SIZE OF FARMS, AND DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 379 



seems a violation of natural right, justice, and humanity ; and 

 there are many circumstances in the condition of society in the 

 old world, which indicate that it must be modified or abandoned. 

 One of the first duties of society is, to give to every man a 

 perfect security in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own indus 

 try ; but it is equally the duty of society to secure to every man 

 disposed to labor an opportunity, as far as possible, fully and 

 effectually to exert that industry. The end which governments 

 ordinarily aim at, is the protection of property ; and almost all 

 laws, being made by men of property, have this for their great 

 object. But wealth is ordinarily quite able to take care of itself; 

 and the object of government should be to protect poverty, which 

 constantly requires protection. The true wealth of a community 

 is its labor, its productive labor. A man is not the richer for 

 houses which he cannot occupy, lands which he cannot use, 

 money that he cannot spend. He might own a continent in the 

 moon, but what would that avail him ? He might die of starva 

 tion in the vaults of the Bank of England, or in the undisturbed 

 possession of the richest of the mines of Peru. Labor is the 

 great source and instrument of subsistence and wealth. Labor, 

 therefore, honest labor, should be, under all circumstances, the 

 great object of the protection and encouragement of every just 

 government. Laws should be such as to secure to labor, as far 

 as possible, an open field for exertion. Such is the tendency of 

 the laws of France respecting the posthumous division of landed 

 estates. The laws of primogeniture, by which large landed 

 estates go exclusively into the hands of the eldest son, and laws 

 of mortmain, by which lands are forever appropriated to particular 

 uses, are laws of a different description. The law of primogeni 

 ture seems to many persons essentially unjust in the favoritism 

 which it implies, among those who obviously have equal claims 

 upon parental kindness arid impartiality. The law of mortmain 

 and perpetual devises, by which extensive landed estates are 

 locked up and appropriated in perpetuity to particular uses, has 

 met with many warm combatants. They ask, and with what 

 reason I shall leave to the judgment of my readers, Was riot the 

 land given to man, that from it, by his labor, he might obtain a 

 subsistence, which, in truth, can come from no other source? 

 Now, shall any man, or set of men. so monopolize and appropriate 

 this land, that it shall not be available to these objects ? It would 



