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Page 64
Fenelon's idyl on Crete is still more fascinating. Mentor is made to
say:--
"All that you will see in this wonderful island is the result of
the laws of Minos. The education which the children receive renders
the body healthy and robust. They are accustomed, from the first,
to a frugal and laborious life; it is supposed that all the
pleasures of sense enervate the body and the mind; no other
pleasure is presented to them but that of being invincible by
virtue, that of acquiring much glory.... there _they_ punish three
vices which go unpunished amongst other people--ingratitude,
dissimulation, and avarice. As to pomp and dissipation, there is no
need to punish these, for they are unknown in Crete...... 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."
Here, again, we see the equalisation of fortunes by law, that is, by
force.
"There were, in Greece, two kinds of republics. One was military,
as Laced�mon; the other commercial, as Athens. In the one it was
wished (by whom?) that the citizens should be idle: in the other,
the love of labour was encouraged.
"It is worth our while to pay a little attention to the extent of
genius required by these legislators, that we may see how, by
confounding all the virtues, they showed their wisdom to the world.
Lycurgus, blending theft with the spirit of justice, the hardest
slavery with extreme liberty, the most atrocious sentiments with
the greatest moderation, gave stability to his city. He seemed to
deprive it of all its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls;
there Was ambition without the hope of rising; there were natural
sentiments where the individual was neither child, nor husband,
nor father. Chastity even was deprived of modesty. _By this road
Sparta was led on to grandeur and to glory_.
"The phenomenon which we observe in the institutions of Greece has
been seen in the midst of the _degeneracy and corruption of our
modern times_. An honest legislator has formed a people where
probity has appeared as natural as bravery among the Spartans. Mr.
Penn is a true Lycurgus, and although the former had peace for his
object, and the latter war, they resemble each other in the
singular path along which they have led _their_ people, in their
influence over free men, in the prejudices which they have
overcome, the passions they have subdued.
"Paraguay furnishes us with another example. _Society_ has been
accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure of commanding as the
only good of life; but it will always be a noble thing to govern
men by making them happy.
"_Those who desire to form similar institutions_, will establish
community of property, as in the republic of Plato, the same
reverence which he enjoined for the gods, separation from strangers
for the preservation of morality, and make the city and not the
citizens create commerce: they should give our arts without our
luxury, our wants without our desires."
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