It follows that children, once they are mature, can marry without the consent of their father and mother, because the obligation to listen to and to respect the advice of one’s superiors does not detract from the right to dispose of one’s property and oneself. I know that the right of fathers and mothers is legitimately founded on their power, their love, and their reason. All this is true insofar as the child is in a state of ignorance and drunk with passion, but when children have attained the age of their reason’s maturity, they can dispose of themselves when taking a step where liberty is absolutely essential—that is to say, marriage. One cannot love through the heart of another. In a word, paternal power consists of raising and governing one’s children for as long as they are not in a state to govern themselves, but, according to natural right, it does not extend any further. See FATHER, MOTHER, PATERNAL POWER.
(3) It is asked if children, even those who are still in their mother’s belly, can acquire and maintain a right of property for goods transferred to them. Civilized nations have established that this be the case. Moreover, reason and natural equity authorize such a practice.
(4) Finally, it may be asked if children may be punished for a crime committed by their father or their mother. But that is a shameful question.
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Nobody can be reasonably punished for a crime committed by another when he himself is innocent. All merits and demerits are personal and depend on the individual’s will, which is the most personal and inalienable of life’s possessions. Human laws that condemn children for the crimes of their fathers are therefore as unjust as they are barbarous. “It is despotic furor,” aptly says the author of The Spirit of the Laws, “that demands that the disgrace of the father lead to that of the children and women: they are unfortunate enough without being criminals. Moreover, it is necessary that the prince allow supplicants to mediate between the accused and himself so that they may move him to clemency or enlighten his justice.”3 Article by Chevalier DE JAUCOURT
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Savings †
SAVINGS (Morality), signifies sometimes the treasury of the prince, savings treasurer, savings revenue.
Savings in this sense is hardly in use any more; today, one instead says royal treasury.
Savings, the law of savings, expression used by some modern scientists to express the decree by which God regulates, in the simplest and most constant manner, all the movements, all the alterations, and the other natural changes. See ACTION, COSMOLOGY, &c.
Savings, in the most common sense, is a function of economy; properly speaking, it is the care and skill necessary to avoid superfluous expenses, and to incur those expenses that are indispensable at little cost. The observations one is going to read here could have gone with the word ECONOMY, which has a broader sense, and which embraces all legitimate means, all the efforts necessary to preserve and increase any possession, and especially to dispense it appropriately. It is in this sense that one says family economy, bees’ economy, national economy. Notwithstanding, the terms savings and economy express virtually the same idea, and they will be employed indiscriminately in this essay, according as how they appear more convenient for exactness of expression.
Economic savings have always been regarded as a virtue, both under paganism and by Christians; there have even been heroes who have practiced it with perseverance. Nonetheless, we must admit that this virtue is too modest, or if you will, too obscure to be essential to heroism; few heroes
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Res Domestica (Frugality)
A woman with compasses (for measuring resources) in her right hand and a wand and ship’s rudder (for household leadership) in her left (alongside beehive).
In the background, a rich dissolute household is depicted on the left, a modest and frugal household on the right.
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are capable of reaching that far. Economy accords much better with politics; it is its basis, its support, and one may say in a word that it is inseparable from it. Indeed, the government ministry is properly the concern of public economy; thus, M. de Sully, that great minister, that such wise and zealous steward, entitled his memoirs, Royal Economies, &c.1
Economic savings therefore join forces perfectly with piety; they are its faithful companion. It is there that a Christian soul finds resources assured for so many good works prescribed by charity.
In any case, there is perhaps no people today less fond of, nor less acquainted with, savings than the French. As a result, there is scarcely a people more agitated or more exposed to the sorrows and miseries of life. Despite this, the indifference, or rather the contempt, we have for this virtue is inspired in us from childhood by a bad education, and especially by the bad examples that we constantly see. We are forever hearing praise for sumptuous meals and feasts, magnificence in clothes, apartments, furniture, &c. All of this is represented not only as the purpose and reward of work and talent, but especially as the fruit of taste and genius, as the mark of a noble soul and an elevated mind.
Furthermore, whoever has a certain air of elegance and tidiness in everything around him, whoever knows how to do the honors in his house and at his table, will surely pass for a man of merit and a sophisticate, even if he lacks the essentials in everything else.
In the midst of these praises poured out to luxury and expense, how to plead the case for savings? Nowadays we don’t take care in studied speeches, education, or sermons to recommend work, savings, or frugality as useful and worthy qualities. It is unheard of to exhort young people to renounce wine, rich food, finery, to know how to do without vain superfluities, to adapt early on to simple necessities. Such exhortations would seem base and offensive. They are nonetheless quite consistent with the maxims of wisdom, and would perhaps be more efficacious than any other morality in making men orderly and virtuous. Unfortunately, they are not fashionable among us; we are becoming daily more alienated from them.
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Everywhere the reverse is insinuated: flabbiness and the comforts of life. I remember that in my youth, young people who were too preoccupied with their finery were observed with a sort of contempt: today, those who have a simple and unaffected air would be regarded with contempt. Education ought to teach us to become useful, sober, disinterested, beneficent citizens: how it estranges us from that great goal today! It teaches us to multiply our needs, and it thereby makes us more grasping, more burdensome to ourselves, harsher and more useless to others.
If a young man has more talent than fortune, one will at most say to him in a vague manner that he should think seriously about his advancement, that he should be faithful in his duties, avoid bad company, debauchery, &c. But no one will say to him what in fact needs to be said and repeated constantly: that to ensure the necessities of life and advance by legitimate means, to become an honorable man and a virtuous citizen, useful to himself and his Country, he must be hardy and patient, he must work without respite, avoid expense, contemn both pain and pleasure, and finally, rise above the prejudices that encourage luxury, dissipation, and flabbiness.
The efficacy of these means is well-enough known: nonetheless, since a certain idea of baseness is wrongly attached to everything that smacks of saving and economy, one would not dare give such advice, which would seem like preaching avarice—on which point, I would observe in passing that of all the vices combated by morality, none is less clearly defined than that one.
Misers are often depicted to us as people without honor and without humanity, people who live only to enrich themselves, and who sacrifice everything to the passion for accumulation;