xation in
education, we are hostile to knowledge. If we say that the State ought
not by taxation to give a fictitious value to land, or to any particular
branch of industry, we are enemies to property and labour. If we think
that the State ought not to support artists, we are barbarians, who look
upon the arts as useless.

Against such conclusions as these I protest with all my strength. Far
from entertaining the absurd idea of doing away with religion,
education, property, labour, and the arts, when we say that the State
ought to protect the free development of all these kinds of human
activity, without helping some of them at the expense of others--we
think, on the contrary, that all these living powers of society would
develop themselves more harmoniously under the influence of liberty; and
that, under such an influence no one of them would, as is now the case,
be a source of trouble, of abuses, of tyranny, and disorder.

Our adversaries consider that an activity which is neither aided by
supplies, nor regulated by government, is an activity destroyed. We
think just the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in
mankind; ours is in mankind, not in the legislator.

Thus M. Lamartine said, "Upon this principle we must abolish the public
exhibitions, which are the honour and the wealth of this country." But I
would say to M. Lamartine,--According to your way of thinking, not to
support is to abolish; because, setting out upon the maxim that nothing
exists independently of the will of the State, you conclude that nothing
lives but what the State causes to live. But I oppose to this assertion
the very example which you have chosen, and beg you to remark, that the
grandest and noblest of exhibitions, one which has been conceived in the
most liberal and universal spirit--and I might even make use of the term
humanitary, for it is no exaggeration--is the exhibition now preparing
in London; the only one in which no government is taking any part, and
which is being paid for by no tax.

To return to the fine arts. There are, I repeat, many strong reasons to
be brought, both for and against the system of government assistance.
The reader must see that the especial, object of this work leads me
neither to explain these reasons, nor to decide in their favour, nor
against them.

But M. Lamartine has advanced one argument which I cannot pass by in
silence, for it is closely connected with this economic study. "The
econ