But it is easy to understand that this morality which is simply a scientific demonstration, and would even lose its efficiency if it changed its character; which addresses itself not to the heart but to the intelligence; which seeks not to persuade but to convince; which gives proofs not counsels; whose mission is not to move but to enlighten, and which obtains over vice no other victory than to deprive it of its booty--it is easy to understand, I say, how this morality has been accused of being dry and prosaic. The reproach is true without being just. It is equivalent to saying that political economy is not everything, does not comprehend everything, is not the universal solvent. But who has ever made such an exorbitant pretension in its name? The accusation would not be well founded unless political economy presented its processes as final, and denied to philosophy and religion the use of their direct and proper means of elevating humanity. Look at the concurrent action of morality, properly so called, and of political economy--the one inveighing against spoliation by an exposure of its moral ugliness, the other bringing it into discredit in our judgment, by showing its evil consequences. Concede that the triumph of the religious moralist, when realized, is more beautiful, more consoling and more radical; at the same time it is not easy to deny that the triumph of economical science is more facile and more certain. In a few lines, more valuable than many volumes, J.B. Say has already remarked that there are two ways of removing the disorder introduced by hypocrisy into an honorable family; to reform Tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of Orgon. Moliere, that great painter of human life, seems constantly to have had in view the second process as the more efficient. Such is the case on the world's stage. Tell me what Caesar did, and I will tell you what were the Romans of his day. Tell me what modern diplomacy has accomplished, and I will describe the moral condition of the nations. We should not pay two milliards of taxes if we did not appoint those who consume them to vote them. We should not have so much trouble, difficulty and expense with the African question if we were as well convinced that two and two make four in political economy as in arithmetic. M. Guizot would never have had occasion to say: "France is rich enough to pay for her glory," if France had never conceived a false idea of glory. The same statesman never would have said: "_Liberty is too precious for France to traffic in it_," if France had well understood that _liberty_ and a _large budget_ are incompatible.