stands, accordingly, as regulator and
controller, not alone of private possessions, but also of the family
and of domestic life; its authority is thus legitimately introduced into
that reserved circle in which the individual will has entrenched itself,
and, as is the habit of all great powers, once the circle is invaded,
its tendency is to occupy it fully and entirely.--To this end, it
invokes a new principle. Constituted as a moral personality, the same as
a church, university, or charitable or scientific body, is not the State
bound, like every corporate body that is to last for ages, to extend
its vision far and near and prefer to private interests, which are only
life-interests, the common interest (l'interet commun) which is eternal?
Is not this the superior end to which all others should be subordinated,
and must this interest, which is supreme over all, be sacrificed to
two troublesome instincts which are often unreasonable and sometimes
dangerous; to conscience, which overflows in mystic madness, and to
honor, which may lead to strife even to murderous duels?--Certainly not,
and first of all when, in its grandest works, the State, as legislator,
regulates marriages, inheritances, and testaments, then it is not
respect for the will of individuals which solely guides it; it does not
content itself with obliging everybody to pay his debts, including even
those which are tacit, involuntary and innate; it takes into account
the public interest; it calculates remote probabilities, future
contingencies, all results singly and collectively. Manifestly, in
allowing or forbidding divorce, in extending or restricting what a man
may dispose of by testament, in favoring or interdicting substitutions,
it is chiefly in view of some political, economical or social advantage,
either to refine or consolidate the union of the sexes, to implant in
the family habits of discipline or sentiments of affection, to excite
in children an initiatory spirit, or one of concord, to prepare for the
nation a staff of natural chieftains, or an army of small proprietors,
and always authorized by the universal assent. Moreover, and always with
this universal assent, it does other things outside the task originally
assigned to it, and nobody finds that it usurps when,

* it coins money,

* it regulates weights and measures,

* it establishes quarantines,

* on condition of an indemnity, it expropriates private property for
public utility,

*