water,
disinfecting of contaminated areas, and other preventive or necessary
hygienic measures which remove or prevent insalubrities growing out of
neighborhood or contact.

All this has to be provided for, and the enterprise, if not wholly
and in its developments, at least in itself and in what is necessary,
imposes itself, collectively, on all the inhabitants of the
conscription, from the highest to the lowest. For, in the absence of a
public road, none of them can do his daily work, travel about, or even
leave his premises; while transportation ceases and trade is suspended;
hence, commerce and other pursuits languish, industry is arrested,
agriculture becomes impracticable or fruitless; the fields are no longer
cultivated; while provisions, food, including bread,[4104] everything is
wanting; the dwellings becoming uninhabitable, more so than the Annecy
houses when the roofs fall in and let in the rain.--On the other hand,
for lack of protection against calamities, these get a free rein: the
day arrives when an equinoctial tide submerges the flat coastal area,
when the river overflows and devastates the countryside, when the
conflagration spreads, when small-pox and the cholera reach a contagious
point, and life is in danger, far more seriously imperiled than when, in
the Annecy domicile, the main walls threaten to tumble down.[4105]

Undoubtedly, I can personally accept this miserable condition of things,
resign myself to it, and consent, as far as I am concerned, to shut
myself up within my own walls, to fast there, and run the risk, more or
less imminent, of being drowned, burnt, or poisoned; but I have no
right to condemn another to do this, nor to refuse my contribution to a
protection by which I am to profit. As to my share of the expense it is
fixed beforehand, and fixed through my share in the benefit:

Whoever receives, owes, and in proportion to what he receives;

such is an equitable exchange; no society is prosperous and healthy
without this; it is essential that, for each member of it, the duties
should exactly compensate the advantages, and that the two sides of the
scale should balance. In the local community, the care taken of public
roads and the precautions taken against natural calamities are useful in
two ways: one, which especially improves the condition of persons, and
the other, which especially improves the condition of things. The first
is equal and the same for all. The poor man, quite as