Did Voltaire Say It?

I have found this line online, attributed to Voltaire.

"It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence."

Now: Voltaire is one of those figures to whom things (passive voice) get attributed. Or, as I believe Benjamin Franklin wisely put it, "You can't believe all quotations you find on the internet."

The inequality/dependence line seems as if it might have been created by someone intent on arguing against the New Deal, or some subsequent welfare-state sort of development, and backdated to Voltaire to give it some Enlightenment cred.

Not that that's a bad cause. Regular readers of this blog know my sympathies. But deception mars every cause for which it is employed. [And a reasonable induction is that it is employed for all human causes.]

So: I open this to my readers. What are the odds that actually comes from Voltaire? Or from anyone speaking or writing earlier than, say, 1932?

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