By the same mode of computation, we shall find 15,875 inhabitants, or
2,741 voters of the _other_ cantons, who pay _one sixth_ LESS to the
contribution of the whole _commune_, will have _three_ voices MORE than
the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the _one_ canton.
Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and mass, in
this curious repartition of the rights of representation arising out of
_territory_ and _contribution_. The qualifications which these confer
are in truth negative qualifications, that give a right in an inverse
proportion to the possession of them.
In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any light
you please, I do not see a variety of objects reconciled in one
consistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly and
irreconcilably brought and held together by your philosophers, like wild
beasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each other to their mutual
destruction.
I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of considering the
formation of a Constitution. They have much, but bad,
metaphysics,--much, but bad, geometry,--much, but false, proportionate
arithmetic; but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry, and
arithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistent
in all their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision.
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