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Title: Illustrations of political economy, Volume 9 (of 9)
Author: Harriet Martineau
Release date: May 16, 2025 [eBook #76102]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Charles Fox, Paternoster-Row, 1834
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, KD Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, VOLUME 9 (OF 9) ***
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Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. On each title
page, the phrase “A Tale” was printed in a blackletter font, which is
rendered here delimited by ‘=’.
The volume is a collection of two already published texts, each with its
own title page and pagination.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
——o——
THE FARRERS OF BUDGE-ROW.
THE MORAL OF MANY FABLES.
——o——
_IN NINE VOLUMES._
VOL. IX.
——o——
LONDON:
CHARLES FOX, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
MDCCCXXXIV.
LONDON:
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,
Duke-street, Lambeth.
CONTENTS.
---
THE FARRERS OF BUDGE-ROW.
CHAP. PAGE│CHAP. PAGE
1. Budge-row again! 1│5. How to entertain 90
│ Strangers
2. Being Roman at Rome 2│6. How to entertain 105
│ Borrowers
3. Death-Chamber Soothings 35│7. Farewell to Budge-row 113
4. Gossiping Authorship 55│
│
THE MORAL OF MANY FABLES.
│
Introduction 1│—— Emigration 76
PART I.-—PRODUCTION 2│PART III.—EXCHANGE 85
—— Large Farms 21│—— Currency 88
—— Slavery 27│—— Free Trade 96
PART II.—DISTRIBUTION 32│—— Corn-Laws and Restrictions 116
│ on Labour
—— Rent, Wages, and Profits 41│PART IV.—CONSUMPTION 127
—— Combinations of Workmen 48│—— Taxes 133
—— Pauperism 62│Conclusion 140
—— Ireland 74│
THE
FARRERS OF BUDGE-ROW.
CHAPTER I.
BUDGE-ROW AGAIN!
“Pray open the window, Morgan,” said Jane Farrer to the old servant who
was assisting her to arrange for tea the room in which the family had
dined.
“Perhaps you don’t know, Ma’am, what a cutting wind it is. More like
December than March, Miss Jane; bitter enough to help on your
rheumatism, my dear.”
And Morgan paused, with her hand on the sash. Miss Farrer chose that the
room should be refreshed. She was aware that the scents from the shop
were at all times strong enough for the nerves of any one unaccustomed
to the atmosphere she lived in; and she did not wish that her brother
Henry should have to encounter in addition those which the dinner had
left behind. She tied a handkerchief over her head while the March wind
blew in chilly, and Morgan applied herself to light the fire. When the
dinner-table was set back against the wall, and the small Pembroke table
brought forward, and the sofa, with its brown cotton cover, wheeled
round, and the two candlesticks, with whole candles in them, placed in
front of the tea-tray, Miss Farrer thought she would go up into Henry’s
room, and see that all was right there, before she put off her black
stuff apron, and turned down the cuffs of her gown, and took her seat
beside the fire.
She tried to look at everything with the eyes she fancied her young
brother would bring from the university. She, who had lived for
five-and-thirty years in this very house, at the corner of Budge Row,
among this very furniture, could not reasonably expect to view either
the one or the other as it would appear to a youth of two-and-twenty,
who had lived in a far different scene, and among such companions as
Jane had no idea of. It was some vague notion of this improbability that
made her linger about Henry’s little apartment, and wonder whether he
would think she ought to have put up a stuff curtain before the window,
and whether he had been accustomed to a bit of carpet, and whether the
soap out of her father’s shop was such as he could use. Then came the
odd mixture of feelings,—that her father’s youngest son ought not to
dream of luxuries that his elder brother and sisters had not had,—and
yet that Henry was a scholar and a gentleman, and therefore unavoidably
held in awe by the family. When she reverted to the time, well
remembered, when she upheld the little fellow, and coaxed him to set one
tiny plump foot before the other, the idea of being now half afraid to
receive him made her smile and then sigh, and hope that good might come
of her father’s ambition to give a son of his a university education.
Before she had finished making herself as neat as usual, and rather more
dressed, she heard, amidst all the noises that came in from the narrow
bustling street, her own name called from the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m coming, father!—It never can be Henry yet. The postman’s bell is
but just gone by, and the six o’clock cries are not all over; and there
sound the chimes. It is full five minutes’ walk from Lad-lane, too.
Perhaps there is something more to be done at the books: so I will carry
down my apron.—Why, Morgan, it is well I did not throw you down stairs.”
Morgan’s face, entrenched in its mob cap, was just visible in the
twilight, peeping into the room from the steep, narrow stair upon which
the chamber-door directly opened. She came to say that her master wanted
Miss Jane; that he was in a great hurry, and seemed to have some good
news to tell.
Mr. Farrer was bustling about, apparently in a state of great happiness.
His brown wig seemed to sit lightly on his crown; his shoes creaked very
actively; his half whistle betokened a light heart, and he poked the
fire as if he had forgotten how much coals were a bushel. He stretched
out his arms when his daughter came down with a look of inquiry, and
kissed her on either cheek, saying,
“I have news for thee, my dear. I say, Morgan, let us have plenty of
buttered toast,—plenty and hot. Well, Jenny,—life is short enough to
some folks. Of all people, who do you think are dead?”
Jane saw that it was nobody that she would be expected to grieve about.
She had fallen enough into her father’s way of thinking to conjecture
aright,—that some of the lot of lives with which her father and she were
joined in a tontine annuity had failed.
“Poor souls! Yes: Jerry Hill and his brother,—both gone together of a
fever, in the same house. Who would have thought it? Both younger lives
than mine, by some years. I have no doubt they thought, many a time,
that mine would be the first to fail. But this is a fine invention,—this
way of purchasing annuities,—though I was against it at first, as being
too much like a lottery for a sober man to venture upon. But, I say,
Jane, I hope you are glad I made you invest your money in this way. You
had a right to look to coming into their lives, sooner or later; but one
would hardly have expected it in my time; though, somehow, I always had
a notion it would turn out so.”
Jane’s colour had been much raised, from the first disclosure of the
news. She now asked whether these were not the last lives of the lot,
out of their own family;—whether her father’s, her brother Michael’s,
and her own were not the only ones now left.
“To be sure they are! We have the whole thing to ourselves from this
time. I think the minister will be for sending Michael and me to the
wars, to have us killed off; though I hope, in that case, you would live
on and on, and enjoy your own for many a year, to disappoint him. But,
to be sure,” said the old man, checking his exultation as he saw his
daughter look grave, “life is a very uncertain thing, as we may see by
what has just happened.”
“I am sure it is the last thing I thought of,” observed Jane.
“Ay. It is a pretty yearly addition to us three;—two dropping together
in this way: and, as I said, I hope you will enjoy it for many a year
when I am dead and gone; as I am sure you deserve, for you have been a
good daughter to me,—keeping the house as well as your mother did before
you, and the books better than I could myself, leaving me free to attend
to the shop. But, let us see. The room is half full of smoke still; and
you will say that comes of my poking the fire. What have you got for
Harry’s tea? The lad will want something solid, though he be a student.
I remember his telling me last time that no folks are more hungry than
those that have been a long while over their books.”
Jane moved about like one in a dream, till, the shop-boy’s heavy tread
having been heard in the passage, Morgan put her head in at the parlour
door to say that Michael and a gentleman with him might be seen from the
shop-door to have turned the corner at the other end of the Row.
“’Tis a pity Patience can’t be here to-night, now really,” said the old
man: “but she always manages to be confined just when we have a
merry-making. ’Tis as perverse as her husband not choosing to buy a
tontine annuity when he had the cash by him. He will find now he had
better have done it. I wish I had thought of it in time to have made it
a condition of his marrying Patience.—Well, Harry, lad! I hope you are
come home hearty. What! You are not ashamed of your kin, though you have
been seeing lords at every turn?”
“How well Jane looks!” was Henry’s first remark, after all the greetings
were over. “She is not like the same person that she was the last time I
came home.”
Henry was not the only one who saw a change in Jane, this evening. Her
eyes shone in the light of the fire, and there was a timidity in her
manner which seemed scarcely to belong to the sober age she had
attained. Instead of making tea in the shortest and quietest way, as
usual, she was hesitating and absent, and glanced towards Henry as often
as her father and Michael joked, or the opening of the door let in a
whiff of the scent of cheese and the et ceteras of a grocer’s
establishment.
Mr. Farrer remarked that Henry would find London a somewhat busier place
just now than he had been accustomed to. London had been all in a bustle
since the King’s speech, so that there was no such thing as getting
shop-boys back when they had been sent of an errand. What with the
soldiers in the Parks, and the fuss upon the river when any news came,
and the forces marching to embark, and the shows some of the emigrants
made in the streets, there was enough to entice idle boys from their
duty.
“Not only from their duty of coming home,” said Michael. “There was our
Sam to-day,—’tis a fact,—left the shop while I was half a mile off, and
the Taylors’ maid came in for half a pound of currants, and would have
gone away again if Morgan had not chanced to pass the inside door and
look over the blind at the moment. ’Tis a fact: and Sam had nothing to
say but that he heard firing, and the newsmen’s horns blowing like mad,
and he went to learn what it was all about.”
“I’ll teach him! I’ll make him remember it!” cried Mr. Farrer. “But we
want another pair of eyes in the shop, sure enough. ’Tis not often that
you and I want to be away at the same time; but——”
And the father and son talked over their shop plans, and prepared
vengeance for Sam, while Henry told his sister what signs of public
rejoicing he had seen this day on his journey;—flags on the steeples,
processions of little boys, and evergreen boughs on the stage coaches.
The war seemed a very amusing thing to the nation at present.
“Stocks are up to-day. The people are in high spirits.”
“When people are bent on being in high spirits, anything will do to make
them so. We were in high spirits six years ago because a few bad taxes
were taken off; and now we are merrier than ever under the necessity of
laying on more.”
“Come, come, Hal,” said his father, “don’t grudge the people a taste of
merriment while they can get it. You will see long faces enough when
these new taxes come to be paid. I hope you are not so dead set against
the minister as you used to be when younger; or so given to find fault
with all that is done.”
“So far from being an enemy to the minister, father, I think it is very
hard that the nation, or the part of them that makes itself heard by the
minister, should be so fond of war as to encourage him to plunge us into
it. These very people will not abuse him the less, in the long run, for
getting the nation into debt.”
“Well, well. We won’t abuse the debt, and loans, and that sort of thing
to-day,—eh, Jane!” And Mr. Farrer chuckled, and Michael laughed loudly.
“For my part,” continued the old man, “I think the debt is no bad thing
for showing what sort of spirits the nation is in. You may depend upon
it, Peek, and all other husbands who have wives apt to be high and low,
would be very glad of such a thermometer to measure the ladies’ humour
by. ’Tis just so, I take it, with Mr. Pitt and the nation. If he wants
to know his mistress’s humour, he has only just to learn the state of
the stocks.”
“Just the same case,” said Michael, laughing.
“Not quite,” said Henry. “Peek would rather do without such a
thermometer, or barometer, if Patience must ruin herself to pay for it:
much more, if she must leave it to her children to pay it after her. I
should not have expected, father, to find you speaking up for war and
the debt.”
“Why, as for war, it seems to make a pretty sort of bustle that rather
brings people to the shop than keeps them away, and that will help us to
pay our share of the new taxes, if we only keep to the shop, instead of
fancying to be fine gentlemen. But I am of your mind about the minister.
If the people are eager for war,—and full of hope—of—of——”
“Ah! of what? What is the best that can come of it?”
“O, every true Englishman hopes to win, you know. But if they will go
headlong into war, they have no right to blame the minister, as if it
was all his doing that they have to pay heavy taxes.”
“Yet he ought to know better than to judge of the people by a parliament
that claps its hands the more the more burdens are laid on their
children’s children. He ought to question their right to tax posterity
in any such way. I cannot see how it is at all more just for us to make
a war which our grandchildren must pay for, than for our allies to make
a war which the English must pay for.”
“I am sure we are paying as fast as we can,” replied Mr. Farrer. “It has
kept me awake more nights than one, I can tell you,—the thinking what
will come of these new taxes on many things that we sell. As for the
debt, it has got so high, it can get little higher; that is one comfort.
To think that in my father’s young days, it was under seven hundred
thousand pounds; and now, in my day, it is near three hundred millions!”
“What makes you so sure it will soon stop, father?”
“That it can’t go on without ruining the nation, son. I suppose you
don’t think any minister on earth would do that. No, no. Three hundred
millions is debt enough, in all conscience, for any nation. No minister
will venture beyond that.”
“Not unless the people choose. And I, for one, will do all in my power
to prevent its proceeding further.”
“And pray how?”
“That depends on what your plans are for me, sir.”
“True enough. Well, eat away now, and let us see whether book-learning
spoils buttered toast. Come, tell us what you think of us, after all the
fine folks you have been amongst.”
Jane was astonished that her father could speak in this way to the
gentleman in black, who, however simple in his manners, and
accommodating in his conversation, was quite unlike every other person
present in his quiet tone, and gentle way of talking. She could not have
asked him what he thought of the place and the party.
Henry replied that he was, as he had said, much struck by his sister’s
looking so well; and as for Morgan, she was not a day older since the
time when he used to run away with her Welsh beaver——
“And make yourself look like a girl, with your puny pale face,”
interrupted Michael.
“Well, but, the place,—how does the old house look?” persisted Mr.
Farrer. “You used to be fond of prying through that green curtain to see
the folks go in and out of the shop; and then you raised mustard and
cress at the back window; and you used to whistle up and down stairs to
your attic till your poor mother could bear it no longer. The old place
looks just as it did to you, I dare say?”
Henry could say no more than that he remembered all these things. By
recalling many others, he hoped to divert the course of investigation;
but his father insisted on his saying that the dingy, confined, shabby
rooms looked to the grown wise man the very same as to the thoughtless
child who had seen no other house. It was as impossible for Henry to say
this as to believe still, as he once did, that his father was the wisest
man in the world; and Mr. Farrer was disconcerted accordingly. He
thought within himself that this was a poor reward for all that he had
spent on his son Harry, and pushed away his cup with the spoon in it
when it had been filled only four times.
“Are you tired, Jane?” asked Henry, setting down his tin candlestick
with its tall thin candle, when his father had done bidding him be
careful not to set the house on fire, and Michael was gone to see that
all was safe in the shop. Jane was quite disposed for more conversation;
and would indeed have been darning stockings for at least another hour
if Henry had gone to sleep at ten, like his brother. She brought out her
knitting, carefully piled the embers, extinguished one candle, and was
ready to hear Henry’s questions and remarks, and to offer some of her
own. She could not return the compliment she had received as to her
looks. She thought Harry was thin, and nearly as pale as in the old days
when his nankeen frock and drab beaver matched his complexion.
Henry had been studying hard; and he acknowledged that his mind had been
anxious of late. It was so strange that nothing had been said to him
respecting his destination in life, that he could not help speculating
on the future more than was quite good for health and spirits. Could
Jane give him any idea what his father’s intentions were?
Henry now looked so boyish, with feet on fender, and fingers busy with
an unemployed knitting-needle, that Jane’s ancient familiarity began to
return. She hoped there were no matrimonial thoughts at the bottom of
Henry’s anxiety about the future.
“Must no man be anxious about his duties and his prospects till he
thinks of marrying, Jane? But why have you hopes and fears about it?”
“Because I am sure my father will not hear of such a thing as your
marrying. You know how steady he is when he once makes up his mind.”
Henry glanced up in his sister’s face, and away again when he saw that
she met his eye. She continued,
“I am not speaking of my own case in particular; but he has expressed
his will to Michael, very plainly, and told him what sort of connexion
he must make if he marries at all. And Michael has in consequence given
up all talk of marriage with a young woman he had promised himself to.”
“Given up the connexion! A grown man like Michael give up the woman he
had engaged himself to, at another man’s bidding! How can he sit
laughing as he did to-night?”
“I did not say he had given up the connexion,” replied Jane, very
quietly; “but he has given up all talk of marriage. So you see——”
“I see I shall have nothing to say to my father on this part of the
subject of settling in life. But you, Jane,—what are you doing and
thinking of? My father knows that he is on safer ground with you than he
can be with his sons. How is it with you, sister?”
“What you say is very true. If he chooses to speak for his daughter,
keeping her in the dark all the while, what can she do but make herself
content to be in the dark, and turn her mind upon something else? If
mine is too full of one object or another, I hope God will be merciful
with me, since I have been under another’s bidding all my days.”
“It _is_ hard—very hard.”
“It is hard that others,—that Morgan, and I dare say Michael, should
know more of what has been said and written in my name than I do myself.
Yes, Morgan. It is from her that I know——”
“About Peek? That he wanted you before he thought of Patience?”
“Not only that. Patience is welcome to her lot,—though I do not see what
need have prevented her taking my place at the books, if my father had
not made up his mind to keep me by him. But that is nothing in
comparison with—some other things that have been done in my name; the
treating a friend as if he were an impostor, and I a royal princess;
while, all the time, I had no such proud thoughts myself, God knows.”
“How came Morgan to tell you anything about it?” cried Henry, eager to
find some one on whom to vent the indignation that he was unwilling to
express in relation to his father.
“Morgan was made a friend of by that person; and she is the kindest
friend I have, you may believe it, Henry. She would have upheld me in
anything I might have chosen to do or to say. But I was doubtful whether
it was not too late then; and altogether I fancy it was best to get on
as I did for a time. And now I am settled to my lot, you see, and grown
into it. I am fully satisfied now with my way of life; and it is not
likely to change.”
“Do you mean that you expect to keep the books, and be a thrifty
housewife, as long as you live? If it was necessary, well and good. But
my father must be enormously rich.”
Jane shook her head as she carefully mended the fire, and observed that
the times were such as to alarm the wealthiest. While her brother made
inquiries about the business, and her share of profit for her toils, she
answered with her habitual caution, and made no communication about the
increased income which the three members of the family would receive in
consequence of the deaths of which she had this afternoon heard.
“So you have no idea,” said Henry, “how long I am to remain here, and
what I am to do next?”
“Ah! indeed I am afraid you will hardly know what to do with your days
here, Henry. I have been thinking what can be managed as to that. You
see we have no books but the one shelf-full that you have read many
times already. And we have no friends; and we dine so early; and the
house itself, I am afraid, is the kind of thing you have been little
used to. You may speak out to me more than you liked to do to my
father.”
Henry was looking about him with a half smile, and owned that the
slanting glass between the windows did not appear quite so grand a
mirror as when he looked up into it fearfully, in his childhood,
wondering by what magic the straight floor could be made to look so like
a very steep carpeted hill. He then thought that no entertainment could
be grander than the new year’s eve, when Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother
used to come to drink punch, and were kind enough to take each a boy
between his knees. But now, it seemed as if there would be barely room
for Mr. Jerry Hill and his brother to turn themselves round in this very
same parlour.
They would never spend another new year’s eve here! They were dead! How?
When? Where? The news only arrived this day! and his father and Michael
so merry! Henry could not understand this.
“But, Jane, do not trouble your head about what amusement I am to find
at home. If it comes to that, I can sit in my old place in the
window-seat and read, let the carts clatter and the sashes rattle as
they may. What I want to know is how I am to employ myself. I shall not
live idly, as you may suppose. I will not accept of food and clothes, to
be led about for a show as my father’s learned son that was bred up at
the university.”
“Certainly not,” said Jane, uneasily. “Perhaps in two or three days
something may turn up to settle the matter. I dare say you had rather go
back to college than do anything else?”
No. Henry now fell into praises of the life of a country clergyman,
living in just such a parsonage as he saw at Allansford, when he was
staying there with his friend, John Stephens.
“Are there any ladies at Mr. Stephens’s?” inquired Jane.
“Mrs. Stephens and her daughter, and a friend of Miss Stephens’s. Ah!
that is just the kind of settlement that I should like; and how easily
my father might, if he would—But, as you say, a few days will show; and
I will have patience till then. I cannot conceive what made him send for
me, unless he has something in view.”
Jane knitted in silence.
“Will you go with me to-morrow morning, Jane, to see poor Patience?”
Jane could not be spared in the mornings; but she could step over before
dark in the evening, and should be glad to introduce to Henry some of
his new nephews and nieces; there having been two brace of twins since
Harry had crossed the threshold. Harry thought Peek was a very dutiful
king’s man. He not only raised taxes wherewith to carry on the king’s
wars, but reared men to fight in them.
“Why, Morgan,” said he, “I thought you had gone to bed without bestowing
a word on me. Cannot you sit down with us for five minutes?”
Morgan set down the little tray with hot water and a bottle of home-made
wine, which she had brought unbidden and half fearfully. She was
relieved by seeing her mistress bring out the sugar and glasses
cheerfully from the cupboard, and invite her brother to help himself. He
did so when he had filled a glass for Morgan.
When the candlewicks had grown long, and the fire had fallen low, so
prodigious a knocking was heard overhead as nearly prevented Morgan from
carrying her last mouthful straight to its destination. Mr. Farrer had
heard their voices on waking from his first sleep, and had no idea of
thoughtless young people wasting his coals and candles in such an idle
way,—as if they could not talk by day-light! The glasses were deposited
so carefully as to make no jingle; the slender candles were once more
lighted, and Henry found time just to assure his sister, in a whisper,
that he had not seen a truer lady than Morgan since they had last
parted. He picked out one favourite volume from the single row of books,
to carry to his chamber; shook hands with his sister, and edged his way
up the narrow stairs. As he found that the room seemed made to forbid
all reading, unless it were in bed, he left his book unopened till the
morning. It was the first volume of poetry that he had ever studied; but
as the window-curtain was puffed to and fro, and a cutting draught
entered under the door, and the whole room was divided between the two,
he put out his flaring candle, and lay thinking poetry instead of
reading it, while the gleams on the ceiling, and the drowsy sounds from
below, called up visions of his childhood, which at last insensibly
mingled with those of sleep.
CHAPTER II.
BEING ROMAN AT ROME.
Morgan need not have exercised her old office of calling Henry the next
morning. Her knock was heard at the accustomed hour; but Henry had been
wakened long before by horns, bells, cries, and rumbling, which seemed
to proceed from “above, about, and underneath,” and which made him
wonder how, in his childhood, he could find it as difficult to open his
eyes when told that the day was come, as to be persuaded to go to bed
when he had laid hold of a new book. A certain childish question of
Henry’s was held in mirthful remembrance by his family, and brought up
by his father every time that he showed his face at home,—“Why must one
go to bed? One no sooner goes to bed than one has to get up again.” Such
a happy oblivion of the many intervening hours was no longer found
practicable in the little apartment that shook with every passing
waggon; and how it could ever have been attained was at least as great a
mystery now as the perpetual motion. “Well, Harry,” said his father,
“what a pity you should have troubled yourself to pull off your clothes,
as you had to put them on again directly! Hey? But I thought you were of
the same mind last night, by the time you sat up. What kept you up so
late?”
“We had a great deal to say, father, after such a long absence. Jane had
but little time for writing letters, you know, while I was away.”
“I think you might have your talk by daylight. What are you going to do
with yourself to-day?”
There was no lack of something to do this first day. First, there was
seeing the shop,—being shown the new contrivance for obtaining half a
foot more room behind the counter, and the better plan for securing the
till, and the evidence of Michael’s pretty taste in the shape of a
yellow lamb of spun butter, with two currants for eyes, and a fine curly
fleece, which might keep its beauty a whole fortnight longer, if this
seasonable March weather should last. Opposite to the lamb was a tower
of Babel, of cheese, which had been crumbling for some time. But, though
the tower was infested with mice, it was the general opinion that it
would outlast the lamb. Then, while Jane settled herself, aproned,
shawled, and mittened, at her desk, there was a long story to be told,—a
story really interesting to Henry,—of the perplexities which had been
introduced into the trade by the fluctuations of the duties on various
articles. When tobacco was sometimes to pay a tax of 350 per cent., and
then no more than 200, and then, on a sudden, 1200, how should custom be
regular, and the trader know what to expect? A man must be as wise as a
Scripture prophet to know what stock to lay in when there was no
depending on custom. People would use twice as much tobacco one year as
another; and a third more sugar; and a fourth more tea; or would drop
one article after another in a way that no mortal could foretell.
Why not foretell? Was it not certain that when a tax on an article of
consumption was increased, the consumption fell off in a definite
proportion?
Quite certain; but then came in another sort of disturbance. When duties
rose very high, smuggling was the next thing; and there was no
calculating how smuggling might keep up the demand.
“Nor what new taxes it may lead to,” observed Henry. “If the consumption
of taxed articles falls off, the revenue suffers; and if, at the same
time, smuggling increases, new expenses are incurred for guarding the
coast. The people must pay both for the one and the other; and so, the
next thing is to lay on new taxes.”
“Ah!” groaned the old man. “They begin to talk of an income tax.”
Whatever Henry’s opinion of an income tax might be, he was aware that
few inflictions could be so dreadful to his father. Mr. Farrer,
possessed, it was supposed, of nearly half a million, managed to pay
less in taxes than most of his neighbours who happened to have eight
hundred a year, and spent it. Mr. Farrer eschewed luxuries, except a few
of the most unexpensive; he was sparing of comforts, and got off paying
more to the state than any other man who must have common food,
clothing, and house-room. His contributions must be prodigiously
increased if he was to be made to pay in proportion to his income. It
was a subject on which none of his family dared to speak, even on this
morrow of a piece of good fortune. The most moderate income tax would
sweep away more than the addition gained by the dropping of the two
lives in the joint annuity.
“They had better mend their old ways than try new,” said Michael. “If
they knew how, they might get more by every tax than it has yielded yet.
Peek says so. He says there is not a taxed article eaten or drunk, or
used, that would not yield more if the tax was lowered; and Peek ought
to know.”
“And you ought to know, Mike, that you are the last man that should wish
for such a change,” said his father, with a sly wink. Michael’s laugh
made his brother uneasy; he scarcely knew why.
“It is a great wrong, I think,” said Henry, “to keep the poorer classes
from the use of comforts and luxuries that they might have, if the state
managed its plan of taxation better.”
“Well, and so it is, Henry; and I often say so when I see a poor man
come for his tobacco, and grumble at the price, and threaten it shall be
the last time; and a poor woman cheapen her ounce of tea, and taste the
butter and smell at the cheese, and go away without buying any of them.
As long as good management would serve to satisfy such poor creatures as
these, without bringing an income tax upon their betters, it is a shame
there is no such management.”
“How much more would be consumed in your family, sir, if taxes on
commodities were lowered as you would have them?”
“O, as for us, we have every thing we want, as far as I know. There
might be little or no difference in our own family; but I know there
would be among our customers. Shopkeepers would wonder where all the
crowd of buyers came from.”
“And the smugglers might turn tax-gatherers, hey, father?”
“And there need be no more talk of an income tax,” said the old man;
“let the French brazen their matters out as they will.”
Henry was not very sure of this, in his own mind. It seemed to him that
the more support the state derived from taxes on commodities, the more
clearly the people would see the injustice of levying the taxes upon
those who were compelled to spend their whole income in the purchase of
commodities, while the rich, who chose to live very frugally and hoard,
might escape the payment of their due share. A customer now came in; and
then the cheese-cellar had to be visited; and then Mr. Farrer wanted
Henry to go with him to two or three neighbours’ houses, where there was
a due admiration of the blessings of a learned education on the one
side, and on the other a prodigious self-complacency about the
liberality, and the generosity, and the wisdom, and the glory of making
one member of the family a great man, who should do honour to his kith
and kin.
The evening was spent at Mrs. Peek’s. Mrs. Peek was able to receive her
family at home, though she had not yet left the house since her
confinement. She was proud of having a brother who had been at college,
though no one grumbled more at the expense than she did by her own
fireside. She was unwilling to lose this opportunity of showing him off
to some neighbours; and when the party from Budge Row entered Peek’s
house, at five o’clock, they perceived several shawls and calashes on
the window-seat in the passage which was called the hall. One of Mr.
Farrer’s candles was flaring in this passage, and two in the
waiting-room, as the children’s play-place was called, and six in the
parlour, it being Mrs. Peek’s wish to have every thing smart for the
reception of her genteel brother. The ample sofa and two arm-chairs were
ranged on one side, and four chairs on the other. When the door was
thrown open, the party in the ante-room saw two young ladies take flight
from the sofa across the room; and by the time that all had entered the
parlour, five maidens were wedged in a close rank, in front of the three
chairs which were next Mrs. Peek’s.
They stood looking shy during the introduction, and were made more
awkward still by the old gentleman insisting, as he settled himself by
the fire, that one of those young ladies should come and sit on the sofa
beside him. None of them stirred.
“Miss Mills, suppose you take a seat on the sofa,” observed Mrs. Peek.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Miss Mills.
“Miss Anne Mills, won’t you take a seat on the sofa?”
“No, ma’am, thank you.”
“Then, Miss Baker, or Miss Grace——. My fourth girl, Grace, is called
after that young lady, Henry;—(Grace Baker is a great favourite of
ours). Grace, my dear, you will sit on the sofa, I am sure. What! none
of you!” (seeing the five edge themselves down on the three chairs.)
“Dear me! and there’s so much room on the other side! I believe I must
go to the sofa, and then Henry will take my seat.”
Miss Mills looked disposed to fly back again to the sofa when Henry took
his seat beside her, as directed. She twisted the tips of her gloves,
looked down, said “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” to all he observed, and
soon found she must go and ask Mrs. Peek after the dear little baby. At
this unexpected movement, two out of the remaining four halfstarted from
their chair, but settled themselves again with a muttered, “Now, how——!”
and then the next began to twist her gloves and look down, leaving,
however, full a third of a chair between herself and the scholar.
Nothing could be done till Mr. Peek came in, further than to tell Henry
which of the young ladies could play and which could draw. Henry could
only hope to hear them play, and to see their drawings; upon which Mrs.
Peek was sorry that her piano was put away in a room up stairs till her
girls should be qualified to use it; but she rang for a servant, who was
desired to tell master Harry to step across for Miss Mills’ sketch-book,
and Master Michael to run to Mr. Baker’s for Miss Grace Baker’s
portfolio.
“The blue portfolio, ma’am,” Miss Baker leaned forward to say on her
sister’s behalf.
“O! the blue portfolio, tell Master Michael.”
Mr. Peek came in, at length, rubbing his hands, and apologizing for
having kept the ladies waiting for their tea; but it was the privilege
of such a business as his to take, in some measure, his own times and
seasons for doing things; and this afternoon he had been paying one of
his official visits where he was least expected.
When Jane had stationed herself at the tea-table, with a Miss Mills to
aid her, and Peek had ordered one little table to be brought for himself
and another for his father-in-law, he addressed his conversation chiefly
to the latter, observing that the young scholar’s part was to entertain
the young ladies.
“You know the Browns,—the way they behaved to my wife and me about our
nursemaid that they tempted away?” said Peek to Mr. Farrer.
“O yes; I hope you have served them out.”
“That I have, pretty well! They should have taken care what they were
about in offending me. I can always make out what are their busy days,
and then I pop in, and there is no end of the stock-taking I make them
go through. What with measuring the canisters, and weighing, and
peeping, and prying, I keep them at it a pretty time; and that is what I
have been about this afternoon.”
“Can’t you catch them with a pound of smuggled stuff?”
“Not an ounce. They know I would if I could; and that makes them take
care and look sharp. What did you think of the last rummer of toddy you
got here?”
“Capital! Had Brown anything to do with that?”
“Not he; but you shall have another to-night, since you liked the last
so much; and Mr. Henry too, if he likes. But I suppose he will be too
busy playing commerce with the ladies? That fine spirit was one of the
good things that one gets by being gentle in one’s vocation, as I tell
Patience when she is cross; and then I hold back some nice present that
I was thinking of giving her.”
“Aye, aye. A little convenient blindness, I suppose, you find your
account in sometimes; and who finds it out, among all the multitude of
articles that pay taxes? Yes, yes, that is one of the understood things
in the business; as our men of your tribe give us to understand.”
“I hope you find them accommodating, sir?”
“Yes; now we know how to manage them. And they are wonderfully kind to
Mike, considering all things.”
Mike assented, with one of his loud laughs.
Henry was listening to all this not the less for his civility in handing
tea, and amusing his next neighbour. By taking in all that passed now
and when he was seated at cards, after Mrs. Peek had made her excuses
and withdrawn, he learned more than he had known before of the
facilities afforded to the collector of taxes on commodities, of
oppressing the humble, and teasing the proud, and sheltering the shabby,
and aiding the fraudulent. He felt that he would rather be a
street-sweep than such an exciseman as Peek. At best, the office was a
most hateful one.
He grew less and less able to give good counsel at cards, and to admire
figures and landscapes, the louder grew Michael’s mirth, and the more
humorous Peek’s stories of how he treated his victims, the small
tradesmen. He would not touch the spirit and water so strongly
recommended, but bore rallying on preferring the more lady-like
refreshment of negus and sweet cake. He roused himself to do what was
proper in shawling Miss Grace Baker; but it was feared by his family
that the young ladies would not be able to give so enthusiastic an
account of him at home as might have been, if he had done himself
justice. It was a great pity!
“What a clever fellow Peek is; he is made for his business! Eh, Harry?”
observed Mr. Farrer, as they turned homewards, after having deposited
the Misses Mills.
“He is made for his business as you say, father. What a cold night it
is!”
“Well; I hoped you caught a bit of what Peek was saying; I thought it
would entertain you. We’ll have him some evening soon; and then I’ll
make him tell some stories as good as any you heard to-night, only not
so new. Do you hear, Jenny; mind you fix Peek and Patience for the first
afternoon they can name next week, and we will have them all to
ourselves. Come, Mike, ring again. It is gone ten. I warrant Morgan and
Sam are nodding at one another on each side the fire. Give it them
well.”
Day after day was filled up in somewhat a similar manner, nothing being
said of the purpose for which Henry was brought home, or of his future
destination. He soon became more reconciled than at first to his strange
position, not only from becoming familiarized with it, but because
London was astir with rumours of strange events abroad, and with
speculations on what curious chapters in the history of nations were
about to be presented for men’s reading. Mr. Farrer made no objection to
his son’s disappearance during the greater part of the day, as he was
sure of bringing home all the news at the end of it. Sometimes he fell
in with a procession going to plant the tree of liberty on Kennington
Common; sometimes he had interesting tales to tell of the misfortunes of
the emigrants, whom his father ceased for the time to compare to locusts
devouring the fruits of the land, or to the wasps that swarmed among his
sugars in summer. Henry could bring the latest tidings of the progress
of the riots in the country on account of the high price of food, and of
certain trials for sedition in which his heart seemed to be deeply
engaged, though he let his father rail on at the traitors who encouraged
the people to think that governments could do wrong. Henry saw all the
reviews, and heard of all the embarkations of soldiers, and could tell
how many new clerks were taken on at the Bank, and what a demand there
was for servants at the government offices, and what spirits every body
was in at Portsmouth and Birmingham, while no one knew what was to be
done with the poor wretches who tried an ineffectual riot in the
manufacturing districts from time to time. All this passed with Mr.
