take a part of the possessions of others.  But this would be dangerous.  Could not you facilitate the thing for me?  Could you not find me a good place? or check the industry of my competitors? or, perhaps, lend me gratuitously some capital, which you may take from its possessor?  Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some prizes? or secure me a competence when I have attained my fiftieth year?  By this means I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace!”

As it is certain, on the one hand, that we are all making some similar request to the Government; and as, on the other, it is proved that Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labour of the others, until I can obtain another definition of the word Government, I feel authorised to give my own.  Who knows but it may obtain the prize?  Here it is: 

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else.

For now, as formerly, every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labours of others.  No one would dare to profess such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself; and then what is done?  A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes to it, and says, “You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake.”  Alas!  Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice, for it is composed of ministers and officials—­of men, in short, who, like all other men, desire in their hearts, and always seize every opportunity with eagerness, to increase their wealth and influence.  Government is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the part which is entrusted to it by the public.  It is glad to be the judge and the master of the destinies of all; it will take much, for then a large share will remain for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents; it will enlarge the circle of its privileges; it will end by appropriating a ruinous proportion.

But the most remarkable part of it is the astonishing blindness of the public through it all.  When successful soldiers used to reduce the vanquished to slavery, they were barbarous, but they were not absurd.  Their object, like ours, was to live at other people’s expense, and they did not fail to do so.  What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order; that it adds nothing to the public good; that it diminishes it, just in proportion to the cost of the expensive medium which we call the Government?

And it is this great chimera which we have placed, for the edification of the people, as a frontispiece to the Constitution.  The following is the beginning of the introductory discourse:—­