1821. April 16

First Lines

Means

Distributive

4. Equality

By the conjunct operation of all these causes taken together, to the maintenance of

each individual, whose powers were thus applicable to the defence of the community, a

mass of property, continually kept on foot, was indispensably necessary. In the

possession of any such individual, suppose a mass of property sufficient, but not

more than sufficient, for this purpose. If, upon his decease, this mass of property

were to be subjected to division, the national force would thus be bereft of one of

its constituent parts: and, in a state of society in which the cultivation of the

means of subsistence have /had/ made so small a progress, so small was the number of

the individuals thus equipped, no individual could be subtracted from the number

without sensible diminution of national security.

The exigencies and habits of acting produced by this state of things, have long been

at an end every where. But the habits of thinking produced by it are scarcely at an

end anywhere. From all labour, employed in the production of the means of

subsistence, and the matter of abundance, all persons thus engaged in the defence of

the community sttood exempted, partly by necessity, in respect of the need of the

application of it to their military function, partly by the power it gave them /they

had/ of exacting from their labour for those and other purposes for their own use.

In regard to exposure to the necessity of labour, from the state of things has been

produced, in the minds of a certain portion of the community, a division of the

members of that same community with two classes: one composed of those in whose

instance the need of employing labour in the acquisition of subsistence and abundance

is no hardship: another composed of those in whose instance the need /and so on/ is a

hardship

To

The