d invalidism, which
must be cared for. To put it briefly, it is far more dangerous to the
state to tell the individual that he shall be taken care of than to
tell him that he must shift for himself. As for the effect upon the
individual, it is a lowering medicine, making the patient gradually
dependent upon the drug, and bringing him finally to the incurable
invalidism of surly apathy. To change Patrick Henry's fiery peroration
slightly: Give me liberty or in the end you give me moral and
political death.

Students of the various forms of this modern
political nostrum, of getting rid of the fools who are rich by
deceiving the fools who are poor, will remember the decree of the
Provisional Government of the French Republic in 1848: "This
Government undertakes to guarantee the existence of the workman by
work. It undertakes to guarantee work to every citizen." On March 9
public works were started and 3,000 men employed. March 15 saw 14,000
on the pay-rolls, most of them unoccupied because there was no
suitable work. Those not working received "inactivity pay" of a franc
a day. The end of April saw 100,000 on the pay-rolls. In May a
minister ventured to suggest that it was the workman's duty to work!
There were murmurs of disapproval, but the public treasury was nearing
bankruptcy, and on June 22 an order was promulgated, that all of these
workmen between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five were to enlist
in the army. An insurrection followed this order that workmen should
work, and 3,000 citizens were shot down in the streets, and another
3,000 were sent to penal colonies in Algeria. The French are a logical
people. The state promised suitable work; that always means, from the
point of view of the worker, agreeable work, and not too fatiguing at
that. Of course, no such thing is possible, and the end was riot,
murder, and penal servitude. The state can no more provide suitable
and agreeable methods of livelihood for its citizens, than it can
provide them with a duty-loving, unenvious, and honest disposition. As
I have remarked elsewhere, the only thing that stands between state
socialism and the instant solution of all our social problems is human
nature! This mongrel demand for an artificial equality, is worse,
because more degrading than any tyranny of church or state even. Every
man wants superiority and distinction for himself, he only wants
equality, invisibility, and inarticulateness for others.

When some
suc