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PART I. - Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy, vol. 9 
Illustrations of Political Economy (3rd ed) in 9 vols. (London: Charles Fox, 1834). Vol. 9.
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My many fables have all been melancholy. This is the fault which has been more frequently found with them than any other. Instead of disputing the ground of complaint, or defending myself by an appeal to fact, I have always entreated the objectors to wait and see if the moral of my fables be melancholy also. I have been sustained throughout by the conviction that it is not; and I now proceed to exhibit the grounds of my confidence.
Is it not true, however, that in the science under review, as in every other department of moral science, we must enter through tribulation into troth? The discipline of the great family of the earth is strictly analogous with that of the small household which is gathered under the roof of the wise parent. It is only by the experience ccnsequent on the conscious or unconscious transgression of laws that the children of either family can fully ascertain the will of the Ruler, and reach that conformity from which alone can issue permanent harmony and progressive happiness. What method, then, is so direct for one who would ascertain those laws, as to make a record of the transgressions and their consequences, in order to educe wise principles from foolish practices, permanent good from transient evil? Whatever be the degree of failure, through the unskilfulness of the explorer, the method can scarcely be a faulty one, since it is that by which all attainments of moral truth are made. Could I, by any number of tales of people who have not suffered under an unwise administration of social affairs, have shown that that administration was unwise? In as far as an administration is wise, there is no occasion to write about it; for its true principles are already brought to a practical recognition, and nothing remains to be done. Would that we had more cheering tales of happy societies tthan we have! They will abound in time; but they will be told for other purposes than that of proving the principles of a new science.
Thus much in defence,—not of any tales, but of the venerable experimental method which is answerable for their being sad.
To cure us of our sadness, however, let us review the philosophy of Labour and Capital;— the one the agent, the other the instrument of
Wealth consists of such commodities as are useful,—that is, necessary or agreeable to mankind.
Wealth is to be obtained bv the employment of labour on materials furnished by Nature.
As the materials of Nature appear to be inexhaustible, and as the supply of labour is continually progressive, no other limits can be assigned to the operations of labour than those of human intelligence.
Productive labour being a beneficial power, whatever stimulates and directs this power is beneficial also.
Many kinds of unproductive labour do this. Many kinds of unproductive labour are, therefore, beneficial.
All labour for which there is a Fair demand is equally respectable.
Labour being a beneficial power, all economy of that labour must be beneficial.
Labour is economized,
Labour is economized,
Labour should be protected by securing its natural liberty; that is,—
Capital is something produced with a view to employment in further production.
Labour is the origin, and
Saving is the support, of capital.
Capital consists of
Of these three parts, the first constitutes fixed capital; the second and third reproducible capital.
Since capital is derived from labour, whatever economizes labour assists the growth of capital.
Machinery economizes labour, and therefore assists the growth of capital.
The growth of capital increases the demand for labour.
Machinery, by assisting the growth of capital, therefore increases the demand for labour.
In other words, productive industry is proportioned to capital, whether that capital be fixed or reproducible.
The interests of the two classes of producers, labourers and capitalists, are therefore the same; the prosperity of both depending on the accumulation of Capital.
Of that which is necessary and agTeeable to mankind, no measure can be taken; the materials being apparently inexhaustible, and the power of appropriation incessantly progressive. andthepowerThere is nothing very melancholy in this; and it is as true as if it was the saddest proposition that ever was made. Is there any known commodity which has failed from off the earth when men desired to retain it? Is it not true of every commodity, that in proportion as men desire to have more of it, its quantity is increased? The desire prompts to the requisite labour; and we know of no instance where the requisite labour has been universally stopped for want of materials. The Norwegians may want more wheat, and the Kamtchatkadales will certainly wish for better clothing by and by; but we know that neither corn nor broadcloth are failing, and that the labour is already being multiplied, and the accumulation of capital going on, which may, at length, supply both the one and the other party with what each needs. Even if every man, woman, and child should take a fancy for the scarcest productions of nature,—for diamonds, perhaps,— we have no reason to suppose that there are not, or will not in time be, diamonds enough to supply the human race; and if diamonds inspired as vehement a desire,—i. e., were as necessary,— as daily bread, there would assuredly be no lack of the labour requisite to procure them.
