Note 69 — Chapter XXXV · SUICIDE AND ABSENCE.

Where a country’s boundaries increase at a greater rate than its population, there luxury favours despotism, firstly, because scarcity of men means less industry, and less industry means a greater dependence of poverty upon wealth, and greater difficulty and less dread of a combination of the oppressed against their oppressors; secondly, because the flatteries, the services, the distinctions, the submission, which cause the difference between the strong man and the feeble to be all the more felt, are more easily obtained from few men than from many, since men are more independent the less subject they are to observation, and are the less subject to observation the more numerous they are. But where the population increases at a faster rate than the boundaries are enlarged, luxury is opposed to despotism, because it gives life to men’s industry and activity, and the necessity of the poor man offers too many pleasures and comforts to the rich man for the pleasures of pure ostentation, which increase the idea of dependence, to have the greater place. Hence it is observable that in large, weak, and depopulated States, unless there are counteracting causes, the luxury of ostentation prevails over the luxury of comfort; but in populous rather than large States the luxury of comfort always causes the diminution of that of ostentation.