itable citizens.
The national domains also would sell the better if pecuniary aids were
provided to cultivate them in small lots.

It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of
civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity
or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched
only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of
economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor?
This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age
of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged
face of society, chequered with the extremes of affluence and want,
proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it,
and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor in all
countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible
for them to get cut of that state of themselves. It ought also to be
observed that this mass increases in all countries that are called
civilized. More persons fall annually into it than get out of it.

Though in a plan of which justice and humanity are the
foundation-principles, interest ought not to be admitted into the
calculation, yet it is always of advantage to the establishment of any
plan to shew that it is beneficial as a matter of interest. The success
of any proposed plan submitted to public consideration must finally
depend on the numbers interested in supporting it, united with the
justice of its principles.

The plan here proposed will benefit all, without injuring any. It will
consolidate the interest of the Republic with that of the individual.
To the numerous class dispossessed of their natural inheritance by the
system of landed property it will be an act of national justice. To
persons dying possessed of moderate fortunes it will operate as a
tontine to their children, more beneficial than the sum of money paid
into the fund: and it will give to the accumulation of riches a degree
of security that none of the old governments of Europe, now tottering on
their foundations, can give.

I do not suppose that more than one family in ten, in any of the
countries of Europe, has, when the head of the family dies, a clear
property left of five hundred pounds sterling. To all such the plan is
advantageous. That property would pay fifty pounds into the fund, and if
there were only two children under age they would receive fifteen pounds
e