Besides the primary materials which Nature casts forth from every cleft of the earth, and every cave of the sea,—which she makes to sprout under every passing cloud, and expand beneath every sunbeam, there are new and illimitable classes of productions perpetually attainable by bringing her forces to bear upon each other. By such combination, not only new materials, but fresh powers are discovered, which, in their turn, develop further resources, and confound our imaginations with the prospect of the wealth which awaits man's reception. It is a great thing to possess improved breeds of animals in the place of their forefathers,—the lean wild cattle with which our forefathers were content; and to see golden corn-fields where coarse, sour grasses once struggled scantily through a hard soil: but it is a much greater thing to have made even the little progress we have made in chemical and mechanical science;—to have learned how to change at will the qualities of the very soil, and bring new agents to increase its fertility and vary its productions;—to have learned to originate and perpetuate motion, and guide to purposes of production the winds of heaven and the streams of earth;—to have learned how to bind the subtlest fluids in the chains of our servitude, and appoint their daily labour to the flying vapours. Truly the Psalmist would scarcely have called man lower [than the angels if he could have foreseen that such as these would in time be his slaves. While there was nothing known but a spontaneous or comparatively simple production,—while men reaped only what Nature had sown, or sowed at random, trusting that Nature would bring forth the harvest,—while there existed only the brute labour of the coral insect, or the barbaric labour which reared the wall of China, and planted the pyramids, rearedand scooped out the temples of Elora, there was assurance of incalculable wealth in the bosom of Nature and in the sinews of men. What is there not now, when a more philosophic labour has won a kingdom from the ocean, and planted a beacon in the region of storms, and made an iron pathway from steep to steep before bridged only by clouds, and realized the old imagery of vapoury wings and steeds of fire, promising, not only to ransack the sea and the tar corners of the earth for wealth which already exists, but to produce more than had been hitherto imagined? There is nothing dark in this prospect. What dimness there is, is in the eyes of some who look upon it.
It seems strange that any should quarrel with this increase of wealth;—that there should be any wish to leave off soliciting Nature, and any preference of brute or barbaric over philosophic labour. It seems strange that men should wish rather to go on working like the ass and the caterpillar than to turn over such labour to brute agents, and betake themselves to something higher;—that they had rather drag their loads through the mire than speed them on a railroad, and spin thread upon thread than see it done for them a thousand times better than they could do it themselves. It seems strange that these objections should proceed from those who most need a larger share of the offered wealth. There are honourable ways of refusing wealth and power, but this is assuredly not one ef them. If there be reasons why man should hesitate to accept large gifts from his fellow-men, there can be none for his declining the bounty of Providence.
The reason why some men do not like to hear of the opening up of new sources of wealth and fresh powers of industry is, that they believe that whatsoever is given to the race is taken from certain individuals; and tothat they had rather that all should suffer privation than that they thenaselves should undergo loss. The mention of lighting London streets with gas was hateful to certain persons connected with the northern fisheries, as it would lessen the demand for oil. They would have had all future generations grope in darkness rather than that their own speculations should suffer. In like manner, an increased importation of palm oil was a great blessing to the African date-gatherers, and will prove no less to the British public; but this pure good was at first regarded as a great evil by a few soap-manufacturers, who hoped to have been able to keep up the price of their commodity by controlling the supply of its component materials; and for the same reasons, the same persons sighed over the removal of the salt-duty. Perhaps no improvement of human resources ever took place without being greeted by some such thankless murmurs as these; and, too probably, it will be long before such murmurs will be perceived to be thankless, though happily experience proves that they are useless.
