by which man must have passed from the state of nature to the state
of society; if he carefully restores, along with the intermediate
situations which I have just described, those which want of time has
compelled me to suppress, or my imagination has failed to suggest,
he cannot fail to be struck by the vast distance which separates the
two states. It is in tracing this slow succession that he will find
the solution of a number of problems of politics and morals, which
philosophers cannot settle. He will feel that, men being different in
different ages, the reason why Diogenes could not find a man was that
he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period. He will
see that Cato died with Rome and liberty, because he did not fit the
age in which he lived; the greatest of men served only to astonish a
world which he would certainly have ruled, had he lived five hundred
years sooner. In a word, he will explain how the soul and the passions
of men insensibly change their very nature; why our wants and pleasures
in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man having vanished
by degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of artificial men and
factitious passions, which are the work of all these new relations, and
without any real foundation in nature. We are taught nothing on this
subject, by reflection, that is not entirely confirmed by observation.
The savage and the civilised man differ so much in the bottom of
their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the
supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair. The former
breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free
from labour; even the _ataraxia_ of the Stoic falls far short of his
profound indifference to every other object. Civilised man, on the
other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains
to find still more laborious occupations: he goes on in drudgery to his
last moment, and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live,
or renounces life to acquire immortality. He pays his court to men in
power, whom he hates, and to the wealthy, whom he despises; he stops at
nothing to have the honour of serving them; he is not ashamed to value
himself on his own meanness and their protection; and, proud of his
slavery, he speaks with disdain of those, who have not the honour of
sharing it. What a sight would the perplexing and envied labours of a
European minister of State present to the eyes of a Caribean! How many
cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to the horrors of
such a life, which is seldom even sweetened by the pleasure of doing
good! But, for him to see into the motives of all this solicitude, the
words _power_ and _reputation_, would have to bear some meaning in his
mind; he would have to know that there are men who set a value on the
opinion of the rest of the world; who can be made happy and satisfied
with themselves rather on the testimony of other people than on their
own. In reality, the source, of all these differences is, that the
savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside
himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that
he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely
from the judgment of others concerning him. It is not to my present
purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises
from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality,
or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but
art and mummery in even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice
itself, of which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show,
in short, how, always asking others what, we are, and never daring
to ask ourselves, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity and
civilisation, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing
to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour
without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.
It is sufficient that I have proved that this is not by any means the
original state of man, but that it is merely the spirit of society, and
the inequality which society produces, that thus transform and alter
all our natural inclinations.
I have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of inequality, and
the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these are
capable of being deduced from the nature of man merely by the light
of reason, and independently of those sacred dogmas which give the
sanction of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from this
survey that, as there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature,
all the inequality which now prevails owes its strength and growth to
the development of our faculties and the advance of the human mind,
and becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment
of property and laws. Secondly, it follows that moral inequality
authorised by positive right alone, clashes with natural right,
whenever it is not proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction
which sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that species
of inequality which prevails in all civilised countries; since it is
plainly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that children
should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged
few should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving
multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life.
[5] Ovid, Metamorphoses xi, 127.
Both rich and poor, shocked at their new-found ills, Would fly from
wealth, and lose what they had sought.
[6] Tacitus, Hist. iv, 17. The most wretched slavery they call peace.
[7] Of the Rights of the Most Christian Queen over various States of
the Monarchy of Spain, 1667.
[8] Distributive justice would oppose this rigorous equality of the
state of nature, even were it practicable in civil society; as all
the members of the State owe it their services in proportion to their
talents and abilities, they ought, on their side, to be distinguished
and favoured in proportion to the services they have actually rendered.
It is in this sense we must understand that passage of Isocrates, in
which he extols the primitive Athenians, for having determined which
of the two kinds of equality was the most useful, viz. that which
consists in dividing the same advantages indiscriminately among all the
citizens, or that which consists in distributing them to each according
to his deserts. These able politicians, adds the orator, banishing
that unjust inequality which makes no distinction between good and bad
men, adhered inviolably to that which rewards and punishes every man
according to his deserts.
But in the first place, there never existed a society, however corrupt
some may have become, where no difference was made between the good
and the bad; and with regard to morality, where no measures can be
prescribed by law exact enough to serve as a practical rule for a
magistrate, it is with great prudence that, in order not to leave the
fortune or quality of the citizens to his discretion, it prohibits him
from passing judgment on persons and confines his judgment to actions.
Only morals such as those of the ancient Romans can bear censors, and
such a tribunal among us would throw everything into confusion. The
difference between good and bad men is determined by public esteem; the
magistrate being strictly a judge of right alone; whereas the public is
the truest judge of morals, and is of such integrity and penetration on
this head, that although it may be sometimes deceived, it can never be
corrupted. The rank of citizens ought, therefore, to be regulated, not
according to their personal merit--for this would put it in the power
of the magistrate to apply the law almost arbitrarily--but according to
the actual services done to the State, which are capable of being more
exactly estimated.
APPENDIX[1]
A famous author, reckoning up the good and evil of human life, and
comparing the aggregates, finds that our pains greatly exceed our
pleasures: so that, all things considered, human life is not at all a
valuable gift. This conclusion does not surprise me; for the writer
drew all his arguments from man in civilisation. Had he gone back to
the state of nature, his inquiries would clearly have had a different
result, and man would have been seen to be subject to very few evils
not of his own creation. It has indeed cost us not a little trouble
to make ourselves as wretched as we are. When we consider, on the one
hand, the immense labours of mankind, the many sciences brought to
perfection, the arts invented, the powers employed, the deeps filled
up, the mountains levelled, the rocks shattered, the rivers made
navigable, the tracts of land cleared, the lakes emptied, the marshes
drained, the enormous structures erected on land, and the teeming
vessels that cover the sea; and, on the other hand, estimate with ever
so little thought, the real advantages that have accrued from all these
works to mankind, we cannot help being amazed at the vast disproportion
there is between these things, and deploring the infatuation of man,
which, to gratify his silly pride and vain self-admiration, induces him
eagerly to pursue all the miseries he is capable of feeling, though
beneficent nature had kindly placed them out of his way.
That men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them
proves beyond doubt: but all the same, I think I've shown that man is
naturally good. What then can have depraved him to such an extent,
except the changes that have happened in his constitution, the advances
he has made, and the knowledge he has acquired? We may admire human
society as much as we please; it will be none the less true that it
necessarily leads men to hate each other in proportion as their
interests clash, and to do one another apparent services, while they
are really doing every imaginable mischief. What can be thought of a
relation, in which the interest of every individual dictates rules
directly opposite to those the public reason dictates to the community
in general--in which every man finds his profit in the misfortunes of
his neighbour? There is not perhaps any man in a comfortable position
who has not greedy heirs, and perhaps even children, secretly wishing
for his death; not a ship at sea, of which the loss would not be good
news to some merchant or other; not a house, which some debtor of bad
faith would not be glad to see reduced to ashes with all the papers
it contains; not a nation which does not rejoice at the disasters
that befall its neighbours. Thus it is that we find our advantage in
the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures, and that the loss of one man
almost always constitutes the prosperity of another. But it is still
more pernicious that public calamities are the objects of the hopes and
expectations of innumerable individuals. Some desire sickness, some
mortality, some war, and some famine. I have seen men wicked enough to
weep for sorrow at the prospect of a plentiful season; and the great
and fatal fire of London, which cost so many unhappy persons their
lives or their fortunes, made the fortunes of perhaps ten thousand
others. I know that Montaigne; censures Demades the Athenian for having
caused to be I punished a workman who, by selling his coffins very
dear, was a great gainer by the deaths of his fellow-citizens; but, the
reason alleged by Montaigne being that everybody ought to be punished,
my point is clearly confirmed by it. Let us penetrate, therefore, the
superficial appearances of benevolence, and survey what passes in the
inmost recesses of the heart. Let us reflect what must be the state of
things, when men are forced to caress and destroy one another at the
same time; when they are born enemies by duty, and knaves by interest.
It will perhaps be said that society is so formed that every man gains
by serving the rest. That would be all very well, if he did not gain
still more by injuring them. There is no legitimate profit so great,
that it cannot be greatly exceeded by what may be made illegitimately;
we always gain more by hurting our neighbours than by doing them good.
Nothing is required but to know how to act with impunity; and to this
end the powerful employ all their strength, and the weak all their
cunning.
Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all nature, and the
friend of all his fellow-creatures. If a dispute arises about a meal,
he rarely comes to blows, without having first compared the difficulty
of conquering his antagonist with the trouble of finding subsistence
elsewhere: and, as pride does not come in, it all ends in a few blows;
the victor eats, and the vanquished seeks provision somewhere else,
and all is at peace. The case is quite different with man in the
state of society, for whom first necessaries have to be provided, and
then superfluities; delicacies follow next, then immense wealth, then
subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys not a moments relaxation; and what
is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more
headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in
his power to gratify them; so that after a long course of prosperity,
after having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero
ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole
master of the world. Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not
of human life, at least of the secret pretensions of the heart of
civilised man.
Compare without partiality the state of the citizen with that of the
savage, and trace out, if you can, how many inlets the former has
opened to pain and death, besides those of his vices, his wants and his
misfortunes. If you reflect on the mental afflictions that prey on us,
the violent passions that waste and exhaust us, the excessive labour
with which the poor are burdened, the still more dangerous indolence
to which the wealthy give themselves up, so that the poor perish of
want, and the rich of surfeit; if you reflect but a moment on the
heterogeneous mixtures and pernicious seasonings of foods; the corrupt
state in which they are frequently eaten; on the adulteration of
medicines, the wiles of those who sell them, the mistakes of those who
administer them, and the poisonous vessels in which they are prepared;
on the epidemics bred by foul air in consequence of great numbers of
men being crowded together, or those which are caused by our delicate
way of living, by our passing from our houses into the open air and
back again, by the putting on or throwing off our clothes with too
little care, and by all the precautions which sensuality has converted
into necessary habits, and the neglect of which sometimes costs us
our life or health; if you take into account the conflagrations and
earthquakes, which, devouring or overwhelming whole cities, destroy
the inhabitants by thousands; in a word, if you add together all the
dangers with which these causes are always threatening us, you will
see how dearly nature makes us pay for the contempt with which we have
treated her lessons.
