On Power Quotes

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“As every advance of Power is useful for war, so war is useful for the advance of power; war is like a sheep-dog harrying the laggard Powers to catch up their smarter fellows in the totalitarian race.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Command is a mountaintop. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius for construction, which are part of man's natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone - that of the state. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master - the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Power is linked with war, and a society wishing to limit war's ravages can find no other way than by limiting the scope of Power.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: "Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Historians of the sentimental school have sometimes regretted that royalty became absolute, while at the same time rejoicing that it installed plebeians in office. They deceive themselves. Royalty exalted plebeians just because it aimed at becoming absolute; it became absolute because it had exalted plebeians.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The leveling process need find no place in Power's programme: it is embedded in its destiny. From the moment that it seeks to lay hands on the resources latent in the community, it finds itself impelled to put down the mighty by its natural tendency as that which causes a bear in search of honey to break the cells of the hive.

How will the common people, the dependents and the laborers, welcome Power's secular work of destruction? With joy, inevitably. Its work is that of demolishing feudal castles; ambition motivates it, but the former victims rejoice in their liberation. Its work is that of breaking the shell of petty private tyrannies so as to draw out the hoarded energy within; greed motivates it but the exploited rejoice in the downfall of their exploiters.

The final result of this stupendous work of aggression, does not disclose itself till late. Visible, no doubt, is the displacement of many private dominions by one general dominion, of many aristocracies by one "statocracy." But at first, the common people can but applaud: the more capable among them are, in a continuous stream, enrolled in Power's army - the administration - there to become the masters of their former social superiors.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“It is true that ideas are queens by birth: but they only gain favour when they enter the service of interests and instincts. Follow an idea through from its birth to its triumph, and it becomes clear that it came to power only at the price of an astounding degradation of itself. A reasoned structure of arguments, setting in motion a whole stream of logical correspondences between defined terms, does not as such make its way into the social consciousness: rather it has undergone pressures which have destroyed its internal architecture, and left in its place only a confused babel of concepts, the most
magical of which wins credit for the others.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power. Its Nature and the History of Its Growth

“As we shall see, theories like those of Divine Right and Popular Sovereignty, which pass for opposites, stem in reality from the same trunk, the idea of sovereignty—the idea, that is, that somewhere there is a right to which all other rights must yield. It is not hard to discover behind this juridical concept a metaphysical one.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“No state can remain indifferent to another state's wresting from its people more of their rights. It must make a corresponding draft on its own people's rights, or else pay dearly for its neglect to put itself on a level...

A Power which interferes with its people only in certain respects cannot increase its warlike potential beyond certain limits. To pass them, it must revolutionize those respects and give itself fresh prerogatives.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“In later times, Power's growth has continued at an accelerated pace, and its extension has brought a corresponding extension of war. And now we no longer understand the process. We no longer protest, we no longer react. The quiescence of ours is a new thing for which Power has to thank the smokescreen in which it has wrapped itself. Formally, it could be seen manifest in the person of the king, who did not disclaim being the matter he was, and in whom human passions were discernible. Now masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The English aristocracy knew better how to work together; the reason perhaps being that, whereas in France the parliament passed into the hands of the lawyers and so became an instrument of the crown, in England it remained an organ of the social authorities and a rallying-point for their opposition. So well did it understand the art of giving to its resistance a plausible show of public advantage that the Magna Carta, to take one instance, though in reality nothing more than a capitulation of the king to vested interests acting in their own defence, contained phrases about law and liberty which are valid for all time.

Whereas the French nobles got themselves known to the people as petty tyrants, often more unruly and exacting than a great one would be, the English nobles managed to convey to the yeoman class of free proprietors the feeling that they too were aristocrats on a small scale, with interests to defend in common with the nobles.

This island English aristocracy achieved its master-stroke in 1689. With Harrington rather than John Locke for inspiration, it riveted on the Power given the king whom it had brought from overseas limits so cleverly contrived that they were to last a long time.

The essential instrument of Power is the army. An article of the Bill of Rights made standing armies illegal, and the Mutiny Act sanctioned courts martial and imposed military discipline for the space of only a year; in this way, the government was compelled to summon Parliament every year to bring the army to life again, as it were, when it was on the verge of legal dissolution. Hence the fact that, even today, there are the “Royal” Navy and the “Royal” Air Force, but not the “Royal” Army. In this way, the tradition of the Army's dependence on Parliament is preserved.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“(Democracy) withstands on occasion the mass whence it came, and it carries the day. It is hard in reality for private persons attending a meeting, taken up as they are with their own concerns and without having concerted among themselves beforehand, to feel the confidence necessary to reject the proposals which are cleverly presented to them from the platform, and in that necessity for which it is supported by arguments based on considerations of a kind to which they are strangers.

