s you, nay more, a
mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as
yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give
me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty
thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We
are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent;
that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."

"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the
Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them;
here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed,
lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us,
and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity,
which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your
being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according
to the pretensions of your noble pride."

SECTION II

All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and
continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when
they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against
the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England
and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of
the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of
everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between
nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always
subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage.

All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination,
wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all
men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their
master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at
least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these
fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is
impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be
jealous of each other.

The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an
infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain
that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till
yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary
to the Privy Council who will make them for