Apart from the common form of enthusiasm for the “sublime legislation” of countries which the writer really knew nothing about, the article on the Legislator has some points worth noticing.  We have seen how Diderot made the possession of property the true note of citizenship, and of a claim to share in the government.  But he did not pay property this compliment for nothing.  It is, he says, the business of the legislator to do his best to make up to mankind for the loss of that equality which was one of the comforts that men surrendered when they gave up the state of nature.  Hence the legislator ought to take care that no one shall reach a position of extreme opulence otherwise than by an industry that enriches the state.  “He must take care that the charges of society shall fall upon the rich, who enjoy the advantages of society.”  Even those who agree with Diderot, and are ready to vote for a graduated income-tax, will admit that he comes to his conclusion without knowing or reflecting about either the serious arguments for it, or the serious objections against it.

What is really interesting in this long article is its anticipation of those ideas which in England we associate with the name of Cobden.  “All the men of all lands have become necessary to one another for the exchange of the fruits of industry and the products of the soil.  Commerce is a new bond among men.  Every nation has an interest in these days in the preservation by every other nation of its wealth, its industry, its banks, its luxury, its agriculture.  The ruin of Leipsic, of Lisbon, and of Lima has led to bankruptcies on all the exchanges of Europe, and has affected the fortunes of many millions of persons."[191] In the same spirit he foresees the decline of patriotism in its older and narrower sense, and the predominance of the international over the national sentiment.  “All nations now have sufficiently just ideas of their neighbours, and consequently they have less enthusiasm for their country than in the old days of ignorance.  There is little enthusiasm where there is much light; enthusiasm is nearly always the emotion of a soul that is more passionate than it is instructed.  By comparing among all nations laws with laws, talents with talents, and manners with manners, nations will find so little reason to prefer themselves to others, that if they preserve for their own country that love which is the fruit of personal interest, at least they will lose that enthusiasm which is the fruit of an exclusive self-esteem.”

Yet Diderot had the perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a revolution in the conditions of social climate.  “Commerce, like enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce takes away the enthusiasm of virtue.  It gradually extinguishes the spirit of magnanimous disinterestedness, and replaces it by that of hard justice.  By turning men’s minds rather to use than beauty, to prudence rather than to greatness, it may be that it injures the strength, the generosity, the nobleness of manners.”