The social Contract - 06
It is certain that the right of property is the most sacred
of all citizens' rights,and in some respects more important than
freedom itself,whether because it is more closely connected with
the preservation of life;
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or because, a man's property being easier to
appropriate占用 and harder to defend than his person, the thing
that is the more readily taken should be the more respected;
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or finally because property is the true foundation of civil society
and the true pledge保证 of the citizens' fidelity忠诚 in fulfilling their
obligations: for if possessions财产 did not answer for a person's acts,
nothing would be simpler than to evade规避 one's duties and flout蔑视 the law.
If the people governed themselves, with no intermediaries between the
citizens and the state administration, all they would need to do
is to club together in order to pay as required, in proportion to
the public need and private means;
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and since each would always be able to keep
watch over看守/监视 the collection and utilization
of public money, no fraud or abuse would be able to
creep into its management.
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The state would never be overburdened负担过重(vt) with debt,
nor the people weighed down by taxation, or, at least,
they would be consoled操纵 for high taxes by confidence
about the way in which they were used.
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★★★
But things cannot be run in this way; however small the boundaries
of the state, the civil society within it is always too large for
it to be governed by all its members.
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Public funds must necessarily pass through the hands
of its leaders, who, besides the interest of the state, all have
their own private interests, which are not the last to be
considered.
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★The people for their part, less aware of public
needs than of the avarice贪婪 and unbridled不受约束的 expenditure of
their chiefs, protest反对/抗议 at seeing themselves forced to go without
necessities in order to provide luxuries for others; and once
they have been embittered愤怒的 beyond a certain point by such
manoeuvres, the most scrupulous绝对正直的 administration will be
unable to regain their trust.(塔西提陷阱？)
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In these circumstances, if contributions are voluntary,
they will produce nothing; if they are made compulsory,
they are illegitimate; and in this cruel dilemma, whether
to allow the state to perish or to attack the sacred right of
property, lies the difficulty of preserving a wise and just
economy.
Since all governments constantly tend towards laxity放纵, this one
consideration shows why no state can subsist生存 unless its
revenues收入 are continually on the increase.
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Whatever the degree of diligence勤勉, a remedy药品 that only follows the
disease, and more slowly, always leaves the state sick: while
thought is being given to (putting right使恢复正常) one defect, another makes
itself felt, and the measures that are adopted produce new
deficiencies缺陷 themselves;
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the result is that, eventually, the nation is taxed
too highly, the people are oppressed and the government loses all
its vigour元气, spending much money to little effect.
★★★(左手倒右手？？？)
It is true that governments hope to keep their peoples
in greater dependence by giving them with one hand
what they have taken from them with the other.
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but this empty sophism is all the more disastrous
for the state because the money taken does not return
to the hands from which it was taken.
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With maxims格言 like this, all one does is to enrich men who
are idle with money taken from those who are useful.
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A liking喜好 for conquest征服 is one of the most obvious and
dangerous causes of this increase in need. It is a liking often
engendered产生 by ambition of a kind different from what it
apparently reveals, and is not always what it seems to be;
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its true motive is less the overt明显的 desire for national aggrandizement扩张,
and more the hidden desire to increase the internal authority
of the rulers, by adding to the number of troops and diverting转移
the citizens' attention by the thought of war.
