Liberty is not license. It refuses to bend under the yoke, but it submits to rule. The mission of authority is not to constrain, but to counsel; not to command, but to help accomplish; not to absorb individual activity, but to develop it. It does not pretend to raise a convenient indifference on the part of government, nor the indolent withdrawal of all protective influence to the dignity of a principle. To say, on the other hand, that the _laisser faire_ and _laisser passer_ of the economists means: Let robbery alone; let fraud alone etc., is to amuse one’s self playing upon words, and to argue in a manner unworthy of any serious answer. Under pretext of painting a picture of economic doctrine, we are given its caricature. Such has never been the system, to the elaboration of which the purest hearts and noblest intellects have devoted themselves. A negation does not constitute the science of Political Economy. It is very convenient to inclose humanity within a circle of action, drawn with rigorous precision, and to govern movements seen in advance. But such artificial conceptions mutilate the activity of man. To guarantee man all liberty, and prevent its abuse—such are the data of the problem. The work is a great and difficult one. Far from yielding in point of elevation to ideal systems, it is superior to them in extent and variety of combinations. Those who ignore its bearing, yield, it may be, to a certain indolence of intellect. Restrained within its natural limits, the famous _laisser faire_ and _laisser passer_ of the Physiocrates deserves even to-day our respect and our confidence. It ought to be preserved in the grateful memory of men, side by side with the maxim which Quesnay succeeded in having printed at Versailles, by the hand of Louis XV himself: “Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre souverain.”(43) XI.