The sophism which this work is intended to refute is the more dangerous when applied to public works, inasmuch as it serves to justify the most wanton enterprises and extravagance.  When a railroad or a bridge are of real utility, it is sufficient to mention this utility.  But if it does not exist, what do they do?  Recourse is had to this mystification:  “We must find work for the workmen.”

Accordingly, orders are given that the drains in the Champ-de-Mars be made and unmade.  The great Napoleon, it is said, thought he was doing a very philanthropic work by causing ditches to be made and then filled up.  He said, therefore, “What signifies the result?  All we want is to see wealth spread among the labouring classes.”

But let us go to the root of the matter.  We are deceived by money.  To demand the co-operation of all the citizens in a common work, in the form of money, is in reality to demand a concurrence in kind; for every one procures, by his own labour, the sum to which he is taxed.  Now, if all the citizens were to be called together, and made to execute, in conjunction, a work useful to all, this would be easily understood; their reward would be found in the results of the work itself.

But after having called them together, if you force them to make roads which no one will pass through, palaces which no one will inhabit, and this under the pretext of finding them work, it would be absurd, and they would have a right to argue, “With this labour we have nothing to do; we prefer working on our own account.”

A proceeding which consists in making the citizens co-operate in giving money but not labour, does not, in any way, alter the general results.  The only thing is, that the loss would react upon all parties.  By the former, those whom the State employs, escape their part of the loss, by adding it to that which their fellow-citizens have already suffered.

There is an article in our constitution which says:—­“Society favours and encourages the development of labour—­by the establishment of public works, by the State, the departments, and the parishes, as a means of employing persons who are in want of work.”

As a temporary measure, on any emergency, during a hard winter, this interference with the tax-payers may have its use.  It acts in the same way as securities.  It adds nothing either to labour or to wages, but it takes labour and wages from ordinary times to give them, at a loss it is true, to times of difficulty.

As a permanent, general, systematic measure, it is nothing else than a ruinous mystification, an impossibility, which shows a little excited labour which is seen, and hides a great deal of prevented labour which is not seen.

VI.—­The Intermediates.

Society is the total of the forced or voluntary services which men perform for each other; that is to say, of public services and private services.