第81章

In addition to the public services, there is a certain number of professions the practice of which the government has seen fit to more or less exclusively reserve; there is a larger number of which legislation has given a monopoly to a restricted number of individuals.Those which are abandoned to competition are subjected to formalities and restrictions, to numberless barriers, which keep many from approaching, and in these consequently competition is far from being unlimited.In short, there are few which are not submitted to varied taxes, necessary doubtless, etc.

What does all this mean? M.Dunoyer doubtless does not intend that society shall dispense with government, administration, police, taxes, universities, in a word, with everything that constitutes a society.Then, inasmuch as society necessarily implies exceptions to competition, the hypothesis of universal competition is chimerical, and we are back again under the regime of caprice, -- a result foretold in the definition of competition.Is there anything serious in this reasoning of M.Dunoyer?

Formerly the masters of the science began by putting far away from them every preconceived idea, and devoted themselves to tracing facts back to general laws, without ever altering or concealing them.The researches of Adam Smith, considering the time of their appearance, are a marvel of sagacity and lofty reasoning.The economic picture presented by Quesnay, wholly unintelligible as it appears, gives evidence of a profound sentiment of the general synthesis.The introduction to J.B.Say's great treatise dwells exclusively upon the scientific characteristics of political economy, and in every line is to be seen how much the author felt the need of absolute ideas.The economists of the last century certainly did not constitute the science, but they sought this constitution ardently and honestly.

How far we are today from these noble thoughts! No longer do they seek a science; they defend the interests of dynasty and caste.The more powerless routine becomes, the more stubbornly they adhere to it; they make use of the most venerated names to stamp abnormal phenomena with a quality of authenticity which they lack; they tax accusing facts with heresy; they calumniate the tendencies of the century; and nothing irritates an economist so much as to pretend to reason with him.

"The peculiar characteristic of the present time," cries M.Dunoyer, in a tone of keen discontent, "is the agitation of all classes; their anxiety, their inability to ever stop at anything and be contented; the infernal labor performed upon the less fortunate that they may become more and more discontented in proportion to the increased efforts of society to make their lot really less pitiful."

Indeed! Because the socialists goad political economy, they are incarnate devils! Can there be anything more impious, in fact, than to teach the proletaire that he is wronged in his labor and his wages, and that, in the surroundings in which he lives, his poverty is irremediable?

M.Reybaud repeats, with greater emphasis, the wail of his master, M.

Dunoyer: one would think them the two seraphim of Isaiah chanting a Sanctus to competition.In June, 1844, at the time when he published the fourth edition of his "Contemporary Reformers," M.Reybaud wrote, in the bitterness of his soul:

To socialists we owe the organization of labor, the right to labor;

they are the promoters of the regime of surveillance....The legislative chambers on either side of the channel are gradually succumbing to their influence....Thus utopia is gaining ground....

And M.Reybaud more and more deplores the secret influence of socialism on the best minds, and stigmatizes -- see the malice! -- the unperceived contagion with which even those who have broken lances against socialism allow themselves to be inoculated.Then he announces, as a last act of his high justice against the wicked, the approaching publication, under the title of "Laws of Labor," of a work in which he will prove (unless some new evolution takes place in his ideas) that the laws of labor have nothing in common, either with the right to labor or with the organization of labor, and that the best of reforms is laissez-faire.

"Moreover," adds M.Reybaud, "the tendency of political economy is no longer to theory, but to practice.The abstract portions of the science seem henceforth fixed.The controversy over definitions is exhausted, or nearly so.The works of the great economists on value, capital, supply and demand, wages, taxes, machinery, farm-rent, increase of population, over- accumulation of products, markets, banks, monopolies, etc., seem to have set the limit of dogmatic researches, and form a body of doctrine beyond which there is little to hope."

Facility of speech, impotence in argument, -- such would have been the conclusion of Montesquieu upon this strange panegyric of the founders of social economy.THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! M.Reybaud makes oath to it; and what he proclaims with so much authority is repeated at the Academy, in the professors' chairs, in the councils of State, in the legislative halls;

it is published in the journals; the king is made to say it in his New Year's addresses; and before the courts the cases of claimants are decided accordingly.

THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! What fools we are, then, socialists, to hunt for daylight at noonday, and to protest, with our lanterns in our hands, against the brilliancy of these solar rays!

But, gentlemen, it is with sincere regret and profound distrust of myself that I find myself forced to ask you for further light.If you cannot cure our ills, give us at least kind words, give us evidence, give us resignation.

"It is obvious," says M.Dunoyer, "that wealth is infinitely better distributed in our day than it ever has been."

"The equilibrium of pains and pleasures," promptly continues M.Reybaud, "ever tends to restore itself on earth."