e, and
a sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one:
Why are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?

No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class,
who have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.

PEOPLE.--And what labor do you perform in our society?

PRIVILEGED CLASS.--None; we are not made to work.

PEOPLE.--How, then, have you acquired these riches?

PRIVILEGED CLASS.--By taking the pains to govern you.

PEOPLE.--What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you enjoy!
we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you absorb
it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation apart,
and govern yourselves.*

* This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
indolence. Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
find in all the same characteristic feature:--Men living in
idleness at the expense of those who labor.

Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake
of their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches
come from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us.
Are we not men of another race--the noble and pure descendants of the
conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
and its own origin.

THE NOBLES.--People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us?
This is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom
and prescribed by time.

PEOPLE.--O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
virtuous in a nation.

And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the n