ABSTRACT
Gentlemen, I would like to request your permission in repeating some general ideas that you
are no strangers to, but that are well worth recalling in their order. A political society, a nation is a union of families linked by common interests,
by geographic convergences, by the same laws. In the word laws, one must understand all of the obligations, even those that are
only imposed by usage, to which one submits no matter what one’s capacity is. Of these laws, some are imposed by the nature of things and others by positive
legislation. The political laws are those that rule the reciprocal obligations of citizens and
of government; the civil laws those that determine the reciprocal obligations of citizens between themselves; the economic laws those that make known which conditions are natural or conventional, through which we can enjoy the goods that man makes use of in the state of society; and upon which the maintenance, the continuation, the well-being of families and society depends.