While there are human wants, there will be no end to discoveries and improvements. Till all are supplied with soap, or something better than soap, there will be more and more palm oil, and a further cheapening of alkalies. The soap-manufacturers must not comfort themselves with the hope that they can stop the supplies, but with the certainty that the more soap there is, the more users of soap there will be; and that their business will extend and prosper in proportion as there are move clean faces among cottage children, and more wholesome raiment among the lower classes of our towns. Since it is vain to think of persuading the poor native of Fernando Po to refrain from gathering his dates when he has once learned that there are thousands of British who demand them, the only thing to be done is to speed the new commerce, and welcome the reciprocation of behests.
Thus is it also with improvements in art. The race cannot submit to permanent privation for the sake of the temporary profits of individuals; and so it has been found by such short-sighted individuals, as often as they have attempted to check the progress of art. No bridge was ever vet delayed in the building for the sake of the neighbouring ferryman; and no one will say that it ought to have been so delayed. When it comes to be a question whether drivers and drovers, carriers and pedlars, shopkeepers, farmers, and market-people shall be inconvenienced or excluded, or one man be compelled to carry his labour elsewhere, few will hesitate on the decision; and the case would be no less clear if a machine were invented to-morrow for turning out handsome stone houses at the rate of six in a day. There would be great suffering among bricklayers and builders for a time: but it would not be the less right that society should be furnished with abundance of airy dwellings at a cheap rate; and the new wants which would arise out of such an invention, and the funds set free by it, would soon provide bricklayers and builders, and their children after them, with other employment in administering to other wants. From huts of boughs to hovels of clay was an advance which called more labour into action, though the weavers of twigs might not like to be obliged to turn their skill to the making of fences instead of huts. From hovels of clay to cottages of brick was a further step still, as, in addition to the brick-makers, there must be carpenters aud glaziers. From cottages of brick to houses of stone was a yet greater advance, as there must be masons, sawyers, painters, upholsterers, ironmongers, cabinetmakers, and all their train of workmen. So far, the advance has been made by means of an accumulation of capital, and a division of labour, each dwelling requiring an ampler finishing than the last, and a wider variety as well as a larger amount of labour. If, by a stupendous invention, ready-made mansions should succeed, to be had at half the cost, the other half of the present cost would remain to be given for a yet ampler furnishing, or for providing conservatories, or hanging gardens, or museums, or whatever else might have become matters of taste: while the poor would remove into the vacated brick-houses, and the cottages be left to be inhabited by cows, and the cowsheds, perhaps, by pigs, and the pigsties be demolished; and so there would be a general advance, every one being a gainer in the end.
Perhaps a few people were very well content, once upon a time, with their occupation of wading in the ponds and ditches of Egypt, to gather the papyrus, and with pressing and drying the leaves, and glueing them crosswise, and polishing them for the style with which they were to be written upon: and these people might think it very hard that any better paper should ever be used to the exclusion of theirs. Yet wide-spreading generations of their children are row employed in the single department of providing the gums and oils required in the composition of the inks which would never have been known if papyrus had been used at this day. If we consider the labour employed in the other departments of inkmaking, and in the preparation of the rags of which paper is made, and in the making and working of the mills from which the beautiful substance issues as if created by invisible hands, and in packing, carrying, and selling the quires and reams, and in printing them, and in constructing and managing the stupendous machinery by which this part of the process is carried on, we shall be quite willing to leave the papyrus to be the home of the dragon-fly, as be-fore the art of writing was known. Saying nothing of the effects of the enlarged communication of minds by means of paper, looking only to the amount of labour employed, who will now plead the cause of the papyrus-gatherers against the world?
