Rousseau_contrat-social

labour, should remain desert and uncultivated, or peopled only by
savages; lands where men’s labour brings in no more than the exact
minimum necessary to subsistence should be inhabited by barbarous
peoples: in such places all polity is impossible. Lands where the
surplus of product over labour is only middling are suitable for free
peoples; those in which the soil is abundant and fertile and gives a
great product for a little labour call for monarchical government, in
order that the surplus of superfluities among the subjects may be
consumed by the luxury of the prince: for it is better for this excess
to be absorbed by the government than dissipated among the individuals.
I am aware that there are exceptions; but these exceptions themselves
confirm the rule, in that sooner or later they produce revolutions which
restore things to the natural order.
General laws should always be distinguished from individual causes that
may modify their effects. If all the South were covered with Republics
and all the North with despotic States, it would be none the less true
that, in point of climate, despotism is suitable to hot countries,
barbarism to cold countries, and good polity to temperate regions. I see
also that, the principle being granted, there may be disputes on its
application; it may be said that there are cold countries that are very
fertile, and tropical countries that are very unproductive. But this
difficulty exists only for those who do not consider the question in all
its aspects. We must, as I have already said, take labour, strength,
consumption, etc., into account.
Take two tracts of equal extent, one of which brings in five and the
other ten. If the inhabitants of the first consume four and those of the
second nine, the surplus of the first product will be a fifth and that
of the second a tenth. The ratio of these two surpluses will then be
inverse to that of the products, and the tract which produces only five
will give a surplus double that of the tract which produces ten.
But there is no question of a double product, and I think no one would
put the fertility of cold countries, as a general rule, on an equality
with that of hot ones. Let us, however, suppose this equality to exist:
let us, if you will, regard England as on the same level as Sicily, and
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