his project should be converted into _law_, and,
consequently, forcibly imposed by power.

"In our project, the State has only to give a legislation to
labour, by means of which the industrial movement may and ought to
be accomplished _in all liberty_. It (the State) merely places
society on an incline (_that is all_) that it may descend, when
once it is placed there, by the mere force of things, and by the
natural course of the _established mechanism_."

But what is this incline? One indicated by M. Louis Blanc. Does it not
lead to an abyss? No, it leads to happiness. Why, then, does not society
go there of itself? Because it does not know what it wants, and it
requires an impulse. What is to give it this impulse? Power. And who is
to give the impulse to power? The inventor of the machine, M. Louis
Blanc.

We shall never get out of this circle--mankind passive, and a great man
moving it by the intervention of the law.

Once on this incline, will society enjoy something like liberty? Without
a doubt. And what is liberty?

"Once for all: liberty consists, not only in the right granted, but
in the power given to man, to exercise, to develop his faculties
under the empire of justice, and under the protection of the law.

"And this is no vain distinction; there is a deep meaning in it,
and its consequences are not to be estimated. For when once it is
admitted that man, to be truly free, must have the power to
exercise and develop his faculties, it follows that every member of
society has a claim upon it for such instruction as shall _enable_
it to display itself, and for the instruments of labour, without
which human activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention
is society to give to each of its members the requisite instruction
and the necessary instruments of labour, unless by that of the
State?"

Thus, liberty is power. In what does this power consist? In possessing
instruction and instruments of labour. Who is to give instruction and
instruments of labour? Society, _who owes them_. By whose intervention
is society to give instruments of labour to those who do not possess
them?

By the _intervention of the State_. From whom is the State to obtain
them?

It is for the reader to answer this question, and to notice whither all
this tends.

One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one which will probabl