A distinction is, however, made by those who complain of human labour being superseded, between a new provision of material, and a change in the method of working it up. They allow that, as rags make better writing material than papyrus, rags should be used; but contend that if men can dip sieves of the pulp of rags into water, and press the substance between felt, it is a sin to employ a cylinder of wire and a mechanical press to do the same. But this distinction is merely imaginary. If we could employ a man to sow rags aud reap paper, we should think it a prodigious waste of time and pains to get paper in the old method; and we do sow rags in the eistern and reap paper from the cylinder; the only difference being, that instead of dew we use spring water, and iron wheels instead of the plough and barrow, and artificial heat instead of sunshine. We might as well wish to keep our agricultural labourers busy all the year trying to manufacture wheat in our farm-house kitchens as recur to the old method's of making paper; and the consumers of bread and of books would fall off in numbers alike in either case.
Instances without end might be adduced to prove the inevitable progress of art and extension of wealth; and they might not be useless, since there is still a strong prevailing prejudice against the beneficent process by which the happiness of the greatest number is incessantly promoted, and a remarkable blindness as to the tendency and issues of the ordination by which an economy of labour is made at the same time the inevitable result of circumstances, and the necessary condition of increased happiness. But though the time already spent upon a subject not new may be no more than its importance demands, my remaining space may be better employed in a sketch of the spread of one ingredient of human comfort than in the mere mention of a variety of similar cases. The instance I have chosen is one where the advance has been wholly owing to improvement in the use of a material which seems to have always abounded.
There is no record of a time when there were not goats and sheep enough to supply clothing to the keepers of the herds, or when their fleeces were not used for this purpose in some parts of the world. While the barbarians of the north dressed themselves in skins, the inhabitants of temperate regions seem to have enjoyed the united lightness and warmth of fabrics of wool. The patriarchs of Asia gathered their flocks about their tents in the earliest days of which history tells; and it was the recorded task of their slaves to wash the fleeces, and of their wives to appoint the spinning of the wool to the maidens of their train. The Arabian damsels carried with them their primitive looms wherever they journeyed; and set up their forked sticks in the sand when they stopped for the night, and fixed the warp and wrought the woof before the sun went down. The most ancient of Egyptian mummies has its woven bandages. In the most remote traffic of the Tartar tribes fleeces were a medium of exchange; and the distaff is found among the imagery of even the earliest Scandinavian poetry. When the Romans, skilled in the choice of fabrics and of dyes, came over to this island, they taught its barbarian dames to leave off rubbing wolf-skins with stones to make them smooth, and dipping them in water to make them soft, and put into their bands the distaff, which was to be found in every home of the Roman dependencies, and instructed them in the use of a more convenient loom than that of the Arabian wanderers. For several hundred years it seems that this remained a purely domestic manufacture; but, as the arts of life improved, it became worth while for the housewives to relax in their spinning and weaving, and exchange the products of their own or their huabands' labour for the cloth of the manufacturers. There was better cloth in Flanders, however, by the beginning of the thirteenth century; and it was found profitable to weave less, and grow more wool for exportation. The British dames might still carry their spindles when they went out to look for their pet lambs on the downs, but it was less with a view to broad cloths than to hose,—not knitted, for knitting was unknown, but made of a ruder kind of cloth. There were abundance of English who would have been very glad of the occupation of weaving fine cloth which the Flemings had now all to themselves; but they could not obtain it till they had adopted and aeeustomed themselves to the improved methods of the Flemings; and as they were slow in doing this, they were assisted by Edward III., who invited over Flemish manufacturers, to teach these improved methods. Having brought them over, the next step necessary was to guard their lives from their English pupils, who would not hear of spinning by wheel, because the wheel did twice as much work as the distaff; or of winding the yarn and arranging the warp and woof otherwise than by the fingers, because many fingers wanted to be employed; or of using new drugs lest the old drug-ists should be superseded, or of fulling by any other means than treading the cloth ill water. If it bad not been that the King was more longsighted than his people, these Flemings would have been torn to pieces, or, at best, sent, home in a panic; and the English wuuld have lost the woollen manufacture for many a year, or for ever.