Farrer for a very natural love of news, and was approved in as far as it
enabled him to say to his superior customers, “My son who was at the
University hears this,” or says that, or knows the other. But Jane saw
that Henry the student was not interested in these vast movements of
humanity as a mere amusement to pass the time. Not in pursuit of mere
amusement was he often without food from breakfast-time till he returned
by lamp-light. Not in pursuit of mere amusement was he sometimes content
to be wet through twice in a day; sometimes feverish with excitement,
and sometimes so silent that she left him unquestioned to the deep
emotions that were stirring within. She occasionally wondered whether he
had any thoughts of entering the army. If he was really anxious to be
doing something, this seemed a ready means; yet she had some suspicion
that his patriotism was not of a kind to show itself in that way; and
that if he fought at all, it would not be to avenge the late French
King. However it might be, Jane felt her affection for this brother grow
with her awe of his mysterious powers and tastes. She listened for his
step when he was absent; intimated her dissent from any passing censure
upon him uttered by his father; saw that dry shoes were always ready for
him when he came in; received gratefully all that he had to tell her,
and asked no questions. She struggled with all the might that was to
prove at last too feeble a barrier to a devastating passion, against the
daily thoughts of food eaten and clothes worn by one who was earning
nothing; satisfied herself that though Henry was no longer enjoying the
advantages of college, he was living more cheaply than he could do
there; and trusted, on the whole, that this way of life might continue
some time.
One morning, Michael’s cup of tea having stood till it was cold, the
discovery was made that Michael was not at home. Mr. Farrer dropped,
with apparent carelessness, the news that he would not return for two or
three days; and when Jane had helped herself to the cold tea, in order
that it might not be wasted, nobody seemed to think more of the matter.
Half an hour after breakfast, before Henry had closed a certain pocket
volume in Greek which he had been observed to read in at all odd times,
Mr. Farrer put his head in at the parlour-door, with
“I say, Harry, we are very busy in the shop to-day, and Mike away.”
“Indeed, sir! Shall I go out and find somebody to help you?”
“Very pretty! And you sitting here with nothing to do! Come yourself; I
will help you to find Mike’s apron.”
Henry first laughed, and then, after an instant’s hesitation, pocketed
his book, and followed his father. While he was somewhat awkwardly tying
on his apron, his sister saw him through the tiny window which gave her,
in her retirement a view of the shop; and she called out to know what he
was doing.
“I am going to try to cut bacon and weigh butter as well as Michael.”
“Is it your own fancy?”
“My father put it into my head; but it is my own will to do it till
Michael comes back.”
There was no more to be said; but Jane reddened all over; and when she
saw the first customer come in, and Mr. Farrer stand over Henry to see
him guess at the weight of soap required, Jane lost all power of casting
up the column of figures over which her pen was suspended.
It was told in many a neighbour’s house that day that there was a new
shopman at Farrer’s, who was dead-slow at tying up parcels, and hacked
sadly at the cheese, as if he did not know an ounce from a pound at
sight. Henry was not aware how far he was from being worthy to rival
Michael. It requires some practice to achieve the peculiar twirl and
jerk with which an adroit shopman ties up and delivers a parcel to a
fair dealer; and Henry knew nothing yet of the art of joking with the
maidens and coaxing the matrons among his customers.
When weary, sick, and inwardly troubled to a degree for which he could
scarcely account, he came in from seeing that the shutters were properly
closed, and from purifying himself from the defilements of the counter,
his father hailed him with,
“Well done, Harry! You will do very well soon, and make up for the
cheese you have crumbled to-day. You will manage not to spill so much
sugar to-morrow, perhaps. And by the end of the year, we shall see what
sort of a younger partner’s share we can afford you.”
“You do not mean that I am to spend a whole year as I have spent to-day,
father?”
“Indeed but I do, though; and as many more years as you have to live. My
father made his fortune in this same business, and I mean my sons to do
the same.”
Henry answered by handing his father the candle to light his pipe.
“I say, Harry,” the old man resumed, after a long silence, “you go into
the shop to-morrow morning.”
“Certainly; till Michael comes back; if, as you said this morning, he
returns before the end of the week.”
“And after he comes back. He will put you in the way better than I can,
you’ll find.”
“After he comes back, I hope to find means of using the education you
have given me, father. It would be all lost if I were to be a grocer.”
Mr. Farrer could see nothing but loss in following any other occupation,
and ingratitude in hesitating to accept a provision which would enable
Henry to become, like his brother and sisters, a public creditor on very
advantageous terms. He let his son more into the secret of his wealth
than he had ever done before; and when he found this confidence of no
avail to his purpose, was vexed at his communicativeness, grew very
angry, threw down his pipe, and ordered the family to bed.
The next day, and the next, all went on so smoothly in the shop that
each party hoped the other had relented. On the Friday evening, Michael
returned, in high spirits, his talk savouring of the sea as his clothes
did of tobacco. On Saturday morning, Henry was missing in his turn.
Morgan appeared with red eyes to say that he had gone out with his blue
bag very early, and had left the letter she now delivered to her master.
This letter was read, crumpled up and thrown under the grate in silence.
Jane afterwards took possession of it; and found that Henry valued his
education too highly not to make the best use he could of it; that he
was quite of his father’s opinion that it was a sin to remain at home in
idleness; that he would therefore endeavour to obtain immediate
employment and independence; that he would come and see his father as
soon as he had anything to communicate, and should be always on the
watch to repay by any duty and attention in his power the obligation he
was under for the advantages he had enjoyed.
Morgan had no intelligence to give of where Henry was gone. He had left
his love for his sister, and an assurance that he would see her soon and
often. Morgan trusted she might take his word for his not feeling
himself “put upon” or ill-regarded in the family. He had assured her
that his feelings for them were as kind as ever, as he hoped to show, if
occasion should arise. Might she believe this?
Jane trusted that she might;—would not let his chamber be disarranged
just at present; and went to her place of business to start at every
black coat that passed the window.
CHAPTER III.
DEATH-CHAMBER SOOTHINGS.
Mr. Farrer seemed to be somewhat surprised to see that Henry’s coat was
still black and still glossy when he called, as he promised, to see his
family. A vague image of a tattered shirt, a wallet and mouldy crusts,
had floated before the old man’s mind as often as he prophesied that
Harry would come begging to his father’s door; whereas Henry seemed to
have nothing to complain of, did not ask for anything to eat, never
mentioned money, and looked very cheerful. It was impossible to
pronounce him paler than usual; and, what was more surprising, he made
no mysteries, but told all that he was asked to tell. Nobody inquired
whether he was married, and none but Jane desired to know where he
lived. But the circumstance of his having obtained employment that would
suffice for the present was related; and he endeavoured to explain to
his father the nature of the literary occupations in which he was
engaged; but when he had once acknowledged that they did not bring him
in so much per week as his brother’s labours afforded, Mr. Farrer did
not desire to hear anything more.
“Jane, you will come and see me?” said Henry, when they were alone.
“My father says you had better come here.”
“Well, so I shall; but you will look in upon me some day? I have
something to show you.”
“Perhaps you can bring it here. My father——”
“Oh, he forbids your visiting me. Yes, I shall certainly come here, and
soon. Do you know, Jane, I think my father looks ill.”
“He is harassed about business just now;—not about the part you have
taken; for he said yesterday that people are better out of business in
such times.”
“What is the matter? Does his custom fall off?”
“Very much; and his profits are less and less. Everything is so taxed,—
everything that the common people must have,—(and they are the customers
that signify most, from their number)—that they go without tea and
sugar, and save in soap and candles more than you would suppose; and
besides, all this dearness makes wages rise every where; and we feel
that directly in the fall of our profits. If things get much worse, we
shall soon be laying by nothing. It will be as much as we can do to make
the year’s gains answer the year’s expenses.”
“That will be a very bad thing if it comes to be the case of the whole
nation, Jane: but I do not think that my father and you need mind it,—so
much as you have both accumulated. It is a bad state of things, however.
Have you seen Dr. Say about my father?”
“Why, no. I think that he would be alarmed at my mentioning such a
thing; and as I know his ailments to be from an uneasy mind——However, I
will watch him, and if he does not get better——But he looks particularly
ill to-day.”
“He does indeed.”
Morgan was waiting near the door when Henry went out.
“I take shame, Mr. Henry, my dear,” said she, “that I did not half
believe you in what you said, the morning you went away, about coming
again, and going to be happy.”
“Well, Morgan, you believe me now?”
“Yes, my dear, I do; and I feel, by your looks, that there is some great
reason behind. Do you know, I should say, if it was not a strange thing
to say, Mr. Henry,—I should say you were married.”
“That is a strange guess, Morgan. Suppose you come, some day, and see;
and, if you bring Jane with you, so much the better.”
“Ah! my dear, it would be a wholesome change for her, so much as she
goes through with my master. You may believe me I hear her half the
night, stealing about to watch his sleep, when by chance he gets any
quiet sleep; and at other times comforting him.”
“Do you mean that he suffers much?”
“In mind, Mr. Henry. What can they expect whom God permits to be deluded
about what they should seek? Be sure you take care, Sir, to provide for
your own household; but I hope never to hear you tossing in your bed
because of the doubt whether you will have three times or only twice as
much gold as you can use.”
“Treat him tenderly, Morgan; and send for me whenever you think I can be
of any use.”
“My dear, there is not a sick child crying for its broken toy that I
would treat so tenderly as your father,—even if I had not Miss Jane
before me for a pattern. I will send for you, I promise you; but it is
little that any of us can do when it comes to be a matter of serious
illness. We brought neither gold nor friends into this world, and ’tis
certain we cannot carry them out; but what you can do for your father,
you shall be called to do, Sir. However, as Michael says, if there comes
a flow of custom to make his mind easy, he may be as well as ever.”
No such flow of custom came, and various circumstances concurred to
lower Mr. Farrer’s spirits, and therefore aggravate his disease. Within
the next eight months, nearly a thousand bankruptcies bore testimony to
the grievous nature of the burdens under which trade was suffering.
Rumours of the approaching downfall of church and state were circulated
with sufficient emphasis to shake the nerves of a sick man who had very
little notion of a dependence on anything but church and state. Besides
this, he did not see that it was now possible for him to be well against
New Year’s Eve,—the festival occasion of those whose lives had afforded
a subject of mutual money-speculation; and if he could not be well on
this anniversary, he was convinced he should be dead. Every time that
Henry went, he thought worse of his father’s case, however flattering
might be the physician’s reports and assurances. There was no thought of
removing him; for the first attempt would have been the death of him.
Where he was born and bred, there he must die; and the best kindness was
to wrap him in his great-coat, and let him sit behind the counter,
ordering, and chatting, and weighing pennyworths, and finding fault with
every body, from Mr. Pitt down to Sam the shop-boy.
The last morning of the year broke bright and cheery. When Morgan issued
from the shop, dressed in her red cloak and round beaver over a
mob-cap,—the Welsh costume which she continued to wear,—the copper sun
showed himself behind the opposite chimney, and glistened on the candies
in the window and the icicles which hung from the outside cornice. Many
a cheery sound was in the frosty air,—the laughter of children sliding
in the Row, the newsman’s call, the clatter of horses’ feet over the
slippery pavement, and the jangle of cans at the stall where hot coffee
was sold at the street-corner. All this was strange to the eyes and ears
of Morgan, not only from her being unaccustomed to walk abroad, but from
its contrast with the scene she had just left.
When she had quitted Mr. Farrer’s sick chamber, the red daylight had
begun to glimmer through the green stuff window curtain, giving a signal
to have done with the yellow candlelight, and to speak some words of
cheer to the patient on the coming of a new day. Mr. Farrer had looked
dreadfully ill in the flickering gleam of the fire, as he sat in the
arm-chair from which his oppressed breathing forbade him to move; but in
the daylight he looked absolutely ghastly, and Morgan felt that no time
was to be lost in summoning Henry, under pretence of purchasing a gallon
of wine.
Her master had called her back to forbid her buying wine while there was
so much in the house; but she was gone beyond the reach of his feeble
voice, and the other persons who were in the room were for the wine
being bought. Dr. Say, an apothecary who passed very well for a
physician in this neighbourhood, declared that home-made raisin wine was
by no means likely to agree with the patient, or support his strength;
and Peek, the son-in-law, reminded the old gentleman that the cost of
the wine would come out of his estate, as it was little likely that he
would live to pay the bill.
“You yourself said,” uttered the old man in the intervals of his
pantings, “you said, only last week, that few drink foreign wine that
spend less than their six hundred a-year. I don’t spend six hundred
a-year; and Jane’s raisin wine might serve my turn.”
“That was in talking about the taxes,—the tax that doubles the cost of
wine. I don’t see why people of three hundred a-year should not drink as
much as those that spend six, if the cost of wine was but half what it
is; especially if they be sick and dying.—And a fine thing it would be
for the wine trade, seeing that there are many more people who spend
three hundred a-year than six. So both the makers and the drinkers have
reason to be vexed that for every gallon of wine that ought to cost five
shillings, they have to pay ten.”
“Now, Mr. Peek, do not make my father discontented with his wine before
he tastes it,” said Jane, observing the shade that came over the old
man’s face at the mention of the price.
“O, that need not be. He must have had wine for to-night, you know, if
he had been well, and brandy into the bargain, if Jerry Hill and his
brother had been alive.—But, sir, if you find fault with the wine-duty,
what would you have? There is no help for it but an income tax, and you
don’t like that, you tell me.—Dear me, Dr. Say, look how white he turns,
and how his teeth chatter. He is failing very fast, poor soul!”
“Confound the income tax! The very talk of it has been the death of me,”
Mr. Farrer had still strength to say.
“Mr. Peek, I wish you would leave off talking about such things,” said
Jane. “Do not you see that my father cannot bear it?”
“Why, dear me, Jane, don’t you know that there is nothing he is so fond
of talking about as that that he and I know most about? Why, he is never
tired of asking me about what I meet with in the way of my business!”
“Well! tell him stories to amuse him, if you like; but don’t threaten
him with the income tax any more.”
“With all my heart. He shall carry none but pleasant ideas to his grave
for me.—I say, sir, I should think you must sell a good many more
candles since the duty came off, don’t you?—Ah! I find the difference in
some of the poorer houses I go into. A halfpenny a pound on tallow
candles was a tax——”
“That prevented many a patient of mine from being properly nursed,” said
Dr. Say. “When people are just so poor as not to afford much
candlelight, such a tax as that dooms many sick to toss about in the
dark, frightened at their own fancies, when a light, to show things as
they are, would have composed them to sleep. That was a bad tax: the
rich using few tallow candles.”
“If that be bad, the others were worse;—that on cottages with less than
seven windows! Lord! I shall never forget what work I used to have and
to hear of about that tax. He must have been a perverse genius that
thought of that tax, and deserved to be put into a cottage of two
windows himself.—Do you hear, Mr. Farrer, that is over and gone; and I
suppose you used to pay a tax upon Morgan that you are not asked for
now?”
Mr. Farrer now proved himself still able to laugh, while he told how he
never paid a farthing for Morgan before the tax on female servants had
been repealed. Morgan believed herself to be the fiftieth cousin of the
family; and on the days when the tax-gatherer was expected, Farrer
always contrived that Morgan should be seated at some employment found
for her in the parlour, and called a relation of the family. Jane now
understood for the first time why her father was upon occasion so
strangely peremptory about the sofa cover being patched, or his shirts
mended, by no one but Morgan, and nowhere but in the parlour. The repeal
of these three assessed taxes, and of a fourth,—on carts and waggons,—
was acknowledged to be an improvement on old management, however
grievous might be the actual burdens, and the great one now in prospect.
In pursuance of his plan to give Mr. Farrer none but pleasant ideas to
carry to the grave, Peek proceeded to observe on the capability of the
country to bear much heavier burdens than formerly. Arkwright alone had
provided the means of paying a large amount of taxes, by endowing the
country with the vast resources of the cotton manufacture.
“And what came of it all?” muttered Mr. Farrer. “There is Arkwright in
his grave, just like any other man.”
“That’s very true; and just as if he had had no more than his three
hundred a-year all his days. But it was a noble thing that he did,—the
enabling the country to bear up in such times as we live in. For my
part, I think the minister may very fairly ask for more money when such
a piece of good luck has befallen us as our cotton manufacture turns out
to be. I’m not so much against the war, since there is this way of
paying for it.”
“You forget we are in debt, Peek. ‘Duty first, and pleasure afterwards,’
I say. ‘Charity begins at home,’ say I. Pay the debt first, and then go
to war, if you must.”
“Some other improvements will turn up, time enough to pay the debt, I
dare say. When the war is done, the minister has only to find somebody,
like Arkwright, that will make a grand invention, and then he can pay
off the debt at his leisure.”
“No, never,” cried Farrer, in a stronger voice than Jane thought he
could now exert. “You will see Arkwright in the next world before you
see his like in this. I knew Arkwright. And as for the debt,—how is that
ever to be paid? The country is ruined, and God knows what will become
of my little savings!”
And the old man wept as if he had already lost his all. It was always a
melancholy fact to him that Arkwright, whom he had been wont to consider
the happiest of men, had been obliged to go away from his wealth;—to die
like other men. Peek attempted to comfort him, regardless of the
frowning looks of Dr. Say, and of Jane’s hints to hold his tongue.
“Why, all that requires to be taken care of will go to Jane, I suppose,
though some of your things would be more suitable to my wife than to any
single woman. That is a nice mattress; and indeed the bedding altogether
is just what would suit our brown chamber, as I was saying to my wife.
But I suppose Jane is to have all that sort of thing?”
“Mr. Peek, you will either go away or leave off talking in that manner,”
said Jane, moving away the empty tankard from which he had drunk his
morning ale.
“Mr. Farrer will enjoy many a good night in that very bed, when we have
subdued the little obstruction that affects the breathing,” observed Dr.
Say, soothingly.
“We all know better than that,” said Peek, with an ostentatious sigh.
“It is hard to leave what it costs such a world of pains to get. I’ve
heard you say, Mr. Farrer, how proud you were when you got a watch, as a
young man. That’s it, I suppose, over the chimney-piece; and a deal of
silver there must be in it, from the weight. I suppose this falls to
Jane too? It will go on, tick, tick, just the same as ever.”
Mr. Farrer forgot his pain while he watched Peek’s method of handling
the old watch, and followed his speculations about the disposal of his
property.
“And do you think that singing-bird will miss you?” asked Peek, nodding
to the siskin in its cage. “I have heard of birds that have pined, as
they say dogs do, from the day of their master’s death. But my children
would soon teach your Teddy a merry ditty, and cure him of moping.”
“Jane, don’t let any body but Morgan move that bird out of the house: do
you hear?” said Farrer.
“It is nobody’s bird but your’s, father. Nobody shall touch it.” And
Jane set Teddy singing, in hopes of stopping Peek’s speculations.
“And there’s the old punch-bowl,” continued the son-in-law, as soon as
there was again silence. “That will be yours of course, Jane?”
“O, our good friend will make punch many a time yet out of that bowl,
when we shall have set up his appetite,” declared Dr. Say.
“No, no, Doctor. He will never make punch again in this world.”
There was a pause after this positive declaration, which was broken by
Farrer saying to his daughter,
“You don’t say anything against it. You don’t think you had rather not
have the things.”
Jane replied in a manner which showed great conflict and agony of mind.
She should feel like a child, if her father must leave her. She had
never lived without him. She did not know that she could conduct herself
and her affairs without him. She was in a terror when she thought of it,
and her mind was full of reproach——
“Ah! you’ll be marrying, next thing, and all my things will be going
nobody knows where. But as for reproaching yourself,—no need of that, so
far, for you have been a good daughter to me.”
Jane declared that she had no thoughts of marrying.
“Come, Doctor, which way are you going? Will you walk with me?” said
Peek, whose apprehensions about the final destination of the property
were roused by the sentimental regards which Dr. Say began to cast upon
Jane, when the conversation took this turn. Dr. Say was in no hurry;
could not think of leaving his patient; would stay to see the effect of
the wine,—and so forth. The old man stretched his feeble hand towards
the doctor’s skirt, and begged him to remain.—One reason of his wish was
that he felt as if he should not die whilst his doctor was by his side;
and another was that he wished for the presence of a stranger while
Henry was with him, and Henry was now coming up stairs.
“They say I am going, Harry; and now perhaps you will be sorry that you
did not do all that I bade you.”
“I always have been sorry, father, that I could not.”
“I should like to know, Doctor, how one should manage one’s sons
now-a-days. Here’s Harry won’t follow my business for all I can say; and
Mike is leaving the shop to take care of itself, while I am laid fast in
this way. He was to have been back three days ago; and not a word have
we heard of him, and don’t know where to send to him. One must look to
one’s daughters, after all—though my father never had to say that of me.
I was in the very middle of counting our stock of short moulds when I
was called up stairs to see him die.—Well, Henry; I have left you
nothing, I give you notice.”
“Indeed, father, I am able to earn what I want; and I have to thank you
for this. You have given me already more than the wealth of the world;
and I shall never forget it.”
“I don’t very well know what you mean; but I can fancy about the not
forgetting. I saw a moon over the church there——”
The old man was evidently wandering after some idea of what he had
observed on the night after his father’s death, and many nights since;
and with this he mixed up some strange anxieties about the neglect of
the shop this day. Within a few minutes, Peek was gone to be a Job’s
comforter to his dawdling wife, assuring her that she could not, by any
exertion, arrive in Budge Row in time to see her father alive; Jane was
trying to pacify the old man by attending behind the counter; while Dr.
Say and Henry remained with the patient. Henry did not choose to be
alone with him, lest any fit of generosity should seize his father, and
cause dissension among the more dutiful of the children.
A few more hours were spent in the restless, fruitless, disheartening
cares which form the greatest part of the humiliation of the sick-room:
the shutting out the light that is irksome, and then restoring it
because the darkness is oppressive; the preparing food which is not to
be tasted, and offering drink which cannot be swallowed; the changing
the posture perpetually, because each is more uneasy than the last. A
few hours of this, and of mutterings about Jerry Hill and his brother,
which indicated that some idea of the day and its circumstances was
present to the dying man,—a few hours of extraordinary self-restraint to
Jane, and anxiety to Morgan, and all was over.
Patience came five minutes too late. She found the shop-boy standing
with eyes and mouth wide, instead of attending to a customer. He could
only relate that Morgan had just shown herself at the inside door,
looking very grave, and that Miss Farrer had turned very white, and gone
up stairs; so that he was sure his master was dead. The customer was
officious in helping to half-close the shutters, and so obliging as to
go elsewhere for what he wanted, spreading as he went the news of the
death of the rich old fellow, Farrer the grocer.
Where was Michael? This was a question asked many times before
night-fall by one or other of the household. None could answer it; not
even she who knew most about Michael’s proceedings, and to whom Morgan
condescended to go in person in search of information. The young woman
was as much at a loss as any body, and so extremely uneasy that Morgan
found in her heart to pity her.
Where was Michael? This was the question that returned upon Jane’s mind
and heart in the dead stillness of the night, when, by her own desire,
she was sitting up alone beside her father’s corpse. She would not hear
of Henry’s staying, and forbade Morgan’s remaining beyond the usual
early hours of the house.
She turned the watch with its face to the wall, when she had wound it
up; for she did not wish to know when midnight and the new year came. It
was a gusty night, and she hoped not to hear the church-clock strike.
She heard instead the voices of the party assembled in the house that
day twelvemonth,—the little party of friends whose hopes of wealth
depended individually on the chance of surviving the rest. What would
she not now give to be set back to that time! The intervening year had
disclosed to her something that she did not fully know before,—that she
was being devoured by the growing passion of avarice. She had felt joy
at the death of Jerry Hill’s brother, though the time had been when the
bare idea of his death weighed upon her heart for days! She had been
unable to tell her father that she did not wish for what he had to
leave. And now,—what did she desire to hear about Michael? If he had
formed bad connexions,—if he was playing a desperate game with
smugglers,—if he should now marry the mother of his children, and thus
distribute by wholesale the wealth his father had saved, and squander
the large annuity which had fallen to him as to her, from their being
the sole survivors of the lot of lives,—what, in such a risk, would be
the best news she could hear of Michael? She started from her seat in
horror as soon as she became conscious that she had entertained the
question. She uncovered the face of the corpse. She had never before
seen those restless features immoveable,—not even in sleep. The eyes had
never before refused to look upon her, the lips to answer to her. If he
no longer cared for her, who should care? The feeling of desolation came
over her strongly; and when her heart bounded for an instant at the
thought of her wealth, and then sank, as a vivid picture came before her
of Michael struggling and sinking in this night’s stormy sea, she was
completely over-powered. The light swam before her eyes, the corpse
seemed to rise up in the bed; the gust that swept along the narrow
street, and the clatter of hail against the window at the instant,
terrified her unaccountably. Something grasped her tight round the
throat; something pulled her clothes behind; something looked down from
the top of the bed. Shrieks woke Morgan from the sleep which had just
overtaken her, and brought her down in the dark, stumbling against the
shivering shop-boy, who had come out upon the stairs because he dared
not stay in his own room.
At the sight of Morgan, standing half dressed at the door, Jane became
instantly quiet. She sank into a chair, while Morgan walked straight to
the bed; her first idea being that the old man was not dead, and that
some movement of his had terrified her mistress. When she saw that all
was still, she turned to Jane with an anxious look of inquiry.
“Morgan, Michael is dead; I think he is. I killed him; I am sure I did!”
“No, Miss Jane; there is some difference between wishing a man dead and
killing him!”
“How do you know? Who told you about it?”, asked Jane, with chattering
teeth.
“There is a light in your eyes, and a heat on your cheeks, that told me
long ago more than you knew yourself. I have seen you grow a child
again, my dear, when every body got to regard you as a staid woman.”
“No, no; I wish I was—I wish I was a child again.”
“Why, my dear, what can be more childish than grasping at what you
cannot use, and giving up all that is precious for the sake of what you
grow less and less able to enjoy?”
“God knows I have nothing left that is precious,” murmured Jane, sinking
into tears.
“Yes, you have. Even they that did you the cruelest harm,—that turned
your heart in upon itself for their own selfish ends, could not take
from you all that is precious, as long as God makes men into families.
My dear, if you see nothing to make you forget your gold in what I saw
this morning, you deserve nothing better than gold, and I shall consider
you given over entirely. If you do not despise your money in comparison
with your brother Henry and his lady, it is a pity you are their
sister.”
“His lady! What lady?”
“His wife, ma’am; I saw her this morning. A pretty lady she is,—so
young, and speaking English that I could hardly make out without the
help of her bright face. And there was her father too, who could not
speak to me at all, though he talked fast enough with his daughter. And
Mr. Henry was very busy with his books and papers, in a corner of the
room where they have hung up a curtain, that he may be, in a manner, by
himself; for they have not over-much room. You will see no gold by going
there; but——”
“But why——? I am his sister, and he never took me there; and——”
“You were too rich, Miss Jane, not to want more money; so they waited
till you could not tax them with interfering with your dues. If you had
asked, Mr. Henry would have told you every thing. As it is, he will
bring his wife to-morrow, and you will be all the better friends for
there being no talk of dividing money between you.”
“Ah! Morgan,” said Jane, becoming calm in proportion as she was humbled,
“you will leave me and go to them; you will leave me to such service as
gold can buy!”
“Never, my dear. You must have some one to put you in mind what great
things you can do, and what great things you have done for one whom not
even you could make happy, after all.” And she cast a sorrowful look
upon the corpse. “You will want some one to hush you and bring you round
again when you take such fits as you have had to-night; and this one of
to-night will not be the last, my dear, if you keep your mind and
conscience on the rack about money. You will want somebody to help you
to be thankful if Providence should be graciously pleased to lessen your
wealth. And if the worst comes to the worst, my dear, you will want
somebody to cover your sin before the world, and to watch privately for
any fair moment for softening your heart. So I shall stay by you, and
always maintain what a noble and tender heart you once had, up to this
very midnight, Miss Jane.”
For the next hour,—while her father’s remains lay at hand, and she was
hearing of Henry, and meditating on his story,—Jane felt some of the
disgust at mere wealth, as an object, that is often expressed, but which
was a new feeling to her. Her mind gradually became confused while
contemplating the uncertainty and emptiness of the life that lay before
her; and she dropped asleep in her father’s chair, giving her old friend
opportunity at last to shed the many tears she had repressed under the
appearance of sternness, when to be stern was the truest kindness. She
afterwards preserved a much more distinct recollection than Jane of the
conversation of the night.
CHAPTER IV.
GOSSIPING AUTHORSHIP.
The only article of his father’s property that Henry coveted was the
bird, which Peek had rightly supposed was to be Jane’s. Henry believed
that Teddy had originally been admitted into the household for his sake,
so expressly had it been given into his boyish charge; but he would not
now ask for it the more for this. He would not have allowed his wife to
pick up a pin from any floor of that house, or have stopped a cough,
unasked, with a morsel of candy from the window. But there was one who
remembered how he had begged candy for the bird, in old days, and helped
it to sing, and been mindful of its wants when every one else was too
busy to attend to them. There was one who not only remembered this, (for
Jane had quite as good a memory,) but acted upon the suggestion. Morgan
made bold to carry the bird to Mr. Henry’s lodgings, with his sister’s
love, and moreover with an ample supply of seeds, and a choice bit of
candy to peck at.
There was it amusing itself, now gently twittering, and now pouring out
its song, as one of the short days of winter closed in, and the little
party in Henry’s lodgings prepared for their evening labours. These
three,—Henry, his wife, and his father-in-law,—were at no leisure to
loll by the fireside and talk of war and revolution; or to pass from
gaiety to gaiety, shaking their heads the while about the mine of
treason which was about to be sprung beneath their feet, the perversity
of the people, and the approaching downfall of monarchy. They were
neither treasonable nor perverse, nor desirous of overthrowing the
monarchy; but they resembled the people in so far as it was necessary
for them to work in order to live. These long winter evenings were
favourable to their objects; and now Marie lighted the lamp, brought out
paper and ink, and applied herself to her task, while her father and her
husband sat down together to compose that which she should afterwards
transcribe. Henry’s literary occupation was not merely classical
proof-correcting; though this was his principal resource for bread. He
was the largest,—almost the sole contributor to a very popular
publication, which, by its talent, and, yet more, its plain speaking,
gave great annoyance to certain of the ministry, much satisfaction to
the opposition, and to a large proportion of the reading population of
London. Henry would have acknowledged to all the world, if he could,
that the work owed much of its value and attraction to the assistance of
his father-in-law, who had lived long enough in England to understand a
great deal of its domestic as well as foreign political interests, and
brought to his task a large share of knowledge and wisdom from his
observation of the affairs of the continent, and his experience of their
vicissitude. M. Verblanc was one of the earliest emigrants to this
country, whither he came intending to deposit his daughter, and return
to be useful; but the march of events was too rapid. Moderate men had
lost their influence, and ran but too much risk of losing their heads,
and he stayed to be useful here till his country should stretch forth
her arms again to welcome such men as he. Henry Farrer had become
attached to his daughter while she was residing with the Stephenses; and
as there seemed to M. Verblanc a strong probability that the children of
two very rich fathers would not long remain very poor, he countenanced
their early marriage, resolving to work to the utmost in their service
till he should be able to recover some of Marie’s intended dower.
Marie was writing out an article from her husband’s short-hand,—an act
to which she had become so accustomed that it did not interfere with her
attention to what was going on at the other end of the table, or prevent
her interposing an occasional remark.
“And are the Mexican cocks benefited?” she asked, in allusion to
something they were talking about. “Do the cock-fighters give up their
sport on account of this tax?”
“The sport is much checked, my dear. The government gets only about
45,000 dollars a year by this tax, so that there cannot be much
cock-fighting.”
“Well, then, I wish you would put in your advice for a very heavy tax on
guillotining. Where is there so barbarous a sport?”
“You are for putting a moral power into the hands of government, Marie,—
a power of controlling the people’s pursuits and tastes. Is such a power
a good?”
“Is it not? Cock-fighting may be checked; therefore may the drinking of
spirits, and the playing with dice. And no one thinks worse than you of
gin and gaming. I am just copying what you say about gin.”
“But the same power may tempt the people to game in lotteries, and drive
them to engage in smuggling; and tyrannize over them in many ways. When
taxes are raised upon what men eat and drink and use, there may be, and
there always is, a great inconsistency in the moral lectures that they
practically give the people. They say, for instance,—‘You must not use
hair-powder or corn; but come and try your luck for a 30,000_l._ prize.’
‘If you wish for tobacco, you must smuggle it: but we must make you pay
for keeping yourself clean with soap, and putting salt into your
children’s food, and trying to let light and air enough into your house
for them to live by.’”
“Well, but this would be abusing their power. Could they not do like the
Mexican people—tax bad sports—tax luxuries?”
“And who is to decide what sports are bad, and what articles are
luxuries? If there is nobody to contend that cock-fighting and
bull-baiting are virtuous sports, there are many opinions on
fox-hunting, and snipe-shooting, and country fairs, and village dances.
And as for luxuries,—where is the line which separates them from
necessaries?”
“Ah! our washerwoman looked very earnest indeed when she said, ‘I must
have my little dish of tea—I am fit for nothing without.’ And I suppose
our landlord says the same of his port-wine; and certainly every
nobleman thinks he must have men-servants and horses and carriages.”
“I do not see, for my part, how government has any more business to
decide upon what articles must be made dear to the people, than an
emperor has to settle how his subjects shall fasten their shoes.”
“Well, but what are they to tax?”
“Property. All that government has a right to do in taxation, is to
raise what money is necessary; and its main duty is to do it in the
fairest proportion possible. It has nothing to do with how people spend
the rest of their money, and has no business to alter the prices of
things, for the sake of exercising a moral power, or any power.”
“Perhaps the meddling would be saved by the government taking the
articles of luxury themselves, instead of taking money upon them. But
they would need large warehouses for all the strange things that would
be gathered in; and they must turn merchants. I wonder whether that plan
has ever been tried?”
“Yes, in China. The Sun of the Celestial Empire took his taxes in kind,—
chiefly in food.”
“And so became a great rice-merchant.”
“And agriculture was improved to a prodigious degree.”
“Improved! then I suppose there would be a great increase of whatever
good things your government might choose to levy?”
“Up to a certain point, taxation of every kind acts as a stimulus. But
that point is easily and usually passed. The necessity of answering the
calls of the state rouses men’s industry and invention; and if the
taxation continue moderate, the people may be gainers, on the whole, by
the stimulus. But if the burden grows heavier as men’s exertions
increase, they not only lose heart, but that which should produce future
wealth goes to be consumed without profit; and the means of further
improvement are taken away.”
“Ah! how often,” exclaimed M. Verblanc, “have the late rulers of France
been told that taxation takes from the people, not only the wealth which
is brought into the treasury, and the cost of collecting it, but all the
values of which it obstructs the creation! How often were they exhorted
to look at Holland, and take warning!”
