1821[?]. April 16.

First Lines

Means

Distributive

In the instance of some of these persons, this habit of expectation has had, for its

cause and support, a correspondent habit of co-enjoyment.

In this case are constantly a man's wife and children: a woman's husband and

children: incidentally, any other such near relatives, especially blood-relations,

whose circumstances, in conjunction with his own, have happened to produce, on their

part, such habit of co-enjoyment.

On the occasion of a man's death, by the distribution which, by /according to/ the

natural course of things takes place, (abstraction made of dispositions made

/arrangements established/ by positive law, for the best express purpose of

controuling it), equality, and that without defalcation from security, is promoted.

So various are the circumstances in which, on the occasion of any such decease, a

family is capable of being left, that, in the way of detail, it is impossible to

pronounce, by any general rule, what course or plan of distribution is most natural:

what course or plan is, in the highest degree, conducive to the greatest happiness of

the greatest number.

In general terms, thus much, however, may be said - that, among those by which equal

regard is paid to the habit of coenjoyment, that other causes /grounds/ of

expectation and demand, being on the same footing, that course will be most

beneficial which, in its nature, and in the conception entertained of it, and the

description given of it, is most simple.

Say, for example, children or no children, on the death of the husband, the whole of

his property to the widow: on the death of the wife, the whole of her property to the

widower.

To /on/ the children, the state of dependence in which they are thus left imposes no

new hardship: this dependence is but a continuation of existing dependence.

As