to them when they perform their duty to
themselves and families; and they have neither leisure, nor other
means of contributing to general prosperity as public men;

---
{110} In France, the richest subject under the crown was a prince of
the blood, &c.

{111} In this case, the English form of government is good, because,
it not only hinders any man from forgetting that he is a man, but
whenever there is any ambition, no one in this country can rise above
the necessity of acting with, and feeling for, their inferiors, of whom
they sometimes have to ask favours, which they never do under a pure
monarchy.
-=-

[end of page #131]

they, indeed, pay more than their share of taxes in almost every
country; {112} but they cannot directly, even by election, participate
in the government of the country.

If any number of persons engross the whole of the lands of a nation,
then the labourers that live on those lands must be in a degraded
situation; they then become less sound and less important members of
the state than they would otherwise be.

Necessity does not act with that favourable impulse on people, where
property is very unequally divided, that it does where the gradation
from the state of poverty to that of riches is more regular.

As the action of the body is brought on by the effect produced on the
mind; and as there is no hope of obtaining wealth where it appears
very unequally divided, so also there is no exertion where there is no
hope. {113}

Where there is no regular gradation of rank and division of property,
emulation, which is the spur to action, when absolute necessity ceases
to operate, is entirely destroyed; thus the lower classes become
degraded and discouraged, as is universally found to be the case in
nations that have passed their meridian; the contrary being as regularly
and constantly the case with rising nations.

Besides the degradation and listlessness occasioned in the lower ranks,
by an unequal distribution of property, the most agreeable, and the
strongest bond of society is thereby broken. The bond that

---
{112} This is less the case in England than in any other country.

{113} It is strange how possibility, which is the mother of hope, acts
upon, and controuls, the passions. Envy is generally directed to those
who are but a little raised above us. They are reckoned to be madmen
who envy kings, or fall in love with princesses, and, in fact, they are
such, unless when they be