s of
labor. It is not for us to belie universal history, to silence the
voice of the past, which attests that this has been the condition of
things since the beginning of the world. We cannot deny that war,
slavery, superstition, the abuses of government, privileges, frauds of
every nature, and monopolies, have been the incontestable and terrible
manifestations of these two sentiments united in the heart of man:
_desire for enjoyment; repugnance to labor_.

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!" But every one wants as
much bread and as little sweat as possible. This is the conclusion of
history.

Thank Heaven, history also teaches that the division of blessings and
burdens tends to a more exact equality among men. Unless one is prepared
to deny the light of the sun, it must be admitted that, in this respect
at least, society has made some progress.

If this be true, there exists in society a natural and providential
force, a law which causes iniquity gradually to cease, and makes justice
more and more a reality.

We say that this force exists in society, and that God has placed it
there. If it did not exist we should be compelled, with the socialists,
to search for it in those artificial means, in those arrangements which
require a fundamental change in the physical and moral constitution of
man, or rather we should consider that search idle and vain, for the
reason that we could not comprehend the action of a lever without a
place of support.

Let us, then, endeavor to indicate that beneficent force which tends
progressively to overcome the maleficent force to which we have given
the name spoliation, and the existence of which is only too well
explained by reason and proved by experience.

Every maleficent act necessarily has two terms--the point of beginning
and the point of ending; the man who performs the act and the man upon
whom it is performed; or, in the language of the schools, the active and
the passive agent. There are, then, two means by which the maleficent
act can be prevented: by the voluntary absence of the active, or by the
resistance of the passive agent. Whence two systems of morals arise, not
antagonistic but concurrent; religious or philosophical morality, and
the morality to which I permit myself to apply the name economical
(utilitarian).

Religious morality, to abolish and extirpate the maleficent act, appeals
to its author, to man in his capacity of active agent. It says to hi