y
be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which is
founded upon this triple hypothesis: the radical passiveness of
mankind,--the omnipotence of the law,--the infallibility of the
legislator:--this is the sacred symbol of the party which proclaims
itself exclusively democratic.

It is true that it professes also to be _social_.

So far as it is democratic, it, has an unlimited faith in mankind.

So far as it is social, it places it beneath the mud.

Are political rights under discussion? Is a legislator to be chosen? Oh!
then the people possess science by instinct: they are gifted with an
admirable tact; _their will is always right_; the general _will cannot
err_. Suffrage cannot be too _universal_. Nobody is under any
responsibility to society. The will and the capacity to choose well are
taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an
age of enlightenment? What! are the people to be always kept in leading
strings? Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort and
sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and
wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are they not in a state to
judge for themselves? Do they not know their own interest? Is there a
man or a class who would dare to claim the right of putting himself in
the place of the people, of deciding and of acting for them? No, no; the
people would be _free_, and they shall be so. They wish to conduct their
own affairs, and they shall do so.

But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of
his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness,
nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence. It is
for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to
organise. Mankind has nothing to do but to submit; the hour of despotism
has struck. And we must observe that this is decisive; for the people,
just before so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no inclinations
at all, or, if they have any, they all lead them downwards towards
degradation. And yet they ought to have a little liberty! But are we not
assured, by M. Considerant, that _liberty leads fatally to monopoly_?
Are we not told that liberty is competition? and that competition,
according to M. Louis Blanc, _is a system of extermination for the
people, and of ruination for trade_? For that reason people are
exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free--