Rousseau_contrat-social

pastures, need less labour, where we know from experience that women are
more fertile than in the plains, and where a great expanse of slope
affords only a small level tract that can be counted on for vegetation.
On the other hand, contraction is possible on the coast, even in lands
of rocks and nearly barren sands, because there fishing makes up to a
great extent for the lack of land-produce, because the inhabitants have
to congregate together more in order to repel pirates, and further
because it is easier to unburden the country of its superfluous
inhabitants by means of colonies.
To these conditions of law-giving must be added one other which, though
it cannot take the place of the rest, renders them all useless when it
is absent. This is the enjoyment of peace and plenty; for the moment at
which a State sets its house in order is, like the moment when a
battalion is forming up, that when its body is least capable of offering
resistance and easiest to destroy. A better resistance could be made at
a time of absolute disorganisation than at a moment of fermentation,
when each is occupied with his own position and not with the danger. If
war, famine, or sedition arises at this time of crisis, the State will
inevitably be overthrown.
Not that many governments have not been set up during such storms; but
in such cases these governments are themselves the State’s destroyers.
Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed,
under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people
would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest
means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the
tyrant.
What people, then, is a fit subject for legislation? One which, already
bound by some unity of origin, interest, or convention, has never yet
felt the real yoke of law; one that has neither customs nor
superstitions deeply ingrained, one which stands in no fear of being
overwhelmed by sudden invasion; one which, without entering into its
neighbours’ quarrels, can resist each of them single-handed, or get the
help of one to repel another; one in which every member may be known by
every other, and there is no need to lay on any man burdens too heavy
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