The only object I have in view is to make it evident to the reader, that in every public expense, behind the apparent benefit, there is an evil which it is not so easy to discern.  As far as in me lies, I would make him form a habit of seeing both, and taking account of both.

When a public expense is proposed, it ought to be examined in itself, separately from the pretended encouragement of labour which results from it, for tins encouragement is a delusion.  Whatever is done in this way at the public expense, private expense would have done all the same; therefore, the interest of labour is always out of the question.

It is not the object of this treatise to criticise the intrinsic merit of the public expenditure as applied to Algeria, but I cannot withhold a general observation.  It is, that the presumption is always unfavourable to collective expenses by way of tax.  Why?  For this reason:—­First, justice always suffers from it in some degree.  Since James B. had laboured to gain his crown, in the hope of receiving a gratification from it, it is to be regretted that the exchequer should interpose, and take from James B. this gratification, to bestow it upon another.  Certainly, it behoves the exchequer, or those who regulate it, to give good reasons for this.  It has been shown that the State gives a very provoking one, when it says, “With this crown I shall employ workmen;” for James B. (as soon as he sees it) will be sure to answer, “It is all very fine, but with this crown I might employ them myself.”

Apart from this reason, others present themselves without disguise, by which the debate between the exchequer and poor James becomes much simplified.  If the State says to him, “I take your crown to pay the gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal safety; for paving the street which you are passing through every day; for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our frontiers,”—­James B., unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this without hesitation.  But if the State were to say to him, “I take this crown that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which case I must take another crown every year to keep an emigrant in it, and another hundred to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and another crown to maintain a general to guard this soldier,” &c., &c.,—­I think I hear poor James exclaim, “This system of law is very much like a system of cheat!” The State foresees the objection, and what does it do?  It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question.  It talks of the effect of this crown upon labour; it points to the cook and purveyor of the Minister; it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a general, living upon the crown; it shows, in fact, what is seen, and if James B. has not learned to take into the account what is not seen, James B. will be duped.  And this is why I want to do all I can to impress it upon his mind, by repeating it over and over again.