ed
_Communes_. These again they subdivide, still proceeding by square
measurement, into smaller districts, called _Cantons_, making in all
6,400.

At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much to
admire or to blame. It calls for no great legislative talents. Nothing
more than an accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In the old divisions
of the country, various accidents at times, and the ebb and flow of
various properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds
were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly. They were subject to
some inconveniences; but they were inconveniences for which use had
found remedies, and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In
this new pavement of square within square, and this organization and
semi-organization, made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and not
upon any politic principle, it is impossible that innumerable local
inconveniences, to which men are not habituated, must not arise. But
these I pass over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of the
country, which I do not possess, to specify them.

When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work of
measurement, they soon found that in politics the most fallacious of all
things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to another
basis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which tottered on
that false foundation. It was evident that the goodness of the soil, the
number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their
contribution, made such infinite variations between square and square
as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power in the
commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures
in the distribution of men. However, they could not give it up,--but,
dividing their political and civil representation into three parts, they
allotted one of those parts to the square measurement, without a single
fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion of
representation was fairly assigned, and ought upon any principle really
to be a third. Having, however, given to geometry this portion, (of a
third for her dower,) out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime
science, they left the other two to be scuffled for between the other
parts, population and contribution.

When they came to provide for population, they were not able to proc