I shall not here repeat, what I have elsewhere said of the calamities
of war; but wish that those, who have sufficient knowledge, were
willing or bold enough to make public the details of the villainies
committed in armies by the contractors for commissariat, and hospitals:
we should see plainly that their monstrous frauds, already none too
well concealed, which cripple the finest armies in less than no time,
occasion greater destruction among the soldiers than the swords of the
enemy.
The number of people who perish annually at sea, by famine, the scurvy,
pirates, fire and shipwrecks, affords matter for another shocking
calculation. We must also place to the credit of the establishment
of property, and consequently to the institution of society,
assassinations, poisonings, highway robberies, and even the punishments
inflicted on the wretches guilty of these crimes; which, though
expedient to prevent greater evils, yet by making the murder of one man
cost the lives of two or more, double the loss to the human race.
What shameful methods are sometimes practised to prevent the birth of
men, and cheat nature; either by brutal and depraved appetites which
insult her most beautiful work--appetites unknown to savages or mere
animals, which can spring only from the corrupt imagination of mankind
in civilised countries; or by secret abortions, the fitting effects
of debauchery and vitiated notions of honour; or by the exposure or
murder of multitudes of infants, who fall victims to the poverty of
their parents, or the cruel shame of their mothers; or, finally, by
the mutilation of unhappy wretches, part of whose life, with their
hope of posterity, is given up to vain singing, or, still worse, the
brutal jealousy of other men: a mutilation which, in the last case,
becomes a double outrage against nature from the treatment of those
who suffer it, and from the use to which they are destined. But is
it not a thousand times more common and more dangerous for paternal
rights openly to offend against humanity? How many talents have not
been thrown away, and inclinations forced, by the unwise constraint of
fathers? How many men, who would have distinguished themselves in a
fitting estate, have died dishonoured and wretched in another for which
they had no taste! How many happy, but unequal, marriages have been
broken or disturbed, and how many chaste wives have been dishonoured,
by an order of things continually in contradiction with that of nature!
How many good and virtuous husbands and wives are reciprocally punished
for having been ill-assorted! How many young and unhappy victims of
their parents' avarice plunge into vice, or pass their melancholy
days in tears, groaning in the indissoluble bonds which their hearts
repudiate and gold alone has formed! Fortunate sometimes are those
whose courage and virtue remove them from life before inhuman violence
makes them spend it in crime or in despair. Forgive me, father and
mother, whom I shall ever regret: my complaint embitters your griefs;
but would they might be an eternal and terrible example to every one
who dares, in the name of nature, to violate her most sacred right.
If I have spoken only of those ill-starred unions which are the
result of our system, is it to be thought that those over which love
and sympathy preside are free from disadvantages? What if I should
undertake to show humanity attacked in its very source, and even in
the most sacred of all ties, in which fortune is consulted before
nature, and, the disorders of society confounding all virtue and vice,
continence becomes a criminal precaution, and a refusal to give life
to a fellow-creature, an act of humanity? But, without drawing aside
the veil which hides all these horrors, let us content ourselves with
pointing out the evil which others will have to remedy.
To all this add the multiplicity of unhealthy trades, which shorten
men's lives or destroy their bodies, such as working in the mines,
and the preparing of metals and minerals, particularly lead, copper,
mercury, cobalt, and arsenic: add those other dangerous trades which
are daily fatal to many tilers, carpenters, masons and miners: put all
these together and we can see, in the establishment and perfection of
societies, the reasons for that diminution of our species, which has
been noticed by many philosophers.
Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are tenacious of their
own convenience and of the respect paid them by others, soon completes
the evil society had begun, and, under the pretence of giving bread to
the poor, whom it should never have made such, impoverishes all the
rest, and sooner or later depopulates the State. Luxury is a remedy
much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in
itself the greatest of all evils, for every State, great or small:
for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates,
it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the labourer; it is
like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with
devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and
spread famine and death wherever they blow.
From society and the luxury to which it gives birth arise the liberal
and mechanical arts, commerce, letters, and all those superfluities
which make industry flourish, and enrich and ruin nations. The reason
for such destruction is plain. It is easy to see, from the very nature
of agriculture, that it must be the least lucrative of all the arts;
for, its produce being the most universally necessary, the price must
be proportionate to the abilities of the very poorest of mankind.
From the same principle may be deduced this rule, that the arts in
general are more lucrative in proportion as they are less useful; and
that, in the end, the most useful becomes the most neglected. From this
we may learn what to think of the real advantages of industry and the
actual effects of its progress.
Such are the sensible causes of all the miseries, into which opulence
at length plunges the most celebrated nations. In proportion as arts
and industry flourish, the despised husbandman, burdened with the
taxes necessary for the support of luxury, and condemned to pass his
days between labour and hunger, forsakes his native field, to seek in
towns the bread he ought to carry thither. The more our capital cities
strike the vulgar eye with admiration, the greater reason is there to
lament the sight of the abandoned countryside, the large tracts of land
that lie uncultivated, the roads crowded with unfortunate citizens
turned beggars or highwaymen, and doomed to end their wretched lives
either on a dunghill or on the gallows. Thus the State grows rich on
the one hand, and feeble and depopulated on the other; the mightiest
monarchies, after having taken immense pains to enrich and depopulate
themselves, fall at last a prey to some poor nation, which has yielded
to the fatal temptation of invading them, and then, growing opulent and
weak in its turn, is itself invaded and ruined by some other.
Let any one inform us what produced the swarms of barbarians, who
overran Europe, Asia and Africa for so many ages. Was their prodigious
increase due to their industry and arts, to the wisdom of their laws,
or to the excellence of their political system? Let the learned tell us
why, instead of multiplying to such a degree, these fierce and brutal
men, without sense or science, without education, without restraint,
did not destroy each other hourly in quarrelling over the productions
of their fields and woods. Let them tell us how these wretches could
have the presumption to oppose such clever people as we were, so well
trained in military discipline, and possessed of such excellent laws
and institutions: and why, since society has been brought to perfection
in northern countries, and so much pains taken to instruct their
inhabitants in their social duties and in the art of living happily
and peaceably together, we see them no longer produce such numberless
hosts as they used once to send forth to be the plague and terror of
other nations. I fear some one may at last answer me by saying, that
all these fine things, arts, sciences and laws, were wisely invented by
men, as a salutary plague, to prevent the too great multiplication of
mankind, lest the world, which was given us for a habitation, should in
time be too small for its inhabitants.
What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must
_meum_ and _tuum_ be annihilated, and must we return again to the
forests to live among beasts? This is a deduction in the manner of
my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let them have the
shame of drawing. O you, who have never heard the voice of heaven,
who think man destined only to live this little life and die in
peace; you, who can resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal
acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts and endless
desires; resume, since it depends entirely on yourselves, your ancient
and primitive innocence: retire to the woods, there to lose the sight
and remembrance of the crimes of your contemporaries; and be not
apprehensive of degrading your species, by renouncing its advances in
order to renounce its vices. As for men like me whose passions have
destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer subsist on
plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates those who were
honoured in their first father with supernatural instructions; those
who discover, in the design of giving human actions at the start a
morality which they must otherwise have been so long in acquiring, the
reason for a precept in itself indifferent and inexplicable on every
other system; those, in short, who are persuaded that the Divine Being
has called all mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfection
of celestial intelligences, all these will endeavour to merit the
eternal prize they are to expect from the practice of those virtues,
which they make themselves follow in learning to know them. They will
respect the sacred bonds of their respective communities; they will
love theft fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might: they
will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer
them; they will particularly honour those wise and good princes, who
find means of preventing, curing or even palliating all these evils and
abuses, by which we are constantly threatened; they will animate the
zeal of their deserving rulers, by showing them, without flattery or
fear, the importance of their office and the severity of their duty.
But they will not therefore have less contempt for a constitution that
cannot support itself without the aid of so many splendid characters,
much oftener wished for than found; and from which, notwithstanding all
their pains and solicitude, there always arise more real calamities
than even apparent advantages.
[1] See "the faculty of self-improvement".
A DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY
The word Economy, or Œconomy, is derived from _οἰκός, a house_,
and _νόμος, law_, and meant originally only the wise and legitimate
government of the house for the common good of the whole family. The
meaning of the term was then extended to the government of that great
family, the State. To distinguish these two senses of the word, the
latter is called _general_ or _political_ economy, and the former
domestic or particular economy. The first only is discussed in the
present discourse.
Even if there were as close an analogy as many authors maintain between
the State and the family, it would not follow that the rules of conduct
proper for one of these societies would be also proper for the other.
They differ too much in extent to be regulated in the same manner; and
there will always be a great difference between domestic government, in
which a father can see everything for himself, and civil government,
where the chief sees hardly anything save through the eyes of others.
To put both on an equality in this respect, the talents, strength, and
all the faculties of the father would have to increase in proportion to
the size of his family, and the soul of a powerful monarch would have
to be, to that of an ordinary man, as the extent of his empire is to
that of a private person's estate.
But how could the government of the State be like that of the family,
when the basis on which they rest is so different? The father being
physically stronger than his children, his paternal authority, as long
as they need his protection, may be reasonably said to be established
by nature. But in the great family, all the members of which are
naturally equal, the political authority, being purely arbitrary as far
as its institution is concerned, can be founded only on conventions,
and the Magistrate can have no authority over the rest, except by
virtue of the laws. The duties of a father are dictated to him by
natural feelings, and in a manner that seldom allows him to neglect
them. For rulers there is no such principle, and they are really
obliged to the people only by what they themselves have promised to
do, and the people have therefore a right to require of them. Another
more important difference is that since the children have nothing but
what they receive from their father, it is plain that all the rights
of property belong to him, or emanate from him; but quite the opposite
is the case in the great family, where the general administration is
established only to secure individual property, which is antecedent to
it. The principal object of the work of the whole house is to preserve
and increase the patrimony of the father, in order that he may be able
some day to distribute it among his children without impoverishing
them; whereas the wealth of the exchequer is only a means, often ill
understood, of keeping the individuals in peace and plenty. In a word,
the little family is destined to be extinguished, and to resolve itself
some day into several families of a similar nature; but the great
family, being constituted to endure for ever in the same condition,
need not, like the small one, increase for the purpose of multiplying,
but need only maintain itself; and it can easily be proved that any
increase does it more harm than good.
In the family, it is clear, for several reasons which lie in its very
nature, that the father ought to command. In the first place, the
authority ought not to be equally divided between father and mother;
the government must be single, and in every division of opinion there
must be one preponderant voice to decide. Secondly, however lightly
we may regard the disadvantages peculiar to women, yet, as they
necessarily occasion intervals of inaction, this is a sufficient reason
for excluding them from this supreme authority: for when the balance
is perfectly even, a straw is enough to turn the scale. Besides, the
husband ought to be able to superintend his wife's conduct, because
it is of importance for him to be assured that the children, whom he
is obliged to acknowledge and maintain, belong to no-one but himself.
