Rule 3: Provide for the public wants

Rule 3. Provision for the public wants is an obvious inference from the general will

The subsistence of citizens should also be considered.

This duty is to keep plenty within the people’s reach.

• It is not to fill the granaries of individuals and make them stop working.

It extends also to everything regarding the management of the exchequer, and the expenses of public administration.

Private Property

The right of property is the most sacred of all the rights of citizenship. In sone respects, it is more important than liberty itself because:

• it more nearly affects the preservation of life
• property is more easily usurped and more difficult to defend than life

This is why the law should pay more attention to what is most easily taken away.

Property is:

• the true foundation of civil society
• the real guarantee of the undertakings of citizens

If property were not answerable for personal actions, nothing would be easier than to evade duties and laugh at the laws.

On the other hand, it is no less certain that the maintenance of the State and the government involves costs and out-goings.

Everyone who agrees to the end must acquiesce in the means.

• And so the members of a society should contribute from their property to its support.

Besides, it is difficult to secure the property of individuals on one side, without attacking it on another.

It is impossible that all the regulations which govern the order of succession, will, contracts, &c. should not lay individuals under some constraint as to the disposition of their goods, and should not consequently restrict the right of property.

Puffendorf has shown that the right of property does not extend beyond the life of the proprietor.

Thus, to prescribe the conditions according to which he can dispose of them, is in reality less to alter his right as it appears, than to extend it in fact.

The institution of the laws which regulate the power of individuals in the disposition of their own goods belongs only to the Sovereign.

The spirit of these laws, which the government ought to follow in their application, is that, from father to son, and from relation to relation, the goods of a family should go as little out of it and be as little alienated as possible.

There is a sensible reason for this in favour of children, to whom the right of property would be quite useless, if the father left them nothing, and who besides, having often contributed by their labour to the acquisition of their father’s wealth, are in their own right associates with him in his right of property.

The continual shifting of rank and fortune among the citizens is the most fatal to morality and to the Republic.

In this way, those who were brought up to one thing find themselves destined for another.

Public Finance

If the people governed themselves and there were no intermediary between the administration of the State and the citizens, they would tax themselves occasionally, in proportion to the public needs and the abilities of individuals.

They would all keep in sight the recovery and employment of such assessments, no fraud or abuse could slip into the management of them.

• The State would never have debt.
• The people would never be over-burdened with taxes.

But no matter how small any State may be, civil societies are always too populous to be under the immediate government of all their members.

The public money should go through the hands of the rulers. These have the interests of:

• the State
• themselves

The people would perceive the ridiculous expenditure of its rulers over the public needs.

• They would see themselves stripped of necessaries to furnish others with superfluities.

When these complaints have reached a certain degree of bitterness, the most upright administration will not be able to restore confidence.

• In such a case, voluntary contributions bring in nothing, and forced contributions are illegitimate.

This cruel alternative of letting the State perish, or of violating the sacred right of property, which is its support, constitutes the great difficulty of just and prudent economy.

The first step which the founder of a republic ought to take after the establishment of laws, is to settle a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the Magistrates and other Officials, and for other public expenses.

This fund is is called:

• œrarium or fisc if it consists in money
• public demesne if it consists of lands

The public demense is obviously much preferred.

Bodin looks on the public demesne as the most reputable and certain means of providing for the needs of the State.

Romulus divided the lands, setting 1/3 for the use of the State.

The produce of the demesne can be reduced to nothing if it is badly managed.

• But it is not of the essence of public demesnes to be badly administered.

Before any use is made of this fund, it should be assigned or accepted by an assembly of the people, or of the estates of the country, which should determine its future use.

After this solemnity, which makes such funds inalienable, their very nature is, in a manner, changed, and the revenues become so sacred, that it is not only the most infamous theft, but actual treason, to misapply them or pervert them from the purpose for which they were destined.

It reflects great dishonour on Rome that the integrity of Cato the censor was something so very remarkable, and that an Emperor, on rewarding the talents of a singer with a few crowns, thought it necessary to observe that the money came from his own private purse, and not from that of the State.

But if we find few Galbas, where are we to look for a Cato?

For when vice is no longer dishonourable, what chiefs will be so scrupulous as to abstain from touching the public revenues that are left to their discretion, and even not in time to impose on themselves, by pretending to confound their own expensive and scandalous dissipations with the glory of the State, and the means of extending their own authority with the means of augmenting its power?