They knew that any society, however republican and however devoted to the principles of equality, would still have to have “some Distinctions and Gradations of Rank arising from education and other accidental Circumstances,” though none of these distinctions and gradations would be as great as those of a monarchical society.
Equality mainly as equality of opportunity: careers open to talents, replacing patronage and kinship as the sources of opportunity in attachment, has had been the case for centuries prior in European societies, and probably most of the places