“There is a case _apropos_ to what we are writing. Down with it! ‘What
country could compare itself with Holland, when Holland was the empress
of commerce, and the nursing mother of wealth? What befell her? Her
industry slackened, her traffic declined, her wealth wasted, and she
knew, at length, the curse of pauperism. Why? Her own committees of
investigation have declared that this change is owing to the devouring
taxation, which, not content with appropriating her revenue, next began
to absorb her capital. First, the creation of values was limited; then
it was encroached upon; and from that day has Holland been sliding from
her pre-eminence. From the very nature of the decline, it must proceed
with accelerated speed, if it be not vigorously checked; so that Holland
seems all too likely to forfeit her place among the nations.’—Will that
do, Marie?”
“O yes; but you must give two or three more examples. At least, when I
wrote themes at school, I was bidden to give always three examples.”
“With all my heart. It would be but too easy to find three times three.
What next, sir? Spain?”
“Spain, if you will. But one need go no farther than Marie’s own unhappy
country. Would her king have been murdered,—would the people have
defiled their emancipation with atrocities, if they had not been sunk in
poverty, and steeped in injuries, by a devouring taxation? That taxation
might, I verily believe, have been borne, as to its amount; but that
amount was taken, not at all from the rich and noble, but wholly from
the industrious. The rich and noble spent their revenue as much as if
they had been duly taxed; while the industrious paid, first their
income, and then their capital, till the labourers, whose hire was thus
kept back from them, rose up against the rich, and scattered them to the
winds of heaven. The oppressors are removed; but there is no recovery of
the substance which they wasted. The impoverished may now come forth,
and raise their cry of famine before the face of heaven, but the food
that was taken from them there is none to restore.”
“So much for poor France!” said Henry, writing rapidly. “Now for Spain.”
“Take but one Spanish tax,—take but the Alcavala, and you have
sufficient reason why, with her prime soil, her wealth of metals, her
colonies whither to send her superfluous consumers, Spain is wretched in
her poverty. The alcavala (the monstrous per centage on all articles,
raw or manufactured, as often as they are sold) must encroach more and
more largely on the capital which is the material of wealth. Under the
alcavala, Spain could not but be ruined.”
“Except in those provinces where there was no alcavala—Catalonia and
Valencia. They bore up long after all others had sunk. There, Marie!
There are your three examples. We have no room for the many more that
rise up.”
“Not for England?”
“England! You do not think England on the road to ruin, my dear? You do
not yet understand England’s resources.”
“Perhaps not. But you told me of eight hundred bankruptcies within the
last seven months. Have you no practice of taxing your capital?”
“We have a few taxes,—bad taxes,—which are paid out of capital,—as my
sister Jane will tell you. She knows something now of how legacies are
reduced by the duties government demands. It is a bad practice to lessen
property in the act of transference. Such taxes consume capital, and
obstruct its circulation. But we have not many such. In one sense or
another, to be sure, every tax may be proved to come out of capital,
more or less; but almost all ours are paid out of our revenue: and so
will be almost any that can be proposed, provided the amount be not
increased. With the revenue that England has, and the ambition that her
people entertain not to sink in society, exertion will be made to keep
her capital entire, as long as there is any reasonable hope of success.
We shall invent, and improve, and save, to a vast extent, before we let
our capital be sacrificed.”
“In the case of your property tax?”
“Why not? The purpose of a property tax would be to take from us, not
more but less than we pay already; less by the cost of collection which
would be saved. If our revenue now pays the greater sum, it would then
well serve for the lesser; and all the better from taxation being then
equalized;—the rich man thus diverting a portion of his unproductive
expenditure,—to the great relief of the industrious capitalist who now
pays much more than his due share. O, it must be a huge property tax
indeed that would trench upon our capital! Why, my dear, we might pay
off our great national debt of nearly 300,000,000_l._ next year, without
using our capital for the purpose.”
“Then I think you had better do it before your great debt gets any
larger. Do you think it will go on growing?”
“Our ministry and parliament seem determined that it shall. Meantime, we
are playing with a Sinking Fund, and making believe to pay off, while we
are only slipping the Dead Weight round and round our necks, and feeling
it grow heavier at every turn.”
“I think this is child’s play but too much like our poor French
administrations that have beggared a nation,” observed M. Verblanc. “Get
rid of your debt, you wise English; let a Frenchman advise you. If
indeed you can pay off your 300,000,000_l._ without impairing your
capital, do it quickly.”
“We are at war,” said Henry, despondingly; “and, what is worse, the debt
is declared to be popular.”
“The time will come when a burdened peace will find you tired of your
debt.”
“Or rather our children. Even then I would advise an immediate exertion
to pay it off,—yes, even if it should amount to twice three hundred
millions.”
“Six hundred millions! Was ever such a debt heard of! What must your
future rulers be if they thus devise the ruin of your fine country!”
“If they exceed that sum again, I would still struggle to pay it,”
persisted Henry. “To be sure, one can hardly conceive of a debt of more
than 600,000,000_l._; but one can still less conceive of a nation being
willing to pay the annual interest upon it. Let us see! I dare say
nearly thirty millions[A].”
-----
Footnote A:
Lest there should be any man, woman, or child in England, who requires
to be reminded of the fact, we mention that our national debt amounts
at present to 800,000,000_l._, and that the annual interest upon it is
28,000,000_l._
-----
“Ah! that interest is the great grievance. If the debt be allowed to
accumulate, your nation may be subjected, within half a century from
this time, to a permanent charge of interest which would of itself have
sufficed to pay for all the wars from the time the debt began. Yes, this
annual raising of interest is the grievance;—the transferring such
enormous sums from the pockets of some classes of men into hands where
it would never naturally find its way. Your ministers may say what they
will about the debt being no actual loss to the country, since the whole
transaction passes within the country;—this does not lessen the burden
to those who have to pay over their earnings to the national creditor,
whose capital has been blown away in gunpowder at sea, and buried with
the dead bodies of their countrymen abroad.”
“Besides,” suggested Marie, “if there is no mischief in carrying on the
debt because the transaction passes within the country, there could be
no harm in paying it off, since that transaction would also be only a
transference.”
“Very true. If all were assessed to pay off the public creditor, there
would be no total loss. And as for the real evils,—the diversion of
capital from its natural channels, and the oppression of industry,—the
remedy of these would be so inestimable a relief, that in a little while
the parties who paid the largest share would wonder at their own ease,
and at the long delay of the nation in shaking off its burdens.”
“Like the heir who has resolution to sell a part of his mortgaged estate
in order to disencumber the remainder. But who are they that would pay
the largest share?”
“The richest, of course. All must contribute something. Even the
labourer would willingly spare a portion of his earnings for the sake of
having his earnings to himself for ever after. But by the aristocracy
was this debt proposed; for their sakes was it incurred; by them is it
accumulated; while it is certain that the burden is very far from being
duly borne by them. From them, therefore, should the liquidation chiefly
proceed.”
“But did not you say that parliament claps its hands at every proposal
to burden posterity?”
“Yes: but what kind of a parliament? If Mr. Grey should ever obtain his
great object,—if there should ever be a parliament through which the
people may speak, and if the people should then declare themselves
content to go on bearing the burden that the aristocracy of this day is
imposing upon them, why, let the people have their way; and I, for one,
shall wish them joy of their patience. But if, when the people can
protest, and make their protests heard, they call for such an assessment
as shall include all, but fall heaviest on those through whom the debt
was incurred, they will do that which is not only just in the abstract,
but (like all that is essentially just) that which is most easy, most
prudent, and must prove most fortunate.”
“So you venture to write that down as you speak it,” said Marie. “Will
you let the word ‘easy’ stand?”
“Yes; because it is used as a comparative term. Almost any plan would be
more easy than sustaining this burden from year to year. A temporary
inconvenience only would be the result of getting rid of it. I question
whether any one person would be ruined; and of the many who must
sacrifice a part of their property, every one would reap certain
advantages which must in time compensate, or more than compensate,
himself or his children. To the bulk of the people the blessing would be
incalculable. It is not for those who most proudly boast of the
resources of the country to doubt whether the thing can be done.”
“A rich and noble country is yours,” observed M. Verblanc; “and the
greater is the wonder and the shame that it contains so much misery,—
such throngs of the destitute. Enormous as has been and now is the
expenditure of your government, how have you not only sustained your
resources, but augmented them! How have you, while paying for your wars,
improved your lands, and your shipping, and your manufactures, and built
docks, and opened canals, and stretched out roads! And while the nation
has thus been growing rich, what crowds of your people have been growing
poor!”
“And how should it be otherwise, when the pressure of public loans falls
so unequally as in England? Fearful as is the amount, the inequality of
pressure is a far greater evil. It is very possible,—when we consider
the excitement afforded to industry and invention by a popular war,—that
the capital of the country would not have been very much greater than
now if we had been spared the wars and other wasteful expenditure of the
public money of the last twenty years; but the distribution is in
consequence most faulty, and the future incumbrances of the people
fearful to contemplate.”
“From your rulers having carried their system of borrowing too far.
There is, to be sure, all the difference in the world between an
individual borrowing for the sake of trade, or profit in some form or
other, and governments borrowing that which is to be dissipated in the
air or the sea, or shed upon the ground, so that it can be no more
gathered up again than the rain which sinks into the thirsty soil.”
“Why cannot war-money be raised from year to year,” asked Marie, “so
that the nation might know what it was about in undertaking a war? When
my father rebuilt his château, he paid for each part as it proceeded,
and so brought away with him no reproach of debt.”
“When people are careless of their heirs, love, as rulers are of the
people’s posterity, they find it easier to borrow and spend, than to
make their spendings and their levies agree. When rulers are afraid to
ask for so much as they desire to spend, they escape, by proposing
loans, the unpleasantness of taxing. Heavily as our governments have
taxed us, they have been actually afraid to tax us enough;—enough for
the purposes proposed to the nation.”
“They were afraid of making the people impatient.”
“Just so; and the people have shown what the rulers of many centuries
have considered an ‘ignorant impatience of taxation.’ That is, the
nominal representatives of the people have encouraged expensive projects
for which the people have shown themselves unwilling to pay. The rulers
and the people thus appear unreasonable to each other; while the blame
chiefly rests in calling those the representatives of the people who are
really not so. Mr. Grey and the friends of the people are doing what
they can to bring the two parties to an understanding. When this is
done, I trust there will be no going to war at the expense of future
generations,—no running into expenses for which the means are not
already provided.”
“They who first devised these public loans could not have guessed what
they were doing, Henry.”
“They never imagined that any one would so improve upon their practice
of borrowing, as not to provide for the payment at some definite time.
If,—as may happen on the unexpected breaking out of a war when the
nation is not in very favourable circumstances,—it is perilous to tax it
heavily and suddenly, it may be expedient to raise the supplies in a way
which will enable the people to pay more conveniently, at their own
leisure. But the period should be fixed when the money is raised. The
money should be raised upon terminable annuities; so that, at least,
every one may know how long the burden is to endure. This is a plain
rule; and happy would it have been for the country if it had been
observed from the day when——”
“When its system of loans began?”
“I would hardly say that; for I do not see how the rulers in the
troubled times of the Revolution could have governed the country without
loans. The tax-payers were so divided in their loyalty at the time, that
King William and his councillors would not have been able to raise money
enough for the struggle by taxation, and would only have made themselves
hated for the attempt. But a foreign war, undertaken by an undivided
people, is a wholly different affair; and the advisers of George II. had
no business to carry on the borrowing system.”
“They found the debt large, I suppose, and left it larger; according to
the methods of borrowers from posterity.”
“Yes; it amounted, when it came into their hands, to fifty-two millions,
having grown to this since the Revolution, when it was only 664,000_l._
It is now five times fifty-two millions.”
“O, make haste and tell these things to your rich men; and they will
plan how soon this monstrous charge may be got rid of.”
“There is a great deal to be done first, my dear. We have first to
convince them that this debt is not a very good thing.—As long as they
escape paying their due share of the interest, and are aware that the
liquidation must, in a considerable proportion, proceed from them, there
is no lack of reasons, convincing to their minds, why a large national
debt must be a great national blessing.”
“It attaches the people to the government, perhaps. Is that what they
say?”
“Yes; as if the people will not always be the most attached to the
government that most consults their prosperity. What can they think of a
government that——”
He stopped suddenly as Marie put her fingers on her lips, and appeared
to be listening. She ran to the door and threw it wide open,—in time to
hear a shuffling down the dark stair-case.
“I am sure there was somebody at the door,” said she, hesitating whether
to shut it again. Her father shrugged his shoulders as the cold air blew
in. Henry observed that if the people of the house wanted anything, they
would come again; and Marie therefore, after calling from the landing
and receiving no answer, returned to her seat as before; observing that
it was not the first time she had believed some person to have remained
outside the door.
Her husband was writing down to her father’s dictation about fallacies
in regard to the debt;—such fallacies as that the parchment securities
of the public creditor were an absolute creation of capital; whereas
they were only the representatives of values which were actually sunk
and lost;—that the annual transfer of the millions required for the
interest was so much added to the circulation; whereas this very sum
would, in the absence of the debt, have been circulating in a more
profitable manner;—that the public funds afforded a convenience for the
prompt investment of unemployed capital; whereas there would be no lack
of good investments for capital if industry were left free;—and,
finally, that the stocks are an admirable instrument for the
ascertainment of public opinion; whereas a very small amount of debt
would answer this purpose as well as the largest. Nobody would object to
retaining the 664,000_l._ of the revolutionary times for this simple
object.
Marie could not settle well to her employment after this interruption.
Henry forgot it in a moment. He grew earnest; he grew eloquent; and, in
proportion, he grew loud. Nobody came from below, as he had predicted.
Nobody could have wanted anything at the door when Henry was asking so
loudly how it was “possible for the people to be attached to a
government which, &c.” And now, when he was insisting on the first
principle of taxation,—equality,—when he was offering a variety of
illustrative cases, all of which resolved themselves into equality or
inequality,—his little wife came behind him, and laying her hand on his
shoulder, asked him in a whisper whether it was necessary to speak quite
so loud.
“My love, I beg your pardon. I am afraid I have been half-stunning you.
Why did not you speak before? I am very apt to forget the dimensions of
our room,” and he started up laughing, and showed that he could touch
the ceiling with the extremities of his long fingers;—“I am apt to
forget the difference between this chamber and the lofty places where I
used to hold forth at college. Was I very boisterous, love?”
“O, no: but loud enough to be heard beyond these four walls.” And she
glanced towards the door.
“If that be all, any one is welcome to hear what I have to say on
taxation. It will be all printed to-morrow, you know, my dear.”
Marie did know this: but she was not the more willing that her husband
should be overheard exclaiming vehemently about equality,—a word held in
very bad repute in those days, when, if a lady made inquiries of her
linen-draper about the equality of wear of a piece of gingham or calico,
the shopman would shake his head at her for a leveller, as soon as she
had turned her back.
“How,” said M. Verblanc, looking tenderly at his daughter, “how shall I
forgive those who have put dread into the heart that was once as light
as the morning gossamer? How shall I forgive those who taught my child
suspicion?”
“O, father, remember the night——”
“Yes, Marie; I knew it was the thought of that night that prompted you
to caution now.—The night,” he continued to Henry, “when our poor friend
La Raye was arrested at our house. We have reason to believe that we had
all been watched for hours,—that eyes had peeped from every cranny, and
that ears were planted all round us. I myself saw the shadow of a man in
ambuscade, when a passing gleam from the court shone into my hall. I
took no notice, and rejoined La Raye and my child. He slipped out by a
back way, but was immediately taken in the street; and for words spoken
that night, coupled with preceding deeds, he suffered.—Well may my Marie
have learned dread and suspicion!”
“No, father; not well! Nay, Henry, you do not know what warning I had
against it;—warning from one who knew not dread, and would not have
saved her life by so vile an instrument as suspicion.”
Henry bent himself to listen with his whole soul, for now he knew that
Marie spoke of her friend, Madame Roland.
“Yes, I was warned by her that the last impiety is to fear; and the
worst penalty of adversity to suspect. I was warned by her that the
chief danger in civil revolution is to forget green meadows and bright
skies in fields of blood and clouds of smoke; and that those who shrink
from looking fully and kindly even upon those who may be the reptiles of
their race, are less wise than the poor prisoner in the Bastile who made
friendship with his spider instead of trying to flee from it.”
“And she observed her own warning, Marie. How her murderers quailed
before her open gaze!”
“Ah, yes! In her prison, she brought home to her the materials of
happiness; and with them neither dread nor suspicion can co-exist. She
brought back into her own bosom the wild flowers which she had worn
there in her childhood; and the creations of her father, the artist; and
the speculations of her husband, the philosopher; and opened up again
the springs of the intellect, which may gush from the hardest dungeon
walls; and wakened up the voice of her mother to thrill the very heart
of silence; and dismissed one obedient faculty at morn to travel with
the sun, and ride at eve down his last slanting ray with tidings of how
embryo man is working his way into light and freedom; and summoned
another obedient faculty at midnight to paint upon the darkness the
image of regenerated man, with his eye fixed upon science, and his hand
supporting his fellow man, and his foot treading down the painted
trifles and deformed usurpations of the world that is passing away.
Having gazed upon this, what were any spectres of darkness to her,—
whether the scowls of traitors, or an axe hanging by a hair?”
“Would that all who desire that women should have kindliness, and
domestic thoughtfulness, and cheerfulness, and grace, knew your friend
as you knew her, Marie!”
“Then would they learn from what quarter of the moral heavens these
endowments may be fetched by human aspiration. Would they behold
kindliness and lightness of spirit? They must give the consciousness of
being able to bestow, instead of the mere craving to receive, the
support which intellect must yield to intellect, if heart is to answer
to heart. Would they have homely thoughtfulness? They must not obstruct
that full intellectual light in which small things dress themselves in
their most shining beauty, as the little fly that looks dark beneath a
candle shows itself burnished at noon. Let men but lay open the universe
for the spirit of woman to exercise itself in, and they may chance to
see again with what grace a woman about to die can beseech the favour to
suffer more than her companions.”
Of this friend, Marie could not yet speak long. Few and frequent were
her words of remembrance; and Henry had learned that the best kindness
was to let her break off, and go, to carry her strong associations of
love and admiration into her daily business. She now slipped away, and
stood tending her bird, and flattering herself that her dropping tears
were unnoticed, because her face was not seen. Then she filled a chafing
dish, and carried it into the little closet that served her father for a
bedchamber. Then she busied herself about Henry’s coffee, while he, for
her sake, applied himself to finish his task. Presently, even he was
convinced that there was some one at the door who had not knocked.—
Without a moment’s delay he threw open the door, and there stood—no
political or domestic spy—but Jane, with a somewhat pale countenance,
wearing a very unusual expression.
“We are glad to see you here at last, Jane. You are just in time to see
what coffee Marie makes.—But where is Morgan?” looking out on the dark
landing. “You did not come alone in the dark?”
“Yes, I did. I have something to tell you, Henry. Michael is home.”
“Thank God! I hope it is the last time he will alarm you so
thoughtlessly. I dare say he knew all that has happened, though he hid
himself from us.”
“O yes; there was one who must have known where he was all the time, and
told him every thing; for, do you know, he has come home in a curricle
of his own! The first thing he had to say to me was about his horses;
and the next was——”
“What?”
“He is going to be married to-morrow morning!”
In spite of a strong effort, Jane’s countenance was painfully moved
while she announced this. Henry did not convey the comfort he intended
by not being sorry to hear any of the news. He was much relieved by
learning that that which was by nature a marriage long ago, was now to
be made so by law. As for the curricle and horses, though such an
equipage might be unsuitable in appearance with the establishment of a
grocer in Budge-row, this was altogether a matter of taste. It was
certain that Michael could afford himself the indulgence, and it was
therefore a very harmless one.
Henry’s cheerful air and open countenance made his sister feel half
envious. He did not seem to dread the risk of her father’s hard-earned
money being spent much more easily than it had been gained. He seemed to
have forgotten what it is to have made many hundred thousand pounds; and
he certainly knew nothing about the anxiety of keeping it. How should
he?
Marie laughed as she asked how Michael looked in his curricle: it must
be such a strange situation to him! She had never seen Michael. She
wondered whether he looked at all like Henry; and then she sighed. She
thought of the carriages that had been at her disposal in France, and
that she now had not one to offer to her disinherited husband.
“Some more sugar, Marie,” said M. Verblanc, when he had tasted his last
cup of coffee.
Marie went to her cupboard, and brought out the little powdered sugar
that remained at the bottom of the last parcel she had bought. She had
tasted no sugar for some time; and it was by very nice management that
she had been able to procure any for her father. She hoped that what had
been written this week might supply comforts for the next. Meantime,
Jane’s entrance had baffled her calculations about the sugar. Henry
smiled at the disclosure, and helped himself to another cup of coffee,
without sugar. Marie would have borrowed from the woman of the house;
but her father would not allow it. His daughter rightly imagined that he
felt uncertain of being able to pay a debt of a mere luxury, and
therefore did not choose to incur it.
“Ah, well!” said she; “everything will cost us less money, let us hope,
when men have left off fighting like dogs, that they may render
peaceable men beggars. They make us pay for their wars out of our tea
and our sugar,—and out of our heart’s blood, papa, when they make us
deny our parents what they expect at our hands.”
M. Verblanc wished that Marie could have, during this time of war, the
sugar that was now growing in her beloved garden at home. Beet-root was
now largely used for making sugar in France; and M. Verblanc had learned
that the produce of his estates was considerable. These estates had been
bought in by a friend; and it was hoped that they would in time be
restored to the rightful owner.
Marie’s scorn was excited by the idea of beet-root growing where her
parterres had looked gay, and where the urns, and statues, and small
fountains, originated by her taste, could have little congeniality with
so thoroughly common and useful a produce as beet-root. She mentioned
one field, and another, and another, which would answer the purpose
quite as well as her garden. As she lightly mapped out the places she
mentioned, Jane’s eye followed her pencil as eagerly as Henry’s. She
asked of M. Verblanc, at length, whether the tenure of land was yet
considered secure in France.
“Of some lands, yes,” answered he. “If, for example, you will buy our
estates, and grow beet-root, no one will turn you out; and it will give
us true satisfaction to see our lands pass into such honourable hands.”
To Henry’s surprise, his sister seemed meditative. Marie looked up,
smiling. “Will you buy our lands?”
“She cannot,” said Henry. “The law is against investing capital in an
enemy’s country.”
“Is it?” said Jane, quickly.
“One would suppose you were really thinking of it, Jane. If you want to
try your hand at farming, there is abundance of land in England.”
Jane muttered that in England there would also be an income tax
immediately.
“And what of that? If you invested your money abroad, you would not go
and live there, would you?”
“I am sure an income tax is enough to drive away all who have any
substance. To leave one no choice! To make one pay, whether one will or
not! I should not wonder to see every independent man in the kingdom
contrive to get abroad with his money, somehow or other.”
“I should. Every person of substance has not a brother Michael, with a
doubtful wife and an ambiguous family; or a brother Henry, living in two
small rooms, with a little Frenchwoman for a wife.”
“’Tis not that, Henry. But, as I said, this way of taxing leaves one no
choice——”
“But of paying one’s due share of what ought to fall equally upon all.
Now tell me, Jane, what choice has the man whose family obliges him to
spend his whole income in commodities? What choice have Patience and her
husband, for instance, of how much they shall pay to the state? It is
not with them as it is with you, that you may contribute to the war or
not, according as you choose to have wine, and servants, and a carriage.
The necessaries that you and Morgan consume cannot cost you much, I
should think,—cannot yield much to the state.”
Jane cautiously replied that everything depended on what was meant by
much and little.
“Well; I mean that Patience’s eight children and three servants must
consume much more butter, and fuel, and calicoes, and bread, and soap,
and shoes, than you and Morgan.”
This could not be denied.
“What choice, then, is left to them? Under the system of taxing
commodities, there is a choice left to those who least need it; while,
if they do not choose to contribute, the poorer, who have no choice,
must bear an increased burden. Oh, Jane! I could not be sorry to see you
contributing as much from your wealth—money,—as the man who makes your
shoes in his wealth—labour! He pays something to the state from every
shilling that passes through his hands. Whether you pay something from
every guinea you touch, I need not ask you. Has Peek told you of the
rhyme that our labourers have at their tongues’ ends just now?”
“Peek has not; but Michael told me of one he had heard several sing by
the road-side,—something about how they divide their labour between one
and another;—among all but themselves, they seem to think.”
“It is the same:—
‘For the Debt till eight,
For the Church till ten:
To defend the State
With guns and men,
I must work till noon, so weary, O!
Then a spell for the Judge,
And two for the Crown;
Sure they need not grudge,
When the sun goes down,
One hour for myself and my deary, O!’”
While Marie was pitying the labourer, and wondering how far his
statement was exaggerated, Jane was thinking aloud how willing she
should be to work with head and hands for Church and State, the Army and
the Law.
“You had rather do this than pay, because your labour is not to you the
wealth that labour is to a poor man.”
“And partly because I really have not enough to do,” said Jane. “Michael
does not seem to wish that I should keep the books any longer; and I
cannot be making frocks for Patience’s children all day long, so little
as I have been accustomed to needle-work for some time. I wish you could
put me in the way of paying my taxes in the way the poor man does.”
“And so take the work out of the poor man’s hands? No, Jane. You must
pay in gold, sister.”
“Is there no sort of work that poor labourers cannot do?” asked Marie,
with a private view to earning sugar and snuff for her father.
“Not that will serve the purposes of the government, my dear. I remember
hearing, some time ago, of a benevolent lady who was making bread seals
to convert the Jews.”
“And I,” said M. Verblanc, “of at least twenty gentle creatures who
distilled rose-water one whole summer——”
“To wash the blackamoor white?”
“To civilize the Hottentot. But the results——”
“History does not record, any more than Jane’s feats of knitting, and
other worthy exercises. Why, Jane, when you have the money ready—the
very thing wanted—why should you offer your taxes in any other form? If
you really want to help the state, suppose you raise a regiment
yourself. You and Morgan can make the red coats, if you want something
to do; or, if that is too fearful a service for a peaceable woman, you
can take upon yourself the half-pay of some fine old officer or two; or
you might build a bridge, or set up a Preventive establishment, (nothing
is more wanted just now,) or do a hundred things that would save the
poor labourer’s pocket, and not interfere with his market for labour.
Such a free gift to the state would immortalize you; and, depend upon
it, it would be far better for you than buying French land in violation
of English law.”
“How they make a mockery of us helpless women, whom they have first made
helpless!” said Marie, while wrapping Jane in her shawl. “We will not
mind them till we have reason for shame at being helpless.”
Neither Jane nor any one else could feel uncomfortable at anything that
Henry said, his manner was so playful and kind. He was now reaching his
hat, in order to walk home with his sister, whom no inducement was
strong enough to tempt into a vehicle which must be hired. She preferred
walking, she always declared, being conscientious enough, however, to
protest invariably against any one accompanying her; but Henry actually
wished to carry his manuscript to the printer this evening, and the
brother and sister set off together.
The weather was most disagreeable,—bitterly cold, with a fog, irritating
alike to the windpipe, the vision, and the temper. The glow-worm lamps,
with each its faint green halo, lost their use among the moving lights
that perplexed the middle of the street. Jane had judged rightly this
time in wishing to walk; for the groping on the foot-way was undoubtedly
a less evil than the confusion of carriages. The occasional backing, the
frequent clash, the yells, the oaths of the drivers, and now and then
the snorting of a frightened horse, and the groans of a wounded one,
showed that riding in a carriage is not always the extremity of bliss
that some little children believe it to be. Henry held his sister’s arm
tight within his, and she held her peace no less tenaciously while they
were every moment walking point blank up against a broad man, or a
slender lamp-post, or innocently knocking down a wearied woman, or a
child who was tracing his mother’s apron upwards in hopes of at length
finding her hand. After a while, it struck Jane that this was a case in
which the longest way about would prove the nearest way home. By
striking down one of the small streets leading to the river, they might
escape all the carriages, and most of the people, and get to Budge Row
all the sooner for making a small circuit. She believed she could engage
not to lead her brother into the river; which was the chief peril in
this path.
“I think there is an opening to the left, here, Jane.”
“Which way does the fog drift? I think there is a draught from the
right, from the west.”
“Nay: surely it comes in our faces. No matter! you shall not go a step
farther till I have made out whether we cannot now turn eastwards. Do
stand still a moment.”
While he was down on his knees, poring over the pavement, to see which
way the stones were laid, Jane observed that it was a shame they had no
more light from the lamps, as they paid for the great new improvement in
lighting,—viz: adding two threads to each burner.
“It is no fault of any one’s,” said Henry. “We may go on thickening
wicks till we use up all our cotton, and we shall make no progress in
lighting. We must make out some new principle.”
“What principle?”
“O, if I knew, I should not have left it to be told now. All I know is
that our streets are not perfectly lighted, and so I conclude that some
better principle remains to be discovered. That is all.”
“All!” thought Jane. “I think it means much;—every thing,” she continued
within herself, while rapidly following out the clew afforded by this
simple act of faith of her brother’s.
There was an opening to the eastward; and they pursued it, feeling
rather than seeing that the river lay open on their right hand. They
seemed to have this bank all to themselves. Except a public house or
two, with open door and lighted windows, all was dark and silent;—so
silent, that when three clocks had done striking their long story, one
after the other, the plash of oars was heard from the water. Presently,
there was a little clatter among the boats moored near the margin, and
the walkers pitied the rowers who had to encounter worse perils than
those of Holborn and the Strand. In another instant, they stood stock
still in a prodigious consternation. The yells and oaths left behind in
Fleet-street were nothing to those which now burst forth immediately in
front of them. There seemed to be threatening, struggling, grappling,
fighting,—all in noise and darkness.
“Back! let us go back!” cried Jane.
There was no use in attempting it. People poured out of the public
houses, and seemed by their multitude, to drop from the clouds or come
up in swarms from the river. As soon as Jane moved back, she met with a
buffet; and was so pushed about, that she began to fear slipping into
the water if she left the spot she occupied. The only thing to be done
was to plant themselves against a house, and wait for an open way, or
for light. Light came;—a gleam or two from an opened upper window,
whence black heads projected, marvellously exaggerated by the fog; and
then, after several abortive experiments with naked candles, a torch,—a
flaring red torch, which did more execution on the gloom than all the
cotton wicks in Cheapside could have done.
“A smuggling fray! Those are smugglers. How daring! to come up so far,”
said Henry.
Jane was making her observations, and correcting her imaginings. She was
scarcely aware till now that she had always fancied a smuggler a large,
stout, grim man, with a bit of red drapery dangling somewhere about him;
a leathern belt; a pistol in his hand, and a keg just before, or just
behind, or just on one side of him. But one of these men was slight and
wan; and another was deformed; and a third wore a brown coat, like any
other man; and none scowled as smugglers and patriots always do in
pictures, but one laughed, and the rest looked vexed or angry in a plain
way. She even thought that the one in a brown coat looked very like a
shopman,—very like Michael.
Thus much was ascertainable while the shifting light from the torch
danced from tub to face, and from the packages on the shore to the
shadowy boat behind, with still a black figure or two in it.
“How very daring!” exclaimed Henry again.
“Yes,” said a voice from a window immediately in their rear. “These are
the days for smuggling frolics. These fellows hold that they are in
favour with the minister, as ’tis certain they are maintained by him.”
“By his multiplying the customs and excise duties, you mean.”
“Ay, sir. Multiplying and raising them. The story goes that these
fellows drink the minister’s health first, in every keg they open; and
the saying is, that if the seditious do as they say,—pull the minister’s
carriage about his ears some day,—he will have a guard of smugglers rise
up of their own accord to bear him harmless. But they don’t like the
talk of an income tax, sir.”
“It is no longer mere talk. The assessment has begun.”
“Sure, sir, it has. And that may have made them desperate in their
daring, which their coming here looks like. But they could not have
chosen their night better. ’Tis a wonder to me how any body could watch
them. Fudge! What are they after now?”
A struggle ended in making the torch more efficacious than was
contemplated. A smuggler staved a cask. Whether by accident or design
was never known,—but the torch dropped into the rivulet of spirit, and
it turned to fire. The blue flame shot up, waved, hovered, looked very
beautiful in itself, but cast a fearful light on the brawlers who rushed
over one another to extricate their shins from the flame. Jane saw a
really grim face at last. A man in a prodigious rage had been fighting
with the brown-coated smuggler who was like Michael. The angry man had
got the better of the other, and was now lifting him up at arms length,
with the strength of an elephant, and the ferocity of a tiger. He dashed
him down with a sound that was heard through the din.
“It _is_ Michael!” cried the brother and sister at the same moment. They
had both seen his face high in the air. They burst through the throng,
and reached the body,—the dead body; for the neck was broken against a
cask.
As Jane kneeled beside him, in front of the flickering blaze, she
replaced the head, horribly bent backwards as it was, and then looked up
in Henry’s face with kindled eyes, to say,
“He is gone; and he is not married. He is gone this time.”
CHAPTER V.
HOW TO ENTERTAIN STRANGERS.
It was long before Henry could get back. He had to convey Jane home, and
recover her to a safer state of mind, and then to communicate the
intelligence to Patience; and then,—more painful still,—to the young
woman whom he always regarded as Michael’s wife. At the end of four
hours, when it was nearly one in the morning, he knocked at the door of
his lodgings, and was instantly let in by his landlord. He perceived
that Mr. Price looked very sulky; and he could obtain no answer to his
enquiries about whether Mrs. Farrer had been uneasy at his not
returning. He bounded up stairs, and Marie was in his arms before he saw
how pale was her face, and how swollen her eyes. The fire burned dull,
the lamp only glimmered, and there was an air of indescribable confusion
in the room; so that, occupied as Henry was with what had happened, he
could not help feeling almost bewildered as to whether this was his
lodging or not.
“I thought you never, never would have come,” sobbed Marie.
“My love, there has been but too much reason for my staying so long.”
“But there was so much reason for your being at home! Henry, they have
carried away my father.”
Marie could not tell where they had taken him. She knew nothing of
English law and justice. She had had no one to help her; for Price
himself introduced the officers of justice; and Mrs. Price was so stiff
and cold in her manner, that Marie was obliged to leave off appealing to
her. All she knew was that some men walked in while her father was
reading, and she writing; that they showed a paper which her father did
not know the use of; searched every corner of the apartments, turning
every article of furniture out of its place, and taking possession at
last of a pocket-pistol, of beautiful workmanship, which M. Verblanc
valued as the gift of an old military friend. M. Verblanc himself was
also carried off, because he had not given notice to the magistrates of
having come to live in this place.
“How is this?” enquired Henry of Price who now entered the room. “The
arrest of aliens, and the search for weapons, can legally take place
only in the day time.”
“They reckon it day time in this sort of thing till nine o’clock, and it
wanted full ten minutes to nine when they came.”
“What did you know about this before I went out?” enquired Henry,
turning the light of the lamp full upon Price’s face.
“Only what most lodging-house keepers know in these days. I was called
upon to give an account in writing of all the aliens in my house.”
