V.--Public Works.


Nothing is more natural than that a nation, after having assured itself
that an enterprise will benefit the community, should have it executed
by means of a general assessment. But I lose patience, I confess, when I
hear this economic blunder advanced in support of such a
project--"Besides, it will be a means of creating labour for the
workmen."

The State opens a road, builds a palace, straightens a street, cuts a
canal, and so gives work to certain workmen--_this is what is seen_: but
it deprives certain other workmen of work--and this is what _is not
seen_.

The road is begun. A thousand workmen come every morning, leave every
evening, and take their wages--this is certain. If the road had not been
decreed, if the supplies had not been voted, these good people would
have had neither work nor salary there; this also is certain.

But is this all? Does not the operation, as a whole, contain something
else? At the moment when M. Dupin pronounces the emphatic words, "The
Assembly has adopted," do the millions descend miraculously on a
moonbeam into the coffers of MM. Fould and Bineau? In order that the
evolution may be complete, as it is said, must not the State organise
the receipts as well as the expenditure? must it not set its
tax-gatherers and tax-payers to work, the former to gather and the