at is lawful as legitimate, so much so, that
many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for
the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many
consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find
defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer
by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these
institutions, it is said directly--"You are a dangerous innovator, a
utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis
upon which society rests."

If you lecture upon morality, or political economy, official bodies will
be found to make this request to the Government:--

"That henceforth science be taught not only with sole reference to free
exchange (to liberty, property, and justice), as has been the case up to
the present time, but also, and especially, with reference to the facts
and legislation (contrary to liberty, property, and justice) which
regulate French industry.

"That, in public pulpits salaried by the treasury, the professor abstain
rigorously from endangering in the slightest degree the respect due to
the laws now in force."[7]

So that if a law exists which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression
or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned--for how
can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires?
Still further, morality and political economy must be taught in
connexion with this law--that is, under the supposition that it must be
just, only because it is law.

Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is, that it
gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to
politics, properly so called, an exaggerated preponderance.

I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways. But I shall confine
myself, by way of illustration, to bringing it to bear upon a subject
which has of late occupied everybody's mind--universal suffrage.

Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau,
which professes to be _very far advanced_, but which I consider twenty
centuries _behind, universal_ suffrage (taking the word in its strictest
sense) is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which
examination and doubt are crimes.

Serious objections may be made to it.

In the first place, the word _universal_ conceals a gross sophism. There
are, in France, 36,000,000 of inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage
universal,