the privileges of birth and position, the illegitimate creations of ignorance and brute force,—all operated to prevent absolute equality. But, nevertheless, the principle remained the same: equality had sanctioned possession; equality sanctioned property.
The husbandman needed each year a field to sow; what more convenient and simple arrangement for the barbarians,—instead of indulging in annual quarrels and fights, instead of continually moving their houses, furniture, and families from spot to spot,—than to assign to each individual a fixed and inalienable estate?
It was not right that the soldier, on returning from an expedition, should find himself dispossessed on account of the services which he had just rendered to his country; his estate ought to be restored to him. It became, therefore, customary to retain property by intent alone—nudo animo; it could be sacrificed only with the consent and by the action of the proprietor.
It was necessary that the equality in the division should be kept up from one generation to another, without a new distribution of the land upon the death of each family; it appeared therefore natural and just that children and parents, according to the degree of relationship which they bore to the deceased, should be the heirs of their ancestors. Thence came, in the first place, the feudal and patriarchal custom of recognizing only one heir; then, by a quite contrary application of the principle of equality, the admission of all the children to a share in their father’s estate, and, very recently also among us, the definitive abolition of the right of primogeniture.
But what is there in common between these rude outlines of instinctive organization and the true social science? How could these men, who never had the faintest idea of statistics,
