Equality is found nowhere except among the lowest and most brute-like savages and the lower animals., And the higher men rise above this state, the greater inequality necessarily becomes. Thus, when the envy-ridden Socialist cries out for equality, he really cries out for returning to brutality and savagery.
Worship of equality at the expense of liberty is a specially French characteristic. We may conjecture that in Great Britain equality-worship, and thence liberty-hatred, vary in proportion to the quantity of non-Teutonic blood in the veins.
After all, the poor Frenchman does not get the equality he strives after. Says Balzac: "Plus nos lois tendront a une impossible egalite, plus nous nous en ecarterons pas les moeurs." "In no country," says Karl Hildebrand, "is the line between different classes drawn so sharply as in France; in none are social prejudices more deeply rooted." "Those," says Edmund Burke, "who attempt to level never equalize." They may destroy liberty, and, therefore, prosperity; but they do not gain equality. Thus the French have neither one nor the other. "The French," says W. S. Lilly, "talk of liberty; but the only liberty that a Frenchman has is that of a ticket-of-leave man under perpetual surveillance." "In France," says Monseigneur Freppel, "there is not even a semblance of liberty." "A man is not free," he says, "who cannot leave his property according to his conscience and the interests of his family. A man is not free when the State dictates to him how he is to educate his children (probably against his own religious convictions). Government in France at the present day means tyranny." The French, said Napoleon, do not even know the meaning of the word "liberty."
Some foolish people think that equality-worshipping Radicalism means Republicanism. But Radicalism and its opposite are in the mind, and reign there just the same, whatever the outward and visible form of government. Among the Republicans of America there are all shades and degrees, from Tories—through Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, and Communists—and Fenians, down to Anarchists and "dynamite devils," just as in England. Human nature is human nature everywhere, for ever and ever. A Liberal (as distinguished from a Radical) is a liberal-minded man who love's liberty, and a Radical is an illiberal-minded, envious destroyer of inequality and civilization all the world over, whatever the country, whatever the age, and whatever the form of constitution.
Nature demands liberty and inequality. The poor Radical may whine like a whipped hound at the laws of nature; but this will not alter them, and the more he strives against them the harder his country, if he gets his way, will he whipped. M. de Laveleye talks of the "painful path France is treading, where coercion and revolution succeed each other, and where liberty is sacrificed."
"The French," says Karl Hildebrand, "call the liberty of the individual a German idea. But it is this very German and English idea that develops, when carried out, man's noblest capacities—manly courage, manly energy, honesty, love of country, intellectual vigor, activity, and progress in all things." "How different," he goes on to say, "from the French ideal. The lower instinct of envy has been idealized as 'love of equality,' the 'rights of man' take the place of 'the duties of man,' and the 'sovereignty of the people' comes really to mean the vanity of the people."
Character is everything. Disaster must follow its loss; and this loss must come to a nation that sacrifices liberty (the special cultivator of character) to strife for equality. "Intelligent observers," says Dr. Smiles, "all agreed that the cause of the deplorable collapse of France before the Germans was the utter absence of the feeling of duty, as well as of truthfulness, from the mind of the French people; while the German people, pervaded by an ardent sense of duty, did not think it beneath them to reverence what was noble and lofty. The French, having sneered at everything, had lost the faculty of respecting anything; and virtue, family life, patriotism, honor, and religion were considered only fitting subjects for ridicule. Of course, the inevitable Nemesis came."
The French Radical's hatred of liberty, because it cannot co-exist with equality, is connected with his hatred of Christianity. Christianity means, among other things, individuality—that is, each person being a free, responsible person: responsible to God and to conscience. Thence comes duty—that word which is such a puzzle to the mind of the genuine French Celt. Socialist-Radicalism aims at slavery—slavery to majorities and to the State. Of course, a slave is not a responsible person.
"Popular forms of government," says Froude, "are possible only when individual men can govern their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more importance than pleasure." If this be true—and true, of course, it is —how about popular forms of government in a race of men who, with their many charming qualities, proverbially do not, as a rule, even know the meaning of the word "duty"? Duty implies liberty to act. So, where liberty is destroyed for the sake of getting equality, by means of every kind of tyrannical, despotic, and compulsory legislation, there can be no "duty"; there can be only subjection to public opinion and mob tyranny. "Mob tyranny," said wise Edmund Burke, "means multiplied tyranny." This is, I suppose, why Radicals love it. The tyranny of one despot is not tyranny enough for them.
"One after another," says Baron Stoffel, "the fine qualities of the French nation are dying out, and the time seems coming when this noble race will be known only by its faults. And France has no idea that, while she is sinking, other nations are distancing her on the road of progress."
One result of the Englishman's love of liberty, and of his strong-charactered self-dependence, is that he makes a good colonist, while the Frenchman makes a bad one. An Englishman goes into the bush with his axe, by himself, and, with energetic self-dependence, sets to work, and keeps at work. French colonists, dependent one on (another, collect themselves into villages, and talk. A community of French emigrants once settled in Canada. Their first measure was to erect a salon de danse. But one evening, when they were all earnestly engaged upon a minuet, a party of Indians came, and scalped every one of them. Still, before the great Revolution—that is, before their insane, suicidal legislation for equality—the French increased, multiplied, and colonized. Since the Revolution—and the legislation for compulsory equality, by destroying liberty of bequest, and liberty everywhere—the multiplying has ceased, and their colonies are more and more swamped by the English and German races. How can a colony thrive if there are no colonists?
In Malthusian France nature's counteractions to deterioration of breed, such as liberty, increasing population, and thence hard competition, have not had free play, and the consequences are what we see—consequences that must take place when the laws of God are superseded by the laws of fools. If the liberty Radicals hate and nature demands has to make way for the equality Radicals demand and nature hates, punishment must follow, as in any and every other case where the laws of nature are transgressed or disregarded.
The French think they love liberty. But, as Napoleon said, they do not even know the meaning of the word. Some think it means lawlessness, whereas it means such stern enforcement of the law that everybody can go about freely without fear of being murdered, hold property without being robbed, and make contracts without being swindled.
It is wonderful how ignorant the most able writers have shown themselves, even nearly to the present day, about human nature and human character, with its enormous variety, inequality, and range from mere brute-like animalism up to men of the noblest type. The thinkers of the time of Mill and Ricardo all discussed the Malthusian population-restricting theories, and yet not one of them ever hinted at the one thing in the matter worth mentioning—namely, the effect Malthusianism would have in the long run upon human character, and thence, of course, upon human conduct and action. That all difference in action comes from difference in character, and that, therefore, character is everything, never entered into their heads. They thought —by far the stupidest thought that is possible to the human mind—that "all men are by nature equal," and that there are no inborn differences. That laws to force equality on a nation, such as artificial restriction of population, and the consequent loss of active, free, and healthy competition, must deteriorate character and faculties, and thence lead to national disaster without limit, never seems to have occurred to their sometimes very clever, but always shallow, minds. They were, in fact, dead to all considerations of character— that is, they were dead to the only questions of real importance.
See also Over 300 PDF/Acrobat Books on Socialism, Communism and Economics and The History & Mystery of Money & Economics-250 Books on DVDrom
Visit my Econ blog at http://fredericbastiat1850.blogspot.com/
For a list of all of my digital books on disk click here
Visit my Econ blog at http://fredericbastiat1850.blogspot.com/
For a list of all of my digital books on disk click here
No comments:
Post a Comment