his child
will never smell the perfume of a calumet, unless I stretch his
nostrils." Another said--"He will be without the sense of hearing,
unless I draw his ears down to his shoulders." A third said--"He will
never see the light of the sun, unless I give his eyes an oblique
direction." A fourth said--"He will never be upright, unless I bend his
legs." A fifth said--"He will not be able to think, unless I press his
brain." "Stop!" said the traveller. "Whatever God does, is well done; do
not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this
frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen
themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."

God has implanted in mankind, also, all that is necessary to enable it
to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social physiology,
as well as a providential human physiology. The social organs are
constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand
air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organisers! Away with their
rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with
their artificial methods! Away with their social workshops, their
governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their
universities, their State religions, their gratuitous or monopolising
banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralisations, and
their equalisation by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted
upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to
have begun--reject all systems, and make trial of liberty--of liberty,
which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

Footnotes

[1] A franc is 10d. of our money.

[2] This error will be combated in a pamphlet, entitled "_Cursed
Money_."

[3] Common people.

[4] The Minister of War has lately asserted that every individual
transported to Algeria has cost the State 8,000 francs. Now it is
certain that these poor creatures could have lived very well in France
on a capital of 4,000 francs. I ask, how the French population is
relieved, when it is deprived of a man, and of the means of subsistence
of two men?

[5] This was written in 1849.

[6] Twenty francs.

[7] General Council of Manufactures, Agriculture, and Commerce, 6th. of
May, 1850.

[8] The French word is _spoliation_.

[9] If protection were only granted in France to a single class, to the
engineers, for instance, it would be so absurdly plu