It is necessary, in order to perceive this truth, to examine, first, what is now the measure of wages; it is not an exact proportion between labour and its reward. In fact, if we consulted only the light of reason and equity, no one, I believe, would dare to decide, that the most scanty necessaries is the just price of fatiguing and painful labour, which commences at the dawn, and does not finish till the setting of the sun: we should not be able to maintain, that in the midst of his enjoyments, and in the bosom of luxurious idleness, the rich ought not to grant any other retribution to those who sacrifice their time and strength to increase their revenue and multiply their enjoyments. It is not then by the principles of common sense or reflection, that the wages of the generality have been fixed; it is a compact established by power, a yoke to which the weak must submit. The possessor of a vast domain would see all his riches vanish, if numerous labourers did not come to cultivate his estate, and carry into his store-house the fruit of their toil; but, as the number of men without property is immense, their concurrence, and the pressing need that they have to labour for a subsistence, obliges them to receive the law from him who can, in the bosom of ease, wait quietly for their services; and it results from this habitual relation between the rich and poor, that the wages for hard labour are constantly reduced to the most scanty allowance, that is to say, to what is only sufficient to satisfy their daily and indispensable wants. This system once settled, if it were possible, that, by a revolution in our nature, men could live and preserve their strength without allotting every day some hours to repose and sleep, it is beyond doubt, that the work of twenty hours would be required for the same wages now granted for twelve. Or, by an assimilation, agreeing with the hypothesis I have just mentioned, suppose that a moral revolution permitted labourers to work the seventh day, they would consequently, in a short time, require of them the extraordinary labour at the former rate; and this levelling would take place through the gradual diminution of the price of labour. The class of society, which, in exerting its power, has regulated the present wages, not according to reason and equity, but according to the necessities of the labourers, would quickly discern its own interest; and that when a day more was paid for, the people could bear a diminution of the seventh part of their wages, and be in their old state. Thus, though before the change had thoroughly taken place, all those who live by labour would think that they had acquired a new resource; yet they would soon be brought to their former condition; for it is the same with social order as with the law of equilibrium in nature, which combines ranks and places, every thing according to the immutable law of the proportion of force.