This origin, however, is now lost in the new train of ideas which the custom has since generated.

What at first might be dictated by state necessity is now supported by female delicacy, and operates with the greatest force on that part of society where, if the original intention of the custom were preserved, there is the least real occasion for it.
When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property, and the institution of marriage, were once established, inequality of conditions must necessarily follow.

Those who were born after the division of property would come into a world already possessed.

If their parents, from having too large a family, could not give them sufficient for their support, what are they to do in a world where everything is appropriated?
We have seen the fatal effects that would result to a society, if every man had a valid claim to an equal share of the produce of the earth.

The members of a family which was grown too large for the original division of land appropriated to it could not then demand a part of the surplus produce of others, as a debt of justice.