System of Equality.Rousseau proclaimed the inalienable rights of human nature. He pleaded for all mankind without distinction. He placed the prosperity of society in the happiness of each of its members, and its strength in the attachment of all to the laws. In his view, public riches consist in the industry and moderation of the citizens, and liberty resides in the power of the sovereign, which is the entire body of the people, and of which each element preserves in itself the influence necessary to the social body, by means of an impartial distribution of enjoyments and of intelligence.
This social order subjects to the will of the sovereign people the acts and properties of each individual, encourages the arts which are useful to all, proscribes those which only flatter the vanities of the few, develops, without predilection or partiality, the reason of each citizen, substitutes for base cupidity the love of country and of glory, and constitutes the whole of society into one vast peaceable family, in which each member is subject to the will of the whole, but no member to that of another. This social order of Rousseau is the same for which all true philosophers have sighed from time immemorial, and has had illustrious advocates in all ages, as, for example, in ancient days, Minos, Plato, Lycurgus, and the lawgiver of the Christians (Jesus Christ); and in modern times, Thomas Moore, Montesquieu,[1] and Mably.[2]
The system of the economists has been named the ORDER OF EGOISM,[3] or the ARISTOCRATIC- ↑ Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws (Esprit de Lois) book 4, cap. 6.
- ↑ Vide Principes de Legislation, and, promiscuously, his other writings. Mably considers a community of property to be the only social order, conformable to the true end or intent of society, which is the permanent happiness of all its members. According to him, all the evils which afflict human society, being the effects of avarice and ambition, the science of politics reduces itself to the art of effectually stifling these passions. Avarice cannot be smothered unless by a community of goods. The principle of community does away with individual property, and thus, at the same time, diminishing the attractions of power, it becomes a rampart against ambition, which ought also to be restrained by manners and by institutions.
- ↑ By this denomination is meant to be expressed, that in this system, the only spring to sentiments and actions is the selfish one of mere personal interest, without any regard whatever to the general good.
