n of Lycurgus at Sparta, the philosophical government of the
great empire of China, and the fine spirit of the institutions of Peru.
We perceive that the same influences which made Rousseau's political
sentimentalism so popular also brought even strong heads like Diderot to
believe in the unbounded power of a government to mould men at its
will, and to impose institutions at discretion. The idea that it is the
main function of a government to make its people virtuous, is generally
as strong in Diderot as it was in Rousseau, and as it became in
Robespierre. He admires the emperors of China, because their edicts are
as the exhortation of a father to his children. All edicts, he says,
ought to instruct and to exhort as much as they command. Yet two years
after the Encyclopaedia was finished (1774), when Turgot prefaced his
reforming edicts by elaborate and reasoned statements of the grounds for
them, it was found that his prefaces caused greater provocation than the
very laws that they introduced.

Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the "sublime legislation"
of countries which the writer really knew nothing about, the article on
the Legislator has some points worth noticing. We have seen how Diderot
made the possession of property the true note of citizenship, and of a
claim to share in the government. But he did not pay property this
compliment for nothing. It is, he says, the business of the legislator
to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of that equality which
was one of the comforts that men surrendered when they gave up the state
of nature. Hence the legislator ought to take care that no one shall
reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise than by an industry that
enriches the state. "He must take care that the charges of society shall
fall upon the rich, who enjoy the advantages of society." Even those who
agree with Diderot, and are ready to vote for a graduated income-tax,
will admit that he comes to his conclusion without knowing or reflecting
about either the serious arguments for it, or the serious objections
against it.

What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation of
those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden. "All
the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the
exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.
Commerce is a new bond among men. Every nation has an interest in these
days in the preservatio