Jump to content

Page:The Production of Security.pdf/16

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.

The Production of Security[1]

Gustave de Molinari


There are two ways of considering society. According to some, the development of human associations is not subject to providential, unchangeable laws. Rather, these associations, having originally been organized in a purely artificial manner by primeval


  1. Although this article may appear utopian in its conclusions, we nevertheless believe that we should publish it in order to attract the attention of economists and journalists to a question which has hitherto been treated in only a desultory manner and which should, nevertheless, in our day and age, be approached with greater precision. So many people exaggerate the nature and prerogatives of government that it has become useful to formulate strictly the boundaries outside of which the intervention of authority becomes anarchical and tyrannical rather than protective and profitable. [Note of the editor-in-chief of the Journal des Economistes, 1849.]

15