Europe appears in the political argument as a setting where the rapid expansion of standing armies and garrisons threatens the population and the conditions of public life. Its significance is not merely geographical: the discussion uses the dangers of military establishment to connect state power and revenue to the welfare of the people, and sets that warning beside a broader account of political scale, government, and liberty.

Standing Armies and Depopulation

The invention of artillery and fortifications has led European princes in modern times to return to regular troops for the garrisoning of towns. Even where the stated motives are lawful, the effects may be as dangerous as those of earlier military establishments. Armies and garrisons draw people away from the land, while the expense of maintaining them burdens the population; the rapid growth of these institutions, the text warns, threatens to depopulate Europe and ultimately ruin its inhabitants.

This warning belongs to a larger criticism of military power sustained at public expense. In the account of the Roman Empire, tyrants maintained regular troops ostensibly to resist foreign enemies but in practice to enslave their own countrymen. Removing men from agricultural labour reduced provisions; maintaining the troops brought taxes that raised prices; popular murmurs prompted rulers to enlarge the forces, compounding the misery that had caused the unrest. The parallel does not establish that modern European princes have identical motives, but it makes the institutional danger legible: a force maintained for security can turn against the population and consume the resources on which that population depends.

Territory, Population, and Political Scale

The account of political strength treats a state’s territory and its population as interdependent measures. Land must be sufficient to maintain the inhabitants, and the population should be proportionate to what the land can sustain. Too much territory is difficult to defend and cultivate, may produce surplus, and can provoke defensive wars; too little makes a state dependent on neighbours and vulnerable to wars of acquisition. A people forced to choose between commerce and war is correspondingly dependent on circumstances and uncertain of its continued existence.

No single numerical ratio can govern every country. Fertility, products, climate, patterns of consumption, population growth, and the effects of institutions all alter what a territory can support. The legislator must therefore consider not only the population present but the population that the country can naturally sustain. This argument gives political geography a practical rather than merely cartographic meaning: the relation between land and inhabitants conditions self-maintenance, security, and political independence.

The size of the state also affects the feasibility of government. Every extension of the social tie relaxes it, and the text argues that, in general, a small state is stronger in proportion than a great one. Distance makes administration harder and more expensive: cities, districts, provinces, and higher levels of government each add costs borne by the people, while the supreme administration overshadows the lower orders. The accumulation of these charges can leave too few resources for emergencies, bringing a state close to destruction rather than making it better governed.

Government and the Measure of Welfare

The number of supreme magistrates, the argument proposes, will generally stand in inverse proportion to the number of citizens. Democracy therefore tends to suit small states, aristocracy those of intermediate size, and monarchy great ones, though innumerable circumstances may produce exceptions. The classification is not a ranking of forms for every context; it is a claim that political arrangements must be judged in relation to the scale of the community they govern.

For judging a government’s results, the text offers a concrete test: the preservation and prosperity of its members, indicated most surely by their numbers and population. All else being equal, the best government is the one under which citizens increase and multiply without external aid, naturalisation, or colonies; a government under which the people diminish is the worst. That standard contests evaluations based on rulers’ tranquillity or the splendour of an age, directing attention instead to the population’s durable condition.

Political Decay and Liberty

Government contains an inherent tension with sovereignty. Its particular will continually acts against the general will; as this pressure grows, the constitution changes, and the ruler may eventually suppress the sovereign and break the social treaty. One form of degeneration is contraction, as government passes from the many to the few and from democracy through aristocracy to royalty. This tendency connects the scale and machinery of political rule to the possibility of a state’s dissolution.

The argument also distinguishes public well-being from the quiet enjoyed by rulers. Periods celebrated for letters and arts may conceal damaging effects, and a country’s reputation or cultural wealth cannot establish that its people are prospering if the population is declining. Outbreaks and civil wars may shock rulers without constituting the people’s deepest calamity; enduring subjection and the destruction of a population’s freedom are more fundamental measures of decline. The discussion invokes France amid political disturbances and Greece amid savage wars to show that conflict alone does not determine whether a people flourishes. Its concluding contrast makes liberty, rather than peace by itself, the decisive condition of genuine prosperity.