There, too, we see the reason why the Roman people was able for so long to pass its laws on the public square: an examination of the procedure followed shows conclusively that their effective part consisted merely in ratifying what had been jointly determined by the magistrates and the Senate.
In our times, the same methods are exactly produced at annual general meetings of shareholders, how could the managing class strong in competence and briefed to withstand opponents failed to grow convinced that they are the people apart, that only in their hands can the interests of society be safeguarded and that, in brief, society's strongest interest is to preserve and cherish its elite of managers?”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The natural requirements of Power made the fortunes of the common people. All those “little people” whom Dupont-Ferrier show us staffing the Treasure Court and the Taxes Court, no sooner found their niche in the state than they set about advancing their own fortunes along with their employers. At whose expense? The aristocrats’. With a boldness born of obscurity they encroached progressively on the taxing rights of the barons and transferred to the royal treasury the incomes of the great. As their invasions grew, the financial machine grew larger and more complicated. There might be new posts for their relations, they discovered new duties, so that whole families take their ease in a bureacracy that grew continually in numbers and authority. Spawning a whole hierarchy of underlings – deputies, clerks, registrars. So it was that everywhere the service of the state became the road to distinction, advancement, and authority of the common people. What a sight it is, the rise of the clerks, this swarming of busy bees who gradually devour the feudal splendour and leave it with nothing but its pomp and titles! Does it not leap to the eye that the state has made the fortunes of all these common peole, just as they have made the state’s.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“...the French Revolution took away from justice the duty which it had previously performed of defending the individual against the encroachments of Power….the cribbing and cabining of justice and the baring of the individual were the work, not of the Reign of Terror, but of the Constituent Assembly. Also because this condition of things has been bequeathed by the Revolution to modern society, in which these principles are still in action.

Just as the Revolution crushed any bodies whose authority was capable of limiting that of the state, so it deprived the individual of every constitutional means of making his right previal against that of the state. It worked for the absolutism of Power.

The Russian Revolution offers the same contrast, but still more pronounced, between the liberty promised and the authority realized. It was not any particular Power, but Power itself, which was denounced and damned by the school of Marx and Engels, with a vigour nearly equal to that of the anarchists. In a justly celebrated pamphlet Lenin asserted that the Revolution must “concentrate all it forces against the might of the state; its task is not to improve the governmental machine but to destroy it and blot it out.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The uses to which Rousseau’s doctrine has been turned are a mater for amazement and provide a striking lesson in social history. All that has been taken over from it is the magic formula, popular sovereignty, divorced both from the subject-matter to which it was applicable and from the fundamental condition of its exercise, the assembly of the people. It is now used to justify the very spate of legislation which it was its purpose to dam, and to advance the indefinite enablement of Power – which Rousseau had sought to restrict!

All his school had made individual right the beginning and the end of his system. It was to be guarantee by subjecting to it at two removes the actual Power in human form, namely the executive. The executive was made subject to the law, which was kept strictly away from it, and the law was made subject to the sacrosanct principles of natural justice.

The idea of the law’s subjection to natural justice has not been maintained. That of power’s subjection to the law has fared a little better, but has been interpreted in such a way that the authority which makes laws has incoporated with itself the authority which applies them; they have become united, and so the omnipotent law has raised to its highest pitch a Power which it has made omnicompetent.

Rousseau’s school had concentrated on the idea of law. Their labour was in vain: all that the social consciousness has taken over from it is the association between the two conceptions, law and popular will. It is no longer accepted that a law owes its validity, as in Rousseau’s thought, should be confined to a generalized subject -matter. Its majesty was usurped by any expression of an alleged popular will.

A mere juggling with meanings has brought the wheel full circle to the dictum which so digusted our philosophers: “Whatever pleases the prince shall have force of law.” The prince has changed – that is all.

