If politics, more enlightened, did seriously occupy itself with the instruction and with the welfare of the people; if laws were more equitable; if each society, less partial, bestowed on its members the care, the education, and the assistance which they have a right to expect; if governments less covetous, and more vigilant, were sedulous to render their subjects more happy, there would not be seen such numbers of malefactors, of robbers, of murderers, who everywhere infest society; they would not be obliged to destroy life, in order to punish a wickedness, which is commonly ascribable to the vices of their own institutions: it would be unnecessary to seek in another life for fanciful chimeras, which always prove abortive against the infuriate passions, and against the real wants of man. In short, if the people were better instructed and more happy, politics would no longer be reduced to the exigency of deceiving them in order to restrain them; nor to destroy so many unfortunates for having procured necessaries at the expense of their hardhearted fellow citizens.