mittees, would
perform their own centralisation very well, and could guide their
common interests without this being done by the State? Do you not
think that the merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, the
industrial population of every kind, who have their books open before
them in the Chambers of Commerce, could in the same way, without the
help of the State, without expecting their salvation from its
good-will, or their ruin from its inexperience, organise at their own
cost a central administration for themselves; could debate their own
affairs in general assemblies; could correspond with other
administrations; could pass all their useful decisions without waiting
for the sanction of the President of the Republic; and could entrust
the execution of their will to one amongst themselves, who would be
chosen by his fellows to be the Minister? It is clear that the public
works which concern agricultural industry and trade, or the
departments and the communes, might in future be assigned to the local
and central administrations which have an interest in them; and should
no more be a special corporation in the hands of the State than is the
army, the customs, or monopolies. Or should the State have its
hierarchy, its privileges, its ministry, so that it may carry on a
trade in mining, canals, or railways, may speculate on the Stock
Exchange, grant leases for ninety-nine years, and leave the building
of streets, bridges, dams, water-ways, excavations, sluices, etc., to
a legion of contractors, speculators, usurers, destroyers of morality,
and extortioners, who live upon the public wealth by the exploitation
of workmen and wage-earners, and upon the folly of the State?

"Can it not be believed that public instruction could be just as well
made universal, be administered, directed, and that the teachers,
professors, and inspectors could be just as well elected, and the
system of studies would be just as much in harmony with the habits and
interests of the nation if it was the business of municipal and
general councils to appoint teachers, while the universities only had
to grant them their diplomas; if in public instruction, as in the
military career, merit in the lower grades was necessary for promotion
to the higher, if our dignitaries of the university must first have
gone through the duties of an elementary teacher and supervisor of
studies?

"Does one imagine that this perfectly democratic system would do harm
to th