Under the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to contract loans.Always depending upon the future for the payment of his debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity.For what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their dreams.Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the soil.Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor which might result finally in a complete release.Now, the debtor's sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace.
And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate husbandman? The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his expropriation.That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal price of money.Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick.
Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit property.Here, sir, you shall make your own defence.
More than once, in your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and privileges of the Bank.
Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie, at five or six per cent., is not too high, and that the conditions of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this interest, are none too severe.So the government thinks.M.
Blanqui--a professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the necessity of a reform.Who, then, best understands the interests of property,--the State, or M.Blanqui?
If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also.For example: when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount.But it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and finally to annihilate interest.Then, proprietors are interested in maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui.
But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property! Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay of the child, nor that of its father.To-day, in the interest of health, we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages.But to fix their minimum wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual insurance obligatory.Once entered upon this path, we never shall stop.Little by little the government will become manufacturer, commission-merchant, and retail dealer.
It will be the sole proprietor.Why, at all epochs, have the ministers of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages? Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property, and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society.Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise charity without violating justice!
The emperor Nicholas has just compelled all the manufacturers in his empire to maintain, at their own expense, within their establishments, small hospitals for the reception of sick workmen,--the number of beds in each being proportional to the number of laborers in the factory."You profit by man's labor," the Czar could have said to his proprietors; "you shall be responsible for man's life." M.Blanqui has said that such a measure could not succeed in France.It would be an attack upon property,--a thing hardly conceivable even in Russia, Scythia, or among the Cossacks; but among us, the oldest sons of civilization!...I fear very much that this quality of age may prove in the end a mark of decrepitude.
