SAVAGE.—The public good.
BACHELOR.—That word public good means a great deal. We have not any so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand?
SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit of the laws.
BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women?
SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves. A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do what he pleases with his own property.
BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral kindred?
SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two, I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans, there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing they should have the pre-eminence.
BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best?
SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow creatures, have been most consulted.
BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found?