As the public expenses displace labour without increasing it, a second serious presumption presents itself against them.  To displace labour is to displace labourers, and to disturb the natural laws which regulate the distribution of the population over the country.  If 50,000,000 francs are allowed to remain in the possession of the tax-payers since the tax-payers are everywhere, they encourage labour in the 40,000 parishes in France.  They act like a natural tie, which keeps every one upon his native soil; they distribute themselves amongst all imaginable labourers and trades.  If the State, by drawing off these 60,000,000 francs from the citizens, accumulates them, and expends them on some given point, it attracts to this point a proportional quantity of displaced labour, a corresponding number of labourers, belonging to other parts; a fluctuating population, which is out of its place, and I venture to say dangerous when the fund is exhausted.  Now here is the consequence (and this confirms all I have said):  this feverish activity is, as it were, forced into a narrow space; it attracts the attention of all; it is what is seen.  The people applaud; they are astonished at the beauty and facility of the plan, and expect to have it continued and extended. That which they do not see is, that an equal quantity of labour, which would probably be more valuable, has been paralyzed over the rest of France.

XI.—­Frugality and Luxury.

It is not only in the public expenditure that what is seen eclipses what is not seen.  Setting aside what relates to political economy, this phenomenon leads to false reasoning.  It causes nations to consider their moral and their material interests as contradictory to each other.  What can be more discouraging or more dismal?

For instance, there is not a father of a family who does not think it his duty to teach his children order, system, the habits of carefulness, of economy, and of moderation in spending money.

There is no religion which does not thunder against pomp and luxury.  This is as it should be; but, on the other hand, how frequently do we hear the following remarks:—­

“To hoard, is to drain the veins of the people.”

“The luxury of the great is the comfort of the little.”

“Prodigals ruin themselves, but they enrich the State.”

“It is the superfluity of the rich which makes bread for the poor.”

Here, certainly, is a striking contradiction between the moral and the social idea.  How many eminent spirits, after having made the assertion, repose in peace.  It is a thing I never could understand, for it seems to me that nothing can be more distressing than to discover two opposite tendencies in mankind.  Why, it comes to degradation at each of the extremes:  economy brings it to misery; prodigality plunges it into moral degradation.  Happily, these vulgar maxims exhibit economy and luxury in a false light, taking account, as they do, of those immediate consequences which are seen, and not of the remote ones, which are not seen.  Let us see if we can rectify this incomplete view of the case.