Thirdly, children should be obedient to their father, at first of
necessity, and afterwards from gratitude: after having had their
wants satisfied by him during one half of their lives, they ought to
consecrate the other half to providing for his. Fourthly, servants owe
him their services in exchange for the provision he makes for them,
though they may break off the bargain as soon as it ceases to suit
them. I say nothing here of slavery, because it is contrary to nature,
and cannot be authorised by any right or law.
There is nothing of all this in political society, in which the chief
is so far from having any natural interest in the happiness of the
individuals, that it is not uncommon for him to seek his own in their
misery. If the magistracy is hereditary, a community of men is often
governed by a child. If it be elective, innumerable inconveniences
arise from such election; while in both cases all the advantages of
paternity are lost. If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the
discretion of a master who has no reason to love you: and if you have
several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions. In
a word, abuses are inevitable and their consequences fatal in every
society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force,
and are perpetually attacked by personal interest and the passions of
the ruler and the members.
Although the functions of the father of a family and those of the
chief magistrate ought to make for the same object, they must do so
in such different ways, and their duty and rights are so essentially
distinct, that we cannot confound them without forming very false ideas
about the fundamental laws of society, and falling into errors which
are fatal to mankind. In fact, if the voice of nature is the best
counsellor to which a father can listen in the discharge of his duty,
for the Magistrate it is a false guide, which continually prevents him
from performing his, and leads him on sooner or later to the ruin of
himself and of the State, if he is not restrained by the most sublime
virtue. The only precaution necessary for the father of a family is to
guard himself against depravity, and prevent his natural inclinations
from being corrupted; whereas it is these themselves which corrupt the
Magistrate. In order to act aright, the first has only to consult his
heart; the other becomes a traitor the moment he listens to his. Even
his own reason should be suspect to him, nor should he follow any rule
other than the public reason, which is the law. Thus nature has made
a multitude of good fathers of families; but it is doubtful whether,
from the very beginning of the world, human wisdom has made ten men
capable of governing their peers.
From all that has just been said, it follows that _public_ economy,
which is my subject, has been rightly distinguished from _private_
economy, and that, the State having nothing in common with the family
except the obligations which their heads lie under of making both
of them happy, the same rules of conduct cannot apply to both. I
have considered these few lines enough to overthrow the detestable
system which Sir Robert Filmer has endeavoured to establish in his
_Patriarcha_; a work to which two celebrated writers have done too much
honour in writing books to refute it. Moreover, this error is of very
long standing; for Aristotle himself thought proper to combat it with
arguments which may be found in the first book of his _Politics_.
I must here ask my readers to distinguish also between _public
economy_, which is my subject and which I call _government_, and the
supreme authority, which I call _Sovereignty_; a distinction which
consists in the fact that the latter has the right of legislation, and
in certain cases binds the body of the nation itself, while the former
has only the right of execution, and is binding only on individuals.
I shall take the liberty of making use of a very common, and in some
respects inaccurate, comparison, which will serve to illustrate my
meaning.
The body politic, taken individually, may be considered as an
organised, living body, resembling that of man. The sovereign power
represents the head; the laws and customs are the brain, the source
of the nerves and seat of the understanding, will and senses, of
which the Judges and Magistrates are the organs: commerce, industry,
and agriculture are the mouth and stomach which prepare the common
subsistence; the public income is the blood, which a prudent _economy_,
in performing the functions of the heart, causes to distribute through
the whole body nutriment and life: the citizens are the body and the
members, which make the machine live, move and work; and no part of
this machine can be damaged without the painful impression being at
once conveyed to the brain, if the animal is in a state of health.
The life of both bodies is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal
sensibility and internal correspondence of all the parts. Where this
communication ceases, where the formal unity disappears, and the
contiguous parts belong to one another only by juxtaposition, the man
is dead, or the State is dissolved.
The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being possessed of a will;
and this general will, which tends always to the preservation and
welfare of the whole and of every part, and is the source of the laws,
constitutes for all the members of the State, in their relations to one
another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust: a truth which
shows, by the way, how idly some writers have treated as theft the
subtlety prescribed to children at Sparta for obtaining their frugal
repasts, as if everything ordained by the law were not lawful.
It is important to observe that this rule of justice, though certain
with regard to all citizens, may be defective with regard to
foreigners. The reason is clear. The will of the State, though general
in relation to its own members, is no longer so in relation to other
States and their members, but becomes, for them, a particular and
individual will, which has its rule of justice in the law of nature.
This, however, enters equally into the principle here laid down;
for in such a case, the great city of the world becomes the body
politic, whose general will is always the law of nature, and of which
the different States and peoples are individual members. From these
distinctions, applied to each political society and its members, are
derived the most certain and universal rules, by which we can judge
whether a government is good or bad, and in general of the morality of
all human actions.
Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of
different kinds, each of which has its interests and its rules of
conduct: but those societies which everybody perceives, because they
have an external and authorised form, are not the only ones that
actually exist in the State: all individuals who are united by a common
interest compose as many others, either transitory or permanent, whose
influence is none the less real because it is less apparent, and the
proper observation of whose various relations is the true knowledge of
public morals and manners. The influence of all these tacit or formal
associations causes, by the influence of their will, as many different
modifications of the public will. The will of these particular
societies has always two relations; for the members of the association,
it is a general will; for the great society, it is a particular will;
and it is often right with regard to the first object, and wrong as to
the second. An individual may be a devout priest, a brave soldier, or a
zealous senator, and yet a bad citizen. A particular resolution may be
advantageous to the smaller community, but pernicious to the greater.
It is true that particular societies being always subordinate to the
general society in preference to others, the duty of a citizen takes
precedence of that of a senator, and a man's duty of that of a citizen:
but unhappily personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to
duty, and increases in proportion as the association grows narrower,
and the engagement less sacred; which irrefragably proves that the most
general will is always the must just also, and that the voice of the
people is in fact the voice of God.
It does not follow that the public decisions are always equitable;
they may possibly, for reasons which I have given, not be so when they
have to do with foreigners. Thus it is not impossible that a Republic,
though in itself well governed, should enter upon an unjust war. Nor
is it less possible for the Council of a Democracy to pass unjust
decrees, and condemn the innocent; but this never happens unless the
people is seduced by private interests, which the credit or eloquence
of some clever persons substitutes for those of the State; in which
case the general will will be one thing, and the result of the public
deliberation another. This is not contradicted by the case of the
Athenian Democracy; for Athens was in fact not a Democracy, but a
very tyrannical Aristocracy, governed by philosophers and orators.
Carefully determine what happens in every public deliberation, and it
will be seen that the general will is always for the common good; but
very often there is a secret division, a tacit confederacy, which, for
particular ends, causes the natural disposition of the assembly to be
set at nought. In such a case the body of society is really divided
into other bodies, the members of which acquire a general will, which
is good and just with respect to these new bodies, but unjust and bad
with regard to the whole, from which each is thus dismembered.
We see then how easy it is, by the help of these principles, to explain
those apparent contradictions, which are noticed in the conduct of
many persons who are scrupulously honest in some respects, and cheats
and scoundrels in others, who trample under foot the most sacred
duties, and yet are faithful to the death to engagements that are often
illegitimate. Thus the most depraved of men always pay some sort of
homage to public faith; and even robbers, who are the enemies of virtue
in the great society, pay some respect to the shadow of it in their
secret caves.
In establishing the general will as the first principle of public
_economy_, and the fundamental rule of government, I have not thought
it necessary to inquire seriously whether the Magistrates belong to the
people, or the people to the Magistrates; or whether in public affairs
the good of the State should be taken into account, or only that of
its rulers. That question indeed has long been decided one way in
theory, and another in practice; and in general it would be ridiculous
to expect that those who are in fact masters will prefer any other
interest to their own. It would not be improper, therefore, further to
distinguish public _economy_ as popular or tyrannical. The former is
that of every State, in which there reigns between the people and the
rulers unity of interest and will: the latter will necessarily exist
wherever the government and the people have different interests, and,
consequently, opposing wills. The rules of the latter are written at
length in the archives of history, and in the satires of Macchiavelli.
The rules of the former are found only in the writings of those
philosophers who venture to proclaim the rights of humanity.
I. The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular
government, that is to say, of government whose object is the good of
the people, is therefore, as I have observed, to follow in everything
the general will. But to follow this will it is necessary to know it,
and above all to distinguish it from the particular will, beginning
with one's self: this distinction is always very difficult to make,
and only the most sublime virtue can afford sufficient illumination
for it. As, in order to will, it is necessary to be free, a difficulty
no less great than the former arises--that of preserving at once the
public liberty and the authority of government. Look into the motives
which have induced men, once united by their common needs in a general
society, to unite themselves still more intimately by means of civil
societies: you will find no other motive than that of assuring the
property, life and liberty of each member by the protection of all.
But can men be forced to defend the liberty of any one among them,
without trespassing on that of others? And how can they provide for
the public needs, without alienating the individual property of those
who are forced to contribute to them? With whatever sophistry all this
may be covered over, it is certain that if any constraint can be laid
on my will, I am no longer free, and that I am no longer master of my
own property, if any one else can lay a hand on it. This difficulty,
which would have seemed insurmountable, has been removed, like the
first, by the most sublime of all human institutions, or rather by a
divine inspiration, which teaches mankind to imitate here below the
unchangeable decrees of the Deity. By what inconceivable art has a
means been found of making men free by making them subject; of using in
the service of the State the properties, the persons and even the lives
of all its members, without constraining and without consulting them;
of confining their will by their own admission; of overcoming their
refusal by that consent, and forcing them to punish themselves, when
they act against their own will? How can it be that all should obey,
yet nobody take upon him to command, and that all should serve, and
yet have no masters, but be the more free, as, in apparent subjection,
each loses no part of his liberty but what might be hurtful; to that of
another? These wonders are the work of law. It is to law alone that men
owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ of the will of all
which establishes, in civil right, the natural equality between men.
It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts
of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his
own judgment, and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with
this voice alone that political rulers should speak when they command;
for no sooner does one man, setting aside the law, claim to subject
another to his private will, than he departs from the state of civil
society, and confronts him face to face in the pure state of nature, in
which obedience is prescribed solely by necessity.
