st, the manufacturer, the merchant,
the savant, the artist, the inventor, the propagandist, the husband and
wife, the father and mother, the patriot, the philanthropist and the
sister of charity.

On the contrary, if, like our Jacobins, the State seeks to confiscate
every natural force to its own profit, it seeks to make affection for
itself paramount, if it strives to suppress all other passions and
interests, if it tolerates no other preoccupation than that which
concerns the common weal, if it tries to forcibly convert every member
of society into a Spartan or Jesuit, then, at enormous cost, will it not
only destroy private fountains, and spread devastation over the entire
territory, but it will destroy its own fountain-head. We honor the State
only for the services it renders to us, and proportionately to these
services and the security it affords us, and to the liberty which it
ensures us under the title of universal benefactor; when it deliberately
wounds us through our dearest interests and most tender affections, when
it goes so far as to attack our honor and conscience, when it becomes
the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the course of time,
turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and patriotism,
exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent springs,
until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country, but stagnant
pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive subjects or
depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth century, in Italy in
the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces in our own day, naught
remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted, torpid creatures, limited
to their daily wants and animal instincts, indifferent to the public
welfare and to their own prospective interests, so degenerate as to have
lost sight of their own discoveries, unlearned their own sciences,
arts and industries, and, in short, and worse than all, base, false,
corrupted souls entirely wanting in honor and conscience. Nothing is
more destructive than the unrestricted meddling of the State, even when
wise and paternal; in Paraguay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so
minute in its details, "Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals
taken in a trap." They worked, ate, drank and gave birth by sound of
bells, under watch and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no
liking for anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed
into so may automat