Let the State prevent, as well as abstain from, any interference with either; let this be its object and nothing more; its abstention is as necessary as its vigilance. Let it guard both, and it will see everywhere growing spontaneously, hourly, each in degree according to conditions of time and place, the most diligent and most competent workmen, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the savant, the artist, the inventor, the propagandist, the husband and wife, the father and mother, the patriot, the philanthropist and the sister of charity.
On the contrary, if, like our Jacobins, the State seeks to confiscate every natural force to its own profit, it seeks to make affection for itself paramount, if it strives to suppress all other passions and interests, if it tolerates no other preoccupation than that which concerns the common weal, if it tries to forcibly convert every member of society into a Spartan or Jesuit, then, at enormous cost, will it not only destroy private fountains, and spread devastation over the entire territory, but it will destroy its own fountain-head. We honor the State only for the services it renders to us, and proportionately to these services and the security it affords us, and to the liberty which it ensures us under the title of universal benefactor; when it deliberately wounds us through our dearest interests and most tender affections, when it goes so far as to attack our honor and conscience, when it becomes the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the course of time, turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and patriotism, exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent springs, until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country, but stagnant pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive subjects or depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces in our own day, naught remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted, torpid creatures, limited to their daily wants and animal instincts, indifferent to the public welfare and to their own prospective interests, so degenerate as to have lost sight of their own discoveries, unlearned their own sciences, arts and industries, and, in short, and worse than all, base, false, corrupted souls entirely wanting in honor and conscience. Nothing is more destructive than the unrestricted meddling of the State, even when wise and paternal; in Paraguay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so minute in its details, "Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals taken in a trap."They worked, ate, drank and gave birth by sound of bells, under watch and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no liking for anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed into so may automatons; at least it may be said is that the means employed to produce this result were gentle and that they, before their transformation were mere brutes. But those who the revolutionary-Jesuit now undertakes to transform into robots, and by harsh means, are human beings.
VIII.
Comparison between despotisms. - Philip II and Louis XIV. - Cromwell and Frederick the Great. - Peter the Great and the Sultans. -Relationship between the tasks the Jacobins are to carry out and the assets at their disposal. - Disproportion between the burdens they are to carry and the forces at their disposal. - Folly of their undertaking. - Physical force the only governmental force they possess. - They are compelled to exercise it. - They are compelled to abuse it. - Character of their government. - Character requisite of their leaders.
Several times, in European history, despotism almost equally harsh have born down heavily on human effort; but never have any of them been so thoroughly inept; for none have ever attempted to raise so heavy a mass with so short a lever.
And to start with, no matter how authoritative the despot might have been, his intervention was limited. - Philip II. burned heretics, persecuted Moors and drove out Jews; Louis XIV. forcibly converted the Protestants; but both used violence only against dissenters, about a fifteenth or a twentieth of their subjects. If Cromwell, on becoming Protector, remained sectarian, and the compulsory servant of an army of sectarians, he took good care not to impose on other churches the theology, rites and discipline of his own church;[18] on the contrary, he repressed fanatical outrages; protected the Anabaptists as well as his Independents. He granted paid curates to the Presbyterians as well as the public exercise of their worship, he showed the Episcopalians a large tolerance and gave them the right to worship in private; he maintained the two great Anglican universities and allowed the Jews to erect a synagogue. - Frederick II. drafted into his army every able-bodied peasant that he could feed; he kept every man twenty years in the service, under a discipline worse than slavery, with almost certain prospect of death; and in his last war, he sacrificed about one sixth of his male subjects;[19] but they were serfs, and his conscription did not touch the bourgeois class. He put his hands in the pockets of the bourgeois and of every other man, and took every crown they had; when driven to it, he adulterated coin and stopped paying his functionaries; but, under the scrutiny of his eyes, always open, the administration was honest, the police effective, justice exact, toleration unlimited, and the freedom of the press complete; the king allowed the publication of the most cutting pamphlets against himself, and their public sale, even at Berlin. - Alittle earlier, in the great empire of the east, Peter the Great,[20]