I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion—­that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organisers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, &c., &c.  Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of attending to it.  It will be answered:—­“You yourself are occupied upon it all this time.”  Very true.  But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold.

I am not doing as Vaucauson did with his automaton, but as a physiologist does with the organisation of the human frame; I would study and admire it.

I am acting with regard to it in the spirit which animated a celebrated traveller.  He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe.  A child had just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks were around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages.  One said—­“This child will never smell the perfume of a calumet, unless I stretch his nostrils.”  Another said—­“He will be without the sense of hearing, unless I draw his ears down to his shoulders.”  A third said—­“He will never see the light of the sun, unless I give his eyes an oblique direction.”  A fourth said—­“He will never be upright, unless I bend his legs.”  A fifth said—­“He will not be able to think, unless I press his brain.”  “Stop!” said the traveller.  “Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty.”

God has implanted in mankind, also, all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies.  There is a providential social physiology, as well as a providential human physiology.  The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty.  Away, then, with quacks and organisers!  Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers!  Away with their artificial methods!  Away with their social workshops, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their gratuitous or monopolising banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralisations, and their equalisation by taxation!  And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun—­reject all systems, and make trial of liberty—­of liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

Footnotes

[1] A franc is 10d. of our money.

[2] This error will be combated in a pamphlet, entitled “Cursed Money.”

[3] Common people.

[4] The Minister of War has lately asserted that every individual transported to Algeria has cost the State 8,000 francs.  Now it is certain that these poor creatures could have lived very well in France on a capital of 4,000 francs.  I ask, how the French population is relieved, when it is deprived of a man, and of the means of subsistence of two men?