The most pressing interest of the ruler, and even his most
indispensable duty, therefore, is to watch over the observation of the
laws of which he is the minister, and on which his whole authority is
founded. At the same time, if he exacts the observance of them from
others, he is the more strongly bound to observe them himself, since he
enjoys all their favour. For his example is of such force, that even if
the people were willing to permit him to release himself from the yoke
of the law, he ought to be cautious in availing himself of so dangerous
a prerogative, which others might soon claim to usurp in their turn,
and often use to his prejudice. At bottom, as all social engagements
are mutual in nature, it is impossible for any one to set himself above
the law, without renouncing its advantages; for nobody is bound by any
obligation to one who claims that he is under no obligations to others.
For this reason no exemption from the law will ever be granted, on any
ground whatsoever, in a well-regulated government. Those citizens who
have deserved well of their country ought to be rewarded with honours,
but never with privileges: for the Republic is at the eve of its fall,
when any one can think it fine not to obey the laws. If the nobility or
the soldiery should ever adopt such a maxim, all would be lost beyond
redemption.
The power of the laws depends still more on their own wisdom than on
the severity of their administrators, and the public will derives its
greatest weight from the reason which has dictated it. Hence Plato
looked upon it as a very necessary precaution to place at the head of
all edicts a preamble, setting forth their justice and utility. In
fact, the first of all laws is to respect the laws: the severity of
penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order
to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of
obtaining. It has constantly been observed that in those countries
where legal punishments are most severe, they are also most frequent;
so that the cruelty of such punishments is a proof only of the
multitude of criminals, and, punishing everything with equal severity,
induces those who are guilty to commit crimes, in order to escape being
punished for their faults.
But though the government be not master of the law, it is much to be
its guarantor, and to possess a thousand means of inspiring the love
of it. In this alone the talent of reigning consists. With force in
one's hands, there is no art required to make the whole world tremble,
nor indeed much to gain men's hearts; for experience has long since
taught the people to give its rulers great credit for all the evil they
abstain from doing it, and to adore them if they do not absolutely hate
it. A fool, if he be obeyed, may punish crimes as well as another: but
the true statesman is he who knows how to prevent them: it is over the
wills, even more than the actions, of his subjects that his honourable
rule is extended. If he could secure that every one should act aright,
he would no longer have anything to do; and the masterpiece of his
labours would be to be able to remain unemployed. It is certain, at
least, that the greatest talent a ruler can possess is to disguise his
power, in order to render it less odious, and to conduct the State so
peaceably as to make it seem to have no need of conductors.
I conclude, therefore, that, as the first duty of the legislator is to
make the laws conformable to the general will, the first rule of public
_economy_ is that the administration of justice should be conformable
to the laws. It will even be enough to prevent the State from being ill
governed, that the Legislator shall have provided, as he should, for
every need of place, climate, soil, custom, neighbourhood, and all the
rest of the relations peculiar to the people he had to institute. Not
but what there still remains an infinity of details of administration
and economy, which are left to the wisdom of the government: but there
are two infallible rules for its good conduct on these occasions; one
is, that the spirit of the law ought to decide in every particular
case that could not be foreseen; the other is that the general will,
the source and supplement of all laws, should be consulted wherever
they fail. But how, I shall be asked, can the general will be known
in cases in which it has not expressed itself? Must the whole nation
be assembled together at every unforeseen event? Certainly not. It
ought the less to be assembled, because it is by no means certain that
its decision would be the expression of the general will; besides, the
method would be impracticable in a great people, and is hardly ever
necessary where the government is well-intentioned: for the rulers
well know that the general will is always on the side which is most
favourable to the public interest, that is to say, most equitable; so
that it is needful only to act justly, to be certain of following the
general will. When this is flouted too openly, it makes itself felt, in
spite of the formidable restraint of the public authority. I shall cite
the nearest possible examples that may be followed in such cases.
In China, it is the constant maxim of the Prince to decide against his
officers, in every dispute that arises between them and the people.
If bread be too dear in any province, the Intendant of that province
is thrown into prison. If there be an insurrection in another, the
Governor is dismissed, and every Mandarin answers with his head for all
the mischief that happens in his department. Not that these affairs do
not subsequently undergo a regular examination; but long experience
has caused the judgment to be thus anticipated. There is seldom any
injustice to be repaired; in the meantime, the Emperor, being satisfied
that public outcry does not arise without cause, always discovers,
through the seditious clamours which he punishes, just grievances to
redress.
It is a great thing to preserve the rule of peace and order through all
the parts of the Republic; it is a great thing that the State should
be tranquil, and the law respected: but if nothing more is done, there
will be in all this more appearance than reality; for that government
which confines itself to mere obedience will find difficulty in getting
itself obeyed. If it is good to know how to deal with men as they are,
it is much better to make them what there is need that they should
be. The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's
inmost being, and concerns itself no less with his will than with
his actions. It is certain that all peoples become in the long run
what the government makes them; warriors, citizens, men, when it so
pleases; or merely populace and rabble, when it chooses to make them
so. Hence every prince who despises his subjects, dishonours himself,
in confessing that he does not know how to make them worthy of respect.
Make men, therefore, if you would command men: if you would have them
obedient to the laws, make them love the laws, and then they will need
only to know what is their duty to do it. This was the great art of
ancient governments, in those distant times when philosophers gave laws
to men, and made use of their authority only to render them wise and
happy. Thence arose the numerous sumptuary laws, the many regulations
of morals, and all the public rules of conduct which were admitted
or rejected with the greatest care. Even tyrants did not forget this
important part of administration, but took as great pains to corrupt
the morals of their slaves, as Magistrates took to correct those of
their fellow-citizens. But our modern governments, which imagine they
have done everything when they have raised money, conceive that it is
unnecessary and even impossible to go a step further.
II. The second essential rule of public economy is no less important
than the first. If you would have the general will accomplished, bring
all the particular wills into conformity with it; in other words, as
virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the particular wills
with the general will, establish the reign of virtue.
If our politicians were less blinded by their ambition, they would
see how impossible it is for any establishment whatever to act in
the spirit of its institution, unless it is guided in accordance
with the law of duty; they would feel that the greatest support of
public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that nothing
can take the place of morality in the maintenance of government. It
is not only upright men who know how to administer the laws; but at
bottom only good men know how to obey them. The man who once gets the
better of remorse, will not shrink before punishments which are less
severe, and less lasting, and from which there is at least the hope
of escaping: whatever precautions are taken, those who only require
impunity in order to do wrong will not fail to find means of eluding
the law, and avoiding its penalties. In this case, as all particular
interests unite against the general interest, which is no longer that
of any individual, public vices have a greater effect in enervating
the laws than the laws in the repression of such vices: so that the
corruption of the people and of their rulers will at length extend to
the government, however wise it may be. The worst of all abuses is
to pay an apparent obedience to the laws, only in order actually to
break them with security. For in this case the best laws soon become
the most pernicious; and it would be a hundred times better that
they should not exist. In such a situation, it is vain to add edicts
to edicts and regulations to regulations. Everything serves only to
introduce new abuses, without correcting the old. The more laws are
multiplied, the more they are despised, and all the new officials
appointed to supervise them are only so many more people to break
them, and either to share the plunder with their predecessors, or to
plunder apart on their own. The reward of virtue soon becomes that of
robbery; the vilest of men rise to the greatest credit; the greater
they are the more despicable they become; their infamy appears even in
their dignities, and their very honours dishonour them. If they buy
the influence of the leaders or the protection of women, it is only
that they may sell justice, duty, and the State in their turn: in the
meantime, the people, feeling that its vices are not the first cause of
its misfortunes, murmurs and complains that all its misfortunes come
solely from those whom it pays to protect it from such things.
It is under these circumstances that the voice of duty no longer speaks
in men's hearts, and their rulers are obliged to substitute the cry of
terror, or the lure of an apparent interest, of which they subsequently
trick their creatures. In this situation they are compelled to have
recourse to all the petty and despicable shifts which they call _rules
of State_ and _mysteries of the cabinet_. All the vigour that is left
in the government is used by its members in ruining and supplanting one
another, while the public business is neglected, or is transacted only
as personal interest requires and directs. In short, the whole art of
those great politicians lies in so mesmerising those they stand in need
of, that each may think he is labouring for his own interest in working
for theirs: I say _theirs_ on the false supposition that it is the real
interest of rulers to annihilate a people in order to make it subject,
and to; ruin their own property in order to secure their possession of
it.
But when the citizens love their duty, and the guardians of the public
authority sincerely apply themselves to the fostering of that love
by their own example and assiduity, every difficulty vanishes; and
government becomes so easy that it needs none of that art of darkness,
whose blackness is its only mystery. Those enterprising spirits,
so dangerous and so much admired, all those great ministers, whose
glory is inseparable from the miseries of the people, are no longer
regretted: public morality supplies what is wanting in the genius of
the rulers; and the more virtue reigns, the less need there is for
talent. Even ambition is better served by duty than by usurpation:
when the people is convinced that its rulers are labouring only for
its happiness, its deference saves them the trouble of labouring to
strengthen their power: and history shows us, in a thousand cases,
that the authority of one who is beloved over those whom he loves is
a hundred times more absolute than all the tyranny of usurpers. This
does not mean that the government ought to be afraid to make use of its
power, but that it ought to make use of it only in a lawful manner.
We find in history a thousand examples of pusillanimous or ambitious
rulers, who were ruined by their slackness or their pride; not one who
suffered for having been strictly just. But we ought not to confound
negligence with moderation, or clemency with weakness. To be just, it
is necessary to be severe; to permit vice, when one has the right and
the power to suppress it, is to be oneself vicious.
