ng existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern
them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the
superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing
it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when
they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they
reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary
means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature
spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their consequence by
their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no
longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected
cannot be re-acted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite
destruction.

That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority
of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate
opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever
produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill sounding
names of avarice and oppression; and besides this, there are some men
who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery
or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their
wants or their independence; whilst in others there is an avidity to
obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of
their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required
with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it
criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a
criterion for exclusive rights.

In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a
commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are
wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights
are represented in the government of that company, than what arise out
of that property; neither has that government cognizance of _any thing
but property_.

But the case is totally different with respect to the institution of
civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a
government has cognizance of every thing, and of _every man_ as a member
of the national society, whether he has property or not; and, therefore,
the principle requires that _every man_, and _every kind of right_, be
represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but
one, and that not of the