his will, and
did not find it his interest to purchase it at the expense of real
services. In fine, an insatiable ambition, the rage of raising their
relative fortunes, not so much through real necessity, as to over-top
others, inspire all men with a wicked inclination to injure each
other, and with a secret jealousy so much the more dangerous, as to
carry its point with the greater security, it often puts on the face
of benevolence. In a word, sometimes nothing was to be seen but a
contention of endeavours on the one hand, and an opposition of
interests on the other, while a secret desire of thriving at the
expense of others constantly prevailed. Such were the first effects of
property, and the inseparable attendants of infant inequality.

Riches, before the invention of signs to represent them, could scarce
consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real goods which
men can possess. But when estates increased so much in number and in
extent as to take in whole countries and touch each other, it became
impossible for one man to aggrandise himself but at the expense of
some other; and the supernumerary inhabitants, who were too weak or
too indolent to make such acquisitions in their turn, impoverished
without losing anything, because while everything about them changed
they alone remained the same, were obliged to receive or force their
subsistence from the hands of the rich. And hence began to flow,
according to the different characters of each, domination and slavery,
or violence and rapine. The rich on their side scarce began to taste
the pleasure of commanding, when they preferred it to every other; and
making use of their old slaves to acquire new ones, they no longer
thought of anything but subduing and enslaving their neighbours; like
those ravenous wolves, who having once tasted human flesh, despise
every other food, and devour nothing but men for the future.

It is thus that the most powerful or the most wretched, respectively
considering their power and wretchedness as a kind of title to the
substance of others, even equivalent to that of property, the equality
once broken was followed by the most shocking disorders. It is thus
that the usurpations of the rich, the pillagings of the poor, and the
unbridled passions of all, by stifling the cries of natural
compassion, and the as yet feeble voice of justice, rendered man
avaricious, wicked and ambitious. There arose between the title of the
strongest,