THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Nothing? Why they would perish of hunger in three days' time.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Not in the least. The others, who possess their portions, set them to work, and share with them. It is from this arrangement that the pay comes for the divine, the confectioner, the apothecary, the preacher, the actor, the attorney, and the hackney-coachman. You thought yourself very ill off, to have no more than a hundred and twenty livres a year, reduced to a hundred and eight by your tax of twelve livres. But consider the soldiers who devote their blood to their country at the rate of fourpence a day. They have not above sixty-three livres a year for their livelihood, and yet they make a comfortable shift, by a number of them joining their little stock and living in common.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—So then an ex-Jesuit has more than five times the pay of a soldier. And yet the soldiers have done more service to the state under the eyes of the king at Fontenoy, at Laufelt, at the siege of Fribourg, than the reverend Father Le Valette ever did in his life.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—Nothing can be truer: nay, every one of these turned-adrift Jesuits, having now become free, has more to spend than what he cost his convent. There are even some among them who have gained a good deal of money by scribbling pamphlets against the parliaments, as for example, the reverend father Patouillet, and the reverend father Monote. In short, in this world every one sets his wits to work for a livelihood. One is at the head of a manufactory of stuffs; another of porcelain; another undertakes the opera; another the Ecclesiastical Gazette; another a tragedy in familiar life, or a novel or romance in the English style; this maintains the stationer, the ink-maker, the bookseller, the hawker, who might else be reduced to beggary. There is nothing, then, but the restitution of the hundred and twenty livres to those who have nothing, that makes the state flourish.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—A pretty way of flourishing, truly!
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—And yet there is no other. In every country it is the rich that enable the poor to live. This is the sole source of the industry of commerce. The more industrious a nation itself is, the more it gains from foreign countries. Could we, on our foreign trade, get ten millions a year by the balance in our favor, there would, in twenty years, be two hundred millions more in the nation. This would afford ten livres a head more, on the supposition of an equitable distribution; that is to say, that the dealers would make each poor person earn ten livres the more, once paid, in the hopes of making still more considerable gains. But commerce, like the fertility of the earth, has its bounds, otherwise its progression would be ad infinitum. Nor, besides, is it clear, that the balance of our trade is constantly favorable to us; there are times in which we lose.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—I have heard much talk of population. If our inhabitants were doubled, so that we numbered forty millions of people instead of twenty, what would be the consequence?
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—It would be this: that, one with another, each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns to live upon; or that the land should produce double the crops it now does; or that there should be double the national industry, or of gain from foreign countries; or that half of the people should be sent to America; or that one half of the nation should eat the other.
THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.—Let us then remain satisfied with our twenty millions of inhabitants, and with our hundred and twenty livres a head, distributed as it shall please the Lord. Yet this situation is a sad one, and your iron age is hard indeed.
THE GEOMETRICIAN.—There is no nation that is better off; and there are many that are worse. Do you believe that there is in the North wherewithal to afford to each inhabitant the value of an hundred and twenty of our livres a year? If they had had the equivalent of this, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Franks would not have deserted their country, in quest of establishments elsewhere, which they conquered, fire and sword in hand.