You seem anxious to explain what ought to be understood by the equality of men in a state of civil society; but your Lordship’s success has not answered your trouble.  If you had looked in the articles of the Rights of Man, you would have found your efforts superseded:  ’Equality, without which liberty cannot exist, is to be met with in perfection in that State in which no distinctions are admitted but such as have evidently for their object the general good;’ ’The end of government cannot be attained without authorising some members of the society to command, and of course without imposing on the rest the necessity of obedience.’

Here, then, is an inevitable inequality, which may be denominated that of power.  In order to render this as small as possible, a legislator will be careful not to give greater force to such authority than is essential to its due execution.  Government is at best but a necessary evil.  Compelled to place themselves in a state of subordination, men will obviously endeavour to prevent the abuse of that superiority to which they submit; accordingly they will cautiously avoid whatever may lead those in whom it is acknowledged to suppose they hold it as a right.  Nothing will more effectually contribute to this than that the person in whom authority has been lodged should occasionally descend to the level of private citizen; he will learn from it a wholesome lesson, and the people will be less liable to confound the person with the power.  On this principle hereditary authority will be proscribed; and on another also—­that in such a system as that of hereditary authority, no security can be had for talents adequate to the discharge of the office, and consequently the people can only feel the mortification of being humbled without having protected themselves.

Another distinction will arise amongst mankind, which, though it may be easily modified by government, exists independent of it; I mean the distinction of wealth, which always will attend superior talents and industry.  It cannot be denied that the security of individual property is one of the strongest and most natural motives to induce men to bow their necks to the yoke of civil government.  In order to attain this end of security to property, a legislator will proceed with impartiality.  He should not suppose that, when he has insured to their proprietors the possession of lands and movables against the depredation of the necessitous, nothing remains to be done.  The history of all ages has demonstrated that wealth not only can secure itself, but includes even an oppressive principle.  Aware of this, and that the extremes of poverty and riches have a necessary tendency to corrupt the human heart, he will banish from his code all laws such as the unnatural monster of primogeniture, such as encourage associations against labour in the form of corporate bodies, and indeed all that monopolising system of legislation, whose baleful influence is shown in the depopulation of the country and in the