If the sentiments in which the nobility have been educated, prove detrimental to the state, throw a discouragement upon them. If birth is to be no mark of distinction, let it not be distinguished by any particular privilege, which in appearance sets that class above the level of those with whom the state intends they should be incorporated. You do not make your valet de chambre get behind your coach, though upon an occasion it might be convenient, and though perhaps he had been your footman the day before; you would even turn him out of doors, did he not change his company with his rank. If you cannot afford to have a nobility, let it die away: grant, as in England, the title of noble to one of a family, and let all the rest be commoners; that is to say, distinguished by no personal privilege whatsoever from the lowest classes of the people. But if you want them to serve you as soldiers, and that they should preserve those sentiments you approve of in a soldier, take care at least of their children. If these appear to you poor and ragged, while they are wandering up and down their fathers lands, chasing a wretched hare or a partridge, compare them, when in the troops, with those of your wealthy neighbours, if any such you have. The establishment of an _hôtel militaire_ shews at least that there are people who lend an ear to such representations. I do not propose that a prince should divert into that channel those streams of wealth which flow from every part of the state, though nothing is more reasonable than for men to pay in order to protect their gains, but let a tax be imposed upon noble property, and let that be applied for the education of the generous youth from their earliest years. There the state will have all under her eye, they are her children, her subjects, and they ask no more than to be taken from the obscurity of their habitations, and rendered capable of being employed while young and vigorous. When they have done their task, the country which produced them will receive them back into her warm bosom; there they will produce others like themselves, and support the spirit and propagation of their own class, without becoming any charge upon others. A statesman should make it his endeavour to employ as many of every class as possible, and when employment fails in the common run of affairs, to contrive new outlets for young people of every denomination. The old and idle are lost beyond recovery in many particulars.