When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work of measurement, they soon found that in politics the most fallacious of all things was geometrical demonstration.  They had then recourse to another basis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which tottered on that false foundation.  It was evident that the goodness of the soil, the number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their contribution, made such infinite variations between square and square as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures in the distribution of men.  However, they could not give it up,—­but, dividing their political and civil representation into three parts, they allotted one of those parts to the square measurement, without a single fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion of representation was fairly assigned, and ought upon any principle really to be a third.  Having, however, given to geometry this portion, (of a third for her dower,) out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime science, they left the other two to be scuffled for between the other parts, population and contribution.

When they came to provide for population, they were not able to proceed quite so smoothly as they had done in the field of their geometry.  Here their arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical metaphysics.  Had they stuck to their metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would be simple indeed.  Men, with them, are strictly equal, and are entitled to equal rights in their own government.  Each head, on this system, would have its vote, and every man would vote directly for the person who was to represent him in the legislature.  “But soft,—­by regular degrees, not yet.”  This metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage, policy, reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their pleasure.  There must be many degrees, and some stages, before the representative can come in contact with his constituent.  Indeed, as we shall soon see, these two persons are to have no sort of communion with each other.  First, the voters in the Canton, who compose what they call primary assemblies, are to have a qualification.  What! a qualification on the indefeasible rights of men?  Yes; but it shall be a very small qualification.  Our injustice shall be very little oppressive:  only the local valuation of three days’ labor paid to the public.  Why, this is not much, I readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion of your equalizing principle.  As a qualification it might as well be let alone; for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are established; and, on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others whose natural equality stands the most in need of protection and defence:  I mean the man who has nothing else but his natural equality to guard him.  You order him to buy the right which you before told him Nature had given to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority on earth could lawfully deprive him.  With regard to the person who cannot come up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is established at the very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe.