And as it is necessary to
deduct from the presumable authors of these infractions children
of seven years and under, who are outside the limits of guilt,
the figures will show that every adult citizen is guilty, three
or four times a year, of violating the established order.
Thus the proprietary system is maintained at Paris only by the
annual consummation of one or two millions of offences! Now,
though all these offences should be the work of a single man, the
argument would still hold good: this man would be the scapegoat
loaded with the sins of Israel: of what consequence is the number
of the guilty, provided justice has its contingent?
Violence, perjury, robbery, cheating, contempt of persons and
society, are so much a part of the essence of monopoly; they flow
from it so naturally, with such perfect regularity, and in
accordance with laws so certain,--that it is possible to submit
their perpetration to calculation, and, given the number of a
population, the condition of its industry, and the stage of its
enlightenment, to rigorously deduce therefrom the statistics of
its morality.
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