ought to provide them with instruments of labour and the means of instruction.  A fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts.  This is the high road to communism; in other words, legislation will be—­what it now is—­the battle-field for everybody’s dreams and everybody’s covetousness.

Law is justice.

In this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable Government.  And I defy any one to tell me whence the thought of a revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance could arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice.  Under such a system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be more equally distributed; and as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity, no one would think of accusing the Government of them, for it would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the temperature.  Have the people ever been known to rise against the court of repeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of claiming the rate of wages, gratuitous credit, instruments of labour, the advantages of the tariff, or the social workshop?  They know perfectly well that these combinations are beyond the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that they are not within the jurisdiction of the law.

But if the law were to be made upon the principle of fraternity, if it were to be proclaimed that from it proceed all benefits and all evils—­that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for every social inequality—­then you open the door to an endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions.

Law is justice.

And it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else!  Is not justice right?  Are not rights equal?  With what show of right can the law interfere to subject me to the social plans of MM.  Mimerel, de Melun, Thiers, or Louis Blanc, rather than to subject these gentlemen to my plans?  Is it to be supposed that Nature has not bestowed upon ME sufficient imagination to invent a Utopia too?  Is it for the law to make choice of one amongst so many fancies, and to make use of the public force in its service?

Law is justice.

And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law, in this sense, would be atheistic, individual, and heartless, and that it would make mankind wear its own image.  This is an absurd conclusion, quite worthy of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law.