II.7 - How France, of All the Countries of Europe, Was Already the One in Which the Capital Had Achieved the Greatest Preponderance over the Provinces and Most Fully Subsumed the Entire Country

Summary

It is neither the location, the size, nor the wealth of a capital that is responsible for its political preponderance over the rest of the country, but rather the nature of the government.

London, whose population is as great as that of some kingdoms, has to date not exerted sovereign influence over the fate of Great Britain.

No citizen of the United States imagines that the people of New York can decide the fate of the American union. Indeed, no one even in the state of New York imagines that that city's wishes should be the sole determinant of policy. Yet there are as many people living in New York today as there were living in Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution.

Paris itself, during the Wars of Religion, was as populous compared to the rest of the kingdom as it would be in 1789. Yet it could decide nothing on its own. At the time of the Fronde, it was still only the largest city in France. By 1789 it had become France itself.

In 1740 Montesquieu wrote to a friend: “In France there is only Paris, together with the remote provinces, because Paris has not yet had time to devour them.”