You cannot prevent logic from being logic.
You cannot prevent Mr.Billault from telling the legislators, "You have granted favors to one, you must grant them to all." You cannot prevent Mr.Cremieux from telling the legislators: "You have enriched the manufacturers, you must enrich the common people." You cannot prevent Mr.Nadeau from saying to the legislators: "You cannot refuse to do for the suffering classes that which you have done for the privileged classes." You cannot even prevent the leader of your orchestra, Mr.Mimerel, from saying to the legislators: "I demand twenty-five thousand subsidies for the workingmen's savings banks;" and supporting his motion in this manner: "Is this the first example of the kind that our legislation offers?
Would you establish the system that the State should encourage everything, open at its expense courses of scientific lectures, subsidize the fine arts, pension the theatre, give to the classes already favored by fortune the benefits of superior education, the most varied amusements, the enjoyment of the arts, and repose for old age; give all this to those who know nothing of privations, and compel those who have no share in these benefits to bear their part of the burden, while refusing them everything, even the necessaries of life?
"Gentlemen, our French society, our customs, our laws, are so made that the intervention of the State, however much it may be regretted, is seen everywhere, and nothing seems to be stable or durable if the hand of the State is not manifest in it.

It is the State that makes the Sevres porcelain, and the Gobelin tapestry.

It is the State that periodically gives expositions of the works of our artists, and of the products of our manufacturers; it is the State which recompenses those who raise its cattle and breed its fish.

All this costs a great deal.

It is a tax to which every one is obliged to contribute.
Everybody, do you understand?
And what direct benefit do the people derive from it?
Of what direct benefit to the people are your porcelains and tapestries, and your expositions?
This general principle of resisting what you call a state of enthusiasm we can understand, although you yesterday voted a bounty for linens; we can understand it on the condition of consulting the present crisis, and especially on the condition of your proving your impartiality.