12. Inequality in the division of property: causes which
render that inevitable.
The original proprietors would (as I have already mentioned)
occupy as much land as their strength would permit them with
their families to cultivate. A man of greater strength, more
laborious, more attentive about the future, would occupy more
than a man of a contrary character. He, whose family is the most
numerous having greater wants and more hands, extends his
possessions further; this is a first cause of inequality. —
Every piece of ground is not equally fertile; two men with the
same extent of land, may reap a very different harvest; this is a
second source of inequality. Property in descending from fathers
to their children, divides into greater or less portions,
according as the descendants are more or less numerous, and as
one generation succeeds another, sometimes the inheritances again
subdivide, and sometimes re-unite again by the extinction of some
of the branches; this is a third source of inequality. The
difference of knowledge, of activity, and, above all, the
oeconomy of some, contrasted with the indolence, inaction, and
dissipation of others, is a fourth principle of inequality, and
the most powerful of all: the negligent and inattentive
proprietor, who cultivates badly, who in a fruitful year consumes
in frivolous things the whole of his superfluity, finds himself
reduced on the least accident to request assistance from his more
provident neighbour, and to live by borrowing. If by any new
accident, or by a continuation of his negligence, he finds
himself not in a condition to repay, he is obliged to have
recourse to new loans, and at last has no other resource but to
abandon a part, or even the whole of his property to his
creditor, who receives it as an equivalent; or to assign it to
another, in exchange for other valuables with which he discharges
his obligation to his creditor.
