[68] Commerce and property are not themselves an end of the social compact, but they may be a means to reach that end. To expose all the members of society to evils, for the production of which so many circumstances work together, would be to subordinate ends to means—a paralogism of all the sciences, but especially of political science, and one into which I fell in the first editions, where I said that the innocent bankrupt ought to be kept guarded in pledge of his debts or employed as a slave to labour for his creditors. I am ashamed of having so written. I have been accused of irreligion without deserving to be, and I have been accused of sedition without deserving to be. I offended the rights of humanity, and no one reproached me for it!
[69] Where a country’s boundaries increase at a greater rate than its population, there luxury favours despotism, firstly, because scarcity of men means less industry, and less industry means a greater dependence of poverty upon wealth, and greater difficulty and less dread of a combination of the oppressed against their oppressors; secondly, because the flatteries, the services, the distinctions, the submission, which cause the difference between the strong man and the feeble to be all the more felt, are more easily obtained from few men than from many, since men are more independent the less subject they are to observation, and are the less subject to observation the more numerous they are. But where the population increases at a faster rate than the boundaries are enlarged, luxury is opposed to despotism, because it gives life to men’s industry and activity, and the necessity of the poor man offers too many pleasures and comforts to the rich man for the pleasures of pure ostentation, which increase the idea of dependence, to have the greater place. Hence it is observable that in large, weak, and depopulated States, unless there are counteracting causes, the luxury of ostentation prevails over the luxury of comfort; but in populous rather than large States the luxury of comfort always causes the diminution of that of ostentation.
[70] This attraction resembles in many points that of gravitation, which moves the universe, because, like it, it diminishes with distance; and if the one force controls all the movements of physical bodies, the other controls those of the mind during the continuance of its sway. But they differ in this, that, whilst gravitation is counterbalanced by obstacles, the other for the most part gains force and strength from the increase of the very obstacles opposed to it.
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