Woollen cloth was very dear in those days. In the fourth year of Henry VII., it was ordered by law what should be the highest price given per yard for “a broad yard of the finest scarlet grained, or of other grainetl cloth of the finest making;”—viz., as much labour and subsistence as could be exchanged for 61. 16s. of our present money. Now, there could not be any very large number of customers in England at that time who could afford to pay 6l. 16s. per yard for fine cloth, even if they had not bad the temptation of getting it cheaper and better from Flanders. The manufacture must have been a very trifling one. and there must have been a sad number of sufferers from cold and damp, who, in those days of ill-built and ill-furnished houses, would have been very glad of the woollen clothing which none but the very rich could obtain. If their rulers had allowed them to get it cheaper and better from Flanders, the home manufacture would have been thereby stimulated, extended, and improved; but, under the idea of protecting the English manufacture, it was made a punishable offence to buy cloth woven by any but Englishmen, and to send wool out of the kingdom. Laws like these (and there were many such during malay reigns) did all that could be done for keeping the manufacture in few hands, and preventing the spread of this great article of comtbrt: but nature was too strong for governments; and it was shown that while there were flocks on the hills, and sickly people shivering in the damps of the valleys, no human power could prevent their striving to have garments of wool for the day and coverlets of wool for the night. In the remote country places of Yorkshire, the people began to encourage one another in spreading the manufacture, to the great discomfiture of the weavers of York, who dreaded nothing so much as that the fabric should become cheaper and commoner. Henry VIII. declared that York had been upheld, and should be upheld, by this exclusive manufacture; that Worcester alone should supply its county and neighbourhood, and that worsted yarn was the private commodity of the city of Norwich: but Henry VIII. spoke in vain. As long as there were streams among the Yorkshire hills where fulling-mills could be worked, the people of York might go on treading with the feet, and offering inferior cloth at a higher price; the people would not have it. The cloth from the fulling mills, and the engine-wound yarn, were sold as fast as they could be prepared, and the men of York and Norwich were obliged to use fulling mills and winding machinery, or give up their trade. They submitted, and sold more cloth than ever, and gained more as their fabric became cheaper and commoner. Queen Elizabeth allowed wool to be freely carried out of the kingdom; and the prosperity of the manufacture increased wonderfully in consequence. More wool was grown, and there was inducement to take pains with its quality. Not only did the gentlemen of the court delight themselves in the superior filaeness of their scarlet and purple stuffs, but many a little maiden in farmhouse or cottage rejoiced in a Christmas present of a substantial petticoat of serge or cloak of kersey.
The more was wanted, the further inducement there was to make a greater quantity with the samewas capital; in other words, to abridge the labour: and then followed improvement upon improvement in the machinery employed, which again extended the demand and caused more labour to be employed. The being able to get more cloth for less money served as a far better encouragement of the manufacture than Charles the Second's law that all the dead should be buried in woollen shrouds. From this time, nothing could stop the spread of commfortable clothing. Even the cotton manufacture,—the most prodigious addition to national resources that ever arose,— proved a pure addition. Society has not worn the less wool for it, but only the more cotton. How stands the ease now?
The value of the woollen manufactured articles of Great Britain alone now exceeds 20,000,000l. a year; and the manufacture employs 500,000 persons:—and these, not spinning and weaving, with all imaginable awkwardness and toil, just enough for their own families, but producing witl rapidity and ease finished fabrics with which to supply not only the multitudes of their own country, but the Russian boors in their winter dwellings, the Greek maidens on the shores of their islands, the boatmen of the Nile, the dancing girls of Ceylon, the negro slaves of Jamaica, the fishermen of Java and the peasantry of Hayti, the sunburnt Peruvian when he goes out defended against the chilly dews of the evening, and the half-frozen Siberian when he ventures to face the icy wind for the sake of the faint gleams of noon. Our looms and mills are at work in Prussian villages and beside Saxon streams. The Turk meets the Frank on the Oder, to exchange the luxuries of the one for the comforts of the other. The merchants of the world meet at the great fair of Leipsie, and thence drop the fabrics of European looms in every region through which they pass. There are shepherds on the wide plains of Van Diemen's Land, and on the hills of the Western World, preparing employment and custom for the operative who sits at his loom at Leeds, and the spinner who little dreams from what remote parts gain will come to him at Bradford. And the market is only beginning to be opened yet. Besides the multitudes still to arise in the countries just named, there are innumerable tribes of Chinese, of Hindoos, of Persians, of dwellers in Africa and South Ameriea, who yet have to learn the comfort of woollen clothing. Will not the Greenlanders seek it too? And who needs it so much as the Esquimaux? All these will in time be customers, if we do but permit the commodity to be brought naturally within their reach.
Would it have been right that all these should be sacrificed to the wishes of the little company of spinners by hand and treaders with the feet? Would not that little company and their children's children have been sacrificed at the same time?
In all other instances of the introduction of machinery, as in this, the interests of masters and men are identical. To make more with tess cost is the true policy of the one, in order that it may bring the advantage of obtaining more with less cost to the other. That is, the utmost economy of labour and capital should be the common aim of both.
A real cause of regret is that the invention of machinery has not yet advanced far enough. This is an evil which is sure to be remedied as time passes on; and perhaps the advance has been as rapid as has been consistent with the safety of society. But as long as there are purely mechanical employments which shorten life and stunt the intellect, we may be sure that man has not risen to his due rank in the scale of occupation, and that he is doing the work of brute matter. As long as the sharpener of needles bends coughing over his work, and young children grow puny amidst the heated atmosphere of spinning factories, and the life of any human being is passed in deep places where God's sunshine never reaches, and others grope with the hands after one servile task in a state of mental darkness, we may be sure that we have not discovered all the means and applied all the powers which are placed within our reach. It is necessary that steel should be ground; but the day will come when it shall be a marvel that men died to furnish society with sharp needles. It is necessary that cotton threads should be tied as they break; but it cannot for ever be that life should be made a long disease, and the spirit be permitted to lie down in darkness in the grave for such a purpose as this. If society understood its true interest, all its members would unite to hasten the time when there shall be no unskilled labour appointed to human hands. It is far nobler to superintend an engine than to be an engine; and when all experience proves that a hundred such superintendents are wanted in the place of one of the ancient human instruments, it appears truly wonderful that men should resist a progression which at once increases the comforts of multitudes. ensures the future prosperity of multitudes more, and enhances the dignity of man by making him the master of physical forces instead of the slave of his fellow man.
Next to providing for the increase of Capital by direct saving, and by economy of the labour which is the source of capital, it is important to economize capital in its application. One principle of this economy,—that capital is most productive when applied in large quantities to large objects,—is illustrated by the comparative results of large and small farming.
Production being the great end in the employment of labour and capital, that application of both which secures the largest production Is the best.
Large capitals, well managed, produce in a larger proportion than small.
In its application to land, for instance, a large capital employs new powers of production,—as in the cultivation of wastes;
——enables its owner to wait for ample but distant returns,—as in planting;
——facilitates the division of labour;
———the succession of crops, or division of time;
———reproduction, by economizing the investment of fixed capital;
———the economy of convertible husbandry;
———the improvement of soils by manming, irrigation, &c.;
——the improvement of implements of husbandry;
———the improvement of breeds of live stock. Large capitals also provide
for the prevention of famine, by furnishing a variety of food; and for the regular supply of the market, by enabling capitalists to wait for their returns.
Large capitals, therefore, are preferable to an equal aggregate amount of small capitals, for two reasons, viz:
they oceasion a large production in proportion; and they promote, by means peculiar to themselves, the general safety and convenience.
Capitals may, however, be too large. They are so when they become disproportioned to The manag ing power.
The interest of capitalists best determines the extent of capital; and any interference of the law is, therefore, unnecessary.
The interference of the law is injurious; as may be seen by the tendency of the law of Succession in France to divide properties too far, law of the law in Primogeniture in England to consolidate, them too extensively.
The increase of agricultural capital provides a fund for the employment of manufacturing and commercial, as well as agricultural, labour.
The interests of the agricultur and agricultural classes are therefore not opposed to each agric, but closely allied.
The same principle applies, of course, in all cases where an extensive production is the inall and points oat the utility of associations of capitalists for many of the higher aims of human industry. A union of capitals is perhaps as excellent an expedient as a division of labour, and will probably be universally so considered ere long. If it be un advantageous agreement ere six cabinetmakers that two should saw the wood for a table, and one square it, and another turn the legs, and a fifth put it together, and the sixth polish it, one set instead of six of each kind of tool being made to suffice, it is no less obvious that six owners of so many fields will also gain by uniting their forees,—by making one set of farmbuildings suffice, by using fewer and better implements, and securing a wider range for a variety of crops and for the management of their live stock. In like manner, twenty fishermen, instead of having twenty cockleshell boats among them, in which no one can weather a stormy night, may find prodigious gain in giving up their little boats for one or two substantial vessels, in which they may make a wide excursion, and bring home an ample prey to divide among them. This is the principle of mining associations, ancl of fishing and commercial companies; and it might ere this have become the principle of all extensive undertakings for purposes of production, if some of the evils winch crowd round the early operations of good principles had not been in their usual punctual attendance. Such associations have led to monopoly, and have been injured by wastefulness in the management of their affairs. But the evils savour of barbarism, while the principle is one of high civilization. The evils are easily remediable and will certainly be remedied, while the principle cannot be overthrown.
Many, however, who do not dispute the principle, object to its application in particular cases, on moral grounds. They say “Let there be mining companies, for not one man in a million is rich enough to work a mine by himself; but let the race of little farmers be preserved, for we have seen that one man, though not rich, may cultivate his little farm;” and then follow praises, not undeserved in their season, of the position and occupation of the small farmer, and lamentations, but too wellfounded, over the condition of agricultural labourers at the present time.
The question is, can the race of small farmers be revived? It cannot. The question is not now, as it was when the country was underpeopled, and the nation comparatively unburdened, whether the labouring class cannot be kept more innocent when scattered in the service of small proprietors than when banded in companies as now; or whether the small proprietor was not happier as a complacent owner than as a humbled labourer? The days are past when this might be a question. The days are past of animal satisfaction and rural innocence in a rambling old farmhouse. The days of a competition for bread are come, and rural innocence has fled away under the competition;—to give place to something better, no doubt, when the troubled stage of transition is passed,—but, still, not to be recalled. A very small capital stands no chance when the taxgatherer is at the farmer's heels, and the pressing cry for bread can be met only by practising new, and more costly, and more extensive methods of tillage every day. The partial taxgatherers may and will be got rid of; but the land will not again be underpeopled, and therefore tillage will not revert to the ancient methods, nor fields be held under the ancient tenure. Production is now the great aim; and unless small farming can be shown to be more productive than large, small farming must come to an end, unless in cases where it is pursued for amusement. Whenever the oak shall be persuaded to draw back its suckers into the ground, whenever the whole of the making of each pin shall be done by one hand, the old system of farming may be revived. Then an ounce of pins must serve a city, and a loaf a month must suffice for a household; and if corn is brought in from abroad to supply the deficiency, the home farmer must be immediately ruined by the dearness of his own corn in comparison with that which is grown in far places. Large capitalists can alone bear up against taxation and protection, at present; and large capitalists alone can stand the competition when freedom of trade in corn shall at length be obtained. Since the time for a country being underpeopled must cease, and the most extensive production must then become for a period the chief object, nothing can be plainer than that it has been settled, from the beginning of time, that small farming capitals must merge in large. It is not our present business to inquire what state of things will next succeed.
Let us not leave the topic, however, under an impression that the state we are passing through is one of unmixed gloom and perplexity. Our agricultural population is in a very deplorable condition,—illfed, untaught, and driven by hardship to the very verge of rebellion; but these evils are caused by the inadequateness of ancient methods, and not by the trial of new ones. More food and other comforts must be found for them, and they must be instructed not to increase the pressure upon the supply of food. In the mean time, it is a decided gain to have discovered and to be discovering methods of securing a greater production at a less cost. If such discoveries go on, (and go on they must,) and our agricultural population grows wiser by instruction and experience as to the means of living, independence of spirit and of action will revive, (though there be no small farms,) virtue may take the place of mere innocence, and bands of labourers may be as good and happy in their cottages as ever farmer and his servants were when collected in the farmhouse kitchen. They may meet in church as efficaciously when the bell calls them each from his own home, as when they walked, many at the heels of one. In one essential respect, there is a probability of a grand improvement on the good old times. In those times, the farmer's eldest son too often followed the plough with little more sense of what was about him than the tiller he held. His much boasted innocence neither opened his eyes to the lights of heaven nor gladdened his heart amidst the vegetation which he resembled much more than he admired. Hereafter, the youngest child of the meanest servant of the farm will look and listen among God's works with the intellectual eye and ear, with which the enlightened mechanic already explores the widelydifferent field in which he is placed. Whencesoever came the demon breath which kindled our farmyard fires, they have flashed wisdom on the minds of our ruiers, and are lighting the labourer's path to knowledge. The evil, though deplorable, is calculable and remediable. Who shall estimate the approaching good?
There is in my Series one other chapter of principles, under ttm head of Production. The time for its insertion in this place is past; and, on the principle of “forgetting those things which are behind,” I should have omitted all allusion to it, if the Number I am writing had been destined to circulate only in this country. But a large proportion of my readers are of a nation which has not vet absolved itself from the tremendous sin of hoisting man as property. Of the difficulties in the way of such absolution, it is for them, not for me, to speak. My business is with principles. Those which have obtained my assent are offered in the subjoined note, and humbly commended to my foreign readers.1 The summary is placed there because I wish to introduce into the body of my text nothing which is irrelevant to the state and prospects of British society. A stronger acknowledgment than this of the blessedness of our penitent state, it is not in my power to make,—or I would make it. It may be that for centuries we may have to witness the remaining sufferings and degradation of those whom we have injured, and perhaps even vet to bear many painful consequences of our long transgression against tlle rights of man. But the weight of guilt is thrown off, the act of confession is made, and that of atonement is about to follow; and all the rest may well he borne.
The next duty to reparation for injury is silence upon the sin: there is contamination in the contemplation of every indulged sin, even when the indulgence is past. Such a sin as this should be to a nation what an act of shame is to an individuat—a remembrance to be strenuously banished, lest it weaken the energy which should press forward to better things. This should be one of the secrets known to all—a circumstance plunged in significant oblivion, like that in which the historians of the Jews have striven to bury the event of the crucifixion. May the consequences in the two cases, however, be as widely different as penitent and impenitent shame! The wonder of succeeding ages at our guilt must be endured; but it will not, let us hope, be made a byword of reproach against us for ever. When Kindred nations shall have been induced to share our emancipation, rebuke and recrimination may cease; the dead will have buried their dead, and the silence of the grave will rest upon them. If we now do our duty fully to those whom we have injured, even they may, perhaps, spare us all future mention of their wrongs. Meantime, it is an unspeakable blessing that, ignorant and unjust as we may still be in the distribution of the wealth which Providence gives us, there is now no crying sin connected with the methods of its production; no national remorse need now silence our acknowledgments of the bounty by which the gratification of human wishes is destined to advance, according to a law of perpetual progression.
[∗]Property is held by conventional, not natural, right.