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Rh Let us call to mind, that very many writers have made the prosperity of nations to consist in the multiplicity of their wants—in the ever augmenting diversity of their material enjoyments—in an immense industry—in an unlimited commerce—in the rapid circulation of the monied metals and (as the last step of the analysis) in the restlessness and insatiable cupidity of the population. At one time they prefer the heaping together of territorial property, at another, they declare for the multiplication of small proprietorships; and whilst some have believed that the misery and brutalization of the productive classes are essential to the opulence and tranquillity of the whole, others, by holding forth the unrestricted and unlimited freedom of industry and commercial transactions, as a means of remedying the established inequality, have only paved the way for a new system of corruption, and for new inequalities, more extensive and pernicious than what before existed. For, once the happiness and strength of society were placed in riches, it became a necessary consequence to debar from the exercise of political rights all the citizens who do not offer by their fortunes a guarantee or pledge of attachment to such an order of things—an order reputed, as it were, the perfection of the social state. In all social systems of this kind, the great majority of the citizens being incessantly subjected to painful drudgery are, in effect, condemned to languish all their days in misery, ignorance, and slavery.