42 Of Systems of Equality, coiil'miicd. Bk. iii. 



to the production of those stimulants to exertion 

 which can alone overcome the natural indolence 

 of man, and prompt him to the proper cultivation 

 of the earth and the fabrication of those conve- 

 niences and comforts which are necessary to his 

 happiness. 



And the other, the inevitable and necessary 

 poverty and misery in which every system of 

 equality must shortly terminate from the acknow- 

 ledged tendency of the human race to increase 

 faster than the means of subsistence, unless such 

 increase be prevented by means infinitely more 

 cruel than those which result from the laws of 

 private property, and the moral obligation imposed 

 on every man by the commands of God and na- 

 ture to support his own children. 



The first of these arguments has, I confess, 

 always appeared to my own mind sufficiently 

 conclusive. A state, in which an inequality of 

 conditions offers the natural rewards of good con- 

 duct, and inspires widely and generally the hopes 

 of rising and the fears of falling in society, is un- 

 questionably the best calculated to develope the 

 energies and faculties of man, and the best suited 

 to the exercise and improvement of human vir- 

 tue ;* and history, in every case of equality that 

 has yet occurred, has uniformly borne witness to 



* See tliis subject very ably treated in a work on the Records of 

 the Creation, and the Moral Attributes of the Creator, by the Rev. 

 John Bird Sumner, not long since published ; a work of veiy 

 great merit, which I hope soon to see in as extensive circulation 

 as it deserves. 



