Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/78

56 succeeding generations, the accumulation can never be considerable.

But if we should even suppose that the chattels made in several generations were accumulated in the hands of certain persons, they would be attended with no great inconvenience. The goods would remain a harmless heap, giving no power to the possessor, by which only wealth is hurtful: because, if every person had an allotment of land, the labour of the people would remain free and under their own direction, and the necessaries of life would be attainable by every one; and, of course, none of the evil of the present state of property, which exists in most civilised nations, would be experienced.

Fortunes may be acquired in a kind of intermediate way, that is, by a method between that by which wealth is raised, by assuming land in the manner as before represented; and that by which a fortune is made, by accumulating only such things as are the work of a man's own hand. This third or intermediate method is by trade.

Trade or traffic consists in buying and selling articles already produced by the poor, and gaining a profit on them. These articles are all the product of the hands of the labourers, manufacturers, &c., from whom they are obtained for less than their full value: a profit otherwise could not be