The People

A body politic may be measured in 2 ways:

1. The extent of its territory
2. Its population

The men make the State. The territory sustains the men.

The right relation is that:

• the land should maintain the inhabitants
• there should be as many inhabitants as the land can maintain

In this proportion lies the maximum strength of a given number of people.

If there is too much land, it is troublesome to guard and it would produce more than is needed.

This would give rise to wars of defence.

If there is not enough land, the State depends on its neighbours. This soon gives rise to wars of offence.

It either conquers others or it is conquered.

Only insignificance or greatness can keep it free.

There is no fixed relation between territorial size and population.

This is because of the differences in:

• the quality and fertility of land
• he nature of its products
• its climate
• the tempers of its people
• the fecundity of women
• the conditions for population growth
• the influence of institutions

Some people in a fertile country consume little.

• Others consume a lot on an ungrateful soil.

The legislator therefore should:

• not go by what he sees, but by what he foresees.
• stop not so much at the state in which he actually finds the population, as at that to which it ought naturally to attain.

Local circumstances might demand or allow the acquisition of more territory than necessary.

A mountainous country has a lot of woods and pastures needing less labour. This will lead to a great expansion.

Women are more fertile than in the plains, and where a great expanse of slope affords only a small level tract that can be counted on for vegetation.

Contraction is possible on a coast because of:

• the lack of land-produce
• the raids by pirates
• the emigration to colonies

Law-giving must allow the enjoyment of peace and plenty.

A state is weakest while its government is setting up.

If war, famine, or sedition arises at this time of crisis, the State will inevitably be overthrown.

Governments have been set up during such storms.

But in such cases these governments are themselves the State’s destroyers.

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood.

The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

The kind of people that can have legislation are those that:

• are already bound by some unity of origin, interest, or convention and have never yet felt the real yoke of law
• do not have customs nor superstitions deeply ingrained
• are not afraid of being overwhelmed by sudden invasion
• where every member may be known by every other
• there is no need to lay on any man burdens too heavy for a man to bear
• can do without other peoples, and without which all others can do
• is neither rich nor poor, but self-sufficient
• unites the consistency of an ancient people with the docility of a new one.

Legislation is made difficult less by what it is necessary to build up than by what has to be destroyed.

What makes success so rare is the impossibility of finding natural simplicity together with social requirements.

All these conditions are indeed rarely found united, and therefore few States have good constitutions.

There is still in Europe one country capable of being given laws—Corsica.

The valour and persistency with which that brave people has regained and defended its liberty well deserves that some wise man should teach it how to preserve what it has won.

I have a feeling that some day that little island will astonish Europe.

[1] If there were 2 neighbouring peoples, one of which could not do without the other, it would be very hard on the former, and very dangerous for the latter.

Every wise nation would try to free the other from dependence.

The Republic of Thlascala is enclosed by the Mexican Empire.

It preferred living without salt than to buy it from the Mexicans.

That little State, shut up in that great Empire, finally led to the ruin of Mexico.