The collapse of this keystone has brought down the whole building. The principle of liberty has been based on the principle of law: to say that liberty consists in obedience to the laws only, presupposes in law such characteristics of justice and permanenece as may enable the citizen to know with precision the demands which are and will be made on him; the limits within which society may command him being in this way narrowly defined, he is his own master in his own prescribed domain. But, if law comes merely to reflect the caprices of the people, or of some body to which the legislative authority has been delegate, or of a faction which control that body, then obedience to the laws means in effect subjection to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men whoch give this will the form of law. In that event the law is no longer the stay of liberty. The inner ligatures of Rousseau’s system come apart, and what was intended as a guarantee becomes a means of oppression.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Imperium and Democracy

History, we have seen, is the picture of a concentration of forces growing to the hand of a single person, called the state, which disposes, as it goes, of ever ampler resources, claims over the community, ever wider rights, and tolerates less and less any authority existing outside itself. The state is command; it aims at being the organizer-in-chief of society, and at making its monopoly of this roles ever more complete. We have seen now, on the other hand, various social authorities defend themselves against it, and set their right in the opposition to its rights, and their liberties, which are often of an anarchic or oppressive character, to its authority. Unceasing war has been waged between these two forces, betweem the interest calling itself general and interests avowing themselves private.

Power has its ups and downs, but, lookging at the picture as a whole, it is one of continuous advance, an advance which is reflected in the stupendous growth of its instruments, its revenues, its armed forces, its police forces, and its capacity to make laws.

Next, we have seen the old Power cast out. But this revolution has not been followed by Power’s dismemberment; far from it. What has perished in the upheveal has been the social authorities which obstructed its advance. And the spiritual authority, too, which gave it rules of behavior, has suffered a great decline. But the complex of rights and powers which composed it has not fallen apart: it has only passed into other hands.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The Revolution and individual rights:

That the Revolution, however fine its language, worked for Power and not for liberty as strikingly proved by what happened to individual rights in the course of the upheaval which started in 1789. Never was more striking – or, no doubt more sincere - proclamation made of the intention to recognize that man, as man, had certain sacred rights. That was a great conception of the members of the Constituent Assembly; that is their title to fame. And in like manner the members of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, and the Thermidorians, all alike, even Bonaparte himself, claimed to have dedicated and guaranteed these rights. And yet the Revolution, obeying the stirrings less of the ideas which it proclaimed than of the unseen principle of life which gave in motion, wiped out all the rights which it had claimed to exalt, and effectively disarmed the citizen of every sure guarantee against the Power to which it had bequeathed an unlimited authority.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The wish of the population was to be quit of the royal intendants and to administer itself by localities. The Constituent Assembly gave it a parent satisfaction by entrusting all departments of government to elected local assemblies. But simultaneously, it destroyed just those historical units which had the ability and the will to govern themselves. The geometrical intelligence of Sieyes conceived the idea of cutting up the country into twenty-four equal rectangles, themselves divided into nine equal communes, which, by the same infantile geometry, spawned nine cantons each. Though this crazy plan was not followed through, it remained at the ideal of the creators of the “departements.” It was safe enough after that to give these artificial creations an autonomous existence! As though there were danger of such as they feeling the breath of life under as though they were danger of such as a feeling the breath of a life on their own!”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Strong in services rendered, the now wealthy heirs of Power’s lawyer-servants claimed henceforward to control its actions, and assuredly there was no other body of men in the country better qualified to hold Power in check.

If officers were bought the control over the sales exercised by this body hedged in the appointment of a new magistrate with guarantees which ensured that no senate was ever recruited better.

If the members of the Parliament were not elected by the public, they deserved on that account more of the public confidence, as being less it's flatterers by design than its champions by principle. Taken as a whole, they formed a weightier and more capable body of men than those of the British Parliament. Was it right, then, for the monarchy to accept and sanction this counter-Power? Or did its dignity demand that it react against the pretension of Parliament? That was a policy of one party, which called itself Richelieu’s heir and it was in fact, led by d’Aiguillon, a great-nephew of the great Cardinal. But if the need was to smash now this aristocracy of the robe and extend that the royal authority even further, it had to be done as in former days to the plaudits of the common people and by employing a new set of plebeians against the present wearers of periwigs. Mirabeau saw as much, but that d’Aiguillon’s faction were blind to it.

That faction consisted of nobles who had been more or less plucked by the monarchial Power and were now getting new feathers by installing themselves into wealth-giving apparatus of state which had been built by the plebeian clerks. Finding that offices were now of greater value than manors. They fell to on the offices. Finding that the bulk of the feudal dues had been diverted into the coffers of the state, they put their hands in them. And, occupying every place and obstructing every avenue leading to Power, they succeeded in weakening it both by their incapacity and by their feeble efforts to prevent it from attracting, as formerly, to its banners and the aspirations of the common people.

