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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Such lamentable but authorised injustices were sanctioned by the most enlightened men and implemented by the freest republics, as a result of regarding society as a union of families rather than as a union of persons. Say there are one hundred thousand people, divided into twenty thousand families, each comprising five people including the head of the family who represents it: then if the association is regarded as consisting of families, there will be twenty thousand persons and eighty thousand slaves; if it is regarded as consisting of individuals there will be one hundred thousand citizens and no slaves. In the former case, there will be one republic and twenty thousand little monarchies which make it up; in the latter, the republican spirit will be breathed not only in the squares and in public meetings, but also within the home, where much of a man's happiness or misery is to be found. In the first case, since laws and customs are the product of the habitual sentiments of the members of the republic – that is, of the heads of households – the spirit of monarchism will gradually infiltrate the republic itself and the effects of this change will be curbed only by the conflict of individual interests, and not by an atmosphere of freedom and equality. Family feeling is a feeling for details and is limited to small matters.
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