"What shall we do in case of war," say they, "if we have placed ourselves at the mercy of Great Britain for iron and coal?"
English monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the corn-laws were repealed, "What will become of Great Britain in time of war if she depends on the United States for food?"
One thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence, which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot depend on the foreigner unless the foreigner depends on us. This is the very essence of society. We do not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural relations, but in a state of isolation.
Remark also: we isolate ourselves in the anticipation of war; but the very act of isolation is the commencement of war. It renders it more easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. Let nations become permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation and surfeit, and they will no longer require [127] the powerful navies which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a Napoleon or of a Bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources, motive, pretext, and popular sympathy.
We know well that we shall be reproached (in the cant of the day) for proposing interest, vile and prosaic interest, as a foundation for the fraternity of nations. It would be preferred that it should have its foundation in charity, in love, even in self-renunciation, and that, demolishing the material comfort of man, it should have the merit of a generous sacrifice.
When shall we have done with such puerile talk? When shall we banish charlatanry from science? When shall we cease to manifest this disgusting contradiction between our writings and our conduct? We hoot at and spit upon interest, that is to say, the useful, the right (for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that that thing is good in itself), as if interest were not the necessary, eternal, indestructible instrument to which Providence has intrusted human perfectibility. Would not one suppose us all angels of disinterestedness? And is it supposed that the public does not see with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? Affectation is truly the malady of this age.
What! because comfort and peace are correlative things; because it has pleased God to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world; you are not willing that we should admire and adore His providence, [128] and accept with gratitude laws which make justice the condition of happiness. You wish peace only so far as it is destructive to comfort; and liberty burdens you because it imposes no sacrifices on you. If self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your carrying it into private life? Society will be grateful to you for it, for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything—it is evil set up in theory.
But, thank Heaven, men may write and read a great deal of such talk, without causing the world to refrain on that account from rendering obedience to its motive-power, which is, whether they will or no, interest. After all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the most sublime abnegation invoked in favor of plunder itself. Just see to what this ostentatious disinterestedness tends. These men, so poetically delicate that they do not wish for peace itself, if it is founded on the base interest of men, put their hands in the pockets of others, and, above all, of the poor; for what section of the tariff protects the poor?
Well, gentlemen, dispose according to your own judgment of what belongs to yourselves, but allow us also to dispose of the fruit of the sweat of our brows, to avail ourselves of exchange at our own pleasure. Talk away about self-renunciation, for that is beautiful; but at the same time practice a little honesty.