Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/288

260 .—If you would but think yourself happy you would then be so.

.—A man cannot imagine what actually is not, unless he be mad.

.—I have already told you that, in order to be more at your ease, and more happy than you are, you should take a wife; to which I tack, however, this clause: that she has, as well as you, one hundred and twenty livres a year; that is to say, four acres at ten crowns an acre. The ancient Romans had each but one. If your children are industrious they can each earn as much by their working for others.

.—So that they may get money without others losing it.

.—Such is the law of all nations; there is no living but on these terms.

.—And must my wife and I give each of us the half of our produce to the legislative and executive power, and the new ministers of state rob us of the price of our hard labor, and of the substance of our poor children, before they are able to get their livelihood? Pray tell me, how much money will these new ministers of ours bring into the king's coffers by this jure divino system?

.—You pay twenty crowns on four acres which bring you in forty. A rich man, who possesses four hundred acres, will, by the new tariff, pay two thousand crowns, and the