Is M. Leon Faucher in a position to
formulate this law and reconcile the various antagonisms which we
have described? No, since he prefers to stop at the idea of an
indemnity. POWER, he says, IN WELL-ORGANIZED NATIONS, HAS ALWAYS
TIME AND MONEY TO GIVE FOR THE MITIGATION OF THESE PARTIAL
SUFFERINGS. I am sorry for M. Faucher's generous intentions, but
they seem to me radically impracticable.
Power has no time and money save what it takes from the
taxpayers. To indemnify by taxation laborers thrown out of work
would be to visit ostracism upon new inventions and establish
communism by means of the bayonet; that is no solution of the
difficulty. It is useless to insist further on indemnification
by the State. Indemnity, applied according to M. Faucher's
views, would either end in industrial despotism, in something
like the government of Mohammed-Ali, or else would degenerate
into a poor-tax,--that is, into a vain hypocrisy. For the good
of humanity it were better not to indemnify, and to let labor
seek its own eternal constitution.
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