REMOVABLE INEQUALITIES 329 



community with reference to which they are asked. Book iv 



For though men's powers of equalising opportunities 



are limited, their powers of making them unequal in a country 



may be said to be indefinitely great ; and the more tuniti 



unequal they have been made at the time when we 



ask our questions, the greater will the progress be 



which there will be room for us to make towards for a s^ 1 deal 



V 1 11 -11 L 1 -1 fe( l uallsatlon - 



equalising them, and the greater will be the social 

 advantages which we may hope to secure by making 

 it. In France, for example, before the first Revolu- 

 tion, the laws affecting industry had almost ruined 

 the nation, not because by unduly favouring one class 

 they led to wealth being concentrated, but because 

 by unduly hampering other classes they prevented 

 its being produced ; and the sweeping away by the 

 Revolution of the old feudal inequalities, though it 

 had none of the millennial effects which the Revolu- 

 tionists themselves hoped for, has had others 

 equally striking, though of a very different kind. 

 It has not made men equal in point of wealth, but 

 it has increased to an astonishing extent the wealth 

 of all classes alike. And the way in which it has 

 done this has been by removing artificial impedi- 

 ments to the development and free exercise of 

 exceptional productive talent ; or in other words, 

 by an equalisation of economic opportunities. 



But the kind of equality that has thus been But removing 

 reached may be described as being of a negative pedunentHs 

 rather than a positive kind. It depends on theSX^ f negati ' c 

 absence of artificial impediments to production, ec 

 rather than on the supply of any artificial helps to 



