What Is Free Trade? Part 13

But in social science authority is but little recognized. As such a one has to do daily with morals, good or bad, with hygiene, with economy, with politics reasonable or absurd, each one considers himself skilled to comment, discuss, decide, and dogmatize in these matters.

Are you ill? There is no good nurse who does not tell you, at the first moment, the cause and cure of your malady.

"They are humors," affirms she; "you must be purged."

But what are humors? and are these humors?

She does not trouble herself about that. I involuntarily think of this good nurse when I hear all social evils explained by these common phrases: "It is the superabundance of products, the tyranny of capital, industrial plethora," and other idle stories of which we cannot even say: _verba et voces praetereaque nihil_: for they are also fatal mistakes.

From what precedes, two things result--

1st. That the social sciences must abound in sophistry much more than the other sciences, because in them each one consults his own judgment or instinct alone.

2d. That in these sciences sophistry is especially injurious, because it misleads public opinion where opinion is a power--that is, law.

Two sorts of books, then, are required by these sciences; those which expound them, and those which propagate them; those which show the truth, and those which combat error.

It appears to us that the inherent defect in the form of this little Essay--_repet.i.tion_--is that which const.i.tutes its princ.i.p.al value.

In the question we have treated, each sophism has, doubtless, its own set form, and its own range, but all have one common root, which is, "_forgetfulness of the interests of man, insomuch as they forget the interests of consumers_." To show that the thousand roads of error conduct to this generating sophism, is to teach the public to recognize it, to appreciate it--to distrust it under all circ.u.mstances.

After all, we do not aspire to arouse convictions, but doubts.

We have no expectation that in laying down the book, the reader shall exclaim: "_I know_." Please Heaven he may be induced to say, "_I am ignorant_."

"I am ignorant, for I begin to believe there is something delusive in the sweets of Scarcity."

"I am no longer so much edified by the charms of Obstruction."

"Effort without Result no longer seems to me so desirable as Result without Effort."

"It may probably be true that the secret of commerce does not consist, as that of arms does, _in giving and not receiving_, according to the definition which the duellist in the play gives of it."

"I consider an article is increased in value by pa.s.sing through several processes of manufacture; but, in exchange, do two equal values cease to be equal because the one comes from the plough and the other from the power-loom?"

"I confess that I begin to think it singular that humanity should be ameliorated by shackles, or enriched by taxes: and, frankly, I should be relieved of a heavy weight, I should experience a pure joy, if I could see demonstrated, which the author a.s.sures us of, that there is no incompatibility between comfort and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labor and the progress of intelligence."

"So, without feeling satisfied by his arguments, to which I do not know whether to give the name of reasoning or of objections, I will interrogate the masters of the science."

Let us terminate by a last and important observation this monograph of sophisms. The world does not know, as it ought, the influence which sophistry exerts upon it. If we must say what we think, when the Right of the Strongest was dethroned, sophistry placed the empire in the Right of the Most Cunning; and it would be difficult to say which of these two tyrants has been the more fatal to humanity.

Men have an immoderate love for pleasure, influence, position, power--in one word, for wealth.

And at the same time men are impelled by a powerful impulse to procure these things at the expense of another. But this other, which is the public, has an inclination not less strong to keep what it has acquired, provided it can and knows how. Spoliation, which plays so large a part in the affairs of the world, has, then, two agents only: Strength and Cunning; and two limits: Courage and Right.

Power applied to spoliation forms the groundwork of human savagism. To retrace its history would be to reproduce almost entire the history of all nations--a.s.syrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, Arabs, Moguls, Tartars--without counting that of the Spaniards in America, the English in India, the French in Africa, the Russians in Asia, etc., etc.

But, at least, among civilized nations, the men who produce wealth have become sufficiently numerous and sufficiently strong to defend it.

Is that to say that they are no longer despoiled? By no means; they are robbed as much as ever, and, what is more, they despoil one another. The agent alone is changed; it is no longer by violence, but by stratagem, that the public wealth is seized upon.

In order to rob the public, it must be deceived. To deceive it, is to persuade it that it is robbed for its own advantage; it is to make it accept fict.i.tious services, and often worse, in exchange for its property. Hence sophistry, economical sophistry, political sophistry, and financial sophistry--and, since force is held in check, sophistry is not only an evil, it is the parent of other evils. So it becomes necessary to hold it in check, _in its turn_, and for this purpose to render the public more acute than the cunning; just as it has become more peaceful than the strong.