PREFACE.

THE following Essay is intended as a contribution towards the solution of the great social problem which has exercised so many minds in the present age, and is likely to give occupation to those of more than one succeeding generation—the discovery of the most efficacious means of improving the condition and elevating the character of the working majority of mankind. The particular part of this great subject which is treated in it is the examination of the relations between the working class and the class of employers, for the purpose of determining whether, and to what extent, these can be modified or superseded with advantage.

The economical and social questions to which such an examination gives rise are closely connected with a political problem, in comparison with which most of the questions of party politics sink into insignificance-the discovery of the mode in which the growing political importance and probably eventual, though, it is to be hoped, still distant political ascendancy of the working majority of the nation may be rendered consistent with the stability of our national institutions, the security of property, and the predominance of high and refined intellects in the government. Two chapters are therefore employed in considering the political aspect of the

questions which grow out of the relations between the working class and their employers: but any general discussion of political subjects would have been inconsistent with the special subject of the present work, and has been, as far as possible, avoided.

The subject of this Essay includes that of Combinations and Strikes among workmen, such as those which have attracted so much attention within the last few months: and one chapter is devoted to this topic. But this occupies a very small portion of the work, and will appear meagre and unsatisfactory to any one who may expect to find in it a prescription for putting an end, by any direct and expeditious remedy, to the serious economical and moral evils which result from the whole system of attempts to regulate labour, and from the strikes to which these give rise. It does not appear that these evils, serious as they are, can be effectually dealt with by any direct means. They may be diminished, and will, it may be hoped, eventually disappear through the improvement of the working class in knowledge of the circumstances upon which the remuneration of their labour depends, through the establishment of a more direct and visible community of interests between them and their employers, whenever this may be practicable, and through a general improvement in their condition. In the language of medicine, combinations and strikes are a local symptom of a constitutional affection, which can only be efficaciously treated by remedies suited to improve the general health; any violent suppression of the local symptom might only have the effect of driving it back into the system to break out afterwards in a more dangerous form; and its eruption, how

ever troublesome, may even be serviceable by compelling attention to something wrong in the constitution which deserves early and careful attention. While therefore the portion of this work which is directly occupied with strikes is very small, the whole of it may be said to be in fact applicable to the subject: since it is occupied with the statement of the laws, by which the remuneration of labour is necessarily fixed, with the proof of the impossibility of preventing the operation of these laws by artificial means, and with the recommendation of the means by which the intelligence and condition of the labourer may be improved.

The laws which determine the relations between labour and capital form one division of the science of Political Economy. But in most treatises on this science, the application of these laws to the appreciation of particular schemes for improving the condition of the labouring classes, has either not been a part of the writer's design, or has been performed in a brief and incidental manner. These laws are only a small part of the numerous topics with which Political Economy is conversant; and most systematic writers have applied their abstract conclusions rather to the explanation and illustration of things as they are than to the investigation of schemes for making them better; to borrow an expression from mechanical science, they have been employed more upon social statics than social dynamics. On the other hand, there has been no want of writers, especially in the present age, whose object has been to find fault with things as they are, and to propose social changes more or less extensive for the purpose of making them better. But most of these have either repudiated the science of Political Economy or