De ce qui constitue la liberté

CHAP. 3: On what constitutes liberty

UNLESS we are to contradict ourselves, we cannot admit that there exist rights and duties inherent in our nature, without at the same time considering as illegitimate all the elements that constitute civil and political slavery. We must therefore, before going further, form for ourselves very clear ideas of the state to which we give the name of liberty; for, to us, liberty is the essential condition of the exercise of every right, and of the accomplishment of every duty.

Philosophers and jurists have defined liberty in various ways: in this work, this word simply designates the state of a person who encounters, in his fellow men, no obstacle, whether to the regular development of his being, or to the innocent exercise of his faculties. If this definition presented any obscurity, it would suffice, to make it disappear, to recall what I have said elsewhere on the perfection of the various faculties of man.

Liberty can therefore be defined in an exact and complete manner only by negations: to say clearly what it is, one must know what are the elements whose presence suffices to make a person or a nation a slave, and then suppose that these elements have successively disappeared. This manner of defining it may at first appear to be only a trivial truth; however, if the definition were complete, there might be found, among those who would have condemned it as too vulgar a truth, people who would not admit it without restriction. One would indeed wish not to place human beings in the rank of properties, because one cannot consider the nature and effects of slavery without being convinced that it makes man descend below the brute; but one would also wish not to proscribe all its elements, because one is afraid of liberty, and one is still dominated by the ideas and habits of servitude [^4].

There are two things to consider in slavery: the end and the means. The end is to give to a man who is called a master the faculty of living gratuitously on the products of the labors of one or several others who are named slaves, and of using their persons for the satisfaction of his pleasures. The means, which are numerous and varied, consist in acting upon the enslaved men in such a way that they are obliged to produce what their possessors desire, and that they can neither defend themselves, nor save themselves by flight.

The abolition of slavery therefore requires two things: the first, that it be recognized, in principle, that a human being is never the property of another, and that each is the master of the products of his labor; the second, that the means by which one or several men can seize, in their interest, the products of the labors of one or several others, or their persons, be completely abolished.

The principle of slavery, we say, is that one man can legitimately possess another, seize the product of his labors, and use his person for his pleasures or his caprices: the principle of liberty is, on the contrary, that a man can never be legitimately possessed by another, and that the products of his labors belong only to him, so long as he has not freely alienated them.In the state of slavery, the man who is called a master, and who does not have enough strength to despoil those he names his slaves, or to dispose of them according to his pleasures, finds support from persons invested with public authority: in the state of liberty, the man who does not himself have enough power to shelter himself from violence or extortion, is protected by the combined forces of society.

Under the regime of servitude, the men who call themselves masters constitute themselves the directors of the labors of those who are called slaves: under the regime of liberty, each chooses the occupations that suit him; each works or rests consulting no other rules than his needs and his interests.

Under the regime of servitude, the relations between the members of a family, between wife and husband, parents and children, are regulated, for the slaves, by the wills or caprices of the masters: under the regime of liberty, the same relations are regulated, for all classes of the population, by the laws inherent in the nature of man, by what is suitable for the prosperity and happiness of all.

In the state of servitude, the masters shape at their will the intelligence and the mores of the slaves; they give them, from childhood, the ideas and habits most suited to perpetuating slavery: in the state of liberty, each develops his intelligence and that of his children as is suitable for their common well-being; each teaches or learns what his interest and that of his fellow men command him to learn or to teach.

Wherever slavery exists, the masters, to guarantee their security and the duration of their domination, forbid the subjugated men any exercise proper to developing their skill and their physical strength; they forbid to the greatest number the use and possession of arms, permitting them only to those whose devotion is assured to them, and whom they employ to contain the others: under the regime of liberty, every man exercises and develops his strength as his interest and that of his fellow citizens require; each possesses the arms he believes necessary for his security or his amusement, if he is rich enough to procure them.

In countries where slavery exists, the masters assign to each slave a space from which he is forbidden to leave, unless by a special permission that indicates the place where he must go; the slave who leaves the space in which he is circumscribed, or who strays from the route traced for him, is returned to his master by the public force: wherever liberty exists, each transports himself to the places where his interests call him, without needing to ask permission; no one is arrested, unless it be on the accusation of a crime, or for the discharge of a legally contracted obligation [^5].