Henry conjectured very truly that the Prices were at the bottom of the
whole affair. Mrs. Price had a very vigorous imagination; and she had
given out among her neighbours that M. Verblanc was certainly a man of
high rank; that he scribbled over more writing paper than any body she
ever saw, except the gentleman that called himself his son-in-law; and
that the writing must be letters, because nobody ever knew what became
of it, and he went out regularly once a day,—no doubt to the
post-office, for he never was known to send letters there by any other
hand.
Marie was obliged to be comforted with the assurance that this arrest
would be only a temporary inconvenience; that such things were
constantly happening in these days; and that there was no doubt of her
father’s being released the next morning. Henry would go at the earliest
practicable hour, and he did not doubt of bringing M. Verblanc home with
him.
Before the earliest practicable hour, however, other engagements
occurred to prevent Henry’s executing his design. Price came in, while
the husband and wife were standing by the fire, mournfully discussing
their plans for this day when so much was to be done. Price wished to
give notice that he must have his rent this morning. He had gone without
it too long, and he had no intention of waiting any longer. Henry was
not aware that the time of payment was past. He understood that it was
to be quarterly: but Marie produced the little that she had laid by for
the purpose; and Henry was reminded to feel in his pocket for the
manuscripts that were to have been carried to their destination the
night before. They were gone. His pocket was empty.
Never mind! This was no time to think about disappointments in the way
of authorship; and, as for the gain,—it was but too probable that Henry
would presently have more money than he desired. Price seemed to have
some idea of this kind; but not the less did he give notice that his
lodgers must turn out at the end of the week. The rooms were already
let; so there was no use in saying any thing about it. Henry could only
suppose that tidings of Michael’s death, and the manner of it, had
reached the house, and that it was concluded that, as the one brother
had been a smuggler, the other must be a swindler.
Before Price was out of the room, came the printer’s man for the
manuscript which had been lost. While he was still shaking his head over
Marie’s calculation of how soon she could make another copy from the
short-hand notes she had happily preserved, the matter was settled by
the publisher sending to ask for the last Greek proof Henry had had to
correct, and to give notice that this was his final transaction with Mr.
Farrer, who need not trouble himself to write any thing more for the
publication of which he had been the chief support. No further
communication from his pen would be accepted. A receipt in form for the
money now sent was requested and given, and the cash immediately paid
over to Price in discharge of the remainder of the rent. The few
shillings left were, when the husband and wife were alone again, pushed
from one to the other with the strange impulse of mirth which often
arises under the extremest pressure of vexation and sorrow.
“Marie, what do you think of all this?” asked her husband, meeting her
eye, which was fixed wistfully upon him.
“I think that if my poor countrymen have their errors, the English have
at least their whims. It is at least remarkable that on this morning,
when there is so much to call you abroad, one after another should come
to keep you at home.”
“Very remarkable!” was all that Henry said before he relapsed into
reverie. He roused himself, and snatched up his hat, assuring his wife,
however, that it was yet, he believed, too early for him to obtain
access to her father, or justice on his behalf. He had not proceeded far
down stairs when he was met by three gentlemen, who requested two
minutes’ conversation with him. They came to invite him to be present at
a meeting to be held for the purpose of declaring attachment to the
constitution.
“Impossible, gentlemen. You are not aware that my only brother died
suddenly last night. I cannot appear needlessly in public to-day.”
And he would have bowed them out; but they had something more to say
than condolence. As his attending the meeting was thus unfortunately
rendered impossible, perhaps he would sign the address to his Majesty.
“That will depend on what it contains. I own I do not see the immediate
occasion for such a protestation; but if the address should express what
I think and feel, I shall have no objection to put my name to it.”
The spokesman conceived that, as every true Englishman must be attached
to the constitution, there could be no risk to any true Englishman in
engaging to declare his attachment.
“Certainly, sir, if we were all agreed as to what the constitution is;
but this is the very point on which men differ. One person thinks that a
dozen or two of trials and transportations of ignorant and educated men
for sedition, and a doubling of the taxes, and an overawing of the House
of Commons, are measures of support to the constitution; while others
consider them as violations. Therefore I must fully understand what is
involved in the address before I sign it; and can, in the mean time,
pledge myself to nothing, gentlemen.”
The visitors looked at one another, and departed,—one sighing, another
giggling, and the third looking back till the last moment,—like a child
who is bidden to look at a traitor, and almost expects to see him turn
into some rare animal,—a Turk or an ourang-outang.
This time Henry got as far as the house-door. There he was turned back
by the commissioners who were employed in making the returns for the
income tax. In vain Henry assured them that he had hitherto had no
income, and that, as soon as he could ascertain whether he was to have
any of his brother’s money, and how much, he would let the gentlemen
know. They were not content with assertions given in the street, and, as
Henry had no doubt of finally satisfying them in two minutes, he invited
them up stairs.
“You are aware, sir, that we are sworn to the most inviolable secrecy as
to the affairs of individuals; that we are empowered, when dissatisfied,
to call for written explanations of the resources of living, and even to
impose an oath, if necessary.”
“Very needful precautions, I should think, considering how strong is the
temptation to concealment and fraud, and how very easy evasion must be
in a great number of cases. Very necessary precautions, if they could
but be effectual.”
“Effectual, sir! Do you suppose we shall violate our oath of secrecy?”
“By no means; but it is impossible that confidence should not often be
reciprocally shaken, when the affairs of individuals are thus
involuntarily exposed. This inquisition is a heavy grievance, indeed,
and it opens the door to a very pernicious use of influence.”
“Well, sir, every tax must have its disadvantages; and when a large
revenue must be raised——”
“True; every tax is bad, in one way or another; yet, taxes there must
be. I do not know that there can be a better than an income tax, if it
can be fairly raised, and duly proportioned to the tenure of incomes. If
I find myself soon in possession of an income, I shall offer my
proportion with pleasure; you will not need to impose the oath on me.
But I do wish, as this tax affords the means, as you say, of raising a
large revenue,—I do wish that we were relieved of some of our indirect
taxes. An income tax may be very cheerfully borne when it is imposed
instead of the indirect taxes which fall so unequally as we know they
do; but the same tax may be felt as a heavy grievance when it is imposed
in addition,—filling up the measure of hardship. Now, we have a load of
partial taxes which can be conveniently paid; and also a fair tax,—fair
in principle,—which must be vexatiously levied. Let us have the one or
the other, but not both.”
“But, Mr. Farrer, you are aware that the evils of this income tax will
be lessened perpetually. We are now just in the bustle and confusion of
making new returns; but when we can establish a system of ascertainment
of the wages of various employments, and the interests upon loans, and
the averages of capital invested by the commercial men in our
districts,—in somewhat the same manner as we can already learn the
rental of landlords from the terms of their leases, and the profits of
the tenants from the proportion profits are considered to bear to rent,—
when this is arranged, there will be much less occasion for vexatious
questioning.”
“And much less facility of evasion. Very true. After all, this tax is a
violation of a subordinate rule of taxation, while our indirect taxes
violate the first and chief. In fact, it seems to me to violate only
that which regards the convenience of the contributors as to the mode of
payment; while it agrees with the principle,—to equalize the
contributions; with another,—to make the amount, and the time and manner
certain; and with a third,—to keep out of the pockets of the people as
little as possible over and above what goes into the treasury. Whenever
I have an income, I had much rather see you on an appointed day, and pay
my portion as I would pay my house-rent, knowing that what I pay goes
straight to its professed destination, than be treated like a child, and
inveigled into paying a little here and a little there, without knowing
it; or, if knowing it, with a pretty strong assurance that plenty of
pockets are gaping to swallow some of it by the way.”
Marie thought this was like sweetening physic for a child. She wondered
that, in a nation of men, such devices should be allowed to be still
enacted.
“We are not yet a nation of men, my dear, because we are not yet an
educated nation. These taxes on commodities are taxes on ignorance.
When, as a nation, we grow wise enough to settle rationally what we
shall spend, and why, and how, we shall grow manly enough to come
forward with our contribution, instead of letting it be filched from us
while we are winking.”
“And yet, sir, it is the rich, and not the ignorant who complain of this
new tax, and are all in favour of the old system. They had rather pay
double for their tea and their wine than have more money raised in this
new way.”
“Yes; no doubt. And the poor man had much rather have his bread and beer
bear their natural price, and pay his taxes out of his wages. Thus he is
sure of paying no more than his due; while the rich man will be properly
compelled to contribute in proportion to the protection he derives from
government. He owes so much more than the poor man to the state which
guards his greater substance, that it is most unfair to leave his
payment to the chance of how much wine, and tea, and other articles he
may consume. He cannot himself consume more bread and beer than his poor
neighbour; and it is a matter of choice whether he shall keep servants
to consume much more. Such choice ought not to be left, when the
alternative is the poor man paying the more for the rich man’s spending
less.”
“Why, indeed, it cannot be justified that the cobbler who patches a
miser’s shoes should pay fifty per cent. to the state, when the miser
himself pays only one per cent. If it be a good rule,—(and it is the
rule on which we proceed, sir,)—that a just taxation will leave
individuals in the same relation in which it found them, the advantage
will be entirely on the side of the measure we have now in hand.”
“And then comes the question whether there may not be a better tax
still. An income tax is immeasurably better than a system of indirect
taxation; but there may be means of avoiding the inequalities which
remain even under the improved system. If you once begin to graduate
your income tax according to the value of the tenure of incomes——”
“Why, it is hard that the physician, whose large income expires on his
becoming infirm, should pay more than the fundholder or landowner, whose
income is permanently yielded to himself and his children.”
“And then, from the fundholders, you must except those who hold
terminable annuities. Five per cent. is a much larger payment from a man
whose income is to terminate in ten or twenty years, than five per cent.
would be from the owner of land. And again; if you lay a tax of five per
cent. on the labourers’ wages, the tax falls upon the capital; for the
wages must rise just so much as the tax amounts to. It follows of course
that the receiver of rent ought to pay a higher per centage, because the
capitalist pays for himself and his labourers too. Now, if we once begin
making these modifications, (which justice requires,) it seems the most
direct and efficacious method to have a property tax; _i. e._, to tax
those incomes which are derived from invested capital. Ah! I see you
shake your heads; I see what you would say about the difficulty of
defining what is property; and the hardship in a few cases,—as in those
of small annuitants; and the tendency,—the very slight,—the practically
imperceptible tendency to check accumulation. We agreed before that all
taxes are bad; that there are some difficulties attending all.”
“But do not you allow these evils, sir?”
“I do; but I hold them to be so much smaller than those we have been
submitting to all this while as to be almost lost in the comparison,—
except for the difficulty that there always is in changing taxes. As for
the defining of what property is, distinctions have been made quite as
subtle as between investments that are too transient to come under the
title of property, and those that are not; between the landlord’s
possession of a field that yields rent, and the tenant’s investment in
marl which is to fertilize it for a season or two. Wherever legislation
interferes with the gains of industry, nice distinctions have to be
made; and this case will hardly rival our excise regulations. As for the
small annuitants, though their case may be a less favourable one than
that of richer men, it will be a far more favourable one than it is now,
when their small incomes must yield enormously to the state through the
commodities they buy. As for the tendency to check accumulation, it is
also nothing in comparison with that which at present exists. What can
check accumulation so much as the enhancement of the price of every
thing that the capitalist and labourer must buy, when part of the added
price goes to pay for the trouble and trickery attendant on a roundabout
method of taxation? No, no. While, besides this enhancement of price,
five or six sevenths of the taxation of the kingdom is borne by the
labouring and accumulating classes, I cannot think that our capital
would grow the slower for the burden being shifted upon the class of
proprietors who can best afford the contribution, which would, after
all, leave them in the same relation to other individuals in which it
found them.”
“It would certainly issue in that equality, since income from skill and
labour would proportion itself presently to the amount of property. The
physician who received a guinea-fee from the till now lightly-taxed
proprietor, would then receive a pound; and so on, through all
occupations. All would enjoy the relief from the diminished cost of
collection, as I hope we shall all do under our present commission, sir.
Well, you will not oblige us to put you upon your oath as to your amount
of income. You really have not an income above 60_l._ a year, Mr.
Farrer? that is our lowest denomination, sir; we tax none under 60_l._ a
year.”
“If you choose to swear me, you may; but my wife and I can assure you
that we have no income beyond the few guineas that I may chance to earn
from week to week. We have not been married many months; and we have
never dared yet to think of such a thing as a regular yearly income.
Well, it might be imprudent; but that is all over, I believe. If I find
that I now am to have money——”
The commissioners disclaimed all intention of judging the principles or
impulses under which Henry’s matrimonial affairs had proceeded,—hoped to
hear from him soon, if their good wishes should be fulfilled, and left
him looking at his watch, and assuring Marie that even yet it was very
early.
“But who are these?” cried the unhappy lady, as two men entered the
room, without the ceremony of bowing, with which the late visiters had
departed. “My husband, there is a conspiracy against us!”
“I believe there is, Marie: but the innocent can in this country
confound conspiracies.”
Henry was arrested on a charge of seditious words spoken at divers
times; and also, of not having given due notice of an alien residing
within the realm without complying with the provisions of the Alien Act.
The word “sedition” sounded fearful to Marie, who had talked over with
her husband, again and again, the fates of Muir and Palmer, of Frost and
Winterbottom, and many other victims of the tyranny of the minister of
that day. Her first thought was,
“They will send you to Botany Bay. But I will go with you.”
Henry smilingly told her he should not have to trouble her to get ready
to go so far, he believed; but if she would put on her bonnet now, he
had no doubt she would be permitted to accompany him, and learn for
herself where the mistake lay which had led to this absurd arrest.
She went accordingly, trembling,—but making a great effort to shed no
tears. In those days of tyrannical and vaguely-expressed laws, of dread
and prejudice in high places, a prisoner’s fate depended mainly on the
strength and clearness of mind of the magistrate before whom he might be
brought. Henry was fortunate in this respect.
Some surprising stories were told,—newer to Henry and Marie than to
anybody else,—of Henry’s disaffection,—of his having dined with old
college friends who, to the disgrace of their education, had toasted the
French republic, and laughed as the king’s health was proposed; of his
having been overheard asking how the people could help hating a
government which had Mr. Pitt at the head of it, and talked vehemently
with some foreigners in praise of equality; and of his having finally
refused to declare his attachment to the constitution.
This story was not very formidable when it was first told; and after the
magistrate had questioned the witnesses, and heard Henry’s own plain
statement, he believed that no ground remained for commitment, or for
asking bail. Not a single seditious word could be sworn to; and, as to
any imprudent ones that might have been dropped, the assertions of the
witnesses were much more imprudent, inasmuch as they could in no way be
made to agree with themselves or one another. This charge was dismissed,
and Marie found she should not have to go to Botany Bay.
The other accusation was better substantiated. M. Verblanc had forgotten
to give the required account of himself when he had changed his
residence, and it had never occurred to Henry to lodge an information
against him, though he knew, (if he had happened to recollect,) that the
forms of the alien law had not been complied with. The magistrate had no
alternative but to fine him, and, as the amount was not forthcoming, to
commit him to prison till the fine should be paid.
Marie’s duty was now clear. She must go to Henry’s sisters, and obtain
the money from them, in order to set her husband free to assist her
father.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW TO ENTERTAIN BORROWERS.
It was a strange way of visiting the old house in Budge-Row for the
first time.
Sam was standing two inches taller than usual, from being left in sole
charge of the shop. He did not know exactly how his master had died;
and, with all his self-importance, was more likely to receive the
information from the many inquisitive customers who came for pennyworths
than to give them any. Morgan had not thought it necessary to be
explicit with him. She advised him to mind his business, and let Miss
Farrer see what he could do in a time of family distress. He was profuse
in his assurances to Marie that his mistress could see no visitors
to-day. Perceiving that she was a foreigner, he concluded that she was a
stranger, and was very unwilling to let even Morgan know that any one
wished to speak with her.
Marie thought she had never seen anything more forlorn than Jane’s
aspect as she sat in her little parlour. She seemed to be doing nothing,
not even listening to Dr. Say, who was attempting soft condolence. There
was not even the occupation of making mourning, which had been a
resource on a former occasion. The bible lay open on the table; but Jane
was sitting by the darkened window as Marie entered,—Dr. Say having
established himself by the fire.
“You will thank me,” said Marie, “for bringing you occupation,—for
enabling you to help us, sister.” And she told her story, and what it
was that she desired Jane to do.
Jane seemed duly shocked at first; but when she found that Henry was in
no danger, and that the whole case resolved itself into a money matter,
her sympathy seemed to cool. She was silent and thoughtful.
“Come,” said Marie, rising, “bring out the money; and will you not go
with me?”
But Jane had something to say; or rather, she seemed to be thinking
aloud. Who knew whether Michael had left a will, and whether Henry would
have any of the money? Besides, she had not so much in her purse; and it
seemed to her that this would not be the end of the business. If there
was a conspiracy against Henry, and his enemies knew that his family had
money, they would soon make up another charge, and nobody could foresee
where it might end. Perhaps the best kindness to Henry would be for his
family to do nothing, that it might be seen that there was no use in
pursuing him for evil. Perhaps——
Dr. Say emphatically assented to the whole of Jane’s reasoning.
“I am afraid of mistaking your English,” said Marie, losing her breath.
“Do you mean that you will not help Henry?”
“Perhaps some other friend——It might be better for him that some one
else——Henry must have many friends.”
“Perhaps. But in France we have sisters who have begged alms for their
brother’s defence, and thereby found a place beside them under the axe
from which they could not save them. I thought there was one universal
sister’s heart.”
Jane called after her in vain. She was gone like lightning. Morgan,
however, detained her an instant at the door.
“Wait, my dear young lady! They will follow you in the streets if you
look so wild, ma’am!”
“Then I will tell them how I scorn your London rich sisters that keep
their brothers prisoners for paltry gold!”
“Do not go, ma’am! Do stay till one can think a little,” urged the
horror-struck Morgan.
“No, I will not stay. But I will not judge all till I have seen another
sister.”
“Ah! Mrs. Peek. Go to Mrs. Peek, ma’am; and I would go with you, but——”
Marie thought this was a land of “buts.” She could not, however, have
stayed till Morgan could get ready. She made all haste to Mrs. Peek’s
house.
She did not know how to believe that the woman she saw, nursing a baby,
could be a sister of Henry’s. The house was as noisy as Jane’s was
quiet; and the mistress as talkative and pliable as Jane was reserved
and stiff.
In her untidy black bombazeen dress, she looked more like a servant than
did her children’s nursemaid in her black coarse stuff; and the various
sounds of complaint that came from little folks in every corner of the
house were less wearing than the mamma’s incessant chiding and
repining.—She did not know anything about whether her brother Henry was
really married or not, she was sure; for Henry never came near them to
let them know what he was doing.
“No wonder,” thought Marie, when she looked back upon the confusion of
children’s toys, stools of all sizes, and carpets (apparently spread to
trip up the walker), among which she had worked her way to the seat she
occupied.
“There are so many calls upon one, you see, ma’am; and those that have
large families,—(what a noise those boys do make!)—so much is required
for a large family like ours, that it is no easy matter to bring up
children as some people do in these days. The burdens are so great! and
I am sure we could never think of sending a son of ours to the
university, if we were sure of his settling ever so well.—O, to be sure,
as you would say, ma’am, that should make no difference in our helping
Henry, hoping he would not get into any such scrapes again. Well, ma’am,
I will ask Mr. Peek when he comes home, to see if anything can be done.—
O, that would be too late, would it? Well, I don’t know that that
signifies so much, for I have a notion that as Mr. Peek is a king’s
servant, it might not be so well for him to appear. Dear me! I never
have any money by me, ma’am, but just for my little bills for the
family; and I should not think of parting with it while my husband is
out.—Why, really, I have no idea where you could find him. My little
girl shall see whether he is at home, though I am quite sure he is not.
Grace, my dear, go and see whether your father is in the back room. O,
you won’t. Then, Jenny, you must go. There! you see they won’t go,
ma’am; but it is of no consequence, for I do assure you he went out
after breakfast. I saw him go. Did not you, Harry?”
“To dare to call one of their dirty, rude boys after my Henry!” thought
Marie, as she ran out of the house. Mrs. Peek stood looking after her,
wondering one thing and another about her, till the baby cried so loud
that she could not put off attending to him any longer.
Marie could think of no further resource but to go back to Morgan for
advice. She was now very weary, and parched with thirst. She was not
accustomed to much exercise, and had never before walked alone through
crowded streets; her restless and anxious night was also a bad
preparation for so much toil. She was near sinking at once when, on
returning to the shop, she found from Sam that Morgan had just gone out,
he did not know whither.
“She could not go out with me!” thought Marie. “My Henry is the only
English person worthy to be French, after all.”
“Sure, mistress, you had better sit down,” observed Sam, wiping a stool
with his apron. On being asked whether he could let her have a glass of
water, he did more than fulfil the request. He found, in a dark place
under the counter, part of a bottle of some delicious syrup, which he
mixed with water, with something of the grace of an apothecary. Marie
could not help enjoying it, miserable as she was; and Sam could not help
smiling broadly at the effect of what he had done, grave as his
demeanour was in duty bound to be this day.
Morgan’s “but” proved one of the most significant words she had ever
spoken. She did better than go with Marie.
She entered Jane’s parlour, and stood beside the door when she had
closed it.
“I must trouble you, ma’am, to pay me my wages, if you please.”
Jane stared at her in astonishment.
“What do you mean, Morgan?”
“I mean, ma’am, that I have had no wages for these eleven years last
past, and I wish to have them now.”
“Morgan, I think you have lost your senses! You never asked my father
for these wages.”
“No, Miss Jane, because I held his promise of being provided for
otherwise and better, and my little money from elsewhere was all that I
wanted while here. But I have it under your hand, ma’am, what wages I
was to have as long as I lived with you.”
“And you have my promise also that I would remember you in my will.”
“Yes; but I would rather have my due wages now instead.”
Jane could understand nothing of all this. People were not accustomed to
be asked for money in so abrupt a way, especially by an old friend.
“Because, ma’am, people of my class are not often so much in want of
their money as I am to-day. If I had not known that you have the money
in the house, I should not have asked for it so suddenly. I will bring
down the box, ma’am.”
She presently appeared, hauling along a heavy box with so much
difficulty as to oblige Jane to offer to assist her. Morgan next
presented a key.
“How came you by this key?” asked Jane, quickly, as she tried it, and
the box lid flew open. Jane felt in her bosom for her own key, which was
there, safe enough, on its stout black ribbon.
Morgan’s master had secretly given her this key years before. He kept
one thousand pounds in hard cash in this box; and it now appeared that
he had set Morgan’s fidelity and Jane’s avarice as a check upon each
other. Each was to count over the money once a-month.
“You can count it now, ma’am, at your leisure, when you have paid me. I
shall not touch that key any more.”
“O, yes, do, Morgan,” said her mistress, with a look of distress. “All
this is too much for me. I cannot take care of everything myself.”
“Then let it go, Miss Jane. I have not had this box under my charge so
many years, to be now followed about by your eyes, every time I go near
the place where it is kept. Better you were robbed than that.”
“And you are too proud to expect a legacy from me? That is the reason
you want your money now? You would cut off all connexion between us?”
“Such is not my present reason, ma’am; but I do not say that I should
like to see you planning and planning how you could——But I won’t follow
it out, my dear. My wages, if you please.”
And she laid down a formal receipt for the sum, and produced the canvass
bag in which to deposit her wealth. She then observed that she must walk
abroad for two or three hours, but hoped to be back before she was much
wanted. If her mistress could spare her till dark, she should take it as
a particular favour; but she could not say it was necessary to be gone
more than three hours at farthest.
Jane seemed too much displeased or amazed to reply; and Morgan left her
counting the guineas. She heard the parlour-door bolted behind her, so
that no more Maries could gain access to her mistress.
How Marie reproached herself for her secret censure of Morgan, when she
found Henry at liberty,—the fine having been paid by his faithful old
friend! Morgan had slipped away as soon as the good deed was done. She
awaited Henry and Marie, however, in their humble home, whither she had
proceeded to prepare a delicate little dinner for them, and see that all
was comfortable for their repose from the troubles of the day. It was no
fault of hers that they brought heavy cares with them; that Henry had to
console his Marie under her father’s misfortune,—his month of
imprisonment, and sentence to leave the country at the end of it. What
more could any one do than join with them in reprobating the tyranny of
the Alien Act?
CHAPTER VII.
FAREWELL TO BUDGE-ROW.
Michael was quietly buried when the verdict of “accidental death” had
been duly agreed upon; and there was ample employment for Henry during
the month of M. Verblanc’s imprisonment in settling the affairs. There
was no will; and he therefore felt that the children, and she whom he
considered as the widow, though the law did not so recognize her, had
the first claim upon his justice. He was resolved that an ample
provision should be made for them; and that it should be done without
encroaching on Mrs. Peek’s share. Jane ought to have given the largest
proportion, not only because she had no claims upon her, but because her
survivorship enriched her by means of this very death. She did
contribute; but Henry’s portion was much larger; and it soon appeared
that Jane would not be at hand in future, if further assistance should
be required.
Henry had, in his investigation of the affairs, learned that which
prevented his being surprised on hearing from Morgan that Jane meant to
go abroad. She had known so much of the smuggling transactions of the
firm, that she had probably a good understanding with certain persons
out at sea, who could aid her in getting away from the country she no
longer loved, and in placing her where she might invest her money so as
to avoid either an income or a property tax.
“It is a strange freak of my mistress’s, sir, is not it?” said Morgan.
“She must feel it so herself, or she would not have left me to tell you
the story.”
“It would be strange in most people, Morgan. I know it is said by some
that an income or a property tax must drive individuals to invest their
money abroad; but I am sure that except in a few rare cases, it would
not be so. A man has so much more confidence in the stability of the
institutions of his own country than in those of any other,—there are so
many inducements to keep his treasure where his heart is,—near his
kindred and his father’s house,—his obligations are so much more
calculable at home than abroad,—and, above all, it is so clear that the
substitution of a direct for an indirect tax must set free the exercise
of his capital and his industry,—that a man must be burdened indeed
before he would think, for this reason alone, of placing his capital
elsewhere. Jane’s case is different.”
“Ah! Mr. Henry, she has left off loving her kindred and her father’s
house.”
“Not so, I hope: but she is no longer happy among them, for reasons
which we can understand.”
“She owned as much to me, sir, as that she could not bear to think of
yon poor young woman and her children having what had been so hardly
earned; or to see the waste and dawdling going on in Mrs. Peek’s family;
or to pay her taxes in a heavy lump when the government chose to call
for it, instead of buying a little of this and a little of that, when
she liked, without having to remember that she was paying taxes.”
“Ah! that is the reason why people like those indirect taxes. But I
should have thought that Jane had seen enough of the waste that there is
in the collecting them, to think very ill of them.”
“The taking stock of my master’s tea, sir, once a-month—what a farce it
was! How many officers were paid for little more than not seeing cheats!
and when one thinks of the permits, and the entry books, and the army of
spies,—for so they are,—that have to be paid out of the duties
collected, one wonders that Miss Jane, or anybody else, should be found
to speak up for such an extravagant plan.”
“Those will be most ready to do so who are unwilling to pay in
proportion for the protection which is of most importance to those who
have the most property. But they forget the plain rule that when the
people’s money is raised to be spent for the good of the people, as
little as possible ought to be wasted by the way. It is a shame that the
cost of collection should be seven pound ten in every hundred pounds,
when the odd shillings would be enough under good management.”
“But is that true, sir?”
“Quite true; and the less this particular matter is looked to, the wider
will the difference be between what is and what ought to be. My wife
will tell you that there was a time in France when the nation paid five
times as much in taxes as ever arrived at the treasury. Under a wiser
management, the same people afterwards paid no more than a tenth part of
their taxes to the collectors, though there were above two hundred
thousand persons employed in the collection. O, yes, these were far too
many; but you may see what a difference it makes to the people whether
this point be managed well or ill; and it is very clear that it must be
a great advantage to have a plan of taxation which would employ a few
persons, at regular times; so that people would know what they had to
pay and when, and that as little as possible would be lost by the way.”
“They say that an immensity of money will be raised by this income tax.”
“A great deal; and so there ought to be. Something great ought to come
out of so disagreeable a process. It is _very_ disagreeable to be
examined, and have one’s concerns pryed into in the way that these
commissioners must do. I am sure I do not wonder at my sister’s dislike
of it.”
“O, sir, I never saw such a conflict as she had to go through with
herself. I determined never to be present again when the gentlemen came.
When she did bring herself to give an account, I know what a struggle
she had to tell the truth. I would not for the world that any one else
had been there; but, sir, the commissioners laughed, and winked, and
threatened her with the oath.”
“One is exposed to the impertinence of tax-gatherers under any system;
and I do not know that it need be worse under this tax than any other.
But it is provoking that this must be added to what we had to bear
before. Prices are just as high as ever. There has been no reduction of
the old taxes yet. Our producers of food and clothing, and all that we
want, go on paying their taxes in commodities, and not only charging
these on the articles when sold, but the interest on their advance of
money for the tax. And so does the consumer’s money run out in many a
channel.”
“All this helps my mistress abroad. But, sir, is it true that she cannot
go safely?”
“Yes, and she must know it.”
“She does. She hinted as much to me. Do you suppose anybody will stop
her?”
“If they can get hold of her; but her friends are those who will convey
her safely, if anybody can. She knows that at present it is high treason
to invest money in an enemy’s country, particularly in land——”
“O dear; and I believe it is your French gentleman’s lands that she has
in view.”
“We cannot prevent her going, if she chooses to run the risk; but a
great risk it is. The sale of their lands is supposed to be the
principal means that our enemies have for carrying on the war; and no
English person is allowed, under the penalty of death, to purchase land
or to buy into the French funds. But what will be done about Jane’s
annuity?”
“She says she has laid a plan for getting it,—whether by coming over
once a year in the same way that she goes, or by some other device, I do
not know. Surely, sir, those tontine annuities are very bad things!
Worse than lotteries, since they make people jealous of their
neighbours’ lives, and rejoiced to hear of their deaths.”
“Very bad! No gaming is much worse. The advantage to the annuitants is,
in its nature, most unequal; and it is so disadvantageous to the
government, that none of its money is set free till the last of the lot
is dead, that I wonder the system is persevered in.”
“I am sure I wish the government had had the Mr. Hills’, and my
master’s; for Miss Jane has never been like the same person since. Do
you know, sir, I believe there is one who will be particularly
disappointed at her going away?”
“You mean Dr. Say. Do you think he has ever had any chance with her?”
“Sometimes I have thought he had; and I should not wonder, after all, if
she thinks to take him on——”
“No, no, Morgan. She never can mean to marry that man.”
“Why, sir, when people of her spirit have been cruelly disappointed
once, as I know her to have been, they are apt to find too late the want
of a friend to join themselves to; and yet they do not like to give up
their sway. Now, Dr. Say is so yielding——”
“Ay, at present."
“True, sir; but he is very yielding indeed, to judge from the coldness
he has put up with from my mistress, and his hanging to her still. But
she will not have him yet; not till she has gained her particular end in
going abroad; and then, perhaps——”
“This is the way human creatures do when they are perverted and injured
like my poor sister. They must finish some trifling thing, gain some
petty point, and then begin to think of the realities of life. Poor
Jane! what can a few more thousands be to her? Morgan, have you ever
thought of going with her?”
“It would have been my desire, if it had not been my promise, to stay
with her as long as we both lived; but from her saying nothing to me
about it, and her talking of things that I believe are to be left for me
to do after she is gone, I suppose that she does not wish for me.”
“Then where will you go? What do you think of doing?”
“Just what Providence may prepare to my hand. I have scarcely cast my
mind that way yet.”
Nor did Morgan settle her thoughts on her own concerns till compelled to
do so. There was much to be thought of and accomplished; and it was the
way of everybody to look to Morgan in all cases of bustle and
difficulty. The business, shop, and house thereto belonging, were
immediately disposed of; and they had to be prepared for the new tenant,
and vacated in a short time. Jane would not sell the furniture; she
could not find in her heart to let it go for so little as it would now
bring; still less to give it to Patience. Her green stuff curtains, and
threadbare carpets, and battered tables, and shabby fire-irons, were all
valuable in her eyes, because of some of these she had known no others,
and of some she still thought as new. How many recurrences of mind had
she to these articles,—now reddening at the idea of the insulting price
that was offered for them, and then sighing at the thought of the
extravagance of hiring a room expressly for their reception! This last
was the plan finally decided upon, however; and, by dint of such close
packing as nobody else would have formed an idea of, the greater part of
the lumber was stowed, while there was still space left to turn round.
Everything was gone from the kitchen but one chair and a few cooking
utensils when Morgan sat before the fire, knitting worsted stockings,
and rocking herself to the time of the old Welsh air she was singing low
to herself. The clock that ticked was gone; and the monotonous singing
of the kettle was the only sound besides her own voice. She was thinking
about Wales, as she always did when she sang,—of the farm-house in the
valley where she was born; and of how lightly she tripped to the spring
the morning she was told that there were thoughts of sending her with
her uncle, the carrier, to London to win her bread; and then of the
evening when she emerged from among the last hills, and saw the plain,
with its clusters of trees, and its innumerable hedge-rows, and its few
hamlets, and a church steeple or two, all glowing in the sunset; and how
she admired a flat country, and fancied how happy people must be who
lived in a flat country; and then how little she imagined that, after
having become familiar with London life, she should ever be sitting
alone, seeing the comfort of the abode demolished, day by day, and
waiting to know what should become of her when the last of the family
she had served so long was about to wander away from the old house. The
clatter without went on just as if all was as formerly within. The
cries, the bustle, and the loud laughs in the street seemed very like a
mockery; and Morgan, who had never, all these years, complained of the
noise of Budge-Row, was very nearly being put out of temper about it
this evening. In the midst of it, she thought she heard her mistress’s
hand-bell ring, and stopped her chanting to answer the summons. She
released from its place under her gown the canvass bag, which must have
proved a great burden to her right side, and carried the kettle in the
other hand, supposing, with the allowable freedom of an old servant,
that Miss Farrer might be wishing for her tea a little earlier than
usual, and that there could be no harm in saving her turns along the
passage.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid your rheumatism troubles you,” said she, seeing that
Jane had drawn her shawl over her head. “I thought it would be so when
you took the curtains down in such bitter weather.”
“Never mind that, Morgan: I must meet more cold at sea.”
“But you had better get well first, ma’am. Would you wish that I should
step for Dr. Say?” and Morgan put some stiffness into her manner.
Jane looked round upon the disfurnished apartment, and probably thought
that it looked too comfortless to be seen by Dr. Say; for she desired
that if he called he should be told that she was too tired to see any
one.
“I think, Morgan,” she proceeded, “there is nothing left but what you
can take care of for me, if I must go in a hurry. It will hardly take
you two hours to stow these few things with the rest of the furniture;
and an hour or two of your time, now and then, will keep them in good
order for me.”
