could not by taxation stimulate the arts of necessity without checking
those of luxury, and thus interrupting the natural course of
civilisation. I may observe, that these artificial transpositions of
wants, tastes, labour, and population, place the people in a precarious
and dangerous position, without any solid basis."

These are some of the reasons alleged by the adversaries of State
intervention in what concerns the order in which citizens think their
wants and desires should be satisfied, and to which, consequently, their
activity should be directed. I am, I confess, one of those who think
that choice and impulse ought to come from below and not from above,
from the citizen and not from the legislator; and the opposite doctrine
appears to me to tend to the destruction of liberty and of human
dignity.

But, by a deduction as false as it is unjust, do you know what
economists are accused of? It is, that when we disapprove of government
support, we are supposed to disapprove of the thing itself whose support
is discussed; and to be the enemies of every kind of activity, because
we desire to see those activities, on the one hand free, and on the
other seeking their own reward in themselves. Thus, if we think that the
State should not interfere by taxation in religious affairs, we are
atheists. If we think the State ought not to interfere by taxation in
education, we are hostile to knowledge. If we say that the State ought
not by taxation to give a fictitious value to land, or to any particular
branch of industry, we are enemies to property and labour. If we think
that the State ought not to support artists, we are barbarians, who look
upon the arts as useless.

Against such conclusions as these I protest with all my strength. Far