36,000 men for vessels of war and 48,000 for merchant vessels and others; France’s entire navy needed only 15,000 men. In France, there are about 13.5 million souls, and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, about 9.5 million. In the three realms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, there are around 20,000 ecclesiastics; in France, there are more than 270,000.
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England’s realm has more than 40,000 sailors, but France has no more than 10,000. In England, Scotland, Ireland, and their dependencies, there were at that time vessels whose capacity amounted to around 60,000 tons, which is worth about 4.5 million pounds sterling. The coastline around England, Scotland, Ireland, and the adjacent islands is about 3,800 miles. In the whole world, there are about 300 million souls, of whom there are only about 80 million with whom the English and Dutch trade. The value of all commercial assets does not exceed 45 million sterling. English manufactures exported from the realm amount to about 5 million sterling annually. Lead, tin, and coal amount to 500,000 pounds sterling per year. The value of French merchandise that enters England does not exceed 1.2 million pounds sterling per year. Finally, there are about 6 million sterling in hard currency in England. All these calculations, as we have said, are relative to the year 1699, and must surely have changed quite a bit since then.
M. Davenant, another originator of political arithmetic, proves that one must not rely absolutely on many of dear Petty’s calculations; he offers others that he has made himself, and that are found to be based upon the observations of Mr. King.4 Here are a few of them.
England, he says, contains 39 million acres of land. According to his calculations, the inhabitants number about 5.545 million souls, and that number increases every year by about 9,000—after deducting those who may die of the plague, diseases, war, the navy, etc., and those who go to the colonies. He counts 530,000 inhabitants in the city of London, 870,000 in the other cities and towns, and 4.1 million in the villages and hamlets. He estimates annual landed income at 10 million sterling; that of houses and buildings at 2 million per year; the produce of all types of grain, in a passably abundant year, at 9.075 million pounds sterling; the income from land on which wheat is cultivated, at 2 million, and its net product above 9 million sterling; the income from pasture, meadow, woods, forests, dunes,
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etc., at 7 million sterling; the annual produce of livestock in butter, cheese, and milk can amount, according to him, to about 2.5 million sterling. He estimates the annual value of shorn wool at about 2 million sterling; that of horses bred every year at around 250,000 pounds sterling; the annual consumption of meat for food at about 3.35 million pounds sterling; that of suet and hides around 600,000 pounds sterling; that of hay for the annual feeding of horses, around 1.3 million pounds sterling, and for that of other livestock, a million sterling; the wood cut annually for building, 500,000 pounds sterling; the wood for burning, etc., about 500,000 pounds sterling. If all of England’s land were equally distributed among all the inhabitants, everyone would have about 7.25 acres as his share. The value of the premium wheat, the rye, and the barley necessary for England’s subsistence amounts to at least 6 million sterling per year. The value of the manufacture of finished wool in England is about 8 million per year, and all the wool merchandise exported annually from England exceeds the value of 2 million sterling. England’s annual income, from which all the inhabitants feed and maintain themselves, and pay all taxes and charges, amounts (according to him) to about 43 million; that of France, to 81 million, and that of Holland to 18.25 million pounds sterling.
In his observations on the mortuary lists, Major Grant reckons that England has 39,000 square miles of land; that there are 4.6 million souls in England and the principality of Wales; that the inhabitants of the city of London number about 640,000—that is, a fourteenth of all the inhabitants of England; that there are about 10,000 parishes in England and Wales; that there are 25 million acres of land in England and Wales—that is, about 4 acres for each inhabitant; that of 100 children born, only 64 reach the age of six; that out of 100, only 40 remain alive at the end of sixteen years; that out of 100, only 25 who live past the age of twenty-six; 16 who live to be thirty-six, and only 10 out of 100 live to the end of their forty-sixth year; that of that same number, there are only 6 who reach the age of fifty-six, 3 of 100 who reach the age of sixty-six, and only one out of 100 who is still alive at the end of seventy-six years. The inhabitants of the city of London have turned over twice in the course of about sixty-four years. See Life [Vie], etc. Messrs. de Moivre, Bernoulli, de Montmort, and de Parcieux have exerted themselves on subjects relative to Political arithmetic; one may
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consult The doctrine of chance, by M. Moivre; The art of conjecture by M. Bernoulli; The analysis of games of chance by M. de Montmort; the work On lifetime annuities and tontines, etc. by M. de Parcieux; and several reports by M. Halley, scattered in the Philosophical transactions, along with the articles in our Dictionary, HASARD [Chance], JEU [Game], PROBABILITÉ, COMBINAISON [Combination], ABSENT [Missing], VIE [Life], MORT [Death], NAISSANCE [Birth], ANNUITÉ, RENTE [Income], TONTINE, etc.
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This important article by Diderot, which was at first attributed to Toussaint, stirred up perhaps as much controversy as any single political article throughout the entire publishing history of the Encyclopédie. Attacks on it continued for more than a decade. In 1752, publication of the dictionary was suspended temporarily, partly because of the storm surrounding this particular essay. Singled out for criticism in the article was the author’s general argument for popular sovereignty, and the specific ideas that liberty is a gift from heaven, and that Paul’s letter to the Romans should be viewed as legitimating limited government. With the resumption of publication (volume 3, in 1753), the editors defended and explained this article by echoing arguments for limited government that the Parlement of Paris had recently made in its controversy with the Crown concerning the church’s withholding of sacraments from the Jansenists.1
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POLITICAL AUTHORITY. No man has received from nature the right to command others. Liberty is a gift from heaven, and each individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he enjoys the use of reason. If nature has established any authority, it is paternal control; but paternal control has its limits, and in the state of nature, it would terminate when the children could take care of themselves. Any other authority comes from another origin than nature. If one seriously considers this matter, one will always go back to one of these two sources: either the force and violence of an individual who has seized it, or the consent of those who have submitted to it by a contract made or assumed between them and the individual on whom they have bestowed authority.
Power that is acquired by violence is only usurpation and only lasts as long as the force of the individual who commands can prevail over the force of those who obey; in such a way that if the latter become in their turn the strongest party and then shake off the yoke, they do it with as much right and justice as the other who had imposed it upon them. The same law that made authority can then destroy it; for this is the law of might. Sometimes authority that is established by violence changes its nature; this occurs when it continues and is maintained with the express consent of those who have been brought into subjection, but in this case it reverts to the second case about which I am going to speak; and the individual who had arrogated it then becomes a prince, ceasing to be a tyrant.
Power that comes from the consent of the people2 necessarily presupposes certain conditions that make its use legitimate, useful to society, advantageous to the republic, and that set
