- ? 
270 on the constitution. Fune 24%. 
so that industry, knowledge, and wealth, being all di- 
minifhed, his power sinks below that of another, who’ 
has received from nature the rudiments of know- 
ledge, who has been instructed by zece/sity to become 
industrious, and who has obtained wealth by the 
combined exertions of both. 
Such are the inequalities of rank, and the diversi< 
ties of station, among men, with the revolutions to 
which they are subjected, that necefsarily result frony 
the doctrine, true as applied to the aggregate body, ~ 
though infinitely false as applied to individuals, 
“¢ that all mankind are born equal.” An attempt to 
perpetuate power to any family or clafs of men is 
therefore unnatural, absurd, impofsible. An attempt,’ 
however, to preserve a perpetual equality among 
men, is still more unnatural, more absurd, and in- 
finitely more impracticable. Such a thing never 
was, nor is, nor ever can be permanently establifhed 
in this world. 
Many awkward attempts have been made in Eu- 
rope to secure to certain families, or clafses of men, 2 
permanency of power, which have been productive 
of a great diversity of lefser evils, and would have 
been productive of the most baneful consequences, 
could they have been carried’ as far as the favourers 
of this system vainly imagined. But this, thank 
heaven, was impofsible. The partial evils these 
have produced, deserve to be adverted to'and cautious= 
ly removed. But the wild system of equality in 
rank, though it has been at different times adopted 
by religious and political fanatics, has been at alk 
‘times productive of such. immediate-destructive con= 
