twenty livres for your little family; that is to say, if distributive justice were to take place, and that each individual had a hundred and twenty livres a year. Your children, in their infancy, stand you in almost nothing; when grown up they will ease and help you. Their mutual aid will save you a good part of your expenses, and you may live very happily, like a philosopher. Always provided, however, that those worthy gentlemen who govern the state have not the barbarity to extort from each of you twenty crowns a year. But the misfortune is, we are no longer in the golden age, where the men, born all equals, had an equal part in the nutritive productions of uncultivated land. The case is now far from being so good a one, as that every two-handed biped possesses land to the value of a hundred and twenty livres a year.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—'Sdeath! You ruin us. You said but just now that in a country of fourscore millions of inhabitants each of them ought to enjoy a hundred and twenty livres a year, and now you take them away from us again.
The Geometrician.—I was computing according to the registers of the golden age, but we must reckon according to that of iron. There are many inhabitants who have but the value of ten crowns a year, others no more than four or five, and above six millions of men who have absolutely nothing.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—Nothing? Why, they would perish of hunger in three days' time.
