1821. April 16.

First Lines

Means

Distributive

4. Equality

To descend from a higher to a lower place in the scale of opulence is a change which

can neither be endured nor apprehended without uneasiness. On the decease of any

possessor of property living without labour, laying out of consideration the widow or

the widower, no division can have place among the Children, but that at any rate, (if

it be an equal one), this inconvenience must be experienced: experienced by all of

them in a degree proportioned to their number. If, by the late proprietor, a House of

a certain extent and appearance with servants in a certain number, and a table

furnished at a certain expence, were kept up, in the comforts of all which, during

the life of the Father, the Children had, all of them, in a greater or less degree,

and naturally in an equal degree, participated, after the decease of the parent, no

such equal enjoyment, except on condition of a degree of harmony not to be expected

from equals so situated, and not under the controul of any superior, nor in that case

without universal renunciation of the comforts of matrimony, can /could/ be kept up

/maintained/.

But, in a situation of this sort, such is the course taken by self-regard, looking

forward to the time in which, in his own person, he will have ceased to exist,

imagination presents to a man, as a sort of substitute to his own person, that of

another who, in nature and denomination, and in amount of property shall come as near

to himself, as one person can come to another: a person whose body once formed a part

of his own, and in the rendering of whose mind a continuation of his own, as

/whatsoever/ much care and labour has been employed as it was agreeable to him so to

employ.