In this way the men who should have served the state, finding themselves discarded, turned Jacobin. In the cold shades of a parliamentary opposition, which, if it had been accepted, would have transformed the absolute monarchy into a limited one, a plebeian elite champed at the bit; had it been admitted to office, it would have extended even further the centralizing power of the throne. So much was it part of its nature to serve the royal authority that it was to ensure its continuance even when there was no king.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Bad tactics and the suicide of the French aristocracy: For France the 18th century was a period of aristocratic reaction, so badly handled, however, that instead of resulting in the limitation of the monarchial Power, it ended by destroying monarchy and aristocracy alike, and by exalting a Power which was far more absolute than that of the “Great King” had ever been.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Plebian Absolutism

Thus we see that the advance of the common people in the state is closely linked with that of the state in the nation. The common people are to the state servants who buttress it; the state is to the common people the master who raises them.

In favoring the freeing of the serfs and limiting the rights of the barons to exploit their underlings, the king thereby weakens his natural enemies. In encouraging the formation of a stratum of well-to-do bourgeoisie, an oligarchy of commoners and a mercantile class, he gets himself servants and assures himself support. In instituting the farming of taxes, he opens to this bourgeoisie the gates of the state. In allowing these taxes to become a heritable property, he links with his own fortunes entire families among the bourgeoisie. He encourages the universities, which provide him with the most effective champions. These maintain his cause, whether against the Emperor or the Pope, in brilliant theses, but, also still more, they gnaw darkly and continuously at the foundations of baronial right.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Aristocracy, always and everywhere, opposes the rise of a Power which disposes in its own right of sufficient means of action to make itself independent of society, those means being, essentially, a permanent administration, a standing army, and taxation. The type of regime which answers to the aristocratic spirit is one in which the magistrates are entrusted by rotation to the most eminent citizens, an armed force is formed at need by the gathering together of the various social forces, and financial resources are collected, as occasion calls, out of the contributions of the leading members of the community. The more concentrated and urban an aristocracy is, and the more tightly knit its common interests, the more effective will such a system; be the more spread out and landed it is, and the more divided in interest, the less effective it will be.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Prince Maurice inherited his father’s prestige, added to it by victories of his own, and seemed about to reach the goal, when Barneveldt, having organized secretly a patrician opposition, put an end to Maruice’s ambitions by putting an end, through the conclusion of peace, to victories which were proving dangerous to the Republic. What did Maurice do then? He allied himself with the most ignorant of the preachers who were, through their fierce intolerance, the aptest to excite the passions of the lower orders: thanks to their efforts, he unleashed the mob at Barneveldt and cut off his head. This intervention by the common people enabled Maurice to execute the leader of the opposition to his own increasing power. That he did not gain the authority he sought was not due to any mistake in his choice of means, as was shown when one of his successors, William III, made himself at last master of the country, by means of a popular rising in which Jean de Witt, the Barneveld of his period, had his throat cut.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Very different, however, is the case that the strength of power is in inverse ratio to its extent - which is what we see today, when the political controls which extend in all directions and leave nothing untouched, are liable to be given, whether simultaneously or successively, contradictory impulsions, and the master of a regimented society is not a single mind, but a confused jumble. It is in such a case as certain as anything can be that, unless there is curtailment of the state's activities, the reins of government will in the end be brought together into one imperial hand, whatever its name it takes and from whatever place in society it comes. What, then, will an egalitarian society, in which the high command no longer resembles an excited crowd look like?”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“The kings, who are the most set on destroying the feudal baronies, are also the best friends of the merchants, the bankers and the master manufacturers. A shipowner is not the chieftain of a gang of sailors whom he abstracts from Power's clutch, but rather an employer of labour who on the contrary, makes them available to power when the time comes for it to require them; In this way, it is explained the favour shown by Francis I, to take one instance towards, Ango. A banker is not after political power - he is after wealth. His function is to build a sort of store-house on which, when the when the time is ripe, Power will draw to transmute this wealth into strength.

A mercantile aristocracy, then, so far from abstracting anything from the state's resources, makes potential additions to them which will, when circumstances so require, be realized. This is the only aspect under which, for many years, Power saw the money power.

But in the end the overthrow of every other social domination of whatever kind left financial domination master of the field. At that stage it was seemed to be the formative source of fresh cells. That showed itself clearly enough in the case of the industrial employers. Not only was the employer the law in his factory, but quite often he would put up nearby a township for his workers in which he had the position of prince. A point was reached at some of the states of the USA, at which the manufacturer, owning as he did the land on which the factory had been built, allowed on it no other police than his own.

