Every question of labor and wages,
say with one accord the economic and representative theorists,
must remain outside of the attributes of power. From the height
of the glorious sphere where religion has placed them, thrones,
dominations, principalities, powers, and all the heavenly host
view the torment of society, beyond the reach of its stress; but
their power does not extend over the winds and floods. Kings can
do nothing for the salvation of mortals. And, in truth, these
theorists are right: the prince is established to maintain, not
to revolutionize; to protect reality, not to bring about utopia.
He represents one of the antagonistic principles: hence, if he
were to establish harmony, he would eliminate himself, which
on his part would be sovereignly unconstitutional and absurd.
But as, in spite of theories, the progress of ideas is
incessantly changing the external form of institutions in such a
way as to render continually necessary exactly that which the
legislator neither desires nor foresees,--so that, for instance,
questions of taxation become questions of distribution; those of
public utility, questions of national labor and industrial
organization; those of finance, operations of credit; and those
of international law, questions of customs duties and
markets,--it stands as demonstrated that the prince, who,
according to theory, should never interfere with things which
nevertheless, without theory's foreknowledge, are daily and
irresistibly becoming matters of government, is and can be
henceforth, like Divinity from which he emanates, whatever may be
said, only an hypothesis, a fiction.
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