become more widely separated-agriculture continues in its rudest state and land, abandoned by the small proprietors, becomes more consolidated from year to year. The one is daily furnishing evidence, that protection to the people is, in fact, protection to the government itself—the other, meanwhile proving, that a government which refuses to perform the duty of protection, must become daily weaker and less respected. §6. Fifteen centuries since, millions of Christians rallied under a banner, upon which was inscribed the word homoousian, while other millions followed another bearing that of homoiousian — the difference between the ideas thereby expressed, being little likely to be comprehended by the masses who slaughtered one another to the extent of hundreds of thousands, with a view to the determination of the question, which of the two should represent the faith of the Christian world. A thousand years later, hundreds of thousands of honest Dutchmen gathered together under flags, bearing the words hoecks and kabbeljaws-butchering each other, as occasion offered, with the idea of thereby determining if it was the fish that took the hook, or the hook that took the fish. - In modern times, patriots seek to overthrow all civil government; Christians disseminate the true faith by aid of opium, spirits, and gunpowder; reformers and liberals advocate centralization *— democrats, meanwhile, growing daily in the belief of the divine origin of slavery, and the necessity for re-opening the slave trade. † The world is word-governed, unmeaning phrases being made idols of objects of word-worship-to the great profit of the large class which stand between the producers and consumers of the world-living at the cost of both. Of these phrases, some have reference to the affairs of another world, while others refer to the societary movement of the present one prominent among the latter being those of Laisser faire, laisser passer—the - The republican government of 1848, perfected the monopoly of the Bank of France, by closing all the departmental banks. German reformers seek the creation of an overshadowing central power. Swiss reform has resulted in augmented centralization. In England, centralization has grown daily since the passage of the reform bill-important stages of its progress being found in the Bank Act of Sir Robert Peel, and the absolute subjection of India to English law. † See ante, vol. ii., pp. 258, 259, notes. See ante, vol. i., p. 39, note. world is governed too much-that country is best governed, which is least governed-&c., &c. That the reader may be enabled to determine for himself, what is the real value of these phrases, we place again before him the following diagram: Rocky Mountains. Land valueless. LAND. Philada. LABOR. On the left, there is no co-ordination- the law of force alone being recognized. There, however, we find the most government the laborer being a slave, and the trader a tyrant. On the right, the power of co-ordination is in constant exercise; yet, there it is, that government is most unfelt-the laborer being free, and his employer respecting his rights. Such being the case, the law would seem to be, that that country is best governed in which the co-ordinating power is most on the alert for the removal of the various obstacles by which the societary circulation is liable to be impeded the first and greatest of which is the necessity for effecting changes of place, with its oppressive tax of transportation. Prominent among the societary operations in which it has been proposed to apply the doctrine of laisser faire, stand those having reference to a public provision for individuals unable to help themselves- Mr. Malthus having assured his countrymen that all laws having that end in view, tended to depress the general condition of the poor, by increasing the population without increasing the food required for their support. He, therefore, urged the gradual, but total, abolition of the system-failing, however, to suggest any mode, by means of which that which was the duty of all should be performed by all; and leaving us, therefore, to find in mendicity the only means of providing for the lame and the blind, the deformed and the diseased. Following in his lead, M. Ricardo told his readers, that such laws were pernicious; that they promoted early and improvident marriages; that their tendency was that of changing wealth and power into misery and weakness; calling away the exertions of the laborer from every object, except that of mere subsistence, and to such an extent confounding all intellectual distinction, as to threaten that "at last, all classes should be infected with the plague of universal poverty.' The successors of those gentlemen have assured their readers, that a poor law has "an irresistible tendency to vitiate the very essence and beauty of that Christian humanity whose function it usurps, by degrading charity from a voluntary gift to a legal obligation;" that it is "a socialistic mulcting of the rich or independent, for the benefit of the poor. a communistic decimation of the savings of the industrious for the benefit of the idle;" that labor is a mere commodity, like corn, calico, or broadcloth; that the notion of the laborer, that "if he is willing to work he is entitled to be fed," is as clear an absurdity as would be the assertion of the manufacturer, that he had a right to have customers for his cloth; that a poor law is "a virtual abrogation of natural lawstanding between the cause and its consequence;" that "the sins of the father are visited upon the children;" that those "who bring into the world paupers, have made for themselves the hard bed they lie on"- having "sinned against the plainest laws of nature;" and, that the corrective is "privation and wretchedness," which are "certain to operate in the end, if only we do not step in to counteract it by regulations dictated by plausible and pardonable, but short-sighted humanity-thereby placing ourselves between the error and its consequences, and perpetuating the sin."