It is not enough to say to the citizens, _be good_; they must be
taught to be so; and even example, which is in this respect the first
lesson, is not the sole means to be employed; patriotism is the most
efficacious: for, as I have said already, every man is virtuous when
his particular will is in all things conformable to the general will,
and we voluntarily will what is willed by those whom we love. It
appears that the feeling of humanity evaporates and grows feeble in
embracing all mankind, and that we cannot be affected by the calamities
of Tartary or Japan, in the same manner as we are by those of European
nations. It is necessary in some degree to confine and limit our
interest and compassion in order to make it active. Now, as this
sentiment can be useful only to those with whom we have to live, it is
proper that our humanity should confine itself to our fellow-citizens,
and should receive a new force because we are in the habit of seeing
them, and by reason of the common interest which unites them. It is
certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by
patriotism: this fine and lively feeling, which gives to the force of
self-love all the beauty of virtue, lends it an energy which, without
disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all passions. This it is
that produces so many immortal actions, the glory of which dazzles our
feeble eyes; and so many great men, whose old-world virtues pass for
fables now that patriotism is made mock of. This is not surprising;
the transports of susceptible hearts appear altogether fanciful to any
one who has never felt them; and the love of one's country, which is a
hundred times more lively and delightful than the love of a mistress,
cannot be conceived except by experiencing it. But it is easy to
perceive in every heart that is warmed by it, in all the actions it
inspires, a glowing and sublime ardour which does not attend the purest
virtue, when separated from it. Contrast Socrates even with Cato; the
one was the greater philosopher, the other more of the citizen. Athens
was already ruined in the time of Socrates, and he had no other country
than the world at large. Cato had the cause of his country always at
heart; he lived for it alone, and could not bear to outlive it. The
virtue of Socrates was that of the wisest of men; but, compared with
Cæsar and Pompey, Cato seems a God among mortals. Socrates instructed
a few individuals, opposed the Sophists, and died for truth: but Cato
defended his country, its liberty and its laws, against the conquerors
of the world, and at length departed from the earth, when he had no
longer a country to serve. A worthy pupil of Socrates would be the most
virtuous of his contemporaries; but a worthy follower of Cato would be
one of the greatest. The virtue of the former would be his happiness;
the latter would seek his happiness in that of all. We should be taught
by the one, and led by the other; and this alone is enough to determine
which to prefer: for no people has ever been made into a nation of
philosophers, but it is not impossible to make a people happy.
Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by making them love
their country: but how can they love it, if their country be nothing
more to them than to strangers, and afford them nothing but what it
can refuse nobody? It would be still worse, if they did not enjoy even
the privilege of social security, and if their lives, liberties and
property lay at the mercy of persons in power, without their being
permitted, or it being possible for them, to get relief from the laws.
For in that case, being subjected to the duties of the state of civil
society, without enjoying even the common privileges of the state of
nature, and without being able to use their strength in their own
defence, they would be in the worst, condition in which freemen could
possibly find themselves, and the word _country_ would mean for them
something merely odious and ridiculous. It must not be imagined that a
man can break or lose an arm, without the pain being conveyed to his
head: nor is it any more credible that the general will should consent
that any one member of the State, whoever he might be, should wound or
destroy another, than it is that the fingers of a man in his senses
should wilfully scratch his eyes out. The security of individuals is so
intimately connected with the public confederation that, apart from the
regard that must be paid to human weakness, that convention would in
point of right be dissolved, if in the State a single citizen who might
have been relieved were allowed to perish, or if one were wrongfully
confined in prison, or if in one case an obviously unjust sentence were
given. For the fundamental conventions being broken, it is impossible
to conceive of any right or interest that could retain the people in
the social union; unless they were restrained by force, which alone
causes the dissolution of the state of civil society.
In fact, does not the undertaking entered into by the whole body of the
nation bind it to provide for the security of the least of its members
with as much care as for that of all the rest? Is the welfare of a
single citizen any less the common cause than that of the whole State?
It may be said that it is good that one should perish for all. I am
ready to admire such a saying when it comes from the lips of a virtuous
and worthy patriot, voluntarily and dutifully sacrificing himself for
the good of his country: but if we are to understand by it, that it
is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent man for the good
of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most execrable rules
tyranny ever invented, the greatest falsehood that can be advanced, the
most dangerous admission that can be made, and a direct contradiction
of the fundamental laws of society. So little is it the case that any
one person ought to perish for all, that all have pledged their lives
and properties for the defence of each, in order that the weakness of
individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and
each member by the whole State. Suppose we take from the whole people
one individual after another, and then press the advocates of this rule
to explain more exactly what they mean by the _body of the State_, and
we shall see that it will at length be reduced to a small number of
persons, who are not the people, but the officers of the people, and
who, having bound themselves by personal oath to perish for the welfare
of the people, would thence infer that the people is to perish for
their own.
Need we look for examples of the protection which the State owes to its
members, and the respect it owes to their persons? It is only among
the most illustrious and courageous nations that they are to be found;
it is only among free peoples that the dignity of man is realised. It
is well known into what perplexity the whole republic of Sparta was
thrown, when the question of punishing a guilty citizen arose.
In Macedon, the life of a man was a matter of such importance, that
Alexander the Great, at the height of his glory, would not have dared
to put a Macedonian criminal to death in cold blood, till the accused
had appeared to make his defence before his fellow-citizens, and had
been condemned by them. But the Romans distinguished themselves above
all other peoples by the regard which their government paid to the
individual, and by its scrupulous attention to the preservation of
the inviolable rights of all the members of the State. Nothing was
so sacred among them as the life of a citizen; and no less than an
assembly of the whole people was needed to condemn one. Not even the
Senate, nor the Consuls, in all their majesty, possessed the right;
but the crime and punishment of a citizen were regarded as a public
calamity among the most powerful people in the world. So hard indeed
did it seem to shed blood for any crime whatsoever, that by the Lex
Porcia, the penalty of death was commuted into that of banishment for
all those who were willing to survive the loss of so great a country.
Everything both at Rome, and in the Roman armies, breathed that love of
fellow-citizens one for another, and that respect for the Roman name,
which raised the courage and inspired the virtue of every one who had
the honour to bear it. The cap of a citizen delivered from slavery,
the civic crown of him who had saved the life of another, were looked
upon with the greatest pleasure amid the pomp of their triumphs; and
it is remarkable that among the crowns which were bestowed in honour
of splendid actions in war, the civic crown and that of the triumphant
general alone were of laurel, all the others being merely of gold. It
was thus that Rome was virtuous and became the mistress of the world.
Ambitious rulers! A herdsman governs his dogs and cattle, and yet is
only the meanest of mankind. If it be a fine thing to command, it is
when those who obey us are capable of doing us honour. Show respect,
therefore, to your fellow-citizens, and you will render yourselves
worthy of respect; show respect to liberty, and your power will
increase daily. Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become
unlimited.
Let our country then show itself the common mother of her citizens; let
the advantages they enjoy in their country endear it to them; let the
government leave them enough share in the public administration to make
them feel that they are at home; and let the laws be in their eyes only
the guarantees of the common liberty. These rights, great as they are,
belong to all men: but without seeming to attack them directly, the
ill-will of rulers may in fact easily reduce their effect to nothing.
The law, which they thus abuse, serves the powerful at once as a weapon
of offence, and as a shield against the weak; and the pretext of the
public good is always the most dangerous scourge of the people. What
is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult, in government, is rigid
integrity in doing strict justice to all, and above all in protecting
the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil has
already come about, when there are poor men to be defended, and rich
men to be restrained. It is on the middle classes alone that the whole
force of the law is exerted; they are equally powerless against the
treasures of the rich and the penury of the poor. The first mocks them,
the second escapes them. The one breaks the meshes, the other passes
through them.
It is therefore one of the most important functions of government to
prevent extreme inequality of fortunes; not by taking away wealth from
its possessors, but by depriving all men of means to accumulate it;
not by building hospitals for the poor, but by securing the citizens
from becoming poor. The unequal distribution of inhabitants over the
territory, when men are crowded together in one place, while other
places are depopulated; the encouragement of the arts that minister
to luxury and of purely industrial arts at the expense of useful
and laborious crafts; the sacrifice of agriculture to commerce; the
necessitation of the tax-farmer by the mal-administration of the funds
of the State; and in short, venality pushed to such an extreme that
even public esteem is reckoned at a cash value, and virtue rated at
a market price: these are the most obvious causes of opulence and
of poverty, of public interest, of mutual hatred among citizens, of
indifference to the common cause, of the corruption of the people, and
of the weakening of all the springs of government. Such are the evils,
which are with difficulty cured when they make themselves felt, but
which a wise administration ought to prevent, if it is to maintain,
along with good morals, respect for the laws, patriotism, and the
influence of the general will.
But all these precautions will be inadequate, unless rulers go still
more to the root of the matter. I conclude this part of public economy
where I ought to have begun it. There can be no patriotism without
liberty, no liberty without virtue, no virtue without citizens; create
citizens, and you have everything you need; without them, you will have
nothing but debased slaves, from the rulers of the State downwards. To
form citizens is not the work of a day; and in order to have men it
is necessary to educate them when they are children. It will be said,
perhaps, that whoever has men to govern, ought not to seek, beyond
their nature, a perfection of which they are incapable; that he ought
not to desire to destroy their passions; and that the execution of such
an attempt is no more desirable than it is possible. I will agree,
further, that a man without passions would certainly be a bad citizen;
but it must be agreed also that, if men are not taught not to love
some things, it is impossible to teach them to love one object more
than another--to prefer that which is truly beautiful to that which is
deformed. If, for example, they were early accustomed to regard their
individuality only in its relation to the body of the State, and to be
aware, so to speak, of their own existence merely as a part of that of
the State, they might at length come to identify themselves in some
degree with this greater whole, to feel themselves members of their
country, and to love it with that exquisite feeling which no isolated
person has save for himself; to lift up their spirits perpetually to
this great object, and thus to transform into a sublime virtue that
dangerous disposition which gives rise to all our vices. Not only does
philosophy demonstrate the possibility of giving feeling these new
directions; history furnishes us with a thousand striking examples.
If they are so rare among us moderns, it is because nobody troubles
himself whether citizens exist or not, and still less does anybody
think of attending to the matter soon enough to make them. It is too
late to change our natural inclinations, when they have taken their
course, and egoism is confirmed by habit: it is too late to lead us
out of ourselves when once the human Ego, concentrated in our hearts,
has acquired that contemptible activity which absorbs all virtue and
constitutes the life and being of little minds. How can, patriotism
germinate in the midst of so many other passions which smother it?
And what can remain, for fellow-citizens, of a heart already divided
between avarice, a mistress, and vanity?
From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve
to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of
citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of
our duty. If there are laws for the age of maturity, there ought to be
laws for infancy, teaching obedience to others: and as the reason of
each man is not left to be the sole arbiter of his duties, government
ought the less indiscriminately to abandon to the intelligence and
prejudices of fathers the education of their children, as that
education is of still greater importance to the State than to the
fathers: for, according to the course of nature, the death of the
father often deprives him of the final fruits of education; but his
country sooner or later perceives its effects. Families dissolve, but
the State remains.
