in these
words--"Society receives its impulse from power;" so long as men
consider themselves as capable of feeling, yet passive--incapable of
raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to
any morality, or well-being, and while they expect everything from the
law; in a word, while they admit that their relations with the State are
the same as those of the flock with the shepherd, it is clear that the
responsibility of power is immense. Fortune and misfortune, wealth and
destitution, equality and inequality, all proceed from it. It is charged
with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore
it has to answer for everything. If we are happy, it has a right to
claim our gratitude; but if we are miserable, it alone must bear the
blame. Are not our persons and property, in fact, at its disposal? Is
not the law omnipotent? In creating the universitary monopoly, it has
engaged to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have been
deprived of liberty; and if these expectations are disappointed, whose
fault is it? In regulating industry, it has engaged to make it prosper,
otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty; and if
it suffers, whose fault is it? In pretending to adjust the balance of
commerce by the game of tariffs, it engages to make it prosper; and if,
so far from prospering, it is destroyed, whose fault is it? In granting
its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty, it
has engaged to render them lucrative; if they become burdensome, whose
fault is it?

Thus, there is not a grievance in the nation for which the Government
does not voluntarily make itself responsible. Is it to be wondered at
that every failure threatens to cause a revolution?

And what is the remedy proposed? To extend indefinitely the dominion of
the law, _i.e._, the responsibility of Government. But if the Government
engages to raise and to regulate wages, and is not able to do it; if it
engages to assist all those who are in want, and is not able to do it;
if it engages to provide an asylum for every labourer, and is not able
to do it; if it engages to offer to all such as are eager to borrow,
gratuitous credit, and is not able to do it; if, in words which we
regret should have escaped the pen of M. de Lamartine, "the State
considers that its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to
strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of