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The Fate of Non-Conformists
If you suggest a doubt as to the
morality of these institutions, it is boldly said that "You
are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a subversive;
you would shatter the foundation upon which society rests."
If you lecture upon morality or upon political science, there
will be found official organizations petitioning the government
in this vein of thought: "That science no longer be taught
exclusively from the point of view of free trade (of liberty, of
property, and of justice) as has been the case until now, but
also, in the future, science is to be especially taught from the
viewpoint of the facts and laws that regulate French industry
(facts and laws which are contrary to liberty, to property, and
to justice). That, in government-endowed teaching positions, the
professor rigorously refrain from endangering in the slightest
degree the respect due to the laws now in force."* *General
Council of Manufacturers, Agriculture, and Commerce, May 6, 1850.
Thus, if there exists a law which
sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form
whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be
mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still
further, morality and political economy must be taught from the
point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a
just law merely because it is a law.
Another effect of this tragic
perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance
to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.
I could prove this assertion in a
thousand ways. But, by way of illustration, I shall limit myself
to a subject that has lately occupied the minds of everyone:
universal suffrage.
Clark Simmons, Webmaster
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