And then followed sundry directions about airing, dusting, brushing,
&c., all which implied that Morgan would remain near at hand.
“I have said nothing about your going with me,” continued Jane. “I
suppose you never thought of it?”
“I considered myself bound, Miss Jane, after what we once said together,
to follow you for life, if you had so pleased. Since you do not——”
“It would be too much for you, Morgan. I would not expose you to the
risk, or to the fatigue. You know nothing of the fatigues of such a
voyage as I am going upon. In a regular vessel it is very great; but——”
“Ma’am, I have no wish to go otherwise than at your desire. I am old
now, and——”
“Yes, it will be much better for you to be with Patience, or with
Henry.”
“No, ma’am; if I leave you, it must be to go back to my own place. The
same day that you dismiss me I shall plan my way home. I do not wish to
be turned over from service to service, knowing that I shall never
attach myself to any as I did, from the first, to you, my dear.”
“But what will you do with yourself in Wales? Everybody you knew there
must be dead, or grown up out of knowledge.”
“Perhaps so; but it will serve my turn to sit and knit by the farmhouse
fire; and I should like to be doing something in a dairy again. I have
not put my hand to a churn, much less seen a goat, these seventeen
years, except once, when your father sent me, in a hurry, to Islington,
and there, Miss, I saw a goat; and, for the life of me, I could not help
following it down a lane to see where it went to, and to watch its
habits. When I saw it browsing and cropping, even though it was in a
brick-field, I could not help standing behind it; and the thing led me
such a round, I had much ado to get home to tea. My master found out
that something had kept me; but I was ashamed to tell him what it was.
However, our Welsh goats——but I am taking up your time. Yes, I shall go
back into Wales. But first, ma’am, there is a little thing to be
settled. I gave up to you my key of that box, or I would have put the
money in without troubling you; but here is the sum you paid me the
other day, and I will trouble you for the receipt back again.”
“What can you mean, Morgan, by demanding your wages so strangely, and
then bringing them back again?”
“I meant to keep the promise I made to you, Miss Jane,—to cover your
faults when I could. You refused to pay the fine for Mr. Henry, and so I
paid it in your name; that was what I wanted the money for. I did not
think of having it back again; but Mr. Henry seemed so uneasy about not
discharging it, that I let him take his own way.”
Jane made some objections, which Morgan would not listen to. She would
neither suffer any allusion to the legacy nor to her own circumstances.
She briefly declared that she had enough. Her small wants were supplied
from the savings of her young days, and she had no further use for
money, besides having taken something of a disgust to it lately. She
possessed herself of the key from her mistress’s side without being
opposed, unlocked the box before her face, and deposited the cash,
showing, at the same time, that she resumed the receipt. While she was
doing this, Jane drew her shawl farther over her head, as if she
suffered from the cold. Morgan saw that it was to conceal her tears.
“Oh, Miss Jane! only say that you wish it, and I will give up Wales and
go with you; or if you would but be content to go back to my home, you
might think about money as much as ever, if you must, and be happy at
living in such a cheap country. But you might there forget all such
troubles to the mind, if you would.”
Jane hastily observed that it was too late for this: she had given her
word to sail, and she must sail directly; she could hear nothing to the
contrary.
Morgan said no more, but brought tea, and prepared everything for her
mistress’s early going to rest, and then came to take away the
tea-things.
“You will make it early bed-time to-night, ma’am?” said she.
Jane assented.
“Then I have a strong belief that this is the last speech I shall have
of you, Miss Jane; and I would not part from you without a farewell, as
I fear others, nearer and dearer, must do.”
“None are nearer and dearer,” exclaimed Jane, in a tone which upset
Morgan’s fortitude. She then checked herself, and coldly added, “I mean
to call on my brother and Patience before I go.”
“What I am least sorry about,” said Morgan, “is, that you are going out
upon the great and wide sea. I am glad that you will see a million of
dashing waves, and feel the sweeping winds, both of which I used to know
something of from the top of our mountain. We have both seen too much of
brick walls, and heard too much of the noise of a city. Your spirits
have failed you sadly of late, my dear; and I myself have been less
lightsome than I have always held that a trusting creature should be.
Ah! your tears will dry up when you are among the deeps; and you will
find, as the waters heave up and about you, how little worth is in all
worldly care, take my word for it, my dear. You on the sea by starlight,
and I in the valley when the early buds come out—oh! we shall grow into
a more wholesome mind than all the changes here have left us in.
Meantime, we must part; and if we should never meet again——”
“Oh, but there is no fear: it is a very safe voyage, indeed, they tell
me. I cannot have any fancies put into my head about not coming back,
Morgan.”
“Well, let it be so then,—let it be that you will certainly come back;
still I am old,—ay, not what you will allow to be old, if you reach my
years, but what I like to think so. You cannot, in your heart, say that
you would be taken by surprise any day to hear that old Morgan was gone.
Well, then, God bless you! and give you a better relish of this life
before he calls you to another!”
“Indeed I am not happy,” was the feeling expressed by Jane’s manner, and
by her tears, as much as by her words. She could neither control her
feelings nor endure to expose their intensity, and she therefore
hastened to bed, seemingly acquiescing in Morgan’s advice not to be in a
hurry to rise in the morning.
Morgan’s sleep was not very sound; partly from the sense of discomfort
in the naked house, and more from busy and anxious thoughts—such as she
had never known among the green hills of Wales, and such as were likely,
she therefore supposed, to be laid to rest when she should be at home
again. She fancied several times that she heard Jane stirring, and then
dropped into a doze again, when she dreamed that her mistress was
sleeping very quietly. At last she started up, uneasy at finding that it
was broad daylight, and sorry that the alarum had not been one of the
last things to be taken away, as she feared that her mistress might be
kept waiting for her breakfast. She bustled about, made a particularly
good fire, ventured to take in, of her own accord, a tempting hot roll,
and, as her mistress was still not down stairs, made a basin of tea, and
carried up the tray to the chamber.
“I hope you find your head better this morning, ma’am?” said she,
drawing up the blind which kept the room in darkness.
No answer. Morgan saw no traces of clothes, and hastily pulled aside the
bed-curtain: no one was there. A little farther search convinced her
that Jane was gone.
The people in the shop testified to two stout porters having arrived
early, and asked permission to go in and out through the shop. They had
each carried a heavy box, and been accompanied by the lady in deep
black, whose veil was over her face when she went out. She had not gone
without another word, as Morgan at first, in the bitterness of her
heart, reproached her for doing. She had left a note, with an
affectionate assurance of remembering her old friend, not only in her
will, but during every day of her life. Morgan would also find that a
sum of money had been left in Henry’s hands for her, as some
acknowledgment of her long services. There was also advice about
purchasing an annuity with it, which Morgan did not read to-day.
The shop-boy had the benefit of the hot roll. Morgan set off to discover
how much Mr. Henry knew of Jane’s proceedings. Marie could tell no more
than that she had missed the bird on coming down into the cheerful
breakfast-room of their new lodgings. Their maid had admitted a lady in
black to write a note there this morning, as the family were not down.
The bird had not been seen since; and it could only be supposed that it
was carried away in its cage under the lady’s long black cloak.
Jane acknowledged this in her note to Henry. She could not resist
carrying away this living relic of old times. It must be more precious
to her than to them; and she should send Marie from abroad some pet to
be cherished for her sake, if Marie cared enough for her to do so. They
had better not enquire where she was gone, or how; but trust to hearing
of her through M. Verblanc (when he should be again abroad) or his
agents.
Patience seemed to be the only one who had seen her sister, while thus
scattering her ghostly adieus. Patience related that the house was in
such confusion when Jane came in, (so unreasonably early!) that she had
no very clear recollection of what had passed, further than that Jane
cried very much, so that the elder children did not know what to make of
it; and that her black veil frightened the little ones when she was
kissing them all round. She hoped Jane did not really mean that she was
going away for any length of time. She somehow had not half believed
that; but as Morgan did believe it, Patience began at last to be very
sorry indeed.
Morgan could not quit London these two or three days, if she was to
leave her mistress’s little concerns in the exact order in which she
desired them to remain. She would not be persuaded to pass her few days
any where but in the old kitchen, or to leave unvisited for a single
night the chamber where her master died. This evening was cold and
stormy. She thought first of her mistress’s rheumatism; and, as the wind
rose, and whistled under the doors, and roared in the chimney, she
wandered to the window to see how things looked in the Row. The flame of
the lamps flickered and flared within the glass; women held on their
bonnets, and the aprons of workmen and the pinafores of children
fluttered about. Morgan was but too sure that it must be a bad night on
the river, or at sea. She wished she knew whether Mr. Henry thought so.
This would have settled the matter with Morgan, for she believed Mr.
Henry knew every thing; but it was too late to intrude upon him
to-night. She would go in the morning.
In the morning, when she got up early, to observe the heavy clouds still
drifting rapidly over the narrow slip of sky which was all that could be
seen from even the back of the house, she found a little bird cowering
down on the window-sill, as if drowsy through fatigue and cold. There
was no mistaking the bird, and in another moment it was warming itself
against Morgan’s cheek and in her bosom, while the hand which was not
employed in guarding it was preparing its holiday mess of crumbs, milk
and sugar.
“O, my bird!” exclaimed Marie, the moment Morgan produced it from
beneath her red cloak.
“Did not my mistress say something to you, ma’am, of sending you some
living thing for a remembrance? Do you think it likely she should send
you this bird?”
No: nobody thought it likely. But how the creature could have escaped
from such guardianship as Jane’s was very unaccountable. There was no
connecting it with the gales of last night; yet Morgan could not forget
her own words about the wide and rough waters, and what Jane would feel
when she saw them in their might.
While Marie was yet weeping over the departure of her father, on the
expiration of his month of imprisonment, and listening to her husband’s
cheering assurances that peace must come, and with it, liberty for all
to go to and fro, she said,
“Meanwhile, there may be comfort for you in hearing through him of Jane.
Will she not send us tidings, as she said?”
No such intelligence came; and in M. Verblanc’s frequent letters was
always contained the assurance that no tidings of the estimable lady,
the sister of his son-in-law, had reached his agent or himself.
Henry had been long settled down to his duties and enjoyments as a
country clergyman, when he received a letter from Peek containing the
following intelligence, which was immediately forwarded to Morgan.
“I had been applied to several times,” Peek wrote, “about Jane Farrer,
spinster, the surviving claimant of the tontine annuity last year, on
whose behalf no claim has been made this year. You will see presently
that government has had a lucky bargain of that annuity, which is more
than can often be said of that sort of transaction. The whole thing has
come to light; and Patience was in great distress about it, all
yesterday. We have had a rare catch of smugglers; and one of them let
out, when he began to be chop-fallen, that it was very odd he had
escaped such a many risks, to be trapped at last. Among the rest, he
told us of one surprising get off when he thought he was sent for to the
bottom where all the rest went. After a windy day, which had blown their
boat out of the river at a fine rate, till they were almost within sight
of their smuggling vessel, their cockle-shell could not stand the gale.
He swears that they should have done very well but for the heavy chests
that they were carrying for a gentlewoman who wanted to be smuggled
abroad. She was almost desperate when they heaved both chests overboard,
though she had been quiet enough while the gale was rising. She went
down quietly enough too, when the boat filled, and sunk from under them
all, leaving such as could to save themselves on any thing they could
find to float on; by which means he and one other only got to shore. All
he remembers about the gentlewoman is that she wore a black cloak, and
noticed nobody, more or less, but a siskin that she had with her in a
cage. One of the last things she did,—and he remembers it by a joke that
went round, of her caring about a brute creature’s life when her own was
not worth a farthing,—the last thing she did was letting fly the bird,
and she looked after it, to see how it fared in the wind, when the water
was up to her own knees. From the oddness of this, and the black cloak,
we feel convinced it must have been sister Jane, besides the date being
the same. Patience fretted a good deal about it yesterday, as I
mentioned. We suppose that we shall now see you in town about the
affairs, and you know where you may always find a pipe and a bit of
chat.”
“Do not go, Henry,” said Marie. “Let Peek have all the wealth. Do not
let us touch that which has poisoned the lives of three of your family.”
“It poisoned the peace of their lives, Marie, and it caused their
deaths. We will not die of such solicitude, nor, if any of our children
must die by violence or accident, shall it be for such a cause. They
must be taught the uses of wealth; and fearfully has Providence
qualified us for teaching this lesson.”
“That wealth is but an instrument, and that they are responsible for the
use of it?”
“Responsible, not only to Him who maketh rich and maketh poor, but to
society,—to the state. We will teach our children that to evade or
repine at their due contribution to the state is to be ungrateful to
their best earthly protector, and to be the oppressors of those who
should rather be spared in proportion as their means are less. If to lay
on burdens too heavy to be borne be one crime, it is another to refuse a
just burden.”
Henry checked himself on perceiving that he was reproaching the memory
of his deceased brother and sister. He regarded them, however, as
victims rather than aggressors,—victims to their father’s false views,
and to the policy of the time, which, by making the state a spendthrift,
rendered too many of its members sordid.
“This is the favourite that Jane sent me to be cherished for her sake,”
said Marie, approaching the bird. “It shall be cherished.”
“I failed in my trust,” thought Morgan, as she went out to call home the
kids from the mountain,—“I failed in my trust when I doubted about Miss
Jane’s old age. What did I know about whether she would ever be old; or,
if she should be, whether there would not by that time be peace, and a
less heavy burdening of the people, so that they might be free to see
more clearly whether or not they were made to struggle with low things
all their lives, like a sick person in a dream who is always trying to
fly, and is for ever baffled?—I don’t know whether one ought to be sorry
that Miss Jane has been wakened up untimely from such a dream; but I
mourn that she did not come here to see what a fearful mistaking of
Providence it is to dream on in that restless bed when here are such
wide fields of sweet thyme for one’s eyes and one’s heart to rest upon.
Let men live in cities, if they will; but why should they think that the
fields and the brooks are for those only who live among them? These
brooks must run over silver sands, and yonder harvest fields must bear
ears of real gold before men may fancy that gold is in favour with God,
and that it should therefore be sought as a main thing by men. I wish it
had pleased God that Miss Jane had but once come here.”
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._
All the members of a society who derive protection from its government
owe a certain proportion of the produce of their labour or capital to
the support of that government,—that is, are justly liable to be taxed.
The proportion contributed should be determined by the degree of
protection enjoyed,—of protection to property,—for all are personally
protected.
In other words, a just taxation must leave all the members of society in
precisely the same relation in which it found them.
This equality of contribution is the first principle of a just taxation.
Such equality can be secured only by a method of direct taxation.
Taxes on commodities are, from their very nature, unequal, as they leave
it in the choice of the rich man how much he shall contribute to the
support of the state; while the man whose whole income must be spent in
the purchase of commodities has no such choice. This inequality is
aggravated by the necessity, in order to make these taxes productive, of
imposing them on necessaries more than on luxuries.
Taxes on commodities are further injurious by entailing great expense
for the prevention of smuggling, and a needless cost of collection.
They could not have been long tolerated but for their quality of
affording a convenient method of tax-paying, and for the ignorance of
the bulk of the people of their injurious operation.
The method of direct taxation which best secures equality is the
imposition of a tax on income or on property.
There is so much difficulty in ascertaining to the general satisfaction
the relative values of incomes held on different tenures, and the
necessary inquisition is so odious, that if a tax on the source of
incomes can be proved equally equitable, it is preferable, inasmuch as
it narrows the province of inquisition.
There is no reason to suppose that an equitable graduation of a tax on
invested capital is impracticable; and as it would equally affect all
incomes derived from this investment (that is, all incomes whatsoever),
its operation must be singularly impartial, if the true principle of
graduation be once attained.
A graduated property tax is free from all the evils belonging to taxes
on commodities; while it has not their single recommendation—of
favouring the subordinate convenience of the tax-payer.
This last consideration will, however, become of less importance in
proportion as the great body of tax-payers advances towards that
enlightened agreement which is essential to the establishment of a just
system of taxation.
The grossest violation of every just principle of taxation is the
practice of burdening posterity by contracting permanent loans, of which
the nation is to pay the interest.
The next grossest violation of justice is the transmitting such an
inherited debt unlessened to posterity, especially as every improvement
in the arts of life furnishes the means of throwing off a portion of the
national burdens.
The same rule of morals which requires state-economy on behalf of the
present generation, requires, on behalf of future generations, that no
effort should be spared to liquidate the National Debt.
THE END.
London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.
PREFACE.
The task which I originally proposed to myself is now finished. I have
done what I could to illustrate the leading principles of Political
Economy. But I cannot leave off without attempting something more which
I believe will improve the purpose of what I have already done. Now that
TAXATION is everywhere considered a subject of deep importance,—
attention having been called to it in a remarkable degree since my
series was planned,—I feel that my work is not complete without a
further illustration of the practice as well as the principle of
Taxation. In the present doubtful state of our financial policy, the few
Numbers which I am about to issue may be expected to be of greater
temporary, and of less permanent, interest than those which have
preceded them. However this may be, I believe myself called upon to
offer them, before laying aside my pen for a long interval.
That I should be permitted to complete, without interruption, my
original plan of monthly publication, for two years, was more than, in
the uncertainty of human affairs and the inconsistency of human
projects, I ventured to anticipate with any degree of assurance. This is
not the place in which to express more than a mere acknowledgment of the
fact. But I must be allowed to add that so long a continuance of health
and leisure is less surprising to me than the steadiness of the favour
by which my exertions have been supported. Unless I could explain how
far my achievements have fallen short of my aims, I could not express my
sense of the patience with which the wise have borne with my failures,
and the ardour with which (for the sake of the science) they have
stimulated my successes: while those who have done me the honour of
learning anything from me, have given me a yet higher pleasure by their
studious appreciation of my object. I know not that my friends of either
class can be better thanked than by the assurance, that while in their
service I have not experienced a single moment of discouragement or
weariness about my task. I have been often conscious of weakness,
amounting to failure; but I have never been disheartened. Long after my
slight elementary work shall have been (I trust) superseded, I shall, if
I live, recur with quiet delight to the time when it formed my chief
occupation, and shall hope that the wide friendships which it has
originated will subsist when my little volumes are forgotten.
It must be perfectly needless to explain what I owe to preceding writers
on the science of which I have treated. Such an acknowledgment could
only accompany a pretension of my own to have added something to the
science—a pretension which I have never made. By dwelling, as I have
been led to do, on their discoveries, I have become too much awakened to
the glory to dream of sharing the honour. Great men must have their
hewers of wood and drawers of water; and scientific discoverers must be
followed by those who will popularize their discoveries. When the
woodman finds it necessary to explain that the forest is not of his
planting, I may begin to particularize my obligations to Smith and
Malthus, and others of their high order.
I proceed to my short remaining task untired, and happy to delay, for a
few months, the period when I must bid my readers a temporary farewell.
H. M.
_February_, 1834.
THE
MORAL OF MANY FABLES.
-----------------------
PART I.
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 truth? 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 consequent 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 than 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 my 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
PRODUCTION.
WEALTH consists of such commodities as are useful,—that is,
necessary or agreeable to mankind.
Wealth is to be obtained by 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,
I. By division of labour; in three ways.
1. Men do best what they are accustomed to do.
2. Men do the most quickly work which they stick to.
3. It is a saving of time to have several parts of a work
going on at once.
Labour is economized,
II. By the use of machinery, which
1. Eases man’s labour.
2. Shortens man’s labour; and thus, by doing his work, sets
him at liberty for other work.
Labour should be protected by securing its natural liberty; that
is,—
1. By showing no partiality.
2. By removing the effects of former partiality.
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
1. Implements of labour.
2. Material, simple or compound, on which labour is employed.
3. Subsistence of labourers.
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 agreeable to mankind, no measure can
be taken; the materials being apparently inexhaustible, and the
power of appropriation incessantly progressive. There 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, and 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 far 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 of
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 that they had rather that all should suffer
privation than that they themselves 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 more 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
benefits.
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 yet 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 and 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 now
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 before 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 and 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
cistern 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 harrow, 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 methods 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 hands 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 husbands’ 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 accustomed 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 druggists should be superseded, or of fulling
by any other means than treading the cloth in water. If it had not
been that the King was more long-sighted than his people, these
Flemings would have been torn to pieces, or, at best, sent home in a
panic; and the English would 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 grained cloth of the finest making;"—viz., as much labour
and subsistence as could be exchanged for 6_l._ 16_s._ 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 6_l._
16_s._ per yard for fine cloth, even if they had not had 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 many
reigns) did all that could be done for keeping the manufacture in
few hands, and preventing the spread of this great article of
comfort: 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 fineness 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 same 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
comfortable 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 case now?
The value of the woollen manufactured articles of Great Britain
alone now exceeds 20,000,000_l._ 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 with 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 Leipsic, 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 America, 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
less 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 manuring, 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 occasion 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 managing 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, and of the law of 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 manufacturing and agricultural classes are
therefore not opposed to each other, but closely allied.
--------------
The same principle applies, of course, in all cases where an
extensive production is the object, and points out 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 an advantageous agreement for six
cabinet-makers 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 forces,—by making one
set of farm-buildings 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 cockle-shell 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, and
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 which 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 well-founded, 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 farm-house. 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
tax-gatherer 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 tax-gatherers
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,—
ill-fed, 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
farm-house 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 widely-different field in which he is
placed. Whencesoever came the demon breath which kindled our
farm-yard fires, they have flashed wisdom on the minds of our
rulers, 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 the
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 yet
absolved itself from the tremendous sin of holding 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.[B] 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 yet
to bear many painful consequences of our long transgression against
the 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 be borne.
-----
Footnote B:
PROPERTY is held by conventional, not natural, right.
As the agreement to hold man in property never took place between
the parties concerned, i. e., is not conventional, man has no
right to hold man in property.
LAW, i. e., the sanctioned agreement of the parties concerned,
secures property.
Where one of the parties under the law is held as property by
another party, the law injures the one or the other as often as
they are opposed. More-over, its very protection injures the
protected party: as when a rebellious slave is hanged.
--------------
Human labour is more valuable than brute labour, only because
actuated by reason; for human strength is inferior to brute
strength.
The origin of labour, human and brute, is the will.
The reason of slaves is not subjected to exercise, nor their will
to more than a few weak motives.
The labour of slaves is therefore less valuable than that of
brutes, inasmuch as their strength is inferior; and less valuable
than that of free labourers, inasmuch as their reason and will are
feeble and alienated.
--------------
Free and slave labour are equally owned by the capitalist.
When the labourer is not held as capital, the capitalist pays for
labour only.
When the labourer is held as capital, the capitalist not only pays
a much higher price for an equal quantity of labour, but also for
waste, negligence, and theft, on the part of the labourer.
Capital is thus sunk which ought to be reproduced.
As the supply of slave labour does not rise and fall with the
wants of the capitalist, like that of free labour, he employs his
occasional surplus on works which could be better done by brute
labour or machinery.
By rejecting brute labour, he refuses facilities for convertible
husbandry, and for improving the labour of his slaves by giving
them animal food.
By rejecting machinery, he declines the most direct and complete
method of saving labour.
Thus, again, capital is sunk which ought to be reproduced.
In order to make up for this loss of capital to slave-owners,
bounties and prohibitions are granted in their behalf by
government; the waste committed by certain capitalists abroad
being thus paid for out of the earnings of those at home.
Sugar being the production especially protected, every thing is
sacrificed by planters to the growth of sugar. The land is
exhausted by perpetual cropping, the least possible portion of it
is tilled for food, the slaves are worn out by overwork, and their
numbers decrease in proportion to the scantiness of their food and
the oppressiveness of their toil.
When the soil is so far exhausted as to place the owner out of
reach of the sugar-bounties, more food is raised, less toil is
inflicted, and the slave population increases.
Legislative protection, therefore, not only taxes the people at
home, but promotes ruin, misery, and death, in the protected
colonies.
A free trade in sugar would banish slavery altogether, since
competition must induce an economy of labour and capital; i. e., a
substitution of free for slave labour.
Let us see then what is the responsibility of the legislature in
this matter.
The slave system inflicts an incalculable amount of human
suffering, for the sake of making a wholesale waste of labour and
capital.
Since the slave system is only supported by legislative
protection, the legislature is responsible for the misery caused
by direct infliction, and for the injury indirectly occasioned by
the waste of labour and capital.
-----
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 individual—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 by-word 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.
-----------------------
PART II.
In the early days of society, it is natural enough for men to take
what they can find or make, without giving themselves any trouble
about analyzing their wealth, or philosophizing about its
distribution. When, however, the desires of some begin to interfere
with those of others, and production does not, in particular
instances, abound as was expected, and sudden and manifold claims
for a provision arise, and can with difficulty be met, men
necessarily begin, however late, to examine their resources, and
investigate the demands upon them. Only very remote approaches to a
true analysis may be made at first; and the consequences of a
hundred pernicious mistakes must probably be borne before any thing
like a fair distribution can be so much as conceived of. But time
and experience are certain to originate the conception, as is proved
by the rise of the science of Political Economy; and there is every
reason to believe that time and experience will exalt the conception
into action, and lead to a wise application of the splendid
apparatus of human happiness which has been confided to the hands of
society. Every mistake has hitherto issued in the furtherance of
this end, according to the uniform plan under which the affairs of
men are administered. It has been discovered that the race cannot
live upon labour without its reward, and that to be numerous is not
of itself to be happy; and there is a relaxation of effort to force
the multiplication of the race. It has been discovered that land of
itself is not wealth, and that our condition would be deplorable if
it were so, since land does not improve of itself, but deteriorates
as the race which subsists upon it is multiplied. It is discovered
that money is not wealth; that the tenants of different localities
do not flourish at one another’s expense; and that wealth cannot be
distributed according to the arbitrary pleasure of rulers. Many
other ancient convictions are now found to be delusions; and, what
is better still, the grand principles are fully established which
may serve as a key to all the mysteries relating to the distribution
of wealth. Their application may require much time and patience; but
we have them safe. Their final general adoption may be regarded as
certain, and an incalculable amelioration of the condition of
society must follow of course.
These principles are two:—That, owing to the inequality of soils
(the ultimate capital of society), the natural tendency of capital
is to yield a perpetually diminishing return;—and that the consumers
of capital increase at a perpetually accelerated rate.
The operation of these principles may be modified to any extent by
the influence of others: but they exist; they are fully ascertained;
and must henceforth serve as guides to all wise attempts to rectify
an unjust distribution of the wealth of society. It is difficult to
conceive how any sound mind can have withheld its assent to these
grand principles, after they had once been clearly announced. It is
very evident that some soils possess a far inferior power of
producing food to others; and that, in the natural course of things,
society will till the best soils first, and then the next best, and
then soils of the third degree, and so on, as the demand for food
increases; and that, as each adopted soil will yield less than the
last, every application of capital will yield a smaller return—all
applications of capital being regulated by the primary application
of capital to land. It is difficult to see how this general
principle can be disputed, however large may be the allowance
required for the influence of other principles. Improvements in
tillage, yet undreamed of, may increase the produce incalculably;
but this increased produce will still be subjected to the same law.
There will be an inequality of improved as of unimproved soils. New
powers, chemical and mechanical, may be brought to bear on the soil
for ever and ever; and still the same law must hold good while there
is an original inequality in the material on which those powers are
employed. Whether we obtain our food from the sea, or from new
regions of the earth,—if we could fetch it down from the moon, or up
from the centre of the globe,—the principle must hold good as long
as there are limited and varying facilities for obtaining this food,
and an increasing demand for it. More labour and more would be given
to answer each new demand; and the return would still be less, till
it came to a vanishing point.
If this labour were that of stocks and stones in the service of a
reasonable number of men, the simple fact would be that this
reasonable number of men must live upon the produce of the labour
already set in motion. But the labour in question is human labour,
which eats in proportion as it works, and multiplies itself faster
by far than it can augment its supply of food. The proprietor of a
field feeds his five children from it, till they each have five
children, and each of these five children in their turn. Does the
produce of the paternal field augment itself five times, and then
twenty-five times, to suit the growing wants of the new generations?
It may possibly be made to yield double, and then three times, and
then four times what it once did; but no kind or degree of skill can
make the ratio of its productiveness the same as that of human
increase. What primary rule of practice follows from the combination
of these two principles?
--------------
The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.
Since successive portions of capital yield a less and less return,
and the human species produce at a constantly accelerated rate,
there is a perpetual tendency in population to press upon the means
of subsistence.
The ultimate checks by which population is kept down to the level of
the means of subsistence, are vice and misery.
Since the ends of life are virtue and happiness, these checks ought
to be superseded by the milder methods which exist within man’s
reach.
These evils may be delayed by promoting the increase of capital, and
superseded by restraining the increase of population.
Towards the one object, a part of society may do a little; towards
the other, all may do much.
By rendering property secure, expenditure frugal, and production
easy, society may promote the growth of capital.
By bringing no more children into the world than there is a
subsistence provided for, society may preserve itself from the
miseries of want. In other words, the timely use of the mild
preventive check may avert the horrors of any positive check.
The preventive check becomes more, and the positive checks less
powerful, as society advances.
The positive checks, having performed their office in stimulating
the human faculties, and originating social institutions, must be
wholly superseded by the preventive check before society can attain
its ultimate aim,—the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
--------------
However the wealth of society may be distributed,—whether among the
three classes who, at present, in all civilized countries, divide
it, or among the partakers of a common stock, (according to the
desire of some who mourn our evils, and look, as others think, in a
wrong place for the remedy),—however the wealth of society may be
distributed, the above principles are of the highest concern to the
whole of society. Some may feel sooner than others the pressure of
population against the means of subsistence; but it ultimately
concerns all, to the last degree, that there should be subsistence
for the race. This consideration is prior to all others which relate
only to the modes and degrees in which wealth shall be shared by
various classes. There is little wisdom in fixing a scale of
enjoyments while society is laid open to vice, disease, and death,—
the awful retribution for a careless administration of the common
possession.—Yet the policy of rulers,—of rulers by office and by
influence,—has, till very lately, been to stimulate population
without any regard to the subsistence provided for it. The plea has
always been that every man born into the world brings with him the
labour which will support more than himself: but each must also
bring with him the land on which his labour is to be employed, or he
may find it no more possible to live upon labour than to live upon
air. There is never any fear that population will not increase fast
enough, as its increase is absolutely determined by the existing
means for its support. But there is a perpetual danger that it may
increase too fast for the purposes of the ruler; and, for what has
but too seldom entered into his purposes,—the happiness of his
people. If he looks to the narratives of wars, he may find that the
subsistence of armies has always failed sooner than men, though its
armed force can never compose more than a small portion of any
nation. He will find in the history of every state that when the
over-pressure of the people upon its food, partially and most
painfully kept down by the death of its infants and its aged, and of
those who have grown sickly through want, has been yet more
fearfully relieved by the agency of famine and pestilence, a new
impulse is invariably given, far more efficacious than the bidding
of any sovereign. It is folly, he may thus see, to lash the dull
tide of a swollen river when banked up so that it cannot flow; and
when a portion of its waters are drawn off, the stream runs fast
enough of itself. If the power of a ruler were to be estimated by
the rate at which he could induce the increase of his subjects,
which would be the most powerful,—the Emperor of China or the King
of Hayti? The Haytian empire is insignificant enough in comparison
of the Chinese; but the Haytian king sees his subjects multiplying,
amidst their superabundance of food, at a rate hitherto unsurpassed;
while the Chinese can multiply no more till they can enlarge the
extent of their food. Under the stimulus of royal promises, children
may be born; but by the command of a higher authority, they die. The
laws of nature are too strong for kings. In this case, the bidding
is either needless or unavailing.
Any power of stimulus which rulers possess should be otherwise
applied,—to the production of subsistence. If the plain rule were
followed, of making increased subsistence _precede_ an increase of
population, the great work of the distribution of wealth would
follow its own natural laws; and men would only have to participate
and be content. When the final cause of the arrangement by which
population has been ordained to press against the means of
subsistence shall have wrought its work in stimulating the human
faculties, and opening up new resources to the race, there will be
as ample an enjoyment of the blessings of life as the warmest
advocate of numbers can desire,—an enjoyment infinitely greater for
the absence of all deadly struggle or pining desire for a due share
of the bounties of nature’s mighty feast.
At present, however, while we have the pride of luxury within our
palaces, and famine at their gates, it is necessary to ascertain how
the two principles announced above affect the distribution of the
wealth of society.
The uncontrolled operation of these principles will be found the
main cause of the tremendous inequality of possession in society;
and if society wishes to put an end to such inequality, it must be
done by suiting the proceedings of society to these principles, and
not by any temporary measures. If the possessions of the richest of
our peers were to-morrow to be divided among the poorest of our
operatives and country labourers, no permanent relief to the latter
class would be obtained by beggaring the former, and the same
principles would go on working, the day after, to produce in time
precisely similar results. Even if it were the practice with us, as
it was with the Jews, that land should revert to the original
possessors, at certain fixed periods, the same laws would work; and
to even greater disadvantage than now, as the land-owners would not
be so rich, while the labourers would be quite as poor. Property
would run less into masses; but there would be less wealth to be
amassed. There is no use in opposition to these principles, or in
discontent at their natural results. The true wisdom is in modifying
the results by practically recognizing the principle. We must
control the rise of rent by stimulating agricultural improvements,
and preventing the demand for food from outstripping them. We must
moderate the pressure upon the subsistence, or wages fund, by
regulating the numbers who are to share it. We must moderate the
pressure against the profits fund, by keeping the demands upon the
wages fund within due bounds.[C]
-----
Footnote C:
It is well known that there are persons in this country, as in
France and elsewhere, who hold the opinion that the evils of
unequal distribution would be annihilated by annihilating the
distinctions of rent, profits, and wages; making the whole society
the sole landowner and capitalist, and all its members labourers.
It is impossible to doubt the benevolent intentions of the leading
preachers of this doctrine, whose exertions have originated in
sympathy with the most-suffering portion of the community; but it
is equally impossible to their opponents to allow that any
arbitrary arrangements of existing resources can exclude want,
while the primary laws of proportion are left uncontrolled. When
the advocates of a common stock can show that their system
augments capital and regulates population more effectually than
the system under which individual property is held, their
pretensions will be regarded with more favour than they have
hitherto engaged. At present, it is pretty evident that in no way
is capital so little likely to be taken care of as when it belongs
to every body,—_i.e._ to nobody; and that, but for the barriers of
individual rights of property, the tide of population would flow
in with an overwhelming force. There may be an age to come when
the institution of property shall cease with the occasions for it;
but such an age is barely within our ken. Meantime, our pauper
system exhibits the consequences of a promise of maintenance
without a restriction of numbers by the state. If it were possible
now to establish common-stock institutions which should include
the entire community, they would soon become so many workhouses,
or pauper barracks. If any one doubts this, let him ask himself
how capital is to be husbanded and cherished when it is nobody’s
interest to take care of it, and how population is to be regulated
when even the present insufficient restraints are taken away. If
education is to supply the deficiency of other stimuli and
restraints, let us have education in addition. We want it enough
as an addition before we can think of trying it as a substitution.