Should the public authority, by taking the place of the father, and
charging itself with that important function, acquire his rights by
discharging his duties, he would have the less cause to complain, as
he would only be changing his title, and would have in common, under
the name of _citizen_, the same authority over his children, as he was
exercising separately under the name of _father_, and would not be less
obeyed when speaking in the name of the law, than when he spoke in that
of nature. Public education, therefore, under regulations prescribed
by the government, and under magistrates established by the Sovereign,
is one of the fundamental rules of popular or legitimate government.
If children are brought up in common in the bosom of equality; if they
are imbued with the laws of the State and the precepts of the general
will; if they are taught to respect these above all things; if they
are surrounded by examples and objects which constantly remind them of
the tender mother who nourishes them, of the love she bears them, of
the inestimable benefits they receive from her, and of the return they
owe her, we cannot doubt that they will learn to cherish one another
mutually as brothers, to will nothing contrary to the will of society,
to substitute the actions of men and citizens for the futile and vain
babbling of sophists, and to become in time defenders and fathers of
the country of which they will have been so long the children.
I shall say nothing of the Magistrates destined to preside over such
an education, which is certainly the most important business of the
State. It is easy to see that if such marks of public confidence
were conferred on slight grounds, if this sublime function were not,
for those who have worthily discharged all other offices, the reward
of labour, the pleasant and honourable repose of old age, and the
crown of all honours, the whole enterprise would be useless and the
education void of success. For where-ever the lesson is not supported
by authority, and the precept by example, all instruction is fruitless;
and virtue itself loses its credit in the mouth of one who does not
practise it. But let illustrious warriors, bent under the weight of
their laurels, preach courage: let upright Magistrates, grown white
in the purple and on the bench teach justice. Such teachers as these
would thus get themselves virtuous successors, and transmit from age to
age, to generations to come, the experience and talents of rulers, the
courage and virtue of citizens, and common emulation in all to live and
die for their country.
I know of but three peoples which once practised public education, the
Cretans, the Lacedæmonians, and the ancient Persians: among all these
it was attended with the greatest success, and indeed it did wonders
among the two last. Since the world has been divided into nations too
great to admit of being well governed, this method has been no longer
practicable, and the reader will readily perceive other reasons why
such a thing has never been attempted by any modern people. It is very
remarkable that the Romans were able to dispense with it; but Rome was
for five hundred years one continued miracle which the world cannot
hope to see again. The virtue of the Romans, engendered by their horror
of tyranny and the crimes of tyrants, and by an innate patriotism, made
all their houses so many schools of citizenship; while the unlimited
power of fathers over their children made the individual authority so
rigid that the father was more feared than the Magistrate, and was in
his family tribunal both censor of morals and avenger of the laws.
Thus a careful and well-intentioned government, vigilant incessantly to
maintain or restore patriotism and morality among the people, provides
beforehand against the evils which sooner or later result from the
indifference of the citizens to the fate of the Republic, keeping
within narrow bounds that personal interest which so isolates the
individual that the State is enfeebled by his power, and has nothing
to hope from his good-will. Wherever men love their country, respect
the laws, and live simply, little remains to be done in order to make
them happy; and in public administration, where chance has less
influence than in the lot of individuals, wisdom is so nearly allied to
happiness, that the two objects are confounded.
III. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them, it is also
necessary to consider their subsistence. Provision for the public wants
is an obvious inference from the general will, and the third essential
duty of government. This duty is not, we should feel, to fill the
granaries of individuals and thereby to grant them a dispensation from
labour, but to keep plenty so within their reach that labour is always
necessary and never useless for its acquisition. It extends also to
everything regarding the management of the exchequer, and the expenses
of public administration. Having thus treated of general economy with
reference to the government of persons, we must now consider it with
reference to the administration of property.
This part presents no fewer difficulties to solve, and contradictions
to remove, than the preceding. It is certain that the right of property
is the most sacred of all the rights of citizenship, and even more
important in some respects than liberty itself; either because it more
nearly affects the preservation of life, or because, property being
more easily usurped and more difficult to defend than life, the law
ought to pay a greater attention to what is most easily taken away; or
finally, because property is the true foundation of civil society, and
the real guarantee of the undertakings of citizens: for if property
were not answerable for personal actions, nothing would be easier
than to evade duties and laugh at the laws. On the other hand, it is
no less certain that the maintenance of the State and the government
involves costs and out-goings; and as every one who agrees to the end
must acquiesce in the means, it follows that the members of a society
ought to contribute from their property to its support. Besides, it is
difficult to secure the property of individuals on one side, without
attacking it on another; and it is impossible that all the regulations
which govern the order of succession, will, contracts, &c. should not
lay individuals under some constraint as to the disposition of their
goods, and should not consequently restrict the right of property.
But besides what I have said above of the agreement between the
authority of law and the liberty of the citizen, there remains to
be made, with respect to the disposition of goods, an important
observation which removes many difficulties. As Puffendorf has shown,
the right of property, by its very nature, does not extend beyond the
life of the proprietor, and the moment a man is dead his goods cease
to belong to him. Thus, to prescribe the conditions according to which
he can dispose of them, is in reality less to alter his right as it
appears, than to extend it in fact.
In general, although the institution of the laws which regulate the
power of individuals in the disposition of their own goods belongs only
to the Sovereign, the spirit of these laws, which the government ought
to follow in their application, is that, from father to son, and from
relation to relation, the goods of a family should go as little out of
it and be as little alienated as possible. There is a sensible reason
for this in favour of children, to whom the right of property would be
quite useless, if the father left them nothing, and who besides, having
often contributed by their labour to the acquisition of their father's
wealth, are in their own right associates with him in his right of
property. But another reason, more distant, though not less important,
is that nothing is more fatal to morality and to the Republic than the
continual shifting of rank and fortune among the citizens: such changes
are both the proof and the source of a thousand disorders, and overturn
and confound everything; for those who were brought up to one thing
find themselves destined for another; and neither those who rise nor
those who fall are able to assume the rules of conduct, or to possess
themselves of the qualifications requisite for their new condition,
still less to discharge the duties it entails. I proceed to the object
of public finance.
If the people governed itself and there were no intermediary between
the administration of the State and the citizens, they would have no
more to do than to assess themselves occasionally, in proportion to
the public needs and the abilities of individuals: and as they would
all keep in sight the recovery and employment of such assessments, no
fraud or abuse could slip into the management of them; the State would
never be involved in debt, or the people over-burdened with taxes;
or at least the knowledge of how the money would be used would be a
consolation For the severity of the tax. But things cannot be carried
an in this manner: on the contrary, however small any State may be,
civil societies are always too populous to be under the immediate
government of all their members. It is necessary that the public money
should go through the hands of the rulers, all of whom have, besides
the interests of the State, their own individual interests, which are
not the last to be listened to. The people, on its side, perceiving
rather the cupidity and ridiculous expenditure of its rulers than the
public needs, murmurs at seeing itself stripped of necessaries to
furnish others with superfluities; and when once these complaints have
reached a certain degree of bitterness, the most upright administration
will find it impossible to restore confidence. In such a case,
voluntary contributions bring in nothing, and forced contributions
are illegitimate. This cruel alternative of letting the State perish,
or of violating the sacred right of property, which is its support,
constitutes the great difficulty of just and prudent economy.
The first step which the founder of a republic ought to take after
the establishment of laws, is to settle a sufficient fund for the
maintenance of the Magistrates and other Officials, and for other
public expenses. This fund, if it consist of money, is called
_œrarium_ or _fisc_, and _public demesne_ if it consist of lands.
This, for obvious reasons, is much to be preferred. Whoever has
reflected on this matter must be of the opinion of Bodin, who looks
upon the public demesne as the most reputable and certain means of
providing for the needs of the State. It is remarkable also that
Romulus, in his division of lands, made it his first care to set apart
a third for the use of the State. I confess it is not impossible for
the produce of the demesne, if it be badly managed, to be reduced to
nothing; but it is not of the essence of public demesnes to be badly
administered.
Before any use is made of this fund, it should be assigned or accepted
by an assembly of the people, or of the estates of the country, which
should determine its future use. After this solemnity, which makes such
funds inalienable, their very nature is, in a manner, changed, and
the revenues become so sacred, that it is not only the most infamous
theft, but actual treason, to misapply them or pervert them from the
purpose for which they were destined. It reflects great dishonour
on Rome that the integrity of Cato the censor was something so very
remarkable, and that an Emperor, on rewarding the talents of a singer
with a few crowns, thought it necessary to observe that the money came
from his own private purse, and not from that of the State. But if we
find few Galbas, where are we to look for a Cato? For when vice is no
longer dishonourable, what chiefs will be so scrupulous as to abstain
from touching the public revenues that are left to their discretion,
and even not in time to impose on themselves, by pretending to confound
their own expensive and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the
State, and the means of extending their own authority with the means
of augmenting its power? It is particularly in this delicate part of
the administration that virtue is the only effective instrument, and
that the integrity of the Magistrate is the only real check upon his
avarice. Books and auditing of accounts, instead of exposing frauds,
only conceal them; for prudence is never so ready to conceive new
precautions as knavery is to elude them. Never mind, then, about
account books and papers; place the management of finance in honest
hands: that is the only way to get it faithfully conducted.
When public funds are once established, the rulers of the State
become of right the administrators of them: for this administration
constitutes a part of government which is always essential, though
not always equally so. Its influence increases in proportion as that
of other resources is diminished; and it may justly be said that a
government has reached the last stage of corruption, when it has ceased
to have sinews other than money. Now as every government constantly
tends to become lax, this is enough to show why no State can subsist
unless its revenues constantly increase.
The first sense of the necessity of this increase is also the
first sign of the internal disorder of the State; and the prudent
administrator, in his endeavours to find means to provide for the
present necessity, will neglect nothing to find out the distant cause
of the new need; just as a mariner when he finds the water gaining
on his vessel, does not neglect, while he is working the pumps, to
discover and stop the leak.
From this rule is deduced the most important rule in the administration
of finance, which is, to take more pains to guard against needs than
to increase revenues. For, whatever diligence be employed, the relief
which only comes after, and more slowly than, the evil, always leaves
some injury behind. While a remedy is being found for one evil, another
is beginning to make itself felt, and even the remedies themselves
produce new difficulties: so that at length the nation is involved in
debt and the people oppressed, while the government loses its influence
and can do very little with a great deal of money. I imagine it was
owing to the recognition of this rule that such wonders were done by
ancient governments, which did more with their parsimony than ours do
with all their treasures; and perhaps from this comes the common use of
the word _economy_, which means rather the prudent management of what
one has than ways of getting what one has not.