† As a consequence of all these teachings, marriage, as we see, has been declared to be "a luxury," in which the poor have no right to indulge-poverty and destitution have been treated as crimes-husbands and wives, parents and children, have been separated, with a view to convert relief into punishment — the result of all these measures being found in the facts, that at the close of thirteen years' trial of the new system, one in nine of the whole people of England were paupers, and that the poor law *Political Economy, chapter on "Wages." system had been extended to Scotland and Ireland, where before it had remained unknown.* Sad experience has thus, as we see, led to a course of operation directly the reverse of that advocated by the economists-common sense having taught the persons charged with the societary co-ordination, that abdication on their part must, inevitably, be followed by a toleration of mendicity, under which the cost would be greater, even, than at present-the open-handed and liberal members of the community paying a larger proportion of the increased quantity, while the grasping and the avaricious almost escape taxation. So long as there shall continue to be blind and dumb, helpless and unemployed, society must continue to provide for them; and the only question to be decided is, whether that which is the burthen of all shall be carried by all, or thrown upon the shoulders of a few. Pauperism may be increased by the abolition of poor laws, but it cannot be diminished. For the accomplishment of this latter, there is needed the abandonment of a system which looks to the cheapening of labor-a system whose professors teach, that "to enable capital to obtain a fair remuneration, wages must be kept down"; a system, by means of which the laborer is made a mere instrument to be used by trade; one, in fine, that tends to the destruction of moral feeling among both employers and employed. Man becomes self-supporting in the ratio of increase in his power of choice between a variety of employers and employments. Throughout the British empire, that power diminishes — land becoming consolidated at home, while abroad the colonists are limited to the one pursuit of scratching out the soil, and exporting it to distant markets. In the former, there is little demand for labor, except in transportation, trade, and manufactures. In the latter, none except in trade, and that pursuit which there is "The so-called labor test, as it has hitherto been applied, has been characterized more by the irksomeness and repulsiveness of the relief, than the industrial nature of the employment. In 1835, the great era of the Poor Law Reform Acts, the rates reached £7,373,807, and in 1848, after thirteen years operation of the amendment, we find £7,817,429, and that every ninth person in our population is a pauper."—Ibid. For the ten years preceding the repeal of the corn laws, say from 1836 to 1845, the gross amount expended in the relief of the poor was ............... .................................................................................................... £46,766,097 From 1846 to 1855, it was .................................. .............................................................................. £53,594,087 honored by the name of agriculture. In neither, can there be any freedom. Again, Mr. McCulloch says of Smith, that although he had shown, in opposition to the commonly-received opinions, that it was "sound policy to leave individuals to pursue their own interest in their own way," he had erred in not saying "that in promoting such branches of industry as are most advantageous to themselves, individuals necessarily promote such as are, at the same time, MOST advantageous to the public"-his leaning to the system of M. Quesnay, making him "swerve from the sounder principles of his own system, so as to admit that the preference shown by individuals in favor of particular employments is not always a true test of their public advantageousness." He therefore considers Dr. Smith's preference of agriculture, and of the home trade, as "fundamentally erroneous. "* Some men prefer horse-racing, gambling, and speculation, to honest industry. Others seek to extend the sale of liquors, or to destroy the morals of communities by help of opium. A third class profits by the sale of injurious medicines, while a fourth devotes its energies to the extension of prostitution-thus affording evidence of its "preference" for those employments. Can, however, such preference be regarded as affording evidence that those pursuits are "most advantageous" to the public? Scarcely so, as we should think.-Why, however, is it, that so very large, and so rapidly-increasing, a proportion of the English people finds itself now compelled to engage in pursuits like these, that have no tendency towards augmentation of the quantity of things to be converted or consumed? Why is it, that the class of middlemen grows so rapidly as to leave but a very small proportion of the small production to be divided between the original producers, and the final consumers? Is it because of any "preference," that women and children employ themselves in the "wasting shops"-working from sixteen to twenty hours per day, and under a temperature so excessive, that their lives are "being expended like those of cattle on a farm"? Is it not, on the contrary, because the system, now as in the days of Adam Smith, is based on the idea of promoting competition for the sale of labor, and * Principles of Political Economy, "Introduction." + Ibid, p. 474. |
