For liberality and
temperance are the only eligible qualities which have to do with the
use of property. A man cannot use property with mildness or courage,
but temperately and liberally he may; and therefore the practice of
these virtues is inseparable from property. There is an inconsistency,
too, in too, in equalizing the property and not regulating the
number of the citizens; the population is to remain unlimited, and
he thinks that it will be sufficiently equalized by a certain number
of marriages being unfruitful, however many are born to others,
because he finds this to be the case in existing states. But greater
care will be required than now; for among ourselves, whatever may be
the number of citizens, the property is always distributed among them,
and therefore no one is in want; but, if the property were incapable
of division as in the Laws, the supernumeraries, whether few or
many, would get nothing. One would have thought that it was even
more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit
should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the
children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this
subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing
cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of
revolution and crime. Pheidon the Corinthian, who was one of the
most ardent legislators, thought that the families and the number of
citizens ought to remain the same, although originally all the lots
may have been of different sizes: but in the Laws the opposite
principle is maintained.
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