trine, an association for mutual protection, a society like other
societies, circumscribed in its purpose, restricted to its office,
limited in its powers, and by which individuals reserving to themselves
the better portion of their property and persons, assess each other for
the maintenance of an army, a police, tribunals, highways, schools, in
short, the major instruments of public safety and utility, at the same
time withholding the remainder of local, general, spiritual and material
services in favor of private initiative and of spontaneous associations
that may arise as occasion or necessity calls for them. Our State is not
to be a simple utilitarian machine, a convenient, handy implement, of
which the workman avails himself without abandoning the free use of his
hand, or the simultaneous use of other implements. Being elder born, the
only son and sole representative of Reason it must, to ensure its sway,
leave nothing beyond its grasp.--In this respect the old regime paves
the way for the new one, while the established system inclines minds
beforehand to the budding theory. Through administrative centralization
the State already, for a long time, has its hands everywhere.[3419]

"You must know," says Law to the Marquis d'Argenson, "that the
kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants. You have neither
parliaments, assemblies or governors, simply thirty masters of requests,
provincial clerks, on whom depends the happiness or misery, the
fruitfulness or sterility of these provinces."

The king, in fact, sovereign, father, and universal guardian, manages
local affairs through his delegates, and intervenes in private affairs
through his favors or lettres-de-cachet (royal orders of imprisonment).
Such an example and such a course followed for fifty years excites
the imagination. No other instrument is more useful for carrying large
reforms out at one time. Hence, far from restricting the central power
the economists are desirous of extending its action. Instead of setting
up new dikes against it they interest themselves only in destroying
what is left of the old dikes still interfering with it. "The system of
counter-forces in a government," says Quesnay and his disciples, "is a
fatal idea. . . The speculations on which the system of counter-balance
is founded are chimerical. . . . Let the government have a full
comprehension of its duties and be left free. . . The State must govern
according to the essential la