"The Law," "The State," and Other Political Writings, 1843-1850

18. Reflections on the Amendment of M. Mortimer-Ternaux

362 [vol. 5, p. 513. “Réflexions sur l’amendement de M. Mortimer-Ternaux.” 1 April 1850. This article was part of the debate in the Legislative Assembly on 1 April 1850. n.p.] To All Democrats No, I am not mistaken; I feel a democratic heart beating within my breast. How is it then that so often I find myself in opposition to these men who proclaim themselves to be the sole representatives of democracy? We need, however, to make sure we understand one another. Has this word two opposing meanings? For my part, I consider that there is a link between the aspiration that drives all men toward their physical, intellectual, and moral advancement and the faculties with which they have been endowed to pursue this aspiration. This being so, I would like each man to have responsibility for the free disposition, administration, and control of his own person, his acts, his family , his business dealings, his associations, his intelligence, his faculties, his work, his capital, and his property. This is how freedom and democracy are understood in the United States. Each citizen jealously guards his ability to remain his own master. This is  18  Reflections on the Amendment of M. Mortimer-Ternaux1 1. (Paillottet’s note) At the session of the Legislative Assembly on 1 April 1850, during the discussions on the budget for state education, M. Mortimer-Ternaux, a representative of the people, put forward as an amendment a reduction of three hundred thousand francs in expenditure on lycées and secondary schools, the establishments frequented by the children of the middle classes. On this question, the representatives of the extreme left voted with the extreme right. When put to the vote, the amendment was defeated by a small majority. The very next day, Bastiat published, in a daily news sheet, the opinion on this vote that we are printing. The Amendment of M. Mortimer-Ternaux 363 how the poor hope to rise out of poverty and how the rich hope to retain their wealth. And in truth, we see that in a very short space of time this regime has enabled the Americans to achieve a degree of energy, security, wealth, and equality that has no peer in the annals of the human race. However, there as everywhere, there are men who have no scruples in undermining the freedom and property of their fellow citizens for their own advantage. This is why the law intervenes, with the sanction of the common force, to anticipate and repress this dissolute tendency. Each person contributes to maintaining the force in proportion to his wealth. This is not, as has been said, a sacrifice of one part of one’s freedom to preserve the other. On the contrary, it is the simplest, most just, most effective , and most economical way of guaranteeing the freedom of all. And one of the most difficult problems of politics is to remove from those in whom the common force is vested the opportunity to do themselves what they are responsible for preventing. It would appear that French democrats see things in a very different light. Doubtless, like American democrats, they condemn, reject, and stigmatize the plunder that citizens might be tempted to indulge in on their own behalf against one another, such as any attack on property, work, and freedom by one individual to the detriment of another individual. But they consider this plunder, which they reject between individuals, as a means of gaining equality and consequently they entrust it to the law, the common force, which I thought had been instituted to prevent plunder. Thus, while American democrats, having entrusted to the common force the task of punishing individual plunder, are deeply concerned by the fear that this force might itself become a plunderer, in the case of French democrats , making this force an instrument of plunder appears to be the very basis and spirit of the system they advocate. They give these arrangements the grandiose titles of organization, association , fraternity, and solidarity. In doing this, they remove any scruples from the most brutal of appetites. “Peter is poor, Mondor is rich. Are they not brothers? Do they not share solidarity? Should they not be put in association and organized? This being so let them share, and everything will be for the best. It is true that Peter should not take anything from Mondor; that would be iniquitous. But we will pass laws and create forces that will be responsible for the...