21 - The punishment of the nobility

Summary

What, then, shall be the punishments fitting for the nobility, whose privileges make up a large part of the laws of nations? This is not the place to consider whether the hereditary distinction between nobility and commoners is useful to a government or necessary in a monarchy, whether it really constitutes a power interposed between and limiting the excesses of the two extremes, or whether it is not rather a class which, a slave to itself and to others, restricts the circulation of credit and hope to a very narrow compass, like those fertile and pleasant oases that stand out in the vast and sandy deserts of Arabia. Nor shall I consider whether, supposing it to be true that inequality is either necessary or useful in society, it is also true that it should subsist between classes rather than between individuals, should be fixed at one part rather than distributed throughout the body politic, or should be perpetual rather than continually destroyed and reborn. I shall confine myself to the punishments suited to this class of person, observing that the punishments ought to be the same for the highest as they are for the lowest of citizens. To be legitimate, every distinction whether of honour or wealth presupposes an antecedent equality based on the laws, which treat every subject as equally subordinate to them.