第6章

Of Capital Cities A capital city is formed in the same way as a provincial city with this difference that the largest landowners in all the state reside in the capital, that the king or supreme government is fixed in it and spends there the government revenue, that the supreme courts of justice are fixed there, that it is the centre of the fashions which all the provinces take for a model, that the landowners who reside in the provinces do not fail to come occasionally to pass some time in the capital and to send their children thither to be polished. Thus all the lands in the state contribute more or less to maintain those who dwell in the capital.

If a sovereign quits a city to take up his abode in another the nobility will not fail to follow him and to make its residence with him in the new city which will become great and important at the expense of the first. We have seen quite a recent example of this in the city of Petersburg to the disadvantage of Moscow, and one sees many old cities which were important fall into ruin and others spring from their ashes.

Great cities are usually built on the seacoast or on the banks of large rivers for the convenience of transport; because water carriage of the produce and merchandise necessary for the subsistence and comfort of the inhabitants is much cheaper than carriages and land transport.