..... No costly
furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no gilded
palaces are allowed."
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mould and manipulate,
doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca,
and, to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of
Salentum.
It is thus that we receive our first political notions. We are taught to
treat men very much as Oliver de Serres teaches farmers to manage and to
mix the soil.
_Montesquieu_.--"To sustain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary
that all the laws should favour it; that these same laws, by their
regulations in dividing the fortunes in proportion as commerce
enlarges them, should place every poor citizen in sufficiently easy
circumstances to enable him to work like the others, and every rich
citizen in such mediocrity that he must work, in order to retain or
to acquire."
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.
"Although, in a democracy, real equality be the soul of the State,
yet it is so difficult to establish, that an extreme exactness in
this matter would not always be desirable. It is sufficient that a
census be established to reduce or fix the differences to a certain
point. After which, it is for particular laws to equalise, as it
were, the inequality, by burdens imposed upon the rich, and reliefs
granted to the poor.
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