reprisals should be made on him for any injury he might do to others.
This origin is so much the more natural, as it is impossible to
conceive how property can flow from any other source but industry; for
what can a man add but his labour to things which he has not made, in
order to acquire a property in them? 'Tis the labour of the hands
alone, which giving the husbandman a title to the produce of the land
he has tilled gives him a title to the land itself, at least till he
has gathered in the fruits of it, and so on from year to year; and
this enjoyment forming a continued possession is easily transformed
into a property. The ancients, says Grotius, by giving to Ceres the
epithet of Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in her honour the
name of Thesmorphoria, insinuated that the distribution of lands
produced a new kind of right; that is, the right of property different
from that which results from the law of nature.

Things thus circumstanced might have remained equal, if men's talents
had been equal, and if, for instance, the use of iron, and the
consumption of commodities had always held an exact proportion to each
other; but as this proportion had no support, it was soon broken. The
man that had most strength performed most labour; the most dexterous
turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious found out
methods of lessening his labour; the husbandman required more iron, or
the smith more corn, and while both worked equally, one earned a great
deal by his labour, while the other could scarce live by his. It is
thus that natural inequality insensibly unfolds itself with that
arising from a variety of combinations, and that the difference among
men, developed by the difference of their circumstances, becomes more
sensible, more permanent in its effects, and begins to influence in
the same proportion the condition of private persons.