h the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of
all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of
RIGHT; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the
work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and
application of JUSTICE in all circumstances where men are liable to come
in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were
ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all
our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious,
our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social
chaos.

This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a
necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is
shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the
notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they
have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress
in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming
testimony.

Eighteen Hundred years ago, the world, under the rule of the Caesars,
exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The
people--intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued
orgies--had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation
by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of
slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them
from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous
form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy
over the depopulated provinces. The wise foresaw the downfall of the
empire, but could devise no remedy. What could they think indeed? To
save this old society it would have been necessary to change the objects
of public esteem and veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by
a justice purely secular; they said: "Rome has conquered through her
politics and her gods; any change in theology and public opinion would
be folly and sacrilege. Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though
binding them in chains, spared their lives; slaves are the most fertile
source of her wealth; freedom of the nations would be the negation of
her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the
pleasures and gorged with the spoils of the universe, is kept alive by
victory and government; her luxury and her pleasur