It seems strange that such should be the opinion of a future President of the Constituent Assembly. How can we explain this apparent contradiction and such love of despotism among the apostles of _laissez-faire_? Despotism, in the eyes of the Physiocrats, had a peculiar significance of its own. It was the work of freedom, not of bondage. It did not signify the rule of the benevolent despot, prepared to make men happy, even against their own will. It was just the sovereignty of the “natural order”[84]—nothing more. Every reasonable person felt himself bound to obey it, and realised that only through such obedience could the truth be possibly known. It is quite different from the despotism of the ancient maxim, _Sicut principi placuit legis habet vigorem_.[85] They would never have subscribed to the doctrine that the king’s word is law, but they were equally energetic in rejecting the claim of the popular will.[86] They are as far from modern democracy as they are from monarchical absolutism. This despotism was incarnate in the person of the sovereign or king. But he is simply an organ for the transmission of those higher laws which are given to him. They would compare him with the leader of an orchestra, his sceptre being the baton that keeps time. The conductor’s despotism is greater than the Tsar’s, for every musician has to obey the movement of the hand, and that immediately. But this is not tyranny, and whoever strikes a false note in a spirit of revenge is not simply a revolter, but also an idiot. Sovereignty appealed to the Physiocrats in the guise of hereditary monarchy, because of its associations with property under the feudal _régime_, and since hereditary rights were connected with landed property so must royalty be. The sovereign who best represents the Physiocratic ideal is perhaps the Emperor of China.[87] As the Son of Heaven he represents the “natural order,” which is also the “divine order.” As an agricultural monarch he solemnly puts his hand to the plough once a year. His people really govern themselves; that is, he rules them according to custom and the practice of sacred rites.[88] In practice there will be nothing of great importance for the despot to do. “As kings and governors you will find how easy it is to exercise your sacred functions, which simply consist in not interfering with the good that is already being done, and in punishing those few persons who occasionally attack private property.”[89] In short, the preservation of the “natural order” and the defending of its basis—private property—against the attacks of the ignorant and the sacrilegious is the first and most important duty of the sovereign. “No order of any kind is possible in society unless the right of possession is guaranteed to the members of that society by the force of a sovereign authority.”[90]