We must see our fathers of families exemplary in providing for
their own offspring before they can be trusted to labour and deny
themselves from an abstract sense of duty. As for the main
principle of the objections to the abolition of proprietorship, it
is contained in the following portion of one of my summaries of
principles:—
It is supposed by some that these tendencies to the fall of wages
and profits may be counteracted by abolishing the distinctions of
shares, and casting the whole produce of land, capital, and
labour, into a common stock. But this is a fallacy.
For, whatever may be the saving effected by an extensive
partnership, such partnership does not affect the natural laws by
which population increases faster than capital. The diminution of
the returns to capital must occasion poverty to a multiplying
society, whether those returns are appropriated by individuals
under the competitive system, or equally distributed among the
members of a co-operative community.
The same checks to the deterioration of the resources of society
are necessary under each system.
These are, (in addition to the agricultural improvements
continually taking place,)—
1. The due limitation of the number of consumers.
2. The lightening of the public burdens, which at present
abstract a large proportion of profits and wages.
3. A liberal commercial system which shall obviate the necessity
of bringing poor soils into cultivation.
-----
The wealth of society naturally distributes itself between two
classes of capitalists, from one of which a portion descends to a
third class,—the labourers. The two classes of capitalists are,
first, the owners of land or water,—of the natural agents of
production,—and next, the farmers of land or water, or those who
employ, by the application of capital, the natural agents of
production. Each of the three classes obtains his share by
purchase,—original, or perpetually renewed—the landowner by the
secondary or hoarded labour of his ancestors or of his youth; the
capitalist by hoarded labour, and the purchased labour of his
servants; and the labourer by primary labour. The landowner receives
his share as rent; the capitalist as profits; the labourer as wages.
Real RENT is that which is paid to the landowner for the use of the
original, indestructible powers of the soil. The total rent paid by
a farmer includes also the profits of the capital laid out by the
landowner upon the estate.
Land possesses its original, indestructible powers in different
degrees.
The most fertile being all appropriated, and more produce wanted,
the next best soil is brought into cultivation; then land of the
third degree, and so on, till all is tilled that will repay tillage.
An unequal produce being yielded by these different lands, the
surplus return of all above the lowest goes to the landowner in the
form of rent.
The same thing happens when repeated applications of capital are
made to the same land for the sake of increasing its productiveness.
The produce which remains over the return to the least productive
application of capital goes to the landowner in the form of rent.
RENT, therefore, consists of that part of the return made to the
more productive portions of capital, by which it exceeds the return
made to the least productive portion.
New lands are not tilled, and capital is not employed for a less
return, unless the produce will pay the cost of production.
A rise of prices, therefore, creates, and is not created by, rent.
When more capital is employed in agriculture, new land is tilled, a
further outlay is made on land already tilled; and thus also rent
arises from increase of capital.
When capital is withdrawn from agriculture, inferior, _i. e._ the
most expensive soils, are let out of cultivation; and thus rent
falls.
A rise of rent is, therefore, a symptom, and not a cause, of wealth.
The tendency of rent is, therefore, to rise for ever in an improving
country. But there are counteracting causes.
Art increases production beyond the usual returns to capital laid
out: prices fall in proportion to the abundance of the supply, and
rent declines.
Improved facilities for bringing produce to market, by increasing
the supply, cause prices to fall and rent to decline.
COMMODITIES, being produced by capital and labour, are the joint
property of the capitalist and labourer.
The capitalist pays in advance to the labourers their share of the
commodity, and thus becomes its sole owner.
The portion thus paid is WAGES.
REAL WAGES are the articles of use and consumption that the labourer
receives in return for his labour.
NOMINAL WAGES are the portion he receives of these things reckoned
in money.
The fund from which wages are paid in any country consists of the
articles required for the use and consumption of labourers which
that country contains.
THE PROPORTION OF THIS FUND RECEIVED BY INDIVIDUALS MUST MAINLY
DEPEND ON THE NUMBER AMONG WHOM THE FUND IS DIVIDED.
The rate of wages in any country depends, therefore, not on the
wealth which that country contains, but on the proportion between
its capital and its population.
As population has a tendency to increase faster than capital, wages
can be prevented from falling to the lowest point only by adjusting
the proportion of population to capital.
The lowest point to which wages can be permanently reduced, is that
which affords a bare subsistence to the labourer.
The highest point to which wages can be permanently raised is that
which leaves to the capitalist just profit enough to make it worth
his while to invest capital.
The variations of the rate of wages between these extreme points
depending mainly on the supply of labour offered to the capitalist,
the rate of wages is mainly determined by the sellers, not the
buyers of labour.
The produce of labour and capital, after rent has been paid, is
divided between the labourer and the capitalist, under the name of
wages and profits.
Where there are two shares, each determines the other, provided they
press equally upon one another.
The increase of the supply of labour, claiming reward, makes the
pressure in the present case unequal, and renders wages the
regulator of profits.
The restriction of the supply of food causes the fall of both
profits and wages.
The increased expense of raising food enhances its price: labour,
both agricultural and manufacturing, becomes dearer (without
advantage to the labourer): this rise of wages causes profits to
fall; and this fall brings after it a reduction of the labourer’s
share, or a fall of wages.
The fall of profits and wages is thus referable to the same cause
which raises rent;—to an inequality in the fertility of soils.
--------------
Thus it appears that, owing to the inequality of soils, and the
principle of increase in the number of consumers, the natural
tendency of rent is to rise; and to rise in proportion to the
increase in the number of consumers. The tendency of profits is to
fall as rent rises, _i. e._ as the production of food becomes more
expensive. The fall of profits brings after it, as a necessary
consequence, the fall of wages; and the individual shares of wages
are still further reduced by every increase of the numbers among
whom the wages’ fund is to be divided.
These are important truths, and by no means discouraging, if we know
how to make use of them. There is no need hastily to suppose that
our landowners must inevitably get all the wealth of society into
their own hands, so that there will in time be only two classes in
the state,—landowners and paupers. It is possible that this might
happen, as it is possible that we may all die of famine from nobody
choosing to be at the trouble of tilling the ground. The two cases
are possible, and the catastrophes about equally probable. No one
can deny the strong tendency to famine to which we are all liable
unless we exert ourselves to avoid it; and the undue rise of rent,
and fall of profits and wages, is quite as certainly avoided by
moderate caution—by bringing natural laws to bear upon each other,
and not (as some desire) a law of human will to control that which
is beyond the reach of the unassisted human will.
Some who toil and earn but little recompense cry out upon the wealth
of the landowners, and desire a law which shall forbid their
receiving more than so much for a certain quantity and quality of
land. A law that men should not die in a famine would be as much to
the purpose. The way to prevent men dying of hunger is to sow grain
for them; and the way to prevent the landlords growing unduly rich
is to provide more food;—whether by improving the methods of tillage
at home, or inventing and improving productions of other kinds which
may exchange for food from abroad. Another way is by making
machinery (which does not eat and drink) supersede human labour, so
that we may have the increased production without the accompanying
consumption; but the most certain method of all, and that which is
in the power of all, is to proportion the number of consumers to the
existing supply of food. As soon as this is done, rents will be
stationary, and will be certain to fall after the next improvement
in tillage or manufacture. Meantime, the landowner can no more help
the rise of his rents than the poorest operative in the next town;
and, in fact, not so much, if that operative is bringing up a large
family to depreciate the value of labour, and increase the excessive
pressure upon food. The landlord, meantime, declares truly that he
is growing no richer. He is told that his rents have risen since
such a time; but (from various causes) his tenants cannot pay the
whole; and he is besides burdened with the maintenance of the
indigent who have been pauperized by the undue depression of wages.
No one would be more glad than he, to have his rents nominally
lowered so that he might receive the whole, and do what he pleased
with it. No one would be more glad than he, if he be wise, at the
tidings of fresh discoveries in science or inventions in art, or of
new resources opened beyond sea, or of increased providence in the
habits of the poorer classes, which should cause his income to fall
with the price of food, but render his lessened income more secure.
--------------
It is of even greater consequence to ascertain the relative position
of the other two parties, since any quarrel about their respective
shares cannot but cause a diminution of that which is to be divided
between them. Each party being dependent upon the other, any
interruption of their harmony cannot but be injurious to both: but
dissension is especially disastrous where, as in the present case,
the dependence is unequal. The capitalists have the great advantage
over the labourers of being able to wait longer for the adjustment
of disputes which may arise between them. Deplorable as are the
consequences to individuals and to society of living upon capital
from the absence of revenue, the case of those who are driven to
live upon their capital is, at least, better than that of the party
which has no capital to live upon.
The consequence of this inequality of dependence is that power of a
different kind is more frequently put in action by the more
dependent than by the less dependent party. The power of combination
to obtain a larger share of the subsistence fund is in the hands of
both parties, and is occasionally used by both; but much more
frequently by the labourers than by the capitalists. For this there
are obvious reasons.
If the proportion of labour to capital be equal, there is little
inducement to either party to quarrel with the other, as their
shares of gain are balanced: but if any capitalists choose to press
upon the labourers, it is to their own ultimate disadvantage, as
well as that of the labourers; for there can never be a combination
so extensive as to include all capitalists; and those who are not
included will find it their interest to lower the prices of their
commodities, paying the same wages as the united capitalists, and
being content with the ordinary rate of profit. By means of this
underselling, the extraordinary rate of profit is necessarily
brought down, and the capitalists are just as they were at first,
the reduction having fallen upon the wages of the labourer. Matters
can seldom, however, proceed so far as to the infliction of this
gratuitous injury. If the proportion of labour to capital be equal,
a very short resistance of the labourers to the reduction of their
wages suffices to make the capitalists repent of their endeavours to
grasp more than their share: and such endeavours are consequently
extremely rare where capital and labour are duly proportioned.
If there be a superabundance of capital, the capitalists are in no
condition to gain any thing by combination. To pay high wages
answers better to them than to live upon their capital. In such a
case, therefore, the capitalists never combine.—Or rather,—and I say
it with sorrow,—if such a case should arise, they would not combine.
Such cases can scarcely be spoken of in this country as matters of
actual experience, since there are but too few instances of capital
being abundant in proportion to labour.
On the third supposition,—that labour abounds in proportion to
capital,—there is no need for the capitalists to use their power of
combination. They can obtain what they want without it. The
labourers are the weaker party, inasmuch as they must have food, and
depend on the capitalists for it:—not for the quantity;—that depends
on themselves,—on the numbers they bring to divide a certain
quantity;—and the capitalists can resist their claims no further
than to secure the rate of profit, without which no capitalist would
do business. Not for the quantity of food to each man do the
labourers depend on the capitalists; but for the purchase of their
labour at all; and therefore, the capitalists do not need to combine
when labour superabounds.
For the same reasons, the labourers do not need to combine when
capital superabounds. They can naturally obtain as large a share of
the subsistence fund as will leave ordinary profits to the
capitalist: and this happens of course, as is well known from the
examples of newly settled countries, and newly invented
manufactures, where the profits of the capitalist are invariably
prevented by the dearness of labour from much exceeding the ordinary
rate.
In cases of equal proportion, the labourers run even a greater risk
from a strike than the capitalists. Some of the capitalists will, if
the balance be exact, withdraw their capital from business rather
than stand a strike; and thus is caused an immediate superabundance
of labour, with all its disadvantages to the labourers. But if no
capitalist withdraws, the waste of capital necessarily caused by a
strike causes also a superabundance of labour; and thus also the
labourers suffer for having destroyed the balance.
But when combination is resorted to in the absence of all other
power, its results are the most disastrous to the weak party which
employs it. The labourers who superabound are already at a
disadvantage, which can only be increased by any resistance which
helps to impoverish the capitalists. They may injure the capitalists
by impairing the capitalists’ share of the subsistence fund: but
they injure themselves much more by impairing, at the same time, the
labourers’ share. That such means of injuring capitalists are ever
resorted to in such a condition of affairs proves most forcibly that
the largest of the parties concerned is not yet fully aware how the
case stands, and that a far greater power of competition with the
capitalists is lodged with them than that which they are too ready
to employ to the injury of both parties and the good of neither.
If it had been, indeed, true that, by any natural laws of
distribution, any class of society could be placed in a position of
necessary and permanent inferiority of rights to any other class,
all writers on the philosophy of society would have shrunk from
relating any fables which must convey so sad a moral. But there is a
very cheering moral involved in every melancholy story that we hear
of the contentions of masters and men, and of the sufferings which
thence arise. The fact is that, so far from the masters having any
natural power,—even if they had the wish,—to oppress the working
classes, the working classes hold a power which may make them the
equals in independence of any class in society. That they have not
yet used it is less their fault than their misfortune. Whether fault
or misfortune, it is destined to be remedied, if we may trust to
experience working its invariable work, and communicating that
wisdom and power which can by no other means be gained. The only
control over the price of labour resides with those who can control
its quantity. Overstock the market with labour, and the most
compassionate of capitalists can do nothing to prevent its being ill
rewarded. Understock the market with labour, and the veriest miser
that ever employed gold for profit cannot prevent labour fetching a
high price. And with whom does it rest to overstock or understock
the market with labour? With whom does it rest to determine whether
the subsistence fund which exists shall be divided among a moderate
number or among a scrambling multitude? Most assuredly not with the
capitalists but the labourers.
When the labouring class fully comprehends the extent of the power
which it holds,—a power of obtaining not only its own terms from the
capitalists, but all the necessaries and comforts of life, and with
them the ease and dignity which become free-born men, they will turn
their other power of combination to better purposes than those of
annoyance and injury. The common plea of those labourers who already
understand their own case is that there is little use in scattered
individuals being careful to proportion their families to their
means of subsistence, while the greater number multiply
thoughtlessly, and prepare for new encroachments on the subsistence
fund. The same plea has been in use for ever on the first proposal
of any great social amelioration; and it has ever been found that
amelioration has followed with unexpected speed upon the virtuous
efforts of scattered individuals. They work round to each other,
they combine, they bring others into the combination, and these
again bring more, till there are hundreds of followers for every
leader, and for every follower there is a foe the less. Why should
it not be so with this greatest of all ameliorations that has ever
been proposed? If the working classes can still combine for objects
which have been a thousand times proved unattainable or hurtful when
attained, why should they not combine for purposes of providence and
mutual support in a better system of economy? Such combinations have
already begun; for every society which has for its objects the
economy of the resources of the working people, and the
encouragement of provident habits, is a society for limiting the
population within the means of subsistence. Many such associations
are so well founded as to give assurance that they will be
persevered in; if persevered in, it cannot be very long before some
one class or band of labourers feels the benefits of prudence, and
exhibits the truth that moderate self-denial in one direction brings
means of rational indulgence in others: and when this happens, the
work of amelioration will be fairly begun. The working men’s day
will be at hand, and no one will hail it more joyfully than the
capitalists;—for willingly would they exchange such power as is
given them by the helplessness of their labourers, for security
against the waste of capital which is caused by the opposition of
their work-people and the pauperism of their dependents.
--------------
Combinations of labourers against capitalists (whatever other
effects they may have) cannot secure a permanent rise of wages
unless the supply of labour falls short of the demand;—in which
case, strikes are usually unnecessary.
Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not
affect the proportion of population to capital.
Legislative interference does not affect this proportion, and is
therefore useless.
Strikes affect it only by wasting capital, and are therefore worse
than useless.
Combinations may avail or not, according to the reasonableness of
their objects.
Whether reasonable or not, combinations are not subjects for
legislative interference; the law having no cognizance of their
causes.
Disturbance of the peace being otherwise provided against,
combinations are wisely therefore now left unregarded by the law.
The condition of labourers may be best improved,—
1. By inventions and discoveries which create capital; and by
husbanding instead of wasting capital;—for instance, by
making savings instead of supporting strikes.
2. BY ADJUSTING THE PROPORTION OF POPULATION TO CAPITAL.
--------------
This is not the place in which to show how tremendous is the waste
of capital in a turn-out; nor have I been able to do it in that one
of my fables which treats of combinations of workmen. I felt myself
bound to present the fairest instance, in order to show the badness
of the principle of a strike in the best case; but I have the means
of showing, if I had but the space, that the members of a
combination are often—are commonly—the victims of a far more
despotic tyranny than they themselves ascribe to the masters, and a
more ruinous spoliation than the discontented suppose the rich
desirous to inflict upon the poor. I trust and believe that there
are many William Allens among the class of operatives; but I also
believe that few of these are leaders of strikes. Allen was an
unwilling leader of a strike; and there are many who see even more
clearly than he did the hopelessness and mischievousness of the
contest, who have either more selfishness to keep them out of it, or
more nerve to make a protest against a bad principle, and a stand
against a bad practice. I believe that the most intelligent and the
best men among the working-classes now decline joining a turn-out;
and it is very certain that not only the most ignorant, but the
worst, are among the first to engage. The reasons for this will be
sufficiently obvious to those who consider what facilities these
associations afford for such practices as ignorant and bad men
like,—for meddling and governing, for rioting, for idling, and
tippling, and journeying, and speechifying at other people’s
expense. No better occasion could be devised for exposing the
simple, and timid, and unwary to be robbed, and jobbed, and made
tools of by a few sharpers and idle busybodies. It is very certain
that three or four individuals have often succeeded, for their own
purposes, in setting three or four hundred, or thousand, better men
than themselves at enmity with their masters. It is difficult to
imagine a case of more spirit-rousing hardship than that of the
labourer who is compelled or inveigled into a contest which he
knows, or may know, to be bad in principle, and hopeless in its
issue,—who must, against his will or his reason, give up a
subsistence which is already too scanty, in order that he may find
it still further reduced when he returns to it. In consideration of
such cases, which everybody knows to be very common, I shall state a
few facts, which may assist and strengthen the determination of some
who may be striving against the now prevalent disposition to
strike for wages. The circumstances of the time will excuse a
disproportioned enlargement on a very obvious point.
In order to bring the principle of strikes to the test, we have only
to ask whether they increase capital or check population?—one or
other of which they must do if they are to benefit the struggling
party. It is known to everybody that they do neither; but it is not
so well known that they do the direct contrary,—that they not only
waste capital, but increase the supply of labour, the very thing of
which there is already too much. They do this by driving the
capitalists to find those silent labourers who never ask subsistence
or refuse their masters’ bidding—the machines, which are the
workmen’s abhorrence. It is unreasonable as it is vain to abhor
machinery; and that its use is facilitated by strikes will be
regarded hereafter as one of the few compensating circumstances
which arise out of the miseries of such a struggle for power or for
bread. But, however great may be the ultimate good of this issue,
the issue is certainly the very reverse of that contemplated and
desired by those who turn out. Yet the time is come for them to meet
it; and they will do well to take heed to the state of the
labour-market at this period.
After long depression and many fluctuations, it appears that there
is a revival of a steady demand for labour. The condition of our
capitalists is, however, different from what it was in most former
periods of prosperity. They are now busy; but they work for very low
profits in almost every branch of manufacture or trade. Their men
must also work hard for little pay, till some of the many
circumstances which tend to raise profits shall have occurred.
Never, however, were our working-class less disposed to take the low
wages which alone the masters are able to give. Combinations to
secure a rise are everywhere spreading, and grand preparations are
thus making for securing a fall. The low profits of the masters will
not stand encroachment. There is a brisk foreign competition, which
forbids trifling with any present demand. Under these circumstances,
if our working men choose to stand idle, what remains to be done but
to use machinery to the utmost extent that ingenuity can devise on
the spur of a great occasion? The quantity of human labour already
thus superseded is very considerable; and there will be more, in
proportion to the failure of harmony between capitalists and
labourers, till not a visible chance is left for the employment of
half our working men in the way they themselves propose. Happy will
it be for them if the usual consequences of the improvement of
machinery follow in the extension of our manufactures, so that there
may still be room for such as can learn a new business! and happy
will it be for them if they have become convinced, in their time of
hardship, that to moderate the supply of labour is the only way of
securing its desired recompense!
The following case illustrates the method by which human labour is
driven out of demand: it is only one of many which have arisen out
of the tyranny of the leaders of strikes, who, not satisfied with
turning out themselves, compel their weaker, but reluctant, brethren
to be idle also. In the case in question, the turning out of the
head spinners in a cotton factory, compelling the idleness of six or
seven work-people subordinate to each spinner, has led the head
spinner’s master to find that he can do without him, and the six or
seven subordinates to rejoice in their freedom from dependence on
his movements.
Six or seven different machines are employed in the production of
cotton-yarn from raw cotton. All but the last are called
“preparation machinery,” and one person waits upon each. The
office of this preparation machinery is to form the raw cotton
into a thick and tender thread, called a “roving.” The office of
the last machine is to twist and draw out the roving into a finer
and stronger thread: this operation is called “spinning,” and the
spun thread is “yarn.” This machine is called the “hand-mule.”
Hand-mules are worked in pairs, each pair requiring the head
spinner above-mentioned to direct its operation, and two or more
children to place the rovings in the machine, and piece the
threads that break.
The head spinner, though paid in proportion to the superiority of
his work, has always been the one to turn out; and his subordinates
must go with him of necessity, however averse they might be to do
so. It was not to be borne that the discontents of the comparatively
few should derange the whole manufacture, and deprive the many of
their bread; and nothing could be more natural than for some
expedient to be sought by which the masters and the subordinates
might be made independent of the head spinners. Twenty years ago,
attempts were made to invent some apparatus which might be attached
to the mule, and discharge the spinner’s task. The apparatus first
used was either too complex or too uncertain in its operation to
answer the purpose; and, as often as it failed, the spinners clapped
their hands, believed the manufacture more in their power than ever,
and advanced in their demands accordingly. They went somewhat too
far in 1824, when they refused very high wages, and drove the
Manchester capitalists to vigorous measures of self-defence. The
requisite talent was sought and found for the object required; and,
early in 1825, a patent for the “self-acting mule” was taken out,
nothing being wanting to its efficacy but the simplification which
time and practice were sure to bring, and which would lessen its
cost so as to qualify it for common adoption. No sooner had it been
set to work, and begun to gain reputation, than a great part of the
establishment where it was in use was destroyed by fire, and the
machine was not heard of for some months. As soon as it began to be
again attended to, so great a stagnation of trade took place, that
the spirit of the spinner was subdued: the master was unwilling to
mortify him in his distress, and all mention of the self-acting mule
was dropped. This was very hard upon the patentees, who had been
originally forced into the business, and had spent, not only much
time and pains, but a great deal of money on the invention. They
rightly supposed, however, that the head spinners would give them
their turn on the first opportunity. They went on improving and
improving their invention, while awaiting another strike on the
revival of trade. This happened at the close of 1829; and then
several leading houses provided themselves with each a pair of
self-acting mules, by way of trial: but the adoption of the machine
went on languidly till the great strike of 1831 achieved its
triumph. It is now used in upwards of fifty mills, and seems likely
soon to be adopted in all others. The head spinners have not a
chance against it; for it not only saves their wages, and leaves
their subordinates at peace, but does their work better than they
could do it themselves;—an unexpected result with which the
perseverance of the inventors has been rewarded. The quantity of
yarn is greater than could before be produced in the same time and
with the same number of spindles: the yarn is of greater strength
and more uniform quality: there is a material saving of waste in the
subsequent processes, from the regularity with which the yarn is
wound on the spindle; and, from the same cause, a greater quantity
of a better fabric than before issues from the loom of the weaver.
This story preaches its own moral. Every one ought to be glad to
hear of improvements in the comforts of mankind; but all would
rather pay any other purchase-money for them than the subsistence of
a useful and often suffering class of society. It is in the power of
our working class to provide that all such improvements shall
henceforth arise otherwise than through their opposition, and for
their destruction. With them rests the choice of controlling the
labour-market on the one hand, and pauperism on the other.
--------------
If no moral reaches us from the long tragedy of pauperism which has
been enacted before the eyes of many generations, we are past
teaching. For the last three generations, especially, the state of
the indigent has been an object of primary attention to all classes
in our society. Statesmen have legislated, magistrates have
administered, the clergy have preached, tradesmen and manufacturers
have contributed, the farmers have been burdened: almost the sole
employment of women, next to the care of their own families, has
been the charge of the poor; almsgiving has been the first virtue to
which infant enthusiasm has been roused, and charity, in this sense,
has been made the test of moral sincerity and religious proficiency.
And what has all this done for society? The number of the indigent
has increased from day to day, and at a perpetually increasing rate,
till it has absorbed, in a legal charity alone, nine millions per
annum of the subsistence-fund, which is the clear right of the
independent labourer. It is no small consideration that the
habitually indigent become, as a matter of course, as their doom,
the most profligate portion of society. But this fearful
consideration is not all. We not only defraud the industrious
classes of their due, now tempting and now forcing them down into a
state of indigence, and by the same act condemning them to
hopelessness and vice, but we, at the same time, put in motion an
apparatus of moral evil among every class which has to communicate
with the indigent, which would bear down the preaching of the twelve
apostles themselves. If account could be taken of the unjust
partialities of magistrates, of the abuse of power by open vestries,
and the jobbing by select vestries; of the heart-wringing oppression
sustained by the tradesman and farmer; of the open licentiousness
and concealed fraud, the ungodly conspiracies and diabolical hatreds
nourished by our system of legal charity, and the daily repeated,
cruel injustice inflicted by our methods of public and private
charity, we might well doubt whether some fiend had not been making
sport of us under the holy semblance of charity. It may be doubted
whether the most profligate tyranny ever broke or depraved so many
hearts as the charities of our Christian nation. If our practices
are to be judged by their fruits, there are none, next to slavery,
for which we need so much pardon as for our methods of charity.
There is no use in pleading our good intentions. The fathers of the
Inquisition are ever ready with their plea of good intentions. The
parent who breaks the spirit, and thus annihilates the moral liberty
of his child, does it with the best intentions. The manœuvrer tells
twenty lies a-day with the best intentions. There is, perhaps, no
crime in whose defence good intentions may not with sincerity have
been pleaded. The question is why, with evidence that we were wrong,
daily and hourly before our eyes, we did not mend our methods.
Thence arises the moral of this dreary lesson, that virtue, whether
beneficence or any other, does not consist in formal and arbitrary
practices, but in conformity to vital principles. Without regard to
this essential truth, virtue may turn to vice before we are aware;
and as a proof of it, we have been doing the pleasure of fiends
under a persuasion that we were discharging the duty of Christians.
We have exercised self-denial in our charity: but so did Simeon
Stylobates in his piety, when he lived on the top of a pillar. We
have toiled and suffered in our charity: but so did the pilgrims who
walked with peas in their shoes to the sepulchre. Their piety and
their sufferings were a mockery of Him they worshipped; and our
charity has proved a scandal to the religion we profess. What
follows? Not that piety and charity are a mockery and a delusion;
but that Simeon did not understand the one, and we have most
assuredly mistaken the other.
One essential distinction between a comparatively rich and poor
society is in the moral right which individuals have to dispose of
their money in certain modes. Where capital abounds in proportion to
the consumers, individuals are fully justified in giving away in
whatsoever form and to whomsoever they please; as they give away
that which leaves nobody destitute. But in a society where
population abounds in proportion to capital, to give food and
clothing to the idle while the industrious are debarred from earning
it, is to take subsistence from him whose due it is, to give it to
one who has no claim. Thus to violate justice can be no true
charity. Where consumers abound in proportion to capital, it is
obvious that the way to bestow most happiness is, not to take away
one man’s share to give it to another, but to do what is possible
towards creating another share in such a way as not to cause more
want. In other words, almsgiving is the mode of charity appropriate
to one state of society, and the establishment of provident
associations, and the encouragement of emigration, and especially of
education, are the modes of charity appropriate to another state of
society. We have need enough of charity in our present state;—with
hundreds of thousands of paupers in our parishes, and of
half-starved artizans in our towns, and broken-spirited labourers in
our villages. We have need enough of charity,—of the time of such as
have leisure, and of the attention of the thoughtful, and of the
exertions of the active, and of the wealth of the opulent. All these
will be too little for the removal of the evil which our own
mistakes have caused. We have need enough of charity; and if we
would learn how to apply it, there are those among the sufferers who
can instruct us. There is in existence a letter from a poor
operative living in a district where charities of food and clothing
abound, entreating the influential parties whom he addresses to put
an end to the almsgiving which leaves no chance of a just provision
to the high-souled working man. There is in existence a petition
from a body of agricultural labourers to the House of Lords, last
year, praying for the abolition of legal charity which condemns the
labourer to starvation or degradation. These documents are signs of
the times which are not to be mistaken, and which may well strike us
silent with shame at our incessant complaints of the poor for having
lost their spirit of independence, and become a degraded race. Where
is our Christian charity, when we first wrest from them their
independence, and then taunt them with the loss? when we invite them
to encroach, and then spurn them for encroaching?
Even from this enormous evil, however, good is at this moment
arising. The rapid, the appalling increase of the mischief has
directed the general attention towards it; and the two grand
principles with which we set out afford the suggestion of remedies
which are actually in preparation. It is now many years since
certain commissioners, appointed by the French government to
investigate our pauper system, pronounced it the great political
gangrene of England, which it was equally dangerous to remove and to
let alone. The mischief has been on the increase ever since, and yet
there is hope of cure. If it were not that we had sound principles
to go upon,—if we had all this vice and misery on our hands to be
got rid of we knew not how, our condition would indeed be
deplorable. But, once having got hold of the truth that ours is a
society where labour abounds in proportion to capital, we know at
least how to look about for a remedy, and with what aim to direct
our proceedings. We must lessen the inducements to indigence,
(strange that such should exist!) by making the condition of the
pauper inferior to that of the independent labourer, and ensure its
remaining universally so by appointing a rigid, impartial, and
uniform administration of the funds of our legal charity. Every
diminution of the inducements to indigence is necessarily an
increase of the inducements to independence; both by giving the
right bias to the inclinations of the labourer, and by saving a
portion of the subsistence-fund.
In proportion to the savings effected in the subsistence-fund by a
rigid administration of the legal charity, the surplus labour of our
parishes will be absorbed; and if, by a wise scheme of emigration,
the disproportion between our capital and labour can be still
further reduced, a way will be open for the total abolition of a
legal charity,—the most demoralizing agency, perhaps, which can be
introduced into any state,—a curse beneath which no society can
prosper. We shall then be at liberty to apply our charity wholly to
that object which should now be uppermost with all the truly
benevolent,—to prevent indigence instead of providing for it, in the
full confidence that “accidental cases will be relieved by
accidental succour.” There are many who believe that an immediate
abolition of our legal charity would cause less misery than its long
continuance: but there is happily no occasion to contemplate the
alternative. There is a strong hope afforded by various instances of
partial reformation that a way remains for us out of our
difficulties,—toilsome and painful, no doubt, but practicable and
safe;—a way of so rectifying the administration of our poor-laws as
to give us the power of at length abolishing them. Honoured be the
rulers who shall set us forward on this path; and blessed be every
one who bestirs himself to remove obstructions by the substitution
of a true for a spurious charity![D]
-----
Footnote D:
If a rebuke were needed for despondency respecting the prospects
of society, it might be found in the experience of the change
which a few months have wrought in the popular convictions as to
the true direction of charity. Fifteen months ago, it required
some resolution to give so much pain to kind hearts as was
occasioned by such exposures as those contained in “Cousin
Marshall,” and yet more to protest against poor-laws for Ireland.
The publications of the Poor-Law Commissioners have since wrought
powerfully in the right direction. Conviction has flashed from
mind to mind; and now we hear from all quarters of Provident and
Friendly Societies, of Emigration, of parish struggles for the
rectification of abuses, of the regulation of workhouses, the
shutting up of soup and blanket charities, and the revision of
charitable constitutions, with a view to promote the employment of
labour rather than the giving of alms. The extent of the change of
opinion in the same time with regard to poor-laws for Ireland is
scarcely less remarkable. On no subject has mistake been more
prevalent, and never has it more rapidly given way before the
statement of principles and facts. The noblest charity, after all,
would be a provision for the regular statement, in a popular form,
of principles and facts of like importance. When shall we have a
Minister of Public Instruction who will be the angel of this new
dispensation? It is for the people to say when.
-----
Here is the statement of the evil and of one of the appropriate
remedies.
--------------
In a society composed of a natural gradation of ranks, some must be
poor; _i.e._ have nothing more than the means of present
subsistence.
Any suspension of these means of subsistence, whether through
disaster, sickness, or decrepitude, converts the poor into the
indigent.
Since indigence occasions misery, and disposes to vice, the welfare
of society requires the greatest possible reduction of the number of
the indigent.
Charity, public and private, or an arbitrary distribution of the
subsistence-fund, has hitherto failed to effect this object; the
proportion of the indigent to the rest of the population having
increased from age to age.
This is not surprising, since an arbitrary distribution of the
subsistence-fund, besides rendering consumption unproductive, and
encouraging a multiplication of consumers, does not meet the
difficulty arising from the disproportion of numbers to the means of
subsistence.
The small unproductive consumption occasioned by the relief of
sudden accidents and rare infirmities is necessary, and may be
justifiably provided for by charity, since such charity does not
tend to the increase of numbers; but, with this exception, all
arbitrary distribution of the necessaries of life is injurious to
society, whether in the form of private almsgiving, public
charitable institutions, or a legal pauper-system.
The tendency of all such modes of distribution having been found to
be to encourage improvidence with all its attendant evils,—to injure
the good while relieving the bad,—to extinguish the spirit of
independence on one side, and of charity on the other,—to encourage
peculation, tyranny, and fraud,—and to increase perpetually the evil
they are meant to remedy,—but one plea is now commonly urged in
favour of a legal provision for the indigent.
This plea is, that every individual born into a state has a right to
subsistence from the state.
This plea, in its general application, is grounded on a false
analogy between a state and its members, and a parent and his
family.
A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence-fund of
his family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported
by that fund; whereas the rulers of a state, from whom a legal
provision emanates, have little influence over its subsistence-fund,
and no control whatever over the number of its members.
If the plea of right to subsistence be grounded on the faults of
national institutions, the right ought rather to be superseded by
the rectification of those institutions, than admitted at the cost
of perpetuating an institution more hurtful than all the others
combined.
--------------
What then must be done to lessen the number of the indigent now so
frightfully increasing?
The subsistence-fund must be employed productively, and capital and
labour be allowed to take their natural course; _i. e._ the pauper
system must, by some means or other, be extinguished.
The number of consumers must be proportioned to the
subsistence-fund. To this end, encouragements to the increase of
population should be withdrawn, and every sanction given to the
preventive check; _i. e._ charity must be directed to the
enlightenment of the mind instead of to the relief of bodily wants.
If not adopted speedily, all measures will be too late to prevent
the universal prevalence of poverty in this kingdom, the legal
provision for the indigent now operating the extinction of our
national resources at a perpetually increasing rate.
--------------
The objects of voluntary emigration, directed by the state, are
three-fold:—
1. To improve the condition of those who emigrate, by placing
them where they may obtain subsistence at less cost than at
home.
2. To improve the condition of those who remain, by increasing
the ratio of capital to population.
3. To improve the condition of the colonized region.
To fulfil the first of these objects, the colony must be so located
as to insure health and abundance to its members; and it must be so
organized as to secure the due co-operation of labour and capital.
To fulfil the second object, the removal of each individual must be
less costly than his maintenance at home would be; and the selection
must be made with a view to lessening the amount of human
productiveness at home.
To fulfil the third object, the colonists must be selected with a
view to their productiveness, both as regards capital and
population; which includes a moral fitness to compose an orderly
society.
It follows from all these considerations that a new settlement
should be composed of young, healthy, and moral persons; that all
should not be labourers, nor all capitalists; and that there should
be a sufficient concentration of their numbers on the new lands to
ensure a facility of exchanges.
--------------
All other proposed remedies must be subjected to, as this must be
regulated by, the test, whether they assist in proportioning labour
and capital. The Home Colonization system here fails, on the double
ground that it ensures a smaller return to capital and labour than
could be had abroad, and serves as a direct premium on population.
Home colonies may afford a temporary relief to a redundant
population, and also increase the productiveness of the lands which
they appropriate; but this is done by alienating capital from its
natural channels; and with the certainty of ultimately injuring
society by increasing the redundancy of population over capital.
Home colonization then, though less injurious than the unproductive
distribution of the charity-fund, is inferior to foreign
colonization, inasmuch as the one yields temporary benefit to a few
at the expense of ultimate injury to many; and the other produces
permanent benefit to all.
--------------
All provisions for rewarding forethought and economy, and
especially all for the diffusion of sound moral and political
knowledge, approve themselves by this test. All contrivance and
care in the production and economy of capital approve themselves
also; but Emigration is conspicuous in its merits, since it not
only immediately reaches the seat of the evil in the mother
country, but affords the greatest of blessings to the colonized
regions. If regulated by a due regard to the infallible test, it
is scarcely possible to conceive of an arrangement more apt to all
the purposes of society. Where it has failed, the reason of
failure has commonly been that one link in the chain of operating
causes has been wanting. Land and labourers cannot mutually
prosper without the capital which has too often been deficient. We
have not yet made the experiment of sending out small societies
completely organized, and amply provided to settle down at once in
a state of sufficient civilization to spare the mother-country all
further anxiety about the expedition. It can be no objection to
this that it abstracts capital and the most useful species of
labour from the mother-country: since the capital so sent out will
yield a more rapid and ample increase to us in a new market for
commerce than it could have done at home; and the labour is that
which we least want at home,—however good its quality may be,—and
that which we most want in our possessions on the other side the
world. Such an organized society, however, would be able to bear a
much larger proportion of children than a similar society could
take charge of at home,—the labour of children being of as much
more value than their maintenance abroad, as it is less at home.
If for every old person naturally belonging to such a company,
left behind, two children were taken out, this country would be
immediately compensated for the abstraction of prime labour, and a
provision would be made for the future contraction of the
population. All details, however, from the greatest to the least,
will be arranged with infinitely less trouble than our parochial
mismanagements have cost us when we have once, as a nation,
surveyed the dreary haunts of our pauperized classes, and then
taken a flight in spirit to the fair regions abroad which invite
their labour with a sure promise of rich recompense. The time must
come when it will be a matter of wonder how we could so long be
oppressed with a redundancy of labour at home, while our foreign
lands were dreary only for want of labour, while an open sea lay
between, while we had shipping to spare to traverse it, and while
we were spending nine millions a year in the fruitless support of
our paupers, and as a premium on the production of yet more and
more labour. The best plea for us in that day will be that we did
not understand our own case. By the time we have spent nine
millions, or the half of nine millions, in relieving our labour
market, we may have discovered how inferior is that superstitious,
spurious charity which doles out bread at its own door to an
unlawful petitioner because to give bread was once charity, and
that enlightened, genuine benevolence which causes plenty to
spring in the far corners of the world, nourishing at home the
ancient household virtues which have been well nigh starved among
us, but which are not dead.
--------------
What decision does our test give out in regard to Ireland? That, as
a redundancy of population is her universally acknowledged curse, it
is unreasonable to expect relief from the introduction of a legal
charity,—the most efficacious of all premiums on population. The
conclusion is so obvious, that it can be got rid of only by proving
either that a redundant population is not the great grievance of
Ireland, or that there may be a legal charity which does not act as
a premium on population. Where are the materials for either the one
proof or the other?
Whatever affects the security of property, or intercepts the due
reward of labour, impairs the subsistence-fund by discouraging
industry and forethought.
Partnership tenantcies affect the security of property by rendering
one tenant answerable for the obligations of all his partners, while
he has no control over the management of their portions.
A gradation of landlords on one estate has the same effect, by
rendering one tenant liable to the claims of more than one landlord.
The levying of fines on a whole district for an illegal practice
going on in one part of it has the same effect, by rendering the
honest man liable for the malpractices of the knave.
The imposition of a church establishment on those who already
support another church, intercepts the due reward of labour, by
taking from the labourer a portion of his earnings for an object
from which he derives no benefit.
The practice of letting land to the highest bidder, without regard
to former service, or to the merits of the applicants, intercepts
the due reward of the labourer, by decreeing his gains to expire
with his lease.
All these practices having prevailed in IRELAND, her
subsistence-fund is proportionably impaired, though the reduction is
somewhat more than compensated by the natural growth of capital.
While capital has been growing much more slowly than it ought,
population has been increasing much more rapidly than the
circumstances of the country have warranted; the consequences of
which are, extensive and appalling indigence, and a wide spread of
the moral evils which attend it.
An immediate palliation of this indigence would be the result of
introducing a legal pauper-system into Ireland; but it would be at
the expense of an incalculable permanent increase of the evil.
To levy a poor-rate on the country at large would be impolitic,
since it would only increase the primary grievance of an
insufficiency of capital, by causing a further unproductive
consumption of it.
To throw the burthen of a pauper-system on absentees would be
especially unjust, since they bear precisely the same relation to
the wealth of their country as its resident capitalists.
In the case of Ireland, as in all analogous cases, permanent relief
can be effected only by adjusting the proportions of capital and
population; and this must be attempted by means suited to her
peculiar circumstances.
The growth of capital should be aided by improvements in
agricultural and domestic economy, and by the removal of political
grievances; from which would follow a union in place of an
opposition of interests.
Population should be reduced within due limits,
In the present emergency, by well-conducted schemes of emigration;
and
Permanently, by educating the people till they shall have become
qualified for the guardianship of their own interests.
A sameness in the natural laws of distribution exactly reverses the
order of possession in new countries, i. e., in those where capital
abounds in proportion to population. There the landowner (if any one
finds it worth his while to be a landowner without being either a
capitalist or a labourer at the same time) gains no real rent till
the best land is all under cultivation, and then very little till a
third degree is resorted to. The capitalist, meanwhile, makes less
than the labourer; or would gain less if he were not, like the
landowner, a labourer also. Where labour is so dear, all are
labourers; and the labourer, by a very natural process, soon becomes
a capitalist and a landowner; and then he may chance to learn what a
strange thing it seems to a man from the mother-country to let land
of a fine quality for no better rent than a small share of the
produce; and how vexatious it is, after having reaped splendid
returns to capital, to have to pay away, in the purchase of labour,
all but little more than the ordinary profits of stock.
The want of a due consideration of the difference in relative
condition of labourers at home and labourers in new countries has
led to some serious errors[E] in the formation and execution of some
of our plans of colonization. Such a scheme as that of penal
colonization could never have been adopted if the case of the
working class in both countries had been understood. Besides the
many other objections which might be and have been forcibly urged,
there must remain the insurmountable one that labour is better
rewarded in a new colony than at home. It does not appear that any
arbitrary severity, short of the infliction of such life-long misery
as no crime can deserve, can counteract the natural law by which the
labourer is more prosperous in our penal colonies than in England.
They are places of privilege, and the carrying him there is putting
him in a condition of privilege, sooner or later, however severely
we may punish him for any terminable period. This is so notoriously
the case, that it has become matter of very serious consideration
how the lot of the convict can be rendered harder, and be made known
at home to be so; and arrangements have been made, within a short
period, by which the disproportion in the lot of the innocent and
the guilty is considerably lessened. Still, however far the convict
may be placed below the virtuous emigrant in the scale of comfort,
no power can, in the present state of our labour-market, prevent his
being much better off than the independent labourer at home. The
power of rulers may ordain chains, whipping, and other penalties to
the convict; but it cannot prevent his having, during a pressing
demand for his labour, that abundance of the necessaries of life
which the virtuous labourer cannot obtain at home. Bob Castle[F]
would not now, perhaps, be able to purchase an estate on which his
honest brother Frank was a labourer; but Bob, however he might have
been punished for seven or fourteen years, could not but have a
fairer prospect before him at the end of that time than honest Frank
would have had in England. This necessity forms, of itself, a
conclusive argument against penal colonization as a secondary
punishment. That mode of punishment can never command respect or
success which wanders so far from the principle of retribution as to
inflict studied miseries as a set-off against advantages which
cannot be excluded.
-----
Footnote E:
It is incumbent on me to advert to the ill-success of one method
of supplying labour to the Australian colonies, which I have
represented in much too favourable a light in my tale of “Homes
Abroad.” I find that, though I have pointed out (pp. 54, 55) the
leading objections to the plan of indenturing servants to colonial
settlers, I have represented the issue of such an experiment as
more prosperous than it has been proved in fact. The true state of
the case will be learned from the following extract from “Papers
relating to the Crown Lands and Emigration to New South Wales,”
printed by order of the House of Commons, October, 1831.
"The Emigrant, in the cases to which we allude, has bound himself,
previously to his departure from this country, to serve his
employer for a time at wages which, though higher than those which
he could have obtained at home, were much below the ordinary rate
in the colony. No attempt has been made to render the advantage
obtained by the employer in this manner an equivalent for the
expense he has incurred in carrying out the Emigrants; and it can
scarcely be doubted that in many instances the bargain, if
strictly adhered to, would have been more than reasonably
profitable to the employer. Indeed it has been the principal fault
of these arrangements that the engagement of the Emigrant has not
been on either side regarded as a mere undertaking to repay the
expense incurred in his conveyance; and hence he has often been
led to look upon the transaction as a disadvantageous hiring of
himself, into which he had been misled by his ignorance of the
circumstances of the place to which he was going. This has been
the frequent cause of discontent on the part of indentured
servants; and their masters, unable to derive any advantage from
unwilling labourers, have found it more for their interest to
discharge these servants than to insist on the right conveyed by
their bond. It is obvious that no increased severity in the legal
enactments for the protection of contracts could prevent those
which we have described from being thus dissolved; for they have
been so, not from any insufficiency in the obligations by which
the Emigrants have been bound, but from the impossibility of
rendering such obligations worth preserving, where one of the
parties strongly desires them to be cancelled."—pp. 21, 22.
These objections apply only to cases of _binding_ for more than
the repayment of the expenses of removal to the colony. Next to
the education of the people at home, there is no way in which
charity can now operate so beneficially as in making loans, under
security of repayment, to enable working men, and yet more working
_women_, to transport themselves to our Australian colonies; and
by diffusing, as widely as possible, _correct_ information
respecting the condition and prospects of emigrants to our North
American colonies. This correct information, which is to the last
degree interesting, may be obtained from the Papers above referred
to, and the “Reports of the Emigration Commissioners, for 1832;
printed by order of the House of Commons.” Every active
philanthropist ought to possess himself of the contents of these
papers. The Report, dated 1832, contains the following.
“Before we close this account of our proceedings regarding New
South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, we must observe that the value
of that which has been accomplished cannot be justly estimated by
a mere reference to the number already gone out. The general scope
and tendency of our measures must be taken into account, as well
as the importance, in an endeavour to direct emigration to a
quarter comparatively new, of having succeeded in making a
_commencement_. For, after the impulse has once been given towards
countries really adapted to emigration, the letters of the
settlers themselves, more perhaps than the most elaborate
statements from authority, serve to maintain and propagate the
disposition to resort to the same quarter. Although, therefore,
the measures that have been adopted this year may be limited in
their immediate influence, and it may be also impossible to
predict with certainty their ulterior results, yet, at least, they
are of such a nature that, if successful, they may serve as the
foundation of a system sufficient for many years to prevent the
progress of the Australian colonies from being retarded by the
want of an industrious population adequate to the development of
their resources.” (p. 6.) And the mother-country, we may add, from
being impeded, by an over-crowded population at home, in her
efforts to exalt the social and moral condition of her mighty
family.
Footnote F:
See Homes Abroad.
-----
The objects of penal colonization are—
1. The security of society by the removal of the offender.
2. The security of society by the effect of his example.
3. The reformation of the offender.
There has hitherto been an entire failure of all these objects: and
no wonder; since,—
1. The offender is only transferred from one portion of society
to another; and besides, frequently returns to his old haunts.
2. His punishment, as far as it is punishment, takes place at
too great a distance to be conspicuous as a warning; and in as
far as his lot does not involve punishment, the effect of his
example is precisely the reverse of what is desired.
3. Our convict arrangements tend to the further corruption of
the offender, by letting him experience a great improvement in
his condition as a direct consequence of his crimes.
The junction of penal with voluntary emigration tends equally to
disappoint the purposes of the one, and to extinguish the benefits
of the other; since convict labourers find themselves in a state of
privilege, in a region where their labour procures them large
rewards; and new settlers find their community deeply injured by the
vice and disease consequent on the introduction of a convict
population.
Before closing this part, it may be well to observe that much vain
reluctance to acknowledge the two grand principles which primarily
regulate the distribution of wealth, arises from too small an
allowance having been asked for subordinate influences, which may
justify a much greater degree of hopefulness respecting the
condition of an advanced country than some economists have ventured
to indulge. It is no wonder that the kind-hearted turn away, and
refuse to listen to a doctrine which is thought to forbid much hope
that the whole of any society can be comfortably provided with the
necessaries of life. It is no wonder that the timid cease from
trying to lop off evils, if they must believe that every head of the
social hydra will grow again,—that for every redundancy drawn off
there will be a speedy over-filling. All experience of humanity
contradicts such forebodings: and, though it would assuredly be our
duty to make our own generation happier than the last, even under
the certainty that the next must fall back again, it is much more
animating to believe, as we are justified in doing, that every
advance is a pledge of a further advance; that every taste of
comfort, generated to the poor man by his own exertions, stimulates
the appetite for more. It has ever been found that, when men have
learned to prefer wheaten bread to potatoes, it is more likely that
their children should be taught to seek butchers’ meat than allowed
to fall back to potatoes. The father who has worked his way up into
a glazed and tiled cottage, brings up his children to fear the mud
hovel in which they were born. If we do but apply ourselves to
nourish the taste for comfort in the poor,—to take for granted the
most, instead of the least, that they ought to require, there is
little fear but that, whenever circumstances allow, they will fall
into our way of thinking, and prefer a home of comfort, earned by
forethought and self-denial, to herding together in a state of
reckless pauperism. With every increase of resources, let a vigorous
exertion be made to rouse the complacency and exalt the tastes of
the labouring class, and it will assuredly be found, in the interval
before a new access of labour can be brought into the market, that
the condition of the class has improved as a matter of theory, as
well as practice, and that it must go hard with them but they will
keep it up.
All experience warrants this statement. There can be no question
that the preventive check has largely superseded the positive in all
advancing societies. There can be no doubt of the increased
providence of the middling classes, and the enlargement of the
domestic requirements of the poor, even though wars, famine, and
pestilence have nearly ceased to make the awful vacancies in which
the wants and desires of the survivors could expand. Though in some
unhappy districts where the visitations of want have extinguished
the moral check, multitudes still herd together, more like brutes
than human beings, it is certain that there is a larger demand among
the working classes of England for better food, clothing,
habitations, and furniture, than their fathers thought of requiring.
If this has taken place notwithstanding all the bad policy, public
and private, with which we have weakened the spirit and the power of
independence, there is ample reason for confidence in an accelerated
progress in proportion as public and private influence shall work in
an opposite direction. Since every one can, many will assist in this
noble work; assured that not a single effort can be lost, and that
its successful result will extend far beyond the present generation.
Few are now found to advocate that species of prospective
benevolence which acts by long-reaching pecuniary bequests; but it
does not follow that benevolence may not be prospective. Let it
extend its view to the remotest ages within ken of the human
imagination. Let it do this by promoting the welfare of the parents
of future generations;—a wide field enough, if we lived but for
charity.
-----------------------
PART III.
The total wealth of society being distributed among three classes,
according to the principles above announced, the next process is the
exchange of commodities by individuals for purposes of individual
enjoyment.
The complication of this process arises chiefly from the diversity
of production which takes place on the earth, occasioning not only a
wide difference in the amount of labour required to produce the same
results in different regions, but a perpetual variegation and
augmentation of commodities, which affect the demand, and render
uncertain the transactions of trade.
This complication, however, involves no disastrous perplexity,
unless meddled with by powers which bear no relation to it. All
commodities will declare their own value, and obtain equivalents, to
the ultimate satisfaction of the exchanging parties, if they are
left to themselves; but when any power, which cannot regulate human
wants and wishes, interferes to prescribe what provision shall be
made for those wants and wishes, there is not only a certainty that
the relative values of commodities will be temporarily deranged, to
the disadvantage of one of the exchanging parties, but an
uncertainty when the natural relation of values will be restored,
and whether disorder will not first spread into every other
department of exchange. Since human labour is the universal
commodity which is brought to market, to be given and taken under
all forms, (since capital is only hoarded labour,) there is no
safety in ticketing any one commodity as containing more labour than
it naturally includes, and thus destroying its balance with the
rest, to the injury of its seller’s credit, and its buyer’s
interest. This is what is done by every government which presumes to
interfere with the barter of individuals, or authorizes such
interference. The duty of government is precisely the reverse;—to
secure the freedom of exchange as carefully as the freedom of
labour, in the full assurance that it cannot determine relative
values till it can determine the amount of labour and the extent of
human wants in every region of the earth. This it may do when it has
mastered the chemical and mechanical constitution of the globe, when
it may not only gauge the rain in every region, but appoint the
proportion of its fall.
There are two kinds of Value: value in use, and value in exchange.
Articles of the greatest value in use may have none in exchange: as
they may be enjoyed without labour; and it is labour which confers
exchangeable value.
This is not the less true for capital as well as labour being
employed in production; for capital is hoarded labour.
When equal quantities of any two articles require an equal amount of
labour to produce them, they exchange exactly against one another.
If one requires more labour than the other, a smaller quantity of
the one exchanges against a larger quantity of the other.
If it were otherwise, no one would bestow a larger quantity of
labour for a less return; and the article requiring the most labour
would cease to be produced.
Exchangeable value, therefore, naturally depends on cost of
production.
Naturally, but not universally; for there are influences which cause
temporary variations in exchangeable value.
These are, whatever circumstances affect demand and supply. But
these can act only temporarily; because the demand of any procurable
article creates supply; and the factitious value conferred by
scarcity soon has an end.
When this end has arrived, cost of production again determines
exchangeable value.
Its doing so may, therefore, stand as a general rule.
Though labour, immediate and hoarded, is the _regulator_, it is not
the _measure_ of exchangeable value; for the sufficient reason, that
labour itself is perpetually varying in quality and quantity, from
there being no fixed proportion between immediate and hoarded
labour.
Since labour, the primary regulator, cannot serve as a measure of
exchangeable value, none of the products of labour can serve as such
a measure.
There is, therefore, no measure of exchangeable value.
Such a measure is not needed; as a due regulation of the supply of
labour, and the allowance of free scope to the principle of
competition ensure sufficient stability of exchangeable value for
all practical purposes.
In these requisites are included security of property, and freedom
of exchange, to which political tranquillity and legislative
impartiality are essential.
Price is the exponent of exchangeable value.
Natural or necessary price,—regulated by cost of production,—
includes the wages of the labourer, and the profits of the
capitalist.
Market price varies from natural price with variations of demand and
supply, and in proportion to the oppressiveness of public burdens
and commercial restrictions.
The more nearly and permanently market prices approach natural
prices, the more prosperous is the state of commerce; and the two
most essential requisites to this prosperity are social tranquillity
and legislative impartiality.
The ancient error, that some mysterious quality inherent in gold and
silver money constituted it wealth, almost to the exclusion of every
other commodity, is now so universally dismissed by all who know
anything of our science, that there is no occasion to controvert it
further than by presenting the appropriate Summary of Principles;
and the kindred modern error, that an enlargement of its quantity
can do more than give a temporary, and probably hurtful, stimulus to
industry, requires now no more than a similar exposure. The sense of
the country has lately been taken on this question; and the result
proves that there is prevalent a sufficient knowledge of the
philosophy and fact of the case to encourage a hope that no such
hazardous sport with the circulating medium as the country has
previously suffered from will be again attempted. The fate of the
Berkeley[G] family, in consequence of actions on the currency, is
only one instance from one class. A long series of sad stories might
be told of sufferers of every rank, whose partial prosperity,
enjoyed at the expense of one another’s ruin, was soon swallowed up
in the destruction which universally attends a shock to public
credit. The injured might be found dispersed through every dwelling
in the land; and, however loudly the richer might complain of the
magnitude of their losses, the most cruelly injured were those who
had the least opportunity of accounting for their gains and their
losses, and therefore the least power of meeting the pressure of
circumstances by prudence and forethought.
-----
Footnote G:
Berkeley the Banker.
-----
To stimulate the production of labour by the increase of the
circulating medium, the fruits of which must be wrested away by an
inevitable contraction, is a policy whose glory is not to be
coveted; and surely no statesman will be found to adventure it till
the last tradition of the consequent woes of our working-classes
shall have died away. By that time, it is probable that the danger
of such recurrence will be obviated by the adoption of some
principle of security, which will give society the advantage of a
free trade in money. It must be long before this can take place; for
it must be long before the values of commodities are allowed to
adjust themselves; and money must, from its importance, be very
cautiously and gradually committed to the equalizing influences of
the natural laws of demand. But, however long it may be, the woes of
past convulsions will not till then be forgotten. That the time of
arbitrary interference will, however, cease, can scarcely be
doubted, if the following be true principles.
In exchanging commodities for one another directly, that is, in the
way of barter, much time is lost, and trouble incurred, before the
respective wants of the exchanging parties can be supplied.
This trouble and waste may be avoided by the adoption of a medium of
exchange,—that is, a commodity generally agreed upon, which, in
order to effect an exchange between two other commodities, is first
received in exchange for the one, and then given in exchange for the
other.
This commodity is Money.
The great requisites in a medium of exchange are, that it should be—
What all sellers are willing to receive;—
Capable of division into convenient portions;—
Portable, from including great value in small bulk;—
Indestructible, and little liable to fluctuations of value.
Gold and silver unite these requisites in an unequalled degree, and
have also the desirable quality of beauty; gold and silver have
therefore formed the principal medium of exchange hitherto adopted;
usually prepared, by an appointed authority, in the form most
suitable for the purposes of exchange, in order to avoid the
inconveniences of ascertaining the value of the medium on every
occasion of purchase.
Where the supply of money is left unrestricted, its exchangeable
value will be ultimately determined, like that of all other
commodities, by the cost of production.
Where the supply is restricted, its exchangeable value depends on
the proportion of the demand to the supply.
In the former case, it retains its character of a commodity, serving
as a standard of value in preference to other commodities only in
virtue of its superior natural requisites to that object.
In the latter case, it ceases to be a commodity, and becomes a mere
ticket of transference, or arbitrary sign of value; and then the
natural requisites above described become of comparatively little
importance.
The quality by which money passes from hand to hand with little
injury enables it to compensate inequalities of supply by the
slackened or accelerated speed of its circulation.
The rate of circulation serves as an index of the state of supply,
and therefore tends, where no restriction exists, to an adjustment
of the supply to the demand.
Where restriction exists, the rate of circulation indicates the
degree of derangement introduced among the elements of exchangeable
value, but has no permanent influence in its rectification.
--------------
In proportion as the processes of exchange become extensive and
complicated, all practicable economy of time, trouble, and expense,
in the use of a circulating medium, becomes desirable.
Such economy is accomplished by making acknowledgment of debt
circulate in place of the actual payment,—that is, substituting
credit, as represented by bank paper, for gold money.
The adoption of paper money saves time, by making the largest sums
as easily payable as the smallest.
It saves trouble, by being more easily transferable than metal
money.
It saves expense, by its production being less costly than that of
metal money, and by its setting free a quantity of gold to be used
in other articles of production.
A further advantage of paper money is, that its destruction causes
no diminution of real wealth, like the destruction of gold and
silver coin; the one being only a representative of value, the other
also a commodity.
The remaining requisites of a medium of exchange—viz., that it
should be what all sellers are willing to receive, and little liable
to fluctuations of value, are not inherent in paper as they are in
metallic money.
But they may be obtained by rendering paper money convertible into
metallic money, by limiting in other ways the quantity issued, and
by guarding against forgery.
Great evils, in the midst of many advantages, have arisen out of the
use of paper money, from the neglect of measures of security, or
from the adoption of such as have proved false. Issues of
inconvertible paper money have been allowed to a large extent,
unguarded by any restrictions as to the quantity issued.
As the issuing of paper money is a profitable business, the issue
naturally became excessive when the check of convertibility was
removed, while banking credit was not backed by sufficient security.
The immediate consequences of a superabundance of money are, a rise
of prices, an alteration in the conditions of contracts, and a
consequent injury to commercial credit.
Its ulterior consequences are, a still stronger shock to commercial
credit, the extensive ruin of individuals, and an excessive
contraction of the currency, yet more injurious than its excessive
expansion.
These evils arise from buyers and sellers bearing an unequal
relation to the quantity of money in the market.
If all sold as much as they bought, and no more, and if the prices
of all commodities rose and fell in exact proportion, all exchanges
would be affected alike by the increase or diminution of the supply
of money. But this is an impossible case; and therefore any action
on the currency involves injury to some, while it affords advantage
to others.
A sudden or excessive contraction of the currency produces some
effects exactly the reverse of the effects of a sudden or excessive
expansion. It lowers prices and vitiates contracts, to the loss of
the opposite contracting party.
But the infliction of reverse evils does not compensate for the
former infliction. A second action on the currency, though
unavoidably following the first, is not a reparation, but a new
misfortune.
Because the parties who are now enriched are seldom the same that
were impoverished by a former change, and _vice versâ_; while all
suffer from the injury to commercial credit which follows upon every
arbitrary change.
All the evils which have arisen from acting arbitrarily upon the
currency prove that no such arbitrary action can repair past
injuries; while it must inevitably produce further mischief.
They do not prove that liability to fluctuation is an inherent
quality of paper money, and that a metallic currency is therefore
the best circulating medium.
They do prove that commercial prosperity depends on the natural laws
of demand and supply being allowed to work freely in relation to the
circulating medium.
The means of securing their full operation remain to be decided upon
and tried.
--------------
Nations exchange commodities as individuals do, for mutual
accommodation, each imparting of its superfluity to obtain that in
which it is deficient.
The imparting is therefore only a means of obtaining: exportation is
the means of obtaining importation—the end for which the traffic is
instituted.
The importation of money into a country where money is deficient is
desirable on the same principle which renders desirable the supply
of any deficient commodity.
The importation of money into a country where money is not deficient
is no more desirable than it is to create an excess of any other
commodity.
That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is no
reason for its being a more desirable article of importation than
commodities which are as much wanted in the country which imports
it.
That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is a
reason for its being the commodity fixed upon for measuring the
relative amounts of other articles of national interchange.
Money bearing different denominations in the different trading
countries, a computation of the relative values of these
denominations was made in the infancy of commerce, and the result
expressed in terms which are retained through all changes in the
value of these denominations.
The term by which, in each country, the original equal proportion
was expressed is adopted as the fixed point of measurement, called
the par of exchange; and any variation in the relative amount of the
total money debts of trading nations is called a variation from par.
This variation is of two kinds—nominal and real.
The nominal variation from par is caused by an alteration in the
value of the currency of any country, which, of course, destroys the
relative proportion of its denominations to the denominations of the
currency of other countries; but it does not affect the amount of
commodities exchanged.
The real variation from par takes place when any two countries
import respectively more money and less of other commodities, or
less money and more of other commodities.
This kind of variation is sure to correct itself, since the country
which receives the larger proportion of money will return it for
other commodities when it becomes a superfluity; and the country
which receives the smaller proportion of money will gladly import
more as it becomes deficient.
The real variation from par can never, therefore, exceed a certain
limit.
This limit is determined by the cost of substituting for each other
metal money and one of its representatives—viz., that species of
paper currency which is called Bills of Exchange.
When this representative becomes scarce in proportion to
commodities, and thereby mounts up to a higher value than the
represented metal money, with the cost of transmission added, metal
money is transmitted as a substitute for bills of exchange, and the
course of exchange is reversed, and restored to par.
Even the range of variation above described is much contracted by
the operations of dealers in bills of exchange, who equalize their
value by transmitting those of all countries from places where they
are abundant to places where they are scarce.
A self-balancing power being thus inherent in the entire system of
commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the results of its
unimpeded operation are absurd.
--------------
The crying philosophers of all times have mourned over the
pertinacity of men and of nations in clinging to errors through all
the sufferings thence arising; the suffering being ascribed to
"fate, or Providence, or something,"—to any thing rather than to
their favourite errors. The laughing philosophers cannot deny this;
but, looking farther, they see that, error by error being exploded
at length, there is no return to that which is clearly seen to be
the cause of suffering,—unless such an experimental brief return as
can only serve to confirm the truth. Commerce has now been
instituted for a longer succession of ages than we have any distinct
knowledge of;—ever since the first root-digger exchanged his
vegetable food for the game of the first sportsman. From that time
till now, an error has subsisted among all classes of exchangers
which has caused enough of privation, of ill-will, of oppression and
fraud, of war, pestilence and famine, to justify the tears of a long
train of crying philosophers. But the error has been detected.
Philosophers have laid their finger upon it; the press has denounced
it; senates are preparing to excommunicate it; and its doom is
sealed. This error is,—that commerce is directly productive. Hence
arises the belief, that if one party gains by commerce, another must
lose; and hence have arisen the efforts of clansmen to confine their
exchanges within their own clan; of villagers within their own
village; of citizens within their own state; of a nation within its
own empire. Hence it arises that the inhabitants of one district
have been afraid to enjoy the productions of any other district, and
that they have been doomed by their rulers to pine and die in
occasional dearth, and to quarrel with occasional superabundance
when they might have had plenty in the one case, and an influx of
new enjoyments in the other. Hence have arisen some of the most
humbling scenes of human vice which have disgraced the species.
The atrocious practice of wrecking was formerly pursued, not only as
a method of robbery, but as a means of impairing the commercial
resources of foreigners. There was connivance at pilots who ran a
rich vessel upon rocks; and protection for the country people who
gave their exertions to destroy instead of to save. If the cargo
went to the bottom, something was supposed to be gained to the
country, though those who looked upon the disaster were disappointed
of their plunder. Next came the ridiculous and cruel practice of
making aliens engaged in commerce answerable for the debts and
offences of each other; and as a kind of set-off against the
advantages which they were supposed to take from the people among
whom they lived, they were compelled to pay much heavier duties than
natives for all articles of import and export.
The necessity thus arose for commercial treaties which should ensure
the safety and proper treatment of commercial agents when any two
powers agreed to exchange good offices. Edward II. made an agreement
with Venice that its merchants and mariners should be permitted,
_for ten years_, to come and go, and sell their merchandise in
security, without having either their persons or goods stopped on
account of other people’s crimes or debts. From the time of such
partial relaxation,—such narrow openings to a foreign trade,—the
wants of the multitude of each civilized people have forced one
after another of the barriers raised by national jealousy, while all
parties remained under the influence of the error that commerce is
directly productive, and of course an advantage to be denied to
enemies, except when a very hard bargain can be driven with them.
Perhaps the most curious specimens in existence of attempts at
mutual overreaching, of laborious arrangement to secure what must
naturally happen, and of an expensive and tyrannical apparatus for
achieving what is impossible, may be found in the commercial
treaties from the infancy of commerce till now. The only idea which
never seems to have struck the negotiators is, that commerce is
valuable,—not because production takes place in the mere exchange of
commodities,—but because systematic exchange facilitates the most
extensive division of labour and the closest economy of capital,—
advantages which must be shared by both if experienced by either of
the exchanging parties. On the same principle that the shoemaker
makes no hats, and the hatter no shoes, and that both find an
advantage in supplying each other, without any new product arising
from the mere act of exchange, the growers of tea and the makers of
hardware respectively profit by supplying each other; and they can
afford to employ an intermediate class, the merchants,—to conduct
their traffic, since they can go on preparing their tea and grinding
their cutlery, while the process of exchange is being transacted.
The saving of capital is mutual also. It must be mutual and
incalculable as long as the regions of the earth differ in their
productions, yielding a superabundance in one place of some
necessary or comfort which is rare in another. No commercial treaty
bears the least reference to the obvious final purpose of all
commerce;—that the greatest number shall obtain the largest amount
of enjoyment at the least cost. Such a recognition of the ultimate
principle would, indeed, be inconsistent with the very existence of
commercial treaties, except as far as they relate to the personal
protection of traders. But, while the people of each country have
shown the most decided inclination to obtain more and more of what
they cannot produce at home, the aim of governments, and generally
of merchants, has been to sell as much as possible to other nations;
to take from them as little as possible but money; and to get the
greatest possible quantity of that. In furtherance of this view,
money has been taken from the people at large, and given to their
merchants to tempt them to go and sell at a loss, rather than not
get hold of foreign money; and again, money has been exacted from
foreigners who come to sell their goods in our ports. Nothing is
gained by this to the nation, as the foreigners must be repaid these
duties as well as the cost of their articles; and it is clear to
every observer how much is lost to all the parties concerned. Yet
such is the false principle on which commercial treaties have
hitherto been founded. This child’s-play of universal circumvention
is pursued less vigorously than it was; and some of the players are
so tired of the wasteful and wearying sport as to be ready to give
it up: but, owing to the false belief that no one could yield
without the rest, the absurdity has endured longer than might have
been expected.
It was not perceived, till lately, that it is a good thing to any
nation, as it would be to any man, to get what it wants, even if it
be compelled to pay in money when it had rather pay in goods:
especially when it is certain, from the ascertained self-balancing
quality of money, that it will soon flow in from some other quarter
in exchange for the goods wanted to be sold. When so plain a truth
as this is once experienced, it cannot but spread; and fewer
examples will be henceforth seen of nations keeping themselves poor,
lest their neighbouring customers should grow rich. How rapidly such
truth runs, when once sent off on its career, may be seen from the
following facts: it being borne in mind that nations are educated by
the experience of centuries, as men are of years.
