herefore we bring a livelihood
to one workman instead of another, but add nothing to the share of the
working class as a whole. Your arguments are fashionable enough, but
they are too absurd to be justified by anything like reason.

V.--Public Works.

Nothing is more natural than that a nation, after having assured itself
that an enterprise will benefit the community, should have it executed
by means of a general assessment. But I lose patience, I confess, when I
hear this economic blunder advanced in support of such a
project--"Besides, it will be a means of creating labour for the
workmen."

The State opens a road, builds a palace, straightens a street, cuts a
canal, and so gives work to certain workmen--_this is what is seen_: but
it deprives certain other workmen of work--and this is what _is not
seen_.

The road is begun. A thousand workmen come every morning, leave every
evening, and take their wages--this is certain. If the road had not been
decreed, if the supplies had not been voted, these good people would
have had neither work nor salary there; this also is certain.

But is this all? Does not the operation, as a whole, contain something
else? At the moment when M. Dupin pronounces the emphatic words, "The
Assembly has adopted," do the millions descend miraculously on a
moonbeam into the coffers of MM. Fould and Bineau? In order that the
evolution may be complete, as it is said, must not the State organise
the receipts as well as the expenditure? must it not set its
tax-gatherers and tax-payers to work, the former to gather and the
latter to pay?

Study the question, now, in both its elements. While you state the
destination given by the State to the millions voted, do not neglect to
state also the destination which the tax-payer would have given, but
cannot now give, to the same. Then you will understand that a public
enterprise is a coin with two sides. Upon one is engraved a labourer at
work, with this device, _that which is seen_; on the other is a labourer
out of work, with the device, _that which is not seen_.

The sophism which this work is intended to refute is the more dangerous
when applied to public works, inasmuch as it serves to justify the most
wanton enterprises and extravagance. When a railroad or a bridge are of
real utility, it is sufficient to mention this utility. But if it does
not exist, what do they do? Recourse is had to this mystification: "We
must find work for the work