rtunes feel a greater facility of
augmenting them than at any former period.

In those parts of this country, where wealth has made the least
progress, the character of the people supports itself the best amongst
the lower classes; and the inverse progress of that character, and of the
acquisition of wealth, is sufficiently striking to be noticed by one who
is neither a very near, nor a very nice observer.

Discontent and envy rise arise from comparison; and, where they
become prevalent, society can never stand long. They are enemies to
fair industry.

Whatever may have been the delusive theories into which ill-
intentioned, designing, and subtile men have sometimes deluded the
great mass of the people, they have never been successful, except
when they could fight under the appearance of justice, and thereby
create discontent. The unequal division of property has frequently
served them in this case.

---
{107} The Parisian populace were the instruments in the hand of those
who destroyed the former government, as the regular army is in the
hands of him who has erected that which now exists.
-=-

[end of page #128]

[Transcriber's note: possible omissis--page 128 ends as above, page 129
starts as next follows...]

while it increased the ignorance, and diminished the number of the
enemies they had to encounter.

As this evil has arisen to a greater height in countries which have had
less wealth in the aggregate than England, it is not the most dangerous
thing we have to encounter; but, as the tendency to it increases very
rapidly of late years, we must, by no means, overlook it. A future
Chapter will be dedicated to the purpose of inquiring how this may be
counteracted in some cases, in others modified and disguised, so as to
prevent, in some degree, the evil effects that naturally arise from it.

Of all the ways in which property accumulates, in particular hands, the
most dangerous is landed property; not only on account of entails, and
the law of primogeniture, (which attach to land alone,) but because it
is the property the most easily retained, the least liable to be alienated,
and the only one that augments in value in a state that is growing rich.

An estate in land augments in value, without augmenting in extent,
when a country becomes richer. A fortune, lent at interest, diminishes,
as the value of money sinks. A fortune engaged in trade is liable to
risks, and requires industry to preserve it: but in