The possessors of slaves prevent, as much as they can, any sort of association from forming among the subjugated men; they suppose, not without reason, that if they could come to an understanding among themselves, all their efforts would tend toward the destruction of slavery: free men associate whenever their interest requires it, without asking permission of anyone: they deliberate on their common interests as often as they judge it suitable, and so long as they do not infringe upon public morals or the rights of others, no one disturbs them in their meetings.

Masters do not permit their slaves to develop at will the intelligence of their children, or to form their mores; it is they themselves, on the contrary, who determine what the children of the possessed men must know or be ignorant of, love or hate: free men consider as one of their most precious rights, as one of the most sacred duties, that of forming the mores and directing the education of their children.

Masters leave to their slaves no influence over the choice of the agents to whose authority they subject them; the exploitation being entirely in their interest, they entrust it only to people well determined to make this interest the rule of their conduct: free men never entrust to any but themselves the choice of the agents to whom they entrust a part of their interests; if they do not name them directly, they at least give the choice to men whom they have invested with their confidence.

In the system of slavery, a master renders to the men he possesses no account of the manner in which he exercises or has exercised his power over them; his agents are responsible to him for the manner in which they fulfill their mandate; but they are subject to no responsibility with regard to the subjugated population: under the regime of liberty, every man who exercises any power whatsoever over his fellow men, is responsible to them for the use he makes of it; he can infringe upon their interests or their rights in no way, without being held to repair the damage he has caused them.

In the system of slavery, the power or authority that the master exercises over his slaves is a property that is transmitted from father to son like a piece of furniture or a piece of land: under the regime of liberty, the authority that a man exercises over his fellow men can be neither sold, nor bequeathed, nor transmitted, as property, by way of succession: it is in his hands only as a trust.

Under the regime of slavery, the merit and demerit of the actions of the subjugated men are measured, either by the advantages that the master and the members of his family derive from these actions, or by the prejudice they cause them: under the regime of liberty, the actions of men are judged according to their nature; they are approved or condemned according to the principle that produces them, and the good or bad consequences that result from them for humanity.

One could push this parallel further; but one would always find that liberty consists in the destruction of the principles and the means that constitute servitude: one would see that it is established and preserved by means directly opposed to those that constitute and preserve slavery.

One must not, moreover, to judge the degree of slavery or liberty that exists in a country, stop at the denominations given to men or to institutions. It is not necessary for an individual to be called a master, a planter, or a sultan, to be a possessor of men, and to have their mores or ideas. Nor is it necessary for a man to be called a serf, a slave, or a fellah, to be possessed, and to experience all the effects of slavery. It suffices, for servitude to exist in a country, that there be men who exercise over their fellow men the powers that a proprietor exercises over his property.

Servitude can be more or less extensive: when one of the elements of which it is formed happens to disappear, the faculty whose exercise the possessed man recovers is named a liberty; it is said that he possesses liberties, when the innocent exercise of several of his faculties has been restored to him; it is said that he is free or that he possesses his liberty, when all the elements whose ensemble constitutes servitude have completely disappeared: it is easy to understand now how most peoples have liberties, and how there are so few who enjoy liberty.

Having expounded the nature and effects of slavery; having demonstrated that such a state is the negation of every kind of right and duty; having then shown that the state to which we give the name of liberty is that in which men are freed from all the bonds of servitude, it remains for me to investigate what developments nations undergo when they are free.

It is by observing the phenomena that constitute liberty, and those that are the natural consequences of such a state, that we will learn how nations prosper, and that we will succeed in knowing what are the rights and duties of each person, and of the various aggregations of persons, whose ensemble composes the human race.

In these investigations, we will have to observe alternately the relations that exist between men and the things in the midst of which they are placed, and between men and their fellow men.

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Notes

[^4]: Slavery properly so-called is only the subjection of a human being to the will or whims of an individual of the same species, who considers him as his property. The dependence in which a man finds himself upon the things in the midst of which nature has placed him is not slavery. M. Dunoyer has given to the words slavery and liberty a sense other than that which they have in this work. See the writing he published under this title: On Morality and Industry Considered in their Relations with Liberty. [^5]: The slaves of the colonies do not need a pass or passport, as long as they only wish to move from one part of the plantation to which they are attached to another part. The subjects of oriental despots can also travel through the states of their masters without being provided with a pass. The kings of the European continent do not leave their subjects such extensive liberty.