[Views on Property and Legislation] 53

There are in Europe two peoples living under the absolute power of a single man: the Danes and the Turks. The electoral law was a result of the progress of enlightenment. In commercial and manufacturing industry it is the workers who pay the taxes levied on that branch of national production. Agricultural industry is, by itself, infinitely more important than all the other branches of industry put together. If one were to establish in a general fashion the relations between agricultural products and all manufactured and commercial products, one would certainly find that the former are at least a hundred times more important. In England, where commercial and manufacturing activity has advanced further than in any other country, agriculture is three or four times as wealthy as all the rest of industry. In France all the products of commerce and manufacturing together account for no more than one-seventh or even one-eighth of agricultural production.