from breaking; virtue will not give robustness nor agility to the extremity of old age.
Equality amongst the members of a community — equality, whatever be the standard portion — includes two points: that no member shall have more than that portion; and that no one shall have less. The first of these points is attainable by the equalisation system to great perfection: the latter not. To the latter, this pure and exalted system is not more competent than the present abusive and corrupt one: it is even much less so. To industry it affords no new encouragement; on the contrary, it takes from it whatever encouragement it bos at present. To what purpose should I earn more than the poorest of my fellow-citizens, when so much as I earn more than them, so much will be taken from me. Neither to idleness or to dissipation does it administer any new discouragement; on the contrary, it gives to both of these dispositions encouragement, and that the greatest they can receive. Putting idle-ness upon a footing of equality in point of future advantage with industry, and dissipation with frugality, it gives to each the portion of present pleasure with which it is attended, clear. Why, so long as I have a penny left, should I refuse the most expensive desire its gratification — w hen, whatever I dissipate of my own present stock, must be made up to me from that of other people? To what purpose, while I have a penny left, should 1 plague myself with working — when, so long as 1 have any thing to pay, others will work for me with pay, and when 1 have no longer pay to give them, they must work for me without it?
Here, then, is a perpetual race between dissipation and idleness on the one hand, and that plan of division, whatever it be, by which the law of equalisation is carried into execution, on the other: dissipation and idleness continually widening the gap; division of property using its best endeavours to fill it up. But the pace of dissipation is the pace of the racer; the pace of legal division that of the tortoise.
All this while, the members of the community are divided into two classes: the industrious and frugal, slaves toiling for others: the idle and prodigal, lords and masters, enjoying for themselves. Such would be the fruit of the equalisation system, while the execution of it was going on, until a certain portion of the national wealth having been destroyed in a variety of ways, and a certain portion of the national population destroyed by a mixture of famine and excess, the miserable would awaken from their delirium, curse the system and its inventors, and join their endeavours to bring back the former state of things.