The climate, that is, the air and the soil, is the first
element for the legislator. His resources prescribe to him
his duties. First, he must consult his local position. A
population dwelling upon maritime shores must have laws
fitted for navigation.... If the colony is located in an
inland region, a legislator must provide for the nature of
the soil, and for its degree of fertility....
It is more especially in the distribution of property
that the wisdom of legislation will appear. As a
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general rule, and in every country, when a new colony is
founded, land should be given to each man, sufficient for
the support of his family....
In an uncultivated island, which you are colonizing with
children, it will only be needful to let the germs of truth
expand in the developments of reason!... But when you
establish old people in a new country, the skill consists in
only allowing it those injurious opinions and customs which
it is impossible to cure and correct. If you wish to prevent
them from being perpetuated, you will act upon the rising
generation by a general and public education of the
children. A prince or legislator ought never to found a
colony without previously sending wise men there to instruct
the youth.... In a new colony, every facility is open to the
precautions of the legislator who desires to purify the tone
and the manners of the people. If he has genius and virtue,
the lands and the men that are at his disposal will inspire
his soul with a plan of society that a writer can only
vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject to the
instability of all hypotheses, which are varied and
complicated by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to
foresee and to combine.
One would think it was a professor of agriculture who was saying to his
pupils
The climate is the only rule for the agriculturist.
His resources dictate to him his duties. The first thing he has to
consider is his local position. If he is on a clayey soil, he must do so
and so. If he has to contend with sand, this is the way in which he must
set about it. Every facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to
clear and improve his soil.
If he only has the skill, the manure which he has at his disposal will
suggest to him a plan of operation, which a professor can only vaguely
trace, and in a way that would be subject to the uncertainty of all
hypotheses, which vary and are complicated by an
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infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine.
But, oh! sublime writers, deign to remember sometimes that this clay,
this sand, this manure, of which you are disposing in so arbitrary
a manner, are men, your equals, intelligent and free beings like
yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the faculty of
seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves!
MABLY--(He is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the
neglect of security, and continues thus):
Under these circumstances, we must be convinced that the
bonds of Government are slack. Give them a new tension (it
is the reader who is addressed), and the evil will be
remedied.... Think less of punishing the faults than of
encouraging the virtues that you want. By this method you
will bestow upon your republic the vigor of youth. Through
ignorance of this, a free people has lost its liberty! But
if the evil has made so much way that the ordinary
magistrates are unable to remedy it effectually, have
recourse to an extraordinary magistracy, whose time should
be short, and its power considerable. The imagination of the
citizens requires to be impressed.
In this style he goes on through twenty volumes.
There was a time when, under the influence of teaching like this, which
is the foundation of classical education, everyone was for placing
himself beyond and above mankind, for the sake of arranging, organizing,
and instituting it in his own way.