But apart from the public demesne, which is of service to the State in
proportion to the uprightness of those who govern, any one sufficiently
acquainted with the whole force of the general administration,
especially when it confines itself to legitimate methods, would be
astonished at the resources the rulers can make use of for guarding
against public needs, without trespassing on the goods of individuals.
As they are masters of the whole commerce of the State, nothing is
easier for them than to direct it into such channels as to provide
for every need, without appearing to interfere. The distribution of
provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to
times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of
wealth, provided those who administer it have foresight enough to
suffer a present apparent loss, in order really to obtain immense
profits in the future. When we see a government paying bounties,
instead of receiving duties, on the exportation of corn in time of
plenty, and on its importation in time of scarcity, we must have such
facts before our eyes if we are to be persuaded of their reality.
We should hold such facts to be idle tales, if they had happened in
ancient times. Let us suppose that, in order to prevent a scarcity in
bad years, a proposal were made to establish public granaries; would
not the maintenance of so useful an institution serve in most countries
as an excuse for new taxes? At Geneva, such granaries, established
and kept up by a prudent administration, are a public resource in bad
years, and the principal revenue of the State at all times. _Alit et
ditat_ is the inscription which stands, rightly and properly, on the
front of the building. To set forth in this place the economic system
of a good government, I have often turned my eyes to that of this
Republic, rejoicing to find in my own country an example of that wisdom
and happiness which I should be glad to see prevail in every other.
If we ask how the needs of a State grow, we shall find they generally
arise, like the wants of individuals, less from any real necessity
than from the increase of useless desires, and that expenses are often
augmented only to give a pretext for raising receipts: so that the
State would sometimes gain by not being rich, and apparent wealth is in
reality more burdensome than poverty itself would be. Rulers may indeed
hope to keep the peoples in stricter dependence, by thus giving them
with one hand what they take from them with the other; and this was in
fact the policy of Joseph towards the Egyptians: but this political
sophistry is the more fatal to the State, as the money never returns
into the hands it went out of. Such principles only enrich the idle at
the expense of the industrious.
A desire for conquest is one of the most evident and dangerous causes
of this increase. This desire, occasioned often by a different species
of ambition from that which, it seems to proclaim, is not always
what it appears to be, and has not so much, for its real motive, the
apparent desire to aggrandise the Nation as a secret desire to increase
the authority of the rulers at home, by increasing the number of
troops, and by the diversion which the objects of war occasion in the
minds of the citizens.
It is at least certain, that no peoples are so oppressed and wretched
as conquering nations, and that their successes only increase their
misery. Did not history inform us of the fact, reason would suffice
to tell us that, the greater a State grows, the heavier and more
burdensome in proportion its expenses become: for every province has
to furnish its share to the general expense of government, and besides
has to be at the expense of its own administration, which is as great
as if it were really independent. Add to this that great fortunes are
always acquired in one place and spent in another. Production therefore
soon ceases to balance consumption, and a whole country is impoverished
merely to enrich a single town.
Another source of the increase of public wants, which depends on the
foregoing, is this. There may come a time when the citizens, no longer
looking upon themselves as interested in the common cause, will cease
to be the defenders of their country, and the Magistrates will prefer
the command of mercenaries to that of free-men; if for no other reason
than that, when the time comes, they may use them to reduce free-men to
submission. Such was the state of Rome towards the end of the Republic
and under the Emperors: for all the victories of the early Romans,
like those of Alexander, had been won by brave citizens, who were
ready, at need, to give their blood in the service of their country,
but would never sell it. Only at the siege of Veii did the practice
of paying the Roman infantry begin. Marius, in the Jugurthine war,
dishonoured the legions by introducing freedmen, vagabonds and other
mercenaries. Tyrants, the enemies of the very people it was their duty
to make happy, maintained regular troops, apparently to withstand
the foreigner, but really to enslave their countrymen. To form such
troops, it was necessary to take men from the land; the lack of their
labour then diminished the amount of provisions, and their maintenance
introduced those taxes which increased prices. This first disorder
gave rise to murmurs among the people; in order to suppress them, the
number of troops had to be increased, and consequently the misery
of the people also got worse; and the growing despair led to still
further increases in the cause in order to guard against its effects.
On the other hand, the mercenaries, whose merit we may judge of by the
price at which they sold themselves, proud of their own meanness, and
despising the laws that protected them, as well as their fellows whose
bread they ate, imagined themselves more honoured in being Cæsar's
satellites than in being defenders of Rome. As they were given over
to blind obedience, their swords were always at the throats of their
fellow-citizens, and they were prepared for general butchery at the
first sign. It would not be difficult to show that this was one of the
principal causes of the ruin of the Roman Empire.
The invention of artillery and fortifications has forced the princes
of Europe, in modern times, to return to the use of regular troops, in
order to garrison their towns; but> however lawful their motives, it is
to be feared the effect may be no less fatal. There is no better reason
now than formerly for depopulating the country to form armies and
garrisons, nor should the people be oppressed to support, them; in a
word, these dangerous establishments have increased of late years with
such rapidity in this part of the world, that they evidently threaten
to depopulate Europe, and sooner or later to ruin its inhabitants.
Be this as it may, it ought to be seen that such institutions
necessarily subvert the true economic system, which draws the principal
revenue of the State from the public demesne, and leave only the
troublesome resource of subsidies and imposts; with which it remains to
deal.
It should be remembered that the foundation of the social compact is
property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained
in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him. It is true that,
by the same treaty, every one binds himself, at least tacitly, to
be assessed toward the public wants: but as this undertaking cannot
prejudice the fundamental law, and presupposes that the need is
clearly recognised by all who contribute to it, it is plain that such
assessment, in order to be lawful, must be voluntary; it must depend,
not indeed on a particular will, as if it were necessary to have the
consent of each individual, and that he should give no more than just
what he pleased, but on a general will, decided by vote of a majority,
and on the basis of a proportional rating which leaves nothing
arbitrary in the imposition of the tax.
That taxes cannot be legitimately established except by the consent of
the people or its representatives, is a truth generally admitted by all
philosophers and jurists of any repute on questions of public right,
not even excepting Bodin. If any of them have laid down rules which
seem to contradict this, their particular motives for doing so may
easily be seen; and they introduce so many conditions and restrictions
that the argument comes at bottom to the same thing: for whether the
people has it in its power to refuse, or the Sovereign ought not to
exact, is a matter of indifference with regard to right; and if the
point in question concerns only power, it is useless to inquire whether
it is legitimate or not. Contributions levied on the people are two
kinds; real, levied on commodities, and personal, paid by the head.
Both are called taxes or subsidies: when the people fixes the sum
to be paid, it is called subsidy; but when it grants the product of
an imposition, it is called a tax. We are told in the Spirit of the
Laws that a capitation tax is most suited to slavery, and a real tax
most in accordance with liberty. This would be incontestable, if the
circumstances of every person were equal; for otherwise nothing can be
more disproportionate than such a tax; and it is in the observations of
exact proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. But if a tax by
heads were exactly proportioned to the circumstances of individuals, as
what is called the capitation tax in France might be, is would be the
most equitable and consequently the most proper for free-men.
These proportions appear at first very easy to note, because, being
relative to each man's position in the world, their incidence is always
public: but proper regard is seldom paid to all the elements that
should enter into such a calculation, even apart from deception arising
from avarice, fraud and self-interest. In the first place, we have
to consider the relation of quantities, according to which, _ceteris
paribus_, the person who has ten times the property of another man
ought to pay ten times as much to the State. Secondly, the relation of
the use made, that is to say, the distinction between necessaries and
superfluities. He who possesses only the common necessaries of life
should pay nothing at all, while the tax on him who is in possession
of superfluities may justly be extended to everything he has over and
above mere necessaries. To this he will possibly object that, when
his rank is taken into account, what may be superfluous to a man of
inferior station is necessary for him. But this is false: for a grandee
has two legs just like a cow-herd, and, like him again, but one belly.
Besides, these pretended necessaries are really so little necessary
to his rank, that if he should renounce them on any worthy occasion,
he would only be the more honoured. The populace would be ready to
adore a Minister who went to Council on foot, because he had sold off
his carriages to supply a pressing need of the State. Lastly, to no
man does the law prescribe magnificence; and propriety is no argument
against right.
A third relation, which is never taken into account, though it ought to
be the chief consideration, is the advantage that every person derives
from the social confederacy; for this provides a powerful protection
for the immense possessions of the rich, and hardly leaves the poor
man in quiet possession of the cottage he builds with his own hands.
Are not all the advantages of society for the rich and powerful?
Are not all lucrative posts in their hands? Are not all privileges
and exemptions reserved for them alone? Is not the public authority
always on their side? If a man of eminence robs his creditors, or is
guilty of other knaveries, is he not always assured of impunity? Are
not the assaults, acts of violence, assassinations, and even murders
committed by the great, matters that are hushed up in a few months,
and of which nothing more is thought? But if a great man himself is
robbed or insulted, the whole police force is immediately in motion,
and woe even to innocent persons who chance to be suspected. If he has
to pass through any dangerous road, the country is up in arms to escort
him. If the axle-tree of his chaise breaks, everybody flies to his
assistance. If there is a noise at his door, he speaks but a word, and
all is silent. If he is incommoded by the crowd, he waves his hand and
every one makes way. If his coach is met on the road by a wagon, his
servants are ready to beat the driver's brains out, and fifty honest
pedestrians going quietly about their business had better be knocked on
the head than an idle jackanapes be delayed in his coach. Yet all this
respect costs him not a farthing: it is the rich man's right, and not
what he buys with his wealth. How different the case of the poor man!
the more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is
shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and
if ever he obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than
others obtain favours. If the militia is to be raised or the highway
to be mended, he is always given the preference; he always bears the
burden which his richer neighbour has influence enough to get exempted
from. On the least accident that happens to him, everybody avoids him:
if his cart be overturned in the road, so far is he from receiving
any assistance, that he is lucky if he does not get horse-whipped by
the impudent lackeys of some young Duke; in a word, all gratuitous
assistance is denied to the poor when they need it, just because they
cannot pay for it. I look upon any poor man as totally undone, if he
has the misfortune to have an honest heart, a fine daughter, and a
powerful neighbour.
