un him and pass him by.

I should not be surprised, Jonathan, if the President of the United
States called him an "undesirable citizen," as he surely would call
Archdeacon Paley if he were alive.

I wanted you to read Paley's illustration of the pigeons before going
into the unequal distribution of wealth. It will help you to
understand another illustration. Suppose that from a shipwreck one
hundred men are fortunate enough to save themselves and to make their
way to an island, where, making the best of conditions, they establish
a little community, which they elect to call "Capitalia." Luckily,
they have all got food and clothing enough to last them for a little
while, and they are fortunate enough to find on the island a supply of
tools, evidently abandoned by some former occupants of the island.

They set to work, cultivating the ground, building huts for
themselves, hunting for game, and so on. They start out to face the
primeval struggle with the sullen forces of Nature as our ancestors
did in the time long past. Their efforts prosper, every one of the
hundred men being a worker, every man working with equal will, equal
strength and vigor. Now, then, suppose that one day, they decide to
divide up the wealth produced by their labor, to institute individual
property in place of common property, competition in place of
co-operation. What would you think if two or three of the strongest
members said, "We will do the dividing, we will distribute the wealth
according to our ideas of justice and right," and then proceeded to
give 55 per cent. of the wealth to one man, to the next eleven men 32
per cent. and to the remaining eighty-eight men only 13 per cent.
between them?

I will put it in another way, Jonathan, since you are not accustomed
to thinking in percentages. Suppose that there were a hundred cows to
be divided among the members of the community. According to the scheme
of division just described, this is how the division would work out:

1 Man would get 55 Cows for himself
11 Men would get 32 Cows among them
88 Men would get 13 Cows among them

When they had divided the cows in this manner they would proceed to
divide the wheat, the potato crops, the land, and everything else
owned by the community in the same unequal way. I ask you again,
Jonathan, what would you think of such a division?

Of course, being a fair-minded man, endowed with ordinary intelligence
at least, you will ad