So long as this idea is retained, which is admitted by all our politicians, and so energetically expressed by M. Louis Blanc in these words—­“Society receives its impulse from power;” so long as men consider themselves as capable of feeling, yet passive—­incapable of raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to any morality, or well-being, and while they expect everything from the law; in a word, while they admit that their relations with the State are the same as those of the flock with the shepherd, it is clear that the responsibility of power is immense.  Fortune and misfortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, all proceed from it.  It is charged with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it has to answer for everything.  If we are happy, it has a right to claim our gratitude; but if we are miserable, it alone must bear the blame.  Are not our persons and property, in fact, at its disposal?  Is not the law omnipotent?  In creating the universitary monopoly, it has engaged to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have been deprived of liberty; and if these expectations are disappointed, whose fault is it?  In regulating industry, it has engaged to make it prosper, otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty; and if it suffers, whose fault is it?  In pretending to adjust the balance of commerce by the game of tariffs, it engages to make it prosper; and if, so far from prospering, it is destroyed, whose fault is it?  In granting its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty, it has engaged to render them lucrative; if they become burdensome, whose fault is it?

Thus, there is not a grievance in the nation for which the Government does not voluntarily make itself responsible.  Is it to be wondered at that every failure threatens to cause a revolution?

And what is the remedy proposed?  To extend indefinitely the dominion of the law, i.e., the responsibility of Government.  But if the Government engages to raise and to regulate wages, and is not able to do it; if it engages to assist all those who are in want, and is not able to do it; if it engages to provide an asylum for every labourer, and is not able to do it; if it engages to offer to all such as are eager to borrow, gratuitous credit, and is not able to do it; if, in words which we regret should have escaped the pen of M. de Lamartine, “the State considers that its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people,”—­if it fails in this, is it not evident that after every disappointment, which, alas! is more than probable, there will be a no less inevitable revolution?

I shall now resume the subject by remarking, that immediately after the economical part[10] of the question, and at the entrance of the political part, a leading question presents itself?  It is the following:—­