But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of his speech alters.  The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness, nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence.  It is for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to organise.  Mankind has nothing to do but to submit; the hour of despotism has struck.  And we must observe that this is decisive; for the people, just before so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no inclinations at all, or, if they have any, they all lead them downwards towards degradation.  And yet they ought to have a little liberty!  But are we not assured, by M. Considerant, that liberty leads fatally to monopoly?  Are we not told that liberty is competition? and that competition, according to M. Louis Blanc, is a system of extermination for the people, and of ruination for trade?  For that reason people are exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free—­take, for example, Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States?  Does not M. Louis Blanc tell us again, that competition leads to monopoly, and that, for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices?  That competition tends to drain the sources of consumption, and urges production to a destructive activity?  That competition forces production to increase, and consumption to decrease;—­whence it follows that free people produce for the sake of not consuming; that there is nothing but oppression and madness among them; and that it is absolutely necessary for M. Louis Blanc to see to it?

What sort of liberty should be allowed to men?  Liberty of conscience?—­But we should see them all profiting by the permission to become atheists.  Liberty of education?—­But parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality and error; besides, if we are to believe M. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty, would cease to be national, and we should be educating our children in the ideas of the Turks or Hindoos, instead of which, thanks to the legal despotism of the universities, they have the good fortune to be educated in the noble ideas of the Romans.  Liberty of labour?—­But this is only competition, whose effect is to leave all productions unconsumed, to exterminate the people, and to ruin the tradesmen.  The liberty of exchange?—­But it is well known that the protectionists have shown, over and over again, that a man must be ruined when he exchanges freely, and that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty.  Liberty of association?—­But, according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and association exclude each other, for the liberty of men is attacked just to force them to associate.

You must see, then, that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience allow men any liberty, because, by their own nature, they tend in every instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralisation.

We are therefore left to conjecture, in this case, upon what foundation universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.