e discipline of schools, to morality, education, the dignity of
instruction, or the peace of the family?

"And as the sinews of every administration are money, as the budget
is made for the country and not the country for the budget, as the
taxes must every year be granted freely by the representatives of the
people, as this is the original and inalienable right of the people
both under a monarchy and a republic, since the country must first
sanction the income and expenditure before it can be applied by the
Government,--does it not follow that the consequence of this financial
initiative, which is formally recognised as belonging to the citizens
in all our constitutions, will consist in the fact that the finance
minister, or, in a word, the whole fiscal organisation, belongs to the
country and not to its ruler; that it depends directly upon those who
pay the budget and not upon those who spend it; that there would be
infinitely fewer abuses in the administration of public money, fewer
extravagances and deficits, if the State had just as little power over
public finances as over religion, justice, the army, taxes, public
works, and public instruction?

"Supposing the heads of the different branches of administration were
grouped together, we should have then a council of ministry or an
executive power which would serve just as well as a State Council.
Place over this a great 'jury,' legislative body, or national
assembly, elected and commissioned directly by the whole of the
country, whose duty it is not to nominate the ministers, for these
receive their office from the members of their special departments,
but to look through accounts, to make laws, to draw up the budget, and
to decide the differences between the different administrations after
having received the report of the Public Minister or the Minister of
the Interior, to which in the future the whole Government will be
reduced,--and there you would have a centralisation which would be all
the stronger the more its different centres were multiplied. You would
have responsibility, which is all the more real because the separation
between various powers is more sharply defined; you would have a
constitution which at the same time is political and social."

Here we have the picture of the society of the future, as Proudhon
imagined it when the principles of democracy and, above all, of
universal suffrage have become a reality--the celebrated federative
principle