Page:A discourse upon the origin and foundation of the inequality among mankind (IA discourseuponori00rous).pdf/325

, that he ecaped hanging, though he had deerved it over and over a hundred times.

Pag. 168.

(19.) Nay, this rigorous Equality of the State of Nature, though practicable in civil Society, would clah with ditributive Jutice; and as on the one hand all the Members of the State owe it Services in Proportion to their Talents and Abilities, they hould be ditinguihed on the other in Proportion to the Services which they actually rendered to it. It is in this Sene we mut undertand a Paage of Iocrates, in which he extols the primitive Athenians for having ditinguihed which of the two following kinds of Equality was the mot ueful, that which conits in haring the ame Advantages indifferently among all the Citizens, or that which conits in ditributing them to each according to his Merit. Thee able Politicians, adds the Orator, banihing that unjut Inequality which makes no Difference between the Good and the Bad, inviolably adhered to that which rewards and punihes every Man according to his Merit. But in the firt place there never exited a Society o corrupt as to make no Difference between the Good and the Bad; and in thoe