First, Is there an incompatibility in principle between the system of Protection and the right of property?
Secondly, Is it the function of the government to guarantee to each the free exercise of his faculties, and the free disposal of the fruits of his labour--that is to say, property--or to take from one to give to the other, so as to weigh in the balance profits, contingencies, and other circumstances?
Ah! Sir, if you arrive at the same conclusions as myself--if, thanks to your talents, to your fame, to your influence, you can imbue the public mind with these conclusions, who can calculate the extent of the service which you will render to French society? We would see the state confine itself within its proper limits, which is, to secure to each the exercise of his faculties, and the free disposition of his possessions. We would see it free itself at once, both from its present vast but unlawful functions, and from the frightful responsibility which attaches to them. It would confine itself to restraining the abuses of liberty, which is to realize liberty itself! It would secure justice to all, and would no longer promise prosperity to any one. Men would learn to distinguish between what is reasonable, and what is puerile to ask from the government. They would no longer overwhelm it with claims and complaints; no longer lay their misfortunes at its door, or make it responsible for their chimerical hopes; and, in this keen pursuit of a prosperity, of which it is not the dispenser, they would no longer be seen, at each disappointment, to accuse the legislature and the law, to change their rulers and the forms of government, heaping institution upon institution, and ruin upon ruin. They would witness the extinction of that universal fever for mutual robbery, by the costly and perilous intervention of the state. The government, limited in its aim and responsibility, simple in its action, economical, not imposing on the governed the expense of their own chains, and sustained by sound public opinion, would have a solidity which, in our country, has never been its portion; and we would at last have solved this great problem--_To close for ever the gulf of revolution_.
