You will notice, my dear C***, that the incentive to behave unjustly in order to acquire wealth supposes the possibility that one might succeed. But this possibility is still, in many respects, a product of the law. If the law were clear, it would warn all equally, if it were just, it would admit of no exception, if it were exact, it would leave no opening for corruption and bad faith. Were civil administration everywhere, not to interfere in so many activities which should be left to take place according to nature, it would not leave an opening for arbitrary power –less dangerous, perhaps, for its exercise than for all that is allowed for the sake of gaining and preserving it. Finally, if everything was governed by laws, if we feared only them instead of men and classes, then only unjust way of acquiring more than we need would be through theft, in the real sense of the word. It is thus against the temptation to acquire more through theft that we ought to compare the strength of the remorse that comes after injustice, and not against the temptation to commit those muted injustices, encouraged by age-old example, and almost authorized by the silence, or rather, the viciousness of the law. These laws, which ought to supplement the citizen’s conscience are all too often instead oppressive chains, or at most, they are occasionally the very last obstruction before wickedness. But supposing we had reasonable laws, the temptation to steal in order to increase one’s pleasures would be much weakened by the inconvenience that acting on it would cause, so that it would be in fact quite rare. Our conscience then need only resist minor thefts, which are in their attraction proportionately less steady and less powerful.
Social institutions are even more to be blamed for the desire to act unjustly out of vanity and ambition. They alone are responsible for the fact that man is dominated by man rather than laws, that a great appointment is anything other than one which it is difficult to fill, that the personal reward for filling it is anything other than the honor of having done it well, or glory, if it is such as to allow for the display of great talents; that titles other than services rendered and public esteem are needed to obtain it; other means for achieving it than being judged worthy of it. It is those social institutions alone, which for every class make it the case that the road to fortune is one of intrigue and artfulness, conspiracy and corruption; they detach ambition from the love of glory, which would ennoble it and purify its ways. Sophie de Grouchy (1798) Letters on Sympathy, Letter 7. Translated by Sandrine Berges [reprinted with permission--please do not quote].
One of the main aims of De Grouchy's Letters is to argue for a secular institutional framework that generates virtue. That is, the legal system is supposed to promote moral education. It is meant to achieve this not by moralizing or by legislating purported moral truths, but rather by being a framework that (i) does not create incentives for corruption and (ii) makes it relatively easy to be moral, and (iii) facilitates the generation of dispositions conducive to virtuous behavior. In order to achieve (i-iii), De Grouchy argues for features we post-Weberians tend to take for granted in the context of state neutrality: impartiality, clarity, equality, and generality. While these legal virtues are familiar enough from theories of (legal) justice, for De Grouchy they are recommended because "corruption and bad faith" are less likely.
In the quoted passage, De Grouchy sounds like a classical eighteenth century proto-Liberal who favors little state intervention: "Were civil administration everywhere, not to interfere in so many activities which should be left to take place according to nature, it would not leave an opening for arbitrary power –less dangerous, perhaps, for its exercise than for all that is allowed for the sake of gaining and preserving it." While she is also concerned with what we would call 'rent-seeking,' the argument is not economic, but political. She is concerned about laws that allow for arbitrary power of (to quote Judith Butler) "petty sovereigns" down the administrative chain. This point is by no means unique with her during the eighteenth century (it's a common concern about the practice of tax farming), but she is astute that the legal structure also creates incentives to gain such power (for example, the right to being a tax farmer was often sold to highest bidder). So badly framed laws do not merely generate injustices for those that suffer from them, but also create incentives that corrupt the folk that benefit from them.
Finally, in the quoted passage, while De Grouchy aims at generating legal structures that promote true glory in office holders. To argue for this, she offers a comparative, counterfactual institutional analysis based on hard-nosed suppositions about their incentive structure(s). Reading De Grouchy usefully reminds us that homo economicus was designed to help us think about ways to achieve virtue, not to be an end in itself.
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