331 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



improvements in agriculture and economy ; they promote 

 investigation ai:d management of public resources 



Again, there are strong intelligible reasons why there 

 should exist in human society great disparity of icealth and 

 station ; not only as these things are acquired in different 

 degrees, but at the first setting out of life. In order, for 

 instance, to answer the various demands of civil life, there 

 ought to be among the members of every civil society a 

 diversity of education, which can only belong to an original 

 diversity of circumstances. As this sort of disparity, w hich 

 ought to take place from the beginning of life, must, ex hy- 

 pothesis be previous to the merit or demerit of the persons 

 upon whom it falls, can it be better disposed of than by 

 chance ? Parentage is that sort of chance ; yet it is the 

 commanding circumstance which, in general, fixes each 

 man's place in civil life, along with every thing Avhich ap- 

 pertains to its distinctions. It may be the result of a bene- 

 ficial rule, that the fortunes or honors of the father devolve 

 upon the son ; and, as it should seem, of a still more neces- 

 sary rule, that the low or laborious condition of the parent 

 be communicated to his family ; but with respect to the 

 successor himself, it is the drawing of a ticket in a lottery. 

 Inequalities, therefore, of fortune, at least the greatest part 

 of them, namely, those which attend us from our birth and 

 depend upon our birth, may be left as they are left, to 

 chance, without any just cause for questioning the regency 

 of a supreme Disposer of events. 



But not only the donation, when by the necessity of the 

 case they must be gifts, but eveA the acquirahility of civil 

 advantages, ought perhaps, in a considerable degree, to lie 

 at the mercy of chance. Some would have all the virtuous 

 rich, or at least removed from the evils of poverty ; without 

 perceiving, I suppose, the consequence, that all the poor 

 must be wicked. And how such a society could be kept in 

 subjection to government has not been shown ; for the poor, 

 that is, they who seek their subsistence }>y constant mai.ual 



