---Chapter viii : The People---

Peoples, like men, are amenable易服從的 only when they are young;?

in old age they become incorrigible /?n'k?r?d??b(?)l/ 無法矯正的.

-

Once customs are established

and prejudices ingrained難除掉的, it is a dangerous and?

futile★無效的 enterprise to try to reform them;?

Certain nations can be

disciplined when they are born, others cannot even after ten

centuries. The Russians will never have a true political order,

because they were given one too early.

-

The genius of Peter the

Great was for imitation; he did not have true creative genius,

of the kind that makes something out of nothing無中生有.

-

Some of the

things he did were good, but the majority were misplaced不合時(shí)宜的.?

He realized that his nation was barbarous, but not that it was not

yet ready for political organization; he attempted to civilize it

when all that was needed was to train it for war.?

-

He wanted to

produce Germans and Englishmen immediately, when he

should have begun by producing Russians: by persuading his

subjects that they were something different from their real

selves, he prevented them from ever becoming what they could

have been.?

-

The Russian Empire will attempt to subjugate征服

Europe and will be subjugated itself. The Tartars韃靼人, its subjects

or its neighbours, will become its masters and ours; it seems to

me inevitable that such a revolution will occur. All the kings of

Europe are working together that it may happen the sooner.

？？？

---Chapter ix : The Same Continued---

UST as nature has put limits to the size of a well-formed man,

and outside these limits produces only dwarfs侏儒 or giants,?

-

so too,when it is a question of the best constitution for a?

state, there are limits to the size that it can have, in order?

that it should neither be too large to be well governed, nor?

too small to continue to exist on its own.

-★★

In every political body there is a

maximum strength which it cannot exceed, and which?

it often loses by becoming larger.?

-

The further the social bond is stretched伸展, the?

weaker it gets; and in general a small state is

proportionately stronger than a large one.

★★★

In the first place, administration is more difficult over large?

distances, just as a weight becomes heavier at the end of a longer?

bar, and it also becomes more onerous★繁重的 as the hierarchy of divisions

increases;?

-

each town, to start with, has its administration, paid

for by the inhabitants; each district too has its own, also paid for

by the inhabitants; then each province; then the greater administrative?

areas, the cost of which increases from one level to the next, but?

still at the expense of the unhappy inhabitants;?

-

finally comes the?

supreme administration that crushes everything underneath. All these?

added burdens are a continual drain on the subjects' resources: far

from having a better administration at the different levels, they

are less well governed than if there were only one above them.

-

There are scarcely any reserves left for emergencies,?

and when it is necessary to resort to them the state is always?

on the brink of ruin.

Not only is the government less swift反應(yīng)快的 and

vigorous有精力的 in seeing that the laws are observed, in preventing

exactions苛捐雜稅, redressing糾正 abuses, and forestalling預(yù)先阻止?

the attempts at sedition暴動(dòng) that can arise in distant places,?

-

but the people has less affection感情 for its leaders, whom it?

never sees, for its country,which it regards as the whole world,?

and for its fellow-citizens,most of whom are strangers.?