Next, comes protection against the spread of calamities, such as fires, inundations, contagious diseases, epidemics, along with the more or less optional and remote precautions which this protection exacts or recommends, night watchers in Russia, dikes in Holland, levees in the valleys of the Po and the Loire, cemeteries and regulations for interment, cleanliness of the streets, ventilation of holes and corners, drainage of marshes, hydrants, and supplies of drinkable water, disinfecting of contaminated areas, and other preventive or necessary hygienic measures which remove or prevent insalubrities growing out of neighborhood or contact.
All this has to be provided for, and the enterprise, if not wholly and in its developments, at least in itself and in what is necessary, imposes itself, collectively, on all the inhabitants of the conscription, from the highest to the lowest. For, in the absence of a public road, none of them can do his daily work, travel about, or even leave his premises; while transportation ceases and trade is suspended; hence, commerce and other pursuits languish, industry is arrested, agriculture becomes impracticable or fruitless; the fields are no longer cultivated; while provisions, food, including bread,[4]
everything is wanting; the dwellings becoming uninhabitable, more so than the Annecy houses when the roofs fall in and let in the rain. -On the other hand, for lack of protection against calamities, these get a free rein: the day arrives when an equinoctial tide submerges the flat coastal area, when the river overflows and devastates the countryside, when the conflagration spreads, when small-pox and the cholera reach a contagious point, and life is in danger, far more seriously imperiled than when, in the Annecy domicile, the main walls threaten to tumble down.[5]
Undoubtedly, I can personally accept this miserable condition of things, resign myself to it, and consent, as far as I am concerned, to shut myself up within my own walls, to fast there, and run the risk, more or less imminent, of being drowned, burnt, or poisoned; but Ihave no right to condemn another to do this, nor to refuse my contribution to a protection by which I am to profit. As to my share of the expense it is fixed beforehand, and fixed through my share in the benefit:
Whoever receives, owes, and in proportion to what he receives;such is an equitable exchange; no society is prosperous and healthy without this; it is essential that, for each member of it, the duties should exactly compensate the advantages, and that the two sides of the scale should balance. In the local community, the care taken of public roads and the precautions taken against natural calamities are useful in two ways: one, which especially improves the condition of persons, and the other, which especially improves the condition of things. The first is equal and the same for all. The poor man, quite as much as the rich one, needs to go and come and to look after his affairs; he uses the street, pavement, sidewalks, bridges, highways, and public fountains quite as much; he equally benefits by the sweeping and lighting of the public gardens. It may be claimed that, in certain respects, he derives more benefits from all this; for he suffers sooner and more keenly when bad roads stop transportation, arrest labor, and increase the cost of food; he is more subject to contagion, to epidemics, to all physical ills; in case of a fire, the risks of a workman in his garret, at the top of steep, narrow stairs, are greater than those of the opulent proprietor on the first story, in a mansion provided with a broad range of steps. In case of inundation, the danger is more suddenly mortal for the humble villager, in his fragile tenement, than for the gentleman farmer in his massive constructions. Accordingly, under this heading, the poor man owes as much as the rich one; the rich man, at least, owes no more than the poor one; if, each year, the poor man cannot pay but one franc, the rich one, each year, should not pay more than that sum likewise. - The second advantage, on the contrary, is not equal for all, but more or less great for each, according to what he spends on the spot, according to his industrial or commercial gains, and according to his local income. Indeed, the more perfect the public highway is, the more are the necessities and conveniences of life;whatever is agreeable and useful, even distant and remote, more within reach, and at my disposition, in my very hands, I enjoy it to the utmost, the measure of my enjoyment of it being the importance of my purchases, everything I consume, in short, my home expenditure.[6] If I am, besides, industrial or in commerce, the state of the public highway affects me even more; for my transportation, more or less costly, difficult and slow, depends on that, and next, the receipt of my raw materials and goods, the sale of my manufactures, the dispatch of my merchandise, bought and sold, while the measure of this special interest, so direct and so intense, is the annual sum-total of my business, or, more strictly speaking, the probable sum of my profits.[7] If, finally, I own real estate, a house or land, its locative value increases or diminishes according to the salubrity and convenience of its site, together with its facilities for cultivating, selling, and distributing its crops, for its various outlets, for its security against floods and fires, and, after this, to improvements in public transit, and to the collective works which protect both soil and buildings against natural calamities.[8] It follows that the inhabitant who benefits from these services, owes a second contribution, greater or lesser according to the greater or lesser advantage which he derives from them.
IV. Local associations.
Local society, thus constituted, is a collective legal entity. - The sphere of its initiation and action. - Its relation to the State. -Distinction between the private and the public domain.