lishment of an _aristocracy of the
rich_. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of getting rid of
the difficulty is to establish the inequality as between department and
department, leaving all the individuals in each department upon an exact
par. Observe, that this parity between individuals had been before
destroyed, when the qualifications within the departments were settled;
nor does it seem a matter of great importance whether the equality of
men be injured by masses or individually. An individual is not of the
same importance in a mass represented by a few as in a mass represented
by many. It would be too much to tell a man jealous of his equality,
that the elector has the same franchise who votes for three members as
he who votes for ten.

Now take it in the other point of view, and let us suppose their
principle of representation according to contribution, that is according
to riches, to be well imagined, and to be a necessary basis for their
republic. In this their third basis they assume that riches ought to be
respected, and that justice and policy require that they should entitle
men, in some mode or other, to a larger share in the administration of
public affairs; it is now to be seen how the Assembly provides for the
preeminence, or even for the security of the rich, by conferring, in
virtue of their opulence, that larger measure of power to their district
which is denied to them personally. I readily admit (indeed, I should
lay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government,
which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security
above what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy,
and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossible
to divine what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preference
upon which the unequal representation of the masses is founded. The rich
cannot feel it, either as a support to dignity or as security to
fortune: for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely democratic
principles; and the prevalence given to it in the general representation
has no sort of reference to or connection with the persons upon account
of whose property this superiority of the mass is established. If the
contrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favor to the rich, in
consequence of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the
privilege either on the individual rich, or on some class formed of rich