Another no less important fact is that the losses of the poor are much
harder to repair than those of the rich, and that the difficulty of
acquisition is always greater in proportion as there is more need for
it. "Nothing comes out of nothing," is as true of life as in physics:
money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more
difficult to acquire than the second million. Add to this that what
the poor pay is lost to them for ever, and remains in, or returns to,
the hands of the rich: and as, to those who share in the government
or to their dependents, the whole produce of the taxes must sooner or
later pass, although they pay their share, these persons have always a
sensible interest in increasing them.
The terms of the social compact between these two estates of men may
be summed up in a few words. "You have need of me, because I am rich
and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit
you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you bestow on
me the little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to
command you."
Putting all these considerations carefully together, we shall find
that, in order to levy taxes in a truly equitable and proportionate
manner, the imposition ought not to be in simple ratio to the property
of the contributors, but in compound ratio to the difference of
their conditions and the superfluity of their possessions. This very
important and difficult operation is daily made by numbers of honest
clerks, who know their arithmetic; but a Plato or a Montesquieu would
not venture to undertake it without the greatest diffidence, or
without praying to Heaven for understanding and integrity.
Another disadvantage of personal taxes is that they may be too much
felt or raised with too great severity. This, however, does not prevent
them from being frequently evaded; for it is much easier for persons to
escape a tax than for their possessions.
Of all impositions, that on land, or real taxation, has always been
regarded as most advantageous in countries where more attention is
paid to what the tax will produce, and to the certainty of recovering
the product, than to securing the least discomfort for the people. It
has been even maintained that it is necessary to burden the peasant
in order to rouse him from indolence, and that he would never work
if he had no taxes to pay. But in all countries experience confutes
this ridiculous notion. In England and Holland the farmer pays very
little, and in China nothing: yet these are the countries in which the
land is best cultivated. On the other hand, in those countries where
the husbandman is taxed in proportion to the produce of his lands, he
leaves them uncultivated, or reaps just as much from them as suffices
for bare subsistence. For to him who loses the fruit of his labour, it
is some gain to do nothing. To lay a tax on industry is a very singular
expedient for banishing idleness.
Taxes on land or corn, especially when they are excessive, lead to two
results so fatal in their effect that they cannot but depopulate and
ruin, in the long run, all countries in which they are established.
The first of these arises from the defective circulation of specie;
for industry and commerce draw all the money from the country into the
capitals: and as the tax destroys the proportion there might otherwise
be between the needs of the husbandman and the price of his corn, money
is always leaving and never returning. Thus the richer the city the
poorer the country. The product of the taxes passes from the hands of
the Prince or his financial officers into those of artists and traders;
and the husbandman, who receives, only the smallest part of it, is at
length exhausted by paying always the same, and receiving constantly
less. How could a human body subsist if it had veins and no arteries,
or if its arteries conveyed the blood only within four inches of the
heart? Chardin tells us that in Persia the royal dues on commodities
are paid in kind: this custom, which, Herodotus informs us, prevailed
long ago in the same country down to the time of Darius, might prevent
the evil of which I have been speaking. But unless Intendants,
Directors, Commissioners and Warehousemen in Persia are a different
kind of people from what they are elsewhere, I can hardly believe
that the smallest part of this produce ever reaches the king, or that
the corn is not spoilt in every granary, and the greater part of the
warehouses not consumed by fire.
The second evil effect arises from an apparent advantage, which
aggravates the evil before it can be perceived. That is that corn is a
commodity whose price is not enhanced by taxes in the country producing
it, and which, in spite of its absolute necessity, may be diminished
in quantity without the price being increased. Hence, many people die
of hunger, although corn remains cheap, and the husbandman bears the
whole charge of a tax, for which he cannot indemnify himself by the
price of his corn. It must be observed that we ought not to reason
about a land-tax in the same manner as about duties laid on various
kinds of merchandise; for the effect of such duties is to raise the
price, and they are paid by the buyers rather than the sellers. For
these duties, however heavy, are still voluntary, and are paid by the
merchant only in proportion to the quantity he buys; and as he buys
only in proportion to his sale, he himself gives the law its particular
application; but the farmer who is obliged to pay his rent at stated
times, whether he sells or not, cannot wait till he can get his own
price for his commodity: even if he is not forced to sell for mere
subsistence, he must sell to pay the taxes; so that it is frequently
the heaviness of the tax that keeps the price of corn low.
It is further to be noticed that the resources of commerce and industry
are so far from rendering the tax more supportable through abundance
of money, that they only render it more burdensome. I shall not insist
on what is very evident; _i.e._ that, although a greater or less
quantity of money in a State may give it the greater or less credit in
the eye of the foreigner, it makes not the least difference to the
real fortune of the citizens, and does not make their condition any
more or less comfortable. But I must make these two important remarks:
first, unless a State possesses superfluous commodities, and abundance
of money results from foreign trade, only trading cities are sensible
of the abundance; while the peasant only becomes relatively poorer.
Secondly, as the price of everything is enhanced by the increase of
money, taxes also must be proportionately increased; so that the farmer
will find himself still more burdened without having more resources.
It ought to be observed that the tax on land is a real duty on the
produce. It is universally agreed, however, that nothing is so
dangerous as a tax on corn paid by the purchaser: but how comes it we
do not see that it is a hundred times worse when the duty is paid by
the cultivator himself? Is not this an attack on the substance of the
State at its very source? Is it not the directest possible method of
depopulating a country, and therefore in the end ruining it? For the
worst kind of scarcity a nation can suffer from is lack of inhabitants.
Only the real statesman can rise, in imposing taxes, above the
mere financial object: he alone can transform heavy burdens into
useful regulations, and make the people even doubtful whether such
establishments were not calculated rather for the good of the nation in
general, than merely for the raising of money.
Duties on the importation of foreign commodities, of which the natives
are fond, without the country standing in need of them; on the
exportation of those of the growth of the country which are not too
plentiful, and which foreigners cannot do without; on the productions
of frivolous and all too lucrative arts; on the importation of all pure
luxuries; and in general on all objects of luxury; will answer the
two-fold end in view. It is by such taxes, indeed, by which the poor
are eased, and the burdens thrown on the rich, that it is possible to
prevent the continual increase of inequality of fortune; the subjection
of such a multitude of artisans and useless servants to the rich, the
multiplication of idle persons in our cities, and the depopulation of
the country-side.
It is important that the value of any commodity and the duties laid
on it should be so proportioned that the avarice of individuals may
not be too strongly tempted to fraud by the greatness of the possible
profit. To make smuggling difficult, those commodities should be
singled out which are hardest to conceal. All duties should be rather
paid by the consumer of the commodity taxed than by him who sells it:
as the quantity of duty he would be obliged to pay would lay him open
to greater temptations, and afford him more opportunities for fraud.
This is the constant custom in China, a country where the taxes are
greater and yet better paid than in any other part of the world.
The merchant himself there pays no duty; the buyer alone, without
murmuring or sedition, meets the whole charge; for as the necessaries
of life, such as rice and corn, are absolutely exempt from taxation,
the common people is not oppressed, and the duty falls only on those
who are well-to-do. Precautions against smuggling ought not to be
dictated so much by the fear of it occurring, as by the attention which
the government should pay to securing individuals from being seduced
by illegitimate profits, which first make them bad citizens, and
afterwards soon turn them into dishonest men.
Heavy taxes should be laid on servants in livery, on equipages, rich
furniture, fine clothes, on spacious courts and gardens, on public
entertainments of all kinds, on useless professions, such as dancers,
singers, players, and in a word, on all that multiplicity of objects
of luxury, amusement and idleness, which strike the eyes of all, and
can the less be hidden, as their whole purpose is to be seen, without
which they would be useless. We need be under no apprehension of the
produce of these taxes being arbitrary, because they are laid on things
not absolutely necessary. They must know but little of mankind who
imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can
ever renounce it: they would a hundred times sooner renounce common
necessaries, and had much rather die of hunger than of shame. The
increase in their expense is only an additional reason for supporting
them, when the vanity of appearing wealthy reaps its profit from the
price of the thing and the charge of the tax. As long as there are rich
people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves
from the poor, nor can the State devise a revenue less burdensome or
more certain than what arises from this distinction.
For the same reason, industry would have nothing to suffer from an
economic system which increased the revenue, encouraged agriculture by
relieving the husbandman, and insensibly tended to bring all fortunes
nearer to that middle condition which constitutes the genuine strength
of the State. These taxes might, I admit, bring certain fashionable
articles of dress and amusement to an untimely end; but it would be
only to substitute others, by which the artificer would gain, and the
exchequer suffer no loss. In a word, suppose the spirit of government
was constantly to tax only the superfluities of the rich, one of two
things must happen: either the rich would convert their superfluous
expenses into useful ones, which would redound to the profit of the
State, and thus the imposition of taxes would have the effect of the
best sumptuary laws, the expenses of the State would necessarily
diminish with those of individuals, and the treasury would not receive
so much less as it would gain by having less to pay; or, if the
rich did not become less extravagant, the exchequer would have such
resources in the product of taxes on their expenditure as would provide
for the needs of the State. In the first case the treasury would be
the richer by what it would save, from having the less to do with its
money; and in the second, it would be enriched by the useless expenses
of individuals.
We may add to all this a very important distinction in matters of
political right, to which governments, constantly tenacious of doing
everything for themselves, ought to pay great attention. It has been
observed that personal taxes and duties on the necessaries of life, as
they directly trespass on the right of property, and consequently on
the true foundation of political society, are always liable to have
dangerous results, if they are not established with the express consent
of the people or its representatives. It is not the same with articles
the use of which we can deny ourselves; for as the individual is under
no absolute necessity to pay, his contribution may count as voluntary.
The particular consent of each contributor then takes the place of the
general consent of the whole people: for why should a people oppose the
imposition of a tax which falls only on those who desire to pay it? It
appears to me certain that everything, which is not proscribed by law,
or contrary to morality, and yet may be prohibited by the government,
may also be permitted on payment of a certain duty. Thus, for example,
if the government may prohibit the use of coaches, it may certainly
impose a tax on them; and this is a prudent and useful method of
censuring their use without absolutely forbidding it. In this case, the
tax may be regarded as a sort of fine, the product of which compensates
for the abuse it punishes.
It may perhaps be objected that those, whom Bodin calls _impostors_,
_i.e._ those who impose or contrive the taxes, being in the class of
the rich, will be far from sparing themselves to relieve the poor. But
this is quite beside the point. If, in every nation, those to whom
the Sovereign commits the government of the people, were, from their
position, its enemies, it would not be worth while to inquire what they
ought to do to make the people happy.