In its jealousy of any and every command, however small, which was not its own, Power could not tolerate such independence. Moreover, as in every other battle which it had fought with aristocratic formations, it soon found itself appealed to by the underlings. Then it made its way not only into the employer's township but into his workshop as well; there it introduced its own law, its own police and its own factory regulations. If its earlier aggressions against closed aristocratic formations were not our old friends, we might be tempted to see in this one nothing more than a result of the popular character of the modern state, and of socialist ideas. These factors played, no doubt, their part, but no more was needed, than that Power should be itself - a thing naturally tending to shut out the intervention of all other authorities.

The financial cell is less visible to the eye than the industrial cell. But its hold on money, and above all by its disposal of vast amounts of private savings, finance has been able to build up a vast structure and impose on the ever growing number of its subjects and authority which is ever plainer on the planer to the view on the empires of finance, also, power made war. The signal for battle was not given by a socialist state, the natural enemy of the barons of capital. It came from Theodore Roosevelt, himself a man of Power, and therefore the enemy of all private authorities.

In this way, a new alliance was sealed - an alliance no less natural than that of the Power of early days with the prisoners of the clan-cells, than that of the monarchy with the subjects of the feudal barons - that of the modern state with the men exploited by capitalist industry, with the men dominated by the financial trusts.

The state has often waged this particular war half-heartedly, thereby making the extent to which it has turned its back on itself and has renounced its role of Power. And renunciation was in this case favoured by the internal weakness of modern Power; the precariousness of its tenure encouraged its phantom tenants to betray it in favor of the financial aristocracies.

But Power has natural charms for those who desire it for its use. It was a certain that anti-capitalists would come to occupy the public offices of the bourgeois state, as it was certain that anti-feudalists would come to occupy those of the monarchial state.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“We have just been seeing political power concerned to break a "clandom" which preceded it in time. Let us now see how it behaves in regard to a clandom which is its contemporary. It may be said in effect, paraphrasing Shakespeare: "Monarchy and feudal aristocracy are two lions born on the same day."
There was something of an act of piracy about the foundation of the European states. The Franks who conquered Gaul, the Normans who conquered England and Sicily, and even the Crusaders who went to Palestine, all behaved like bands of adventurers, dividing the spoil. What was there to divide? First of all, the ready cash. Afterwards, there were the lands; no deserts, these, but furnished with men whose labor was to maintain the victor. To every man, then, his share in the prize. And there we have the man-at-arms turned baron. This is shown to the evolution of the world of the word baro, which in Germany meant "freeman" and in Gaul denoted the name of the class.

There the remains for seizure the apparatus of state, which there was one: naturally it is the share of the chief. But when a barbarian like Clovis found himself confronted with the administrative machine of the Late Empire, he did not understand it. All he saw in it was a system of suction pumps, bringing him a steady flow of riches on which he made merry with no thought for the public services for which these resources were intended. In the result, then, he divided up along among his foremost companions the treasure of the state, whether in the form of lands or fiscal revenues.

In this way, civilized government was gradually brought to ruin, and Gaul of the ninth and 10th centuries, was reduced to the same condition as that in which William of Normandy was to find England of the 11th.

There was imposed the system of barbarian government known as government by retainers. Let the Charlemagne use as points d'appui of Power, the influential men who are already on the spot, or let William create his own influential men by a share-out of big fiefs in England - it was all one. The important thing to note is that the central authority appoints as its representatives in a given district either the chief proprietors of the soil who were there already, or those whom it sets up in their place.

By a slant common to the barbarian mind, or rather by an inclination which is natural to all men, but in barbarians encounters no opposing principle, these influential men soon confound their function with their property and exercise the former as though it were the latter. Each little local tyrant then becomes legislature, judge and administrator of a more or less extensive principality; and on the tribute paid by it he lives, along with his servants and his men-at-arms.

Power thus expelled soon returns, however, under the spur of its requirements. The resources at his disposal are absurdly out of proportion to the area, which depends on it and to the population, which calls it the sovereign. The reason is that the manpower has been taken over by the barons. What was in other days a tax is now a feudal due. The only way is to rob the baronial cell of its withheld resources. That is why monarchy establishes townships on the confines of the baronial lands; they act as cupping-glasses, drawing away the best elements in the population. In that way, the barons will get fewer villeins, and the king more bourgeoisie who will be grateful for the franchises conferred on them and will help the king in his necessities from their purses.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth