und, in a forced Utopia, or,
which is worse, in the midst of a multitude of Utopias, striving to gain
possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and
philanthropy have no fixed limits, like justice. Where will you stop?
Where is the law to stop? One person, as M. de Saint Cricq, will only
extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and will
require the law to _dispose of the consumers in favour of the
producers_. Another, like M. Considerant, will take up the cause of the
working classes, and claim for them by means of the law, at a fixed
rate, _clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the support
of life_. A third, as, M. Louis Blanc, will say, and with reason, that
this would be an incomplete fraternity, and that the law ought to
provide them with instruments of labour and the means of instruction. A
fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for
inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote
hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts. This is the high road to
communism; in other words, legislation will be--what it now is--the
battle-field for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness.

Law is justice.

In this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable
Government. And I defy any one to tell me whence the thought of a
revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance could arise against
a public force confined to the repression of injustice. Under such a
system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be
more equally distributed; and as to the sufferings inseparable from
humanity, no one would think of accusing the Government of them, for it
would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the
temperature. Have the people ever been known to rise against the court
of repeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of
claiming the rate of wages, gratuitous credit, instruments of labour,
the advantages of the tariff, or the social workshop? They know
perfectly well that these combinations are beyond the jurisdiction of
the justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that they are not
within the jurisdiction of the law.

But if the law were to be made upon the principle of fraternity, if it
were to be proclaimed that from it proceed all benefits and all
evils--that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for
every social inequality--then you open the d