Footnotes
[[26]]
On the same principle it should be judged what centuries deserve
the preference for human prosperity. Those in which letters and arts
have flourished have been too much admired, because the hidden object of
their culture has not been fathomed, and their fatal effects not taken
into account. "ldque apud imperitos humanitas
vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset." [Fools called
"humanity" what was a part of slavery, Tacitus, Agricola, 31.] Shall we
never see in the maxims books lay down the vulgar interest that makes
their writers speak? No, whatever they may say, when, despite its
renown, a country is depopulated, it is not true that all is well, and
it is not enough that a poet should have an income of 100,000 francs to
make his age the best of all. Less attention should be paid to the
apparent repose and tranquillity of the rulers than to the well-being of
their nations as wholes, and above all of the most numerous States. A
hail-storm lays several cantons waste, but it rarely makes a famine.
Outbreaks and civil wars give rulers rude shocks, but they are not the
real ills of peoples, who may even get a respite, while there is a
dispute as to who shall tyrannise over them. Their true prosperity and
calamities come from their permanent condition: it is when the whole
remains crushed beneath the yoke, that decay sets in, and that the
rulers destroy them at will, and "ubi solitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant." (Where they create solitude, they
call it peace, Tacitus, Agricola, 31.] When the bickerings of the great
disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris took a
dagger in his pocket to the Parliament, these things did not prevent the
people of France from prospering and multiplying in dignity, ease and
freedom. Long ago Greece flourished in the midst of the most savage
wars; blood ran in torrents, and yet the whole country was covered with
inhabitants. It appeared, says Machiavelli, that in the midst of
murder, proscription and civil war, our republic only throve: the
virtue, morality and independence of the citizens did more to strengthen
it than all their dissensions had done to enfeeble it. A little
disturbance gives the soul elasticity; what makes the race truly
prosperous is not so much peace as liberty.
