F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 159 
Now listen how McCulloch copies this verbatim, but adds ‘ labour’ 
to ‘ capital,’ and emphasises the completeness of the social benefit. Notice 
still more how he, quite correctly, inserts into the middle of the argument 
the fundamental principle on which it rests: ‘It may be observed that 
_ every individual is constantly exerting himself to find out the most 
advantageous methods of employing his capital and labour. It is true that 
it is his own advantage and not that of the society which he has in view ; 
but, as a society is nothing more than an aggregate collection of individuals,*4 
it is plain that each in steadily pursuing his own aggrandisement is follow- 
ing that precise line of conduct which is most for the public advantage.’ * 
The large assumption on which the conclusion depended, viz. that 
individuals know their own interest better than any other man, or ‘select 
number of men,’ can teach them is, with McCulloch, ‘ an admitted principle 
in the Science of Morals as well as of Political Economy’ * which hardly 
calls for exposition. 
An individualist view of the social bond involved, as I have already 
observed, a severe limitation of the functions of the State, or, in Adam 
Smith’s language, of the ‘ sovereign.’ Herein again Bastiat brings out what 
is implicit in Adam Smith. In his article on the State, written in 1848, 
in the midst of the Socialistic agitation of the period, he prides himself 
on being able thus to characterise it: ‘ The State is the great fiction by 
means of which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone *®. . . 
‘ To-day as aforetime, everyone would like to profit by the toil of others. 
- One doesn’t dare to profess such a sentiment ; one conceals it from oneself. 
So what does one do? We invent an intermediary ; we turn to the State ; 
and one class after another comes and says to it: ‘‘ You, who can properly 
] and honestly do so, take from the public; and we will share.” Alas! 
the State has only too great an inclination to follow this diabolical counsel ; 
for it is composed of ministers and officials—men, in fact, who, like all other 
men, desire at heart, and seize every opportunity, to increase their own 
riches and influence.’ 
For quite such sweeping language from an English pen we have to 
come to America. And here is a characteristic passage from that forcible 
little book by the late Professor Sumner of Yale, ‘ What Social Classes owe 
to Each Other’ :*7 ‘As an abstraction, the State is to me only All-of-us. In 
practice—that is, when it exercises will or adopts a line of action—it is only 
a little group of men chosen in a very haphazard way by the majority of 
us... ‘‘ The State,” instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, 
and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us possess, generally 
offers much less of all these things’; and so on. 
In the last half-century we have seen a high doctrine of the State enter- 
‘ing into England, and in a lesser measure into America, as part of the 
influence of the Hegelian philosophy and of a renewed appreciation of the 
= 
$4 McCulloch’s own italics. 
35 Principles of Political Hconomy (1825), Pt. V., ch. iv. (Reprint, p. 74.) 
* Reprint, p. 16. 
6 L’Etat, c'est la grande fiction a travers laquelle TOUT LE MONDE s’efforce de 
vivre aux dépens de TOUT LE MONDE’ (Bastiat’s own capitals and italics):—@uvres 
| Choisies, ed. Foville, p. 94. There is a poor translation in a volume edited by D. A. 
Wells, Bastiat, Essays in Political Economy (1893). 
37 1885, p. 9. 
