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 necessity which reduces the sad relicks to owe their
very existence to the ostentatious bounty of their oppressors. If it is
true in common life, it is still more true in governments, that we
should be just before we are generous; but our legislators seem to have
forgotten or despised this homely maxim. They have unjustly left
unprotected that most important part of property, not less real because
it has no material existence, that which ought to enable the labourer to
provi