In 1703, a commercial treaty was concluded between Great Britain and
Portugal, which was for many years lauded by the British as being in
the highest degree favourable to the interests of her manufacturing
classes, at a very slight expense. Our woollens were then excluded
from Portugal. Mr. Methuen, who managed the treaty, obtained a free
admission for them, in return for a concession which was considered
a mere nothing in comparison with the advantage obtained. It was
merely promised that port-wine should be admitted into Great Britain
at one-third less duty than French wines. As for the woollens, their
admission into Portugal duty-free was a much greater advantage to
the Portuguese than to us. They obtained cheap an article which they
very much wanted, and which we were sure of selling in one quarter
or another, if we could produce it at such a cost as made its
production worth while. As for the wine,—the Portuguese and the
British have both been suffering ever since for the arbitrary
preference given to that of Portugal over that of France. Portugal
has, and has always had, too little capital for the capabilities of
the country and the wants of the people. By the monopoly of the
British market being given to Portugal, too large a proportion of
its small capital has been devoted to the growth of wine, and the
whole country is in a more backward state than it would have been if
its capital had been allowed to find its own channels. We,
meanwhile, lost the French market for our woollens, brought upon
ourselves retaliatory restrictions on other articles, and were
compelled to drink inferior wine at a greater cost than if the trade
had been left to itself. France grew more pettish; we grew
resentful, and raised the duties again, and again, and again.
Thousands, who had been fond of French wines, found that they could
afford the indulgence no longer, and took to port. Thousands more,
who had drunk port because they could not afford French wines, left
off drinking wine at all. In three years the revenue from the
wine-duties fell off by more than 350,000_l._, while the naturally
wine-drinking population was increasing. The richest of our
citizens, to whom the price of wine is not a very important
consideration, had their cause of complaint. Guernsey was all this
time receiving small quantities of wine, and sending out large
quantities. A prosperous manufacture of wines was carried on there;
and no gentleman could tell how much sloe-juice, apple-juice, and
brandy he might be drinking under the name of wine. There is no good
reason why a day-labourer should not drink French wines at his
dinner instead of beer, if they are equally cheap; and no one knows
how cheap they might have been by this time, if they had been
allowed their fair chance; and the cheaper, and therefore the more
abundant, those wines, the larger must be the quantity of our goods
taken by the French in exchange. As it is, the Portuguese have
profited where we meant they should not, and suffered where we meant
they should be permitted to profit. Our Government has suffered a
diminution of revenue; our rich men have drunk adulterated wines;
our middling classes have been obliged to put up with dear port-wine
or none; our working classes have been debarred from having wine at
all, and have been shut out for more than a hundred years from one
of the largest markets where their labour might have found its
recompense.
Such are some of the consequences of the famous Methuen treaty,
which was, for a considerable length of years, extolled as a model
of commercial negotiation. These consequences, and others which
followed similar blunders, wrought at length their natural effect
upon the minds of those primarily interested in the principles and
methods of commercial policy. On the 8th of May, 1820, the following
petition from the merchants of London was presented to the House of
Commons. It was signed by all the principal merchants of London;—a
class whose opinions on this question could not but be respectfully
regarded, if they had been announced with less dignity and precision
than we find in this memorable address. The time may and will come
when its propositions will be regarded as a set of truisms scarcely
worthy of announcement under such circumstances of formality; but it
should in fairness be remembered in those days that it was drawn up
at the very period when silk and tobacco were being smuggled into
hundreds of creeks along our shores; when bread and wine were taxed
for purposes of unjust protection at home, and wicked oppression
abroad; and when our houses and ships were being built of bad wood
at a higher cost than need have been paid for the best, in order to
favour a colony which, after all, would flourish much more through
our prosperity than at our expense. No change of times and
convictions can impair the honour due to those who concurred in the
following petition:—
"To the Honourable the Commons, &c., the Petition of the Merchants
of the City of London.
"Sheweth,
"That foreign commerce is eminently conducive to the wealth and
prosperity of a country, by enabling it to import the commodities
for the production of which the soil, climate, capital, and industry
of other countries are best calculated, and to export, in payment,
those articles for which its own situation is better adapted.
"That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost
extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital
and industry of the country.
"That the maxim of buying in the cheapest market, and selling in the
dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings,
is strictly applicable, as the best rule for the trade of the whole
nation.
"That a policy founded on these principles would render the commerce
of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, and diffuse an
increase of wealth and enjoyments among the inhabitants of each
state.
"That, unfortunately, a policy the very reverse of this has been and
is more or less adopted and acted upon by the government of this and
every other country; each trying to exclude the productions of other
countries, with the specious and well-meant design of encouraging
its own productions: thus inflicting on the bulk of its subjects,
who are consumers, the necessity of submitting to privations in the
quantity or quality of commodities; and thus rendering what ought to
be the source of mutual benefit and of harmony among states, a
constantly recurring occasion of jealousy and hostility.
"That the prevailing prejudices in favour of the protective or
restrictive system may be traced to the erroneous supposition that
every importation of foreign commodities occasions a diminution or
discouragement of our own productions to the same extent; whereas it
may be clearly shown, that, although the particular description of
production which could not stand against unrestrained foreign
competition would be discouraged, yet, as no importation could be
continued for any length of time without a corresponding
exportation, direct or indirect, there would be an encouragement for
the purpose of that exportation, of some other production to which
our situation might be better suited; thus affording at least an
equal, and probably a greater, and certainly a more beneficial,
employment to our own capital and labour.
"That of the numerous protective and prohibitory duties of our
commercial code, it may be proved that, while all operate as a very
heavy tax on the community at large, very few are of any ultimate
benefit to the classes in whose favour they were originally
instituted, and none to the extent of the loss occasioned by them to
other classes.
"That among the other evils of the restrictive or protective system,
not the least is that the artificial protection of one branch of
industry or source of production against foreign competition, is set
up as a ground of claim by other branches for similar protection; so
that, if the reasoning upon which these restrictive or prohibitory
regulations are founded were followed out consistently, it would not
stop short of excluding us from all foreign commerce whatsoever. And
the same train of argument, which, with corresponding prohibitions
and protective duties, should exclude us from foreign trade, might
be brought forward to justify the re-enactment of restrictions upon
the interchange of productions (unconnected with public revenue)
among the kingdoms composing the union, or among the counties of the
same kingdom.
"That an investigation of the effects of the restrictive system at
this time is peculiarly called for, as it may, in the opinion of
your petitioners, lead to a strong presumption that the distress
which now so generally prevails is considerably aggravated by that
system; and that some relief may be obtained by the earliest
practicable removal of such of the restraints as may be shown to be
most injurious to the capital and industry of the community, and to
be attended with no compensating benefit to the public revenue.
"That a declaration against the anti-commercial principles of our
restrictive system is of the more importance at the present
juncture; inasmuch as, in several instances of recent occurrence,
the merchants and manufacturers of foreign countries have assailed
their respective governments with applications for further
protective or prohibitory duties and regulations, urging the example
and authority of this country, against which they are almost
exclusively directed, as a sanction for the policy of such measures.
And certainly, if the reasoning upon which our restrictions have
been defended is worth anything, it will apply in behalf of the
regulations of foreign states against us. They insist on our
superiority in capital and machinery, as we do upon their
comparative exemption from taxation; and with equal foundation.
"That nothing would tend more to counteract the commercial hostility
of foreign States, than the adoption of a more enlightened and more
conciliatory policy on the part of this country.
"That although, as a matter of mere diplomacy, it may sometimes
answer to hold the removal of particular prohibitions, or high
duties, as depending upon corresponding concessions by other states
in our favour, it does not follow that we should continue our
restrictions in cases where the desired concessions on their part
cannot be obtained. Our restrictions would not be the less
prejudicial to our own capital and industry, because other
governments persisted in preserving impolitic regulations.
"That, upon the whole, the most liberal would prove to be the most
politic course on such occasions.
"That, independent of the direct benefit to be derived by this
country on every occasion of such concession or relaxation, a great
incidental object would be gained, by the recognition of a sound
principle or standard, to which all subsequent arrangements might be
referred; and by the salutary influence which a promulgation of such
just views, by the legislature and by the nation at large, could not
fail to have on the policy of other states.
"That in thus declaring, as your petitioners do, their conviction of
the impolicy and injustice of the restrictive system, and in
desiring every practicable relaxation of it, they have in view only
such parts of it as are not connected, or are only subordinately so,
with the public revenue. As long as the necessity for the present
amount of revenue subsists, your petitioners cannot expect so
important a branch of it as the customs to be given up, nor to be
materially diminished, unless some substitute less objectionable be
suggested. But it is against every restrictive regulation of trade,
not essential to the revenue, against all duties merely protective
from foreign competition, and against the excess of such duties as
are partly for the purpose of revenue, and partly for that of
protection, that the prayer of the present petition is respectfully
submitted to the wisdom of parliament.
“May it therefore, &c.”
In order to see how extensively and how effectually governments have
interfered to pervert the natural distribution of the gifts of
Providence, it would be necessary to review almost the whole list of
spontaneous and artificial productions; for there are few or none
whose spread has not been arbitrarily stopped in one direction or
another. What Great Britain alone,—the most enlightened of
commercial countries,—has done in damming up the streams of human
enjoyment, is fearful to think of. In the vineyards of France and
Portugal, the grapes have been trodden to waste, and the
vinedressers’ children have gone half clothed, because wines were
not permitted to be brought in, and cottons and woollens were
thereby forbidden to be carried out, at their natural cost. During
the long series of years that good tea has been a too costly drink
for many thousands of our population, they would have been glad of
the refreshment of chocolate, in some of its various preparations,
if Spain had been permitted to send it to us from her colonies as
cheap as Spain was willing to afford it. But the article has been
loaded with a duty amounting to from 100 to 230 per cent.; so that
few but the rich could ever taste it; and they have been swallowing
a curious compound of the nut, flour, and Castile soap. The
silkworms of Italy would have wrought as busily for England as for
France, if England had not been jealous of France, and thereby
injured her own manufacture. England is wiser now, and new myriads
of worms are hanging their golden balls on the mulberry trees, while
the neighbouring peasantry are enjoying the use of our hardware, and
looms are kept busy in Spitalfields. Time was when the northern
nations welcomed our manufactures in return for their timber and
iron of prime quality: but now, the ship and house-builders must pay
higher for worse wood from Canada; and we have laid exorbitant
duties on foreign iron, in order to encourage mining at home. The
good people of Sweden and Norway, having nothing to offer us but
timber and iron, must do without our manufactures; and thus are
willing nations prevented from helping one another. Whatever may be
thought of the indulgence of opium in this country, no one objects
to its being used by the Hindoo and the Chinese as a stimulus
appropriate to the climate in which they dwell. If we had allowed
things to take their natural course, Persian husbandmen would have
tended their vast poppy-fields, season by season, guarding the
delicate plant from the injuries of insects, and sheltering it from
unfavourable winds, while the Chinese and the Hindoos would have
been busy preparing commodities to exchange with the Persian, and
all would have been made rich enough by their traffic to keep
British merchant-ships continually going and coming to supply their
wants. But our India Company has chosen to force and monopolize the
culture of opium. It has beggared and enslaved many thousands of
reluctant cultivators; narrowed the demand; lessened its own
revenue, year by year, and just lived to see China freely supplied
with Turkey opium by American traders. Thousands of our lowly
brethren in Hindostan and Ceylon have dropped unnoticed out of life
because they have not been permitted to touch the crisped salt
beneath their feet, or to pluck the spices which perfume the air
they breathe. Millions more have sunk at the approach of famine,
because no labour of theirs was permitted to provide them with what
might be exchanged for food from some neighbouring coast.
It is difficult to say whether we have injured China or Great
Britain the most by our extraordinary fancy of sending functionaries
invested at once with political and commercial power into a country
where commerce is held by far too degrading an employment to be
associated with political functions. This blunder was made by our
monopolists, who were, but lately, keeping up a splendid
establishment of important personages, who were regarded by the
Chinese as being just above the rank of vagabonds;—no more
respectable, in their possession of incomes graduating from 4000_l._
to 18,000_l._ a-year, than the American free-traders who turn their
backs on the Hong merchants, and go into the open market, offering
their furs with one hand, and receiving teas and nankeens with the
other, cleverly stealing the trade of the British meantime with
both. What wealth and comfort untold might the two vast empires of
Britain and China have poured into one another by this time, if
their original jealousies had not been perpetuated by English
mismanagement! The Dutch and the Americans have both smuggled large
quantities of tea into England, while the twelve supercargoes at
Canton have been talking politics or yawning within the walls of
their Factory! Truly did the Celestial Emperor say to our
representatives, “Your good fortune has been small! You arrived at
the gates of the imperial house, and were unable to lift your eyes
to the face of heaven.” The day of exclusion is, however, over. It
may be long before we can overcome the contempt of the nation, and
make them forget that some of our politicians were traders: but we
have the interests of the Chinese in our favour. They will import
according to their needs; more of our weavers and cutlers will have
money to buy tea with, and they will get more tea for their money;
and no one can tell what new classes of productions may become
common when the messengers of these two mighty empires shall go to
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Such are a few of the specimens which might be adduced of the
mischiefs wrought in one hemisphere by interference with commerce.
“To all things there cometh an end;” to all unjust and foolish
things, at least. We are now in possession of so ample a stock of
experience, that the day cannot be far off when all customs duties
shall be repealed but those which are necessary for the purposes of
revenue. There will be some half-objectors left; some importers who
will admit the impolicy of protections of all articles but the one
in which they happen to deal. Mr. Huskisson was pathetically
appealed to to protect green glass bottles; and a last struggle may
be tried with another minister in favour of liquorice or coral
beads; but an immense majority of every civilised people are verging
towards a mutual agreement to give, in order that to each may be
given “full measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running
over.” Such is the plenty in which God showers his gifts among us;
and such is the measure in which he would have us yield each to the
other.
The countries of the world differ in their facilities for producing
the comforts and luxuries of life.
The inhabitants of the world agree in wanting or desiring all the
comforts and luxuries which the world produces.
These wants and desires can be in no degree gratified but by means
of mutual exchanges. They can be fully satisfied only by means of
absolutely universal and free exchanges.
By universal and free exchange,—that is, by each person being
permitted to exchange what he wants least for what he wants most,—an
absolutely perfect system of economy of resources is established;
the whole world being included in the arrangement.
The present want of agreement in the whole world to adopt this
system does not invalidate its principle when applied to a single
nation. It must ever be the interest of a nation to exchange what it
wants little at home for what it wants more from abroad. If denied
what it wants most, it will be wise to take what is next best; and
so on, as long as anything is left which is produced better abroad
than at home.
In the above case, the blame of the deprivation rests with the
prohibiting power; but the suffering affects both the trading
nations,—the one being prevented getting what it wants most,—the
other being prevented parting with what it wants least.
As the general interest of each nation requires that there should be
perfect liberty in the exchange of commodities, any restriction on
such liberty, for the sake of benefiting any particular class or
classes, is a sacrifice of a larger interest to a smaller,—that is a
sin in government.
This sin is committed when,—
First,—Any protection is granted powerful enough to tempt to
evasion, producing disloyalty, fraud, and jealousy: when,
Secondly,—Capital is unproductively consumed in the maintenance of
an apparatus of restriction: when,
Thirdly,—Capital is unproductively bestowed in enabling those who
produce at home dearer than foreigners to sell abroad as cheap
as foreigners,—that is, in bounties on exportation: and when,
Fourthly,—Capital is diverted from its natural course to be
employed in producing at home that which is expensive and
inferior, instead of in preparing that which will purchase the
same article cheap and superior abroad,—that is, when
restrictions are imposed on importation.
But though the general interest is sacrificed, no particular
interest is permanently benefited, by special protections: since
Restrictive regulations in favour of the few are violated, when such
violation is the interest of the many; and
Every diminution of the consumer’s fund causes a loss of custom to
the producer. Again,
The absence of competition and deprivation of custom combine to make
his article inferior and dear; which inferiority and dearness cause
his trade still further to decline.
Such are the evils which attend the protection of a class of
producers who cannot compete with foreign producers of the same
article.
If home producers can compete with foreign producers, they need no
protection, as, _cæteris paribus_, buying at hand is preferable to
buying at a distance.
Free competition cannot fail to benefit all parties:—
Consumers, by securing the greatest practicable improvement and
cheapness of the article;
Producers, by the consequent perpetual extension of demand;—and
Society at large, by determining capital to its natural channels.
-------
Colonies are advantageous to the mother-country as affording places
of settlement for her emigrating members, and opening markets where
her merchants will always have the preference over those of other
countries, from identity of language and usages.
Colonies are not advantageous to the mother-country as the basis of
a peculiar trade.
The term “colony trade” involves the idea of monopoly; since, in a
free trade, a colony bears the same relation as any other party to
the mother-country.
Such monopoly is disadvantageous to the mother-country, whether
possessed by the government, as a trading party, by an exclusive
company, or by all the merchants of the mother-country.
It is disadvantageous as impairing the resources of the dependency,
which are a part of the resources of the empire, and the very
material of the trade which is the object of desire.
If a colony is forbidden to buy of any but the mother-country, it
must do without some articles which it desires, or pay dear for
them;—it loses the opportunity of an advantageous exchange, or makes
a disadvantageous one. Thus the resources of the colony are wasted.
If a colony is forbidden to sell its own produce to any but the
mother-country, either the prohibition is not needed, or the colony
receives less in exchange from the mother-country than it might
obtain elsewhere. Thus, again, the resources of the colony are
wasted.
If a colony is forbidden either to buy of or sell to any but the
mother-country, the resources of the colony are wasted according to
both the above methods, and the colony is condemned to remain a poor
customer and an expensive dependency.
In proportion, therefore, as trade with colonies is distinguished
from trade with other places, by restrictions on buyers at home, or
on sellers in the colonies, that trade (involving the apparatus of
restriction) becomes an occasion of loss instead of gain to the
empire.
If restrictive interference be impolitic,—oppressive,—impious,
between empire and empire, it becomes absolutely monstrous when
introduced among the different classes of the same country. The
magistrates of a grazing county would do ill to prohibit intercourse
with the manufacturing, and agricultural, and mining districts
around; but much more oppressive and fatal would be the policy of a
city corporation which should make the resources of the city depend
on the will of the corn-dealers which it contained.—Such has been
the policy of the rulers of Britain; and side by side with this
restriction of the supply of food,—this abuse of capital,—may be
placed the curious perversion of labour which is caused not only by
the forcing of agriculture at the expense of manufactures, but by
the existence of exclusive and injurious privileges to trading
corporations, of certain ancient laws respecting apprenticeship, and
of the iniquitous practice of the impressment of seamen.
The system of restricting the supply of food would exhibit as many
sins under the head of Production as of Distribution. To make an
ever-increasing population depend on graduating soils for its
support, is at once to enact that either a certain number shall die
outright of hunger, or that a much larger number shall be half-fed;
and that, in either, case, waste of capital must be made in
proportion to the inferiority of our newly-cultivated soils compared
with those which might yield us their produce from abroad. From this
waste arises another and equally destructive species of waste in the
preparation of our manufactured articles. Wages are higher than they
need be to purchase the same necessaries; therefore our manufactured
articles are higher priced than they need be; therefore they have
not a fair chance in foreign markets; and therefore our ill-fed
manufacturing population is wronged. Such are some of the evils of a
restricted trade in corn, considered under the head of Production.
As for the distribution of this prime necessary of life,—the
circumstance of its being loaded with an artificial cost suggests
the deplorable scenes and narratives of suffering which may be
verified in every street of all our cities. No arrangement can be
more utterly unprincipled than that by which a necessary of life, of
which the richest can scarcely consume more than the poorest, is
made needlessly expensive. We may linger in vain to find a
comparison to illustrate the iniquity. It is the worst possible
instance of legislative injustice; and when it is considered that
this injustice is perpetrated for the benefit of a particular class,
which class is brought by it to the verge of ruin, and that the
injury spreads to every other class in turn, it will be seen that no
words can describe its folly. Add to this our provisions for
diverting labour from its natural channels, and for making it
stagnate in one spot, and it will appear as if we had yet to learn
the rights of labour and the uses of capital, or as if we openly
defied the one, and abused the other. It is not so, however. The
folly came before the iniquity; and, in cases of false legislation,
the folly, originating in ignorance, must be long perceived and
pointed out,—i.e. must become iniquity,—before it can be remedied.
But the remedy is secured from the moment that the denunciation goes
abroad. We have passed through the necessary stages, and the issue
is at hand. Our grandfathers legislated about corn on false
principles, through ignorance; our fathers clung to these false
principles in a less innocent state of doubt. We have perpetuated
them wickedly, knowing their disastrous results; and a voice is
going up through all the land which will almost immediately compel
their relinquishment.
Very little can be done to improve the condition of the people till
the Corn Laws are repealed. All practicable retrenchments, all
ordinary reduction of taxation, all reforms in the organization of
Church and State, important as they are, are trifles compared with
this. The only measure of equal consequence is the reduction of the
Debt; and this ought to accompany or immediately precede the
establishment of a free trade in corn. Day and night, from week to
week, from month to month, the nation should petition for a free
trade in corn, urging how landlords, when freed from fluctuation of
their revenues, will be able to bear their fair proportion of the
national burdens; how the farmer, no longer tempted to a wasteful
application of capital, will cease the so-called ungrateful clamour
with which he repays legislative protection; how the manufacturing
class will prosper and will multiply our resources when they are
allowed the benefits of the free competition in which their
ingenuity qualifies them to hold a distinguished place; and how our
labourers will be, by one comprehensive act, raised, every man of
them, a grade higher than any laborious, partial legislation can
raise any one of their classes. An act which must, at once, prevent
the waste of capital and the misapplication of labour, unclog the
system of manufactures and commerce, and obviate the main distresses
of our agriculturists, must do more for the improvement of our
revenue, and the union of our nation than all less comprehensive
measures put together. To untax the prime necessary of life is to
provide at once a prospective remedy for all the worst evils of our
social arrangements. This will scarcely be disputed by those who
admit the principles of the following summary. It is important that
such results of these principles should be traced out and made
familiar to the mind, as it is certain that the days of free trading
in corn are at hand.
-------
As exchangeable value is ultimately determined by the cost of
production, and as there is an incessant tendency to an increase
in the cost of producing food, (inferior soils being taken into
cultivation as population increases,) there is a perpetual
tendency in the exchangeable value of food to rise, however this
tendency may be temporarily checked by accidents of seasons, and
by improvements in agricultural arts.
As wages rise (without advantage to the labourer) in consequence
of a rise in the value of food, capitalists must either sell their
productions dearer than is necessary where food is cheaper, or
submit to a diminution of their profits.
Under the first alternative, the capitalist is incapacitated for
competition with the capitalists of countries where food is
cheaper: under the second, the capital of the country tends,
through perpetual diminution, to extinction.
Such is the case of a thickly-peopled country depending for food
wholly on its own resources.
There are many countries in the world where these tendencies have
not yet shown themselves; where there is so much fertile land,
that the cost of producing food does not yet increase; and where
corn superabounds, or would do so, if there was inducement to grow
it.
Such inducement exists in the liberty to exchange the corn with
which a thinly-peopled country may abound, for the productions in
which it is deficient, and with which a populous country may
abound. While, by this exchange, the first country obtains more
corn in return for its other productions, and the second more of
other productions in return for its corn, than could be extracted
at home, both are benefited. The capital of the thickly-peopled
country will perpetually grow; the thinly-peopled country will
become populous; and the only necessary limit of the prosperity of
all will be the limit to the fertility of the world.
-------
But the waste of capital caused by raising corn dear and in limited
quantities at home, when it might be purchased cheap and in
unlimited quantities abroad, is not the only evil attending a
restriction of any country to its own resources of food; a further
waste of capital and infliction of hardship are occasioned by other
consequences of such restriction.
As the demand for bread varies little within any one season, or few
seasons, while the supply is perpetually varying, the exchangeable
value of corn fluctuates more than that of any article whose return
to the cost of production is more calculable.
Its necessity to existence causes a panic to arise on the smallest
deficiency of supply, enhancing its price in undue proportion; and
as the demand cannot materially increase on the immediate occasion
of a surplus, and as corn is a perishable article, the price falls
in an undue proportion.
These excessive fluctuations, alternately wasting the resources of
the consumers and the producers of corn, are avoided where there is
liberty to the one class to buy abroad in deficient seasons, and to
the other to sell abroad in times of superabundance.
It is not enough that such purchase and sale are permitted by
special legislation when occasion arises, as there can be no
certainty of obtaining a sufficient supply, on reasonable terms, in
answer to a capricious and urgent demand.
Permanently importing countries are thus more regularly and cheaply
supplied than those which occasionally import and occasionally
export; but these last are, if their corn-exchanges be left free,
immeasurably more prosperous than one which is placed at the mercy
of man and circumstance by a system of alternate restriction and
freedom.
By a regular importation of corn, the proper check is provided
against capital being wasted on inferior soils; and this capital is
directed towards manufactures, which bring in a larger return of
food from abroad than could have been yielded by those inferior
soils. Labour is at the same time directed into the most profitable
channels. Any degree of restriction on this natural direction of
labour and capital is ultimately injurious to every class of the
community,—to land-owners, farming and manufacturing capitalists,
and labourers.
Labourers suffer by whatever makes the prime necessary of life dear
and uncertain in its supply, and by whatever impairs the resources
of their employers.
Manufacturing capitalists suffer by whatever tends needlessly to
check the reciprocal growth of capital and population, to raise
wages, and disable them for competition abroad.
Farming capitalists suffer by whatever exposes their fortunes to
unnecessary vicissitude, and tempts them to an application of
capital which can be rendered profitable only by the maintenance of
a system which injures their customers.
Landowners suffer by whatever renders their revenues fluctuating,
and impairs the prosperity of their tenants, and of the society at
large on which the security of their property depends.
As it is the interest of all classes that the supply of food should
be regular and cheap, and as regularity and cheapness are best
secured by a free trade in corn, it is the interest of all classes
that there should be a free trade in corn.
-------
The duty of government being to render secure the property of its
subjects, and their industry being their most undeniable property,
all interference of government with the direction and the rewards of
industry is a violation of its duty towards its subjects.
Such interference takes place when some are countenanced by
legislation in engrossing labours and rewards which would otherwise
be open to all; as in the case of privileged trading corporations;—
When arbitrary means of preparation are dictated as a condition of
the exercise of industry, and the enjoyment of its fruits,—as in the
case of the apprenticeship law;—
When labourers are compelled to a species of labour which they would
not have chosen,—as in the case of the impressment of seamen.
The same duty—of securing the free exercise of industry—requires
that companies should be privileged to carry on works of public
utility which are not within the reach of individual enterprise,—as
in the case of roads, canals, bridges, &c.; and also,
That the fruits of rare ingenuity and enterprise should be secured
to the individual,—according to the design of our patent law.
In the first-mentioned instances of interference, the three great
evils arise of
The restraint of fair competition in some cases;
The arbitrary increase of competition in other cases;
The obstruction of the circulation of labour and capital from
employment to employment, and from place to place.
In the last-mentioned instances of protection, none of these evils
take place.
-------
The general principles of Exchange are so few and obvious that there
would be little need to enlarge upon them but for their perpetual
violation. To leave all men free to seek the gratification of their
wants seems a simple rule enough; and universal experience has
shown, not only that wants freely expressed are sure to be supplied,
generally to the advantage of both parties, but that every
interference of authority, whether to check or stimulate the want,—
to encourage or discourage the supply, proves an aggression on the
rights of industry, and an eventual injury to all concerned. All
that governments have to do with the exchanges of nations, as of
individuals, is to protect their natural freedom; and, if a system
of indirect taxation be the one adopted, to select those commodities
for duty which are not necessary enough to subject the lowest class
to this species of tax, while they are desirable enough to induce
others to pay the additional cost. It may be a question whether this
method of raising revenue be wise: there can be no question that a
government directly violates its duty when it grants privileges
(real or supposed) to one class above another.
But, it is said, governments have always shown more or less of this
partiality. May it be confidently anticipated that they will ever
cease to transgress the legitimate bounds of their power?
Yes; very confidently. Such transgression is a feudal barbarism. The
feudal system has died out in theory; and it is impossible that its
practical barbarism should long remain. The progress of freedom has
been continuous and accountable, and its consummation is clearly a
matter of confident prophecy. Sovereigns, grand and pretty,
individual or consisting of a small number compacted into a
government, have first exercised absolute power over the lives,
properties and liberties of their subjects: this despotic grasp has
been gradually relaxed, till life, property, and liberty have been
made to depend on law, and not on arbitrary will. Next, the law has
been improved, from being the agent of such arbitrary will, to being
the expression of a more extended and abstract will. From this stage
of improvement the progress has been regular. The province of rule
has been narrowed, and that of law has been enlarged. Whatever may
have been,—whatever may still be,—the faults in the methods of
making the law, the absurdities of the law in some of its parts, and
its inadequateness as a whole in every civilized country, the
process of enlargement has still gone on, some unjust usurpation
being abolished, some sore oppression removed from time to time,
affording a clear prospect of a period when every natural and social
right shall be released from the gripe of irresponsible authority.
No king now strikes off heads at any moment when the fancy may seize
him. No kings’ councillors now plunder their neighbours to carry on
their wars or their sports, or are paid for their services by gifts
of patents and monopolies. No parliaments now make laws according to
the royal pleasure, without consulting the people; and, if they are
slow to repeal some oppressive old laws with which the people are
disgusted, it is certain that such laws could not at this day be
proposed. What can be more eloquent than this language of events?
What more prophetic than this progression? While the agents by which
the advance has been achieved are multiplied and strengthened,—while
its final purposes are more clearly revealed, day by day, what other
expectation can be entertained than that it will advance more and
more rapidly, till the meanest rights of industry shall be at length
freed from the last aggressions of power? Then the humblest labourer
may buy his loaf and sell his labour in what corner of the earth he
pleases. Then legislators will no more dream of dictating what wine
shall be drunk, and what fabrics shall be worn, and through what
medium God’s free gifts must be sought, than they now dream of
branding a man’s face on account of his theology. They will perceive
that the office of dispensing the bounty of nature is not theirs but
God’s; and that the agents he has appointed are neither kings,
parliaments, nor custom-house officers, but those ever-growing
desires with which he has vivified the souls of the haughtiest and
the lowliest of his children.
-----------------------
PART IV.
CONSUMPTION is of two kinds—productive and unproductive.
The object of the one is the restoration, with increase, in some new
form, of that which is consumed. The object of the other is the
enjoyment of some good through the sacrifice of that which is
consumed.
That which is consumed productively is capital, re-appearing for
future use. That which is consumed unproductively ceases to be
capital, or any thing else: it is wholly lost.
Such loss is desirable, or the contrary, in proportion as the
happiness resulting from the sacrifice exceeds or falls short of the
happiness belonging to the continued possession of the consumable
commodity.
The total of what is produced is called the gross produce.
That which remains, after replacing the capital consumed, is called
the net produce.
While a man produces only that which he himself consumes, there is
no demand and supply.
If a man produces more of one thing than he consumes, it is for the
sake of obtaining something which another man produces, over and
above what he consumes.
Each brings the two requisites of a demand,—viz., the wish for a
supply, and a commodity wherewith to obtain it.
This commodity, which is the instrument of demand, is, at the same
time, the instrument of supply.
Though the respective commodities of no two producers may be exactly
suitable to their respective wishes, or equivalent in amount, yet,
as every man’s instrument of demand and supply is identical, the
aggregate demand of society must be precisely equal to its supply.
In other words, a general glut is impossible.
A partial glut is an evil which induces its own remedy; and the more
quickly the greater the evil; since, the aggregate demand and supply
being always equal, a superabundance of one commodity testifies to
the deficiency of another; and, all exchangers being anxious to
exchange the deficient article for that which is superabundant, the
production of the former will be quickened, and that of the latter
slackened.
A new creation of capital, employed in the production of the
deficient commodity, may thus remedy a glut.
A new creation of capital is always a benefit to society, by
constituting a new demand.
It follows that an unproductive consumption of capital is an injury
to society, by contracting the demand. In other words, an
expenditure which avoidably exceeds the revenue is a social crime.
All interference which perplexes the calculations of producers, and
thus causes the danger of a glut, is also a social crime.
-------
It is necessary to the security and advancement of a community that
there should be an expenditure of a portion of its wealth for
purposes of defence, of public order, and of social improvement.
As public expenditure, though necessary, is unproductive, it must be
limited; and as the means of such expenditure are furnished by the
people for defined objects, its limit is easily ascertained.
That expenditure alone which is necessary to defence, public order,
and social improvement, is justifiable.
Such a direction of the public expenditure can be secured only by
the public functionaries who expend being made fully responsible to
the party in whose behalf they expend.
For want of this responsibility, the public expenditure of an early
age—determined to pageantry, war, and favouritism—was excessive, and
perpetrated by the few in defiance of the many.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public
expenditure of an after age—determined to luxury, war, and
patronage—was excessive, and perpetrated by the few in fear of the
many, by deceiving and defrauding them.
For want of a due degree of this responsibility, the public
expenditure of the present age—determined chiefly to the sustaining
of burdens imposed by a preceding age—perpetuates many abuses; and
though much ameliorated by the less unequal distribution of power,
the public expenditure is yet as far from being regulated to the
greatest advantage of the many, as the many are from exacting due
responsibility and service from the few.
When this service and responsibility shall be duly exacted, there
will be—
Necessary offices only, whose duties will be clearly defined, fully
accounted for, and liberally rewarded;—
Little patronage, and that little at the disposal of the people;—
No pomp, at the expense of those who can barely obtain support;—but
Liberal provisions for the advancement of national industry and
intelligence.
-------
If the above principles be true, a comparison of them with our
experience will yield very animating conclusions. Consumption—that
is, human enjoyment—is the end to which all the foregoing processes
are directed. Demand is the index of human enjoyment. Every increase
of capital creates a new demand. Capital is perpetually on the
increase. To sum up the whole, human enjoyment is perpetually on the
increase. The single exception to this happy conclusion is where, as
in Ireland, the growth of capital is overmatched by the increase of
population. But even in Ireland (the worst case which could be
selected) the evil is so partial as to allow the good to spread.
Though too large a portion of the demand comes in the form of a
clamour for daily food, there is a new and spreading demand for a
multitude of articles of less necessity. Portions of the population
are rising to a region of higher and wider desires; and if this
partial elevation has taken place under a most vicious political
system, there need be no question that a more rapid improvement will
grow up under that wiser and milder government which the civilized
world will take care that Ireland shall at length enjoy. There is
something so delightful in the review of the multiplication of
comforts and enjoyments, that it is difficult to turn away from it
at any time; and never is it more difficult than when establishing
the moral of hopefulness. But I have dwelt largely on this happy
truth in my story of “Briery Creek;” and probably no day passes in
which my readers do not hear or say something about the wonderful
improvements in art, the variety of new conveniences, and the spread
downwards of luxuries to which the wealthy were formerly believed to
have an exclusive title. Great as is still the number of those who
are scorched by God’s vivifying sun, and chilled by his fertilizing
rain, for want of shelter and clothing, the extension of enjoyment
has kept its proportion (being both cause and effect) to the
improvement of the subordinate processes. With every increase of
production, with every improvement of distribution, with every
extension of exchange, consumption has kept pace. The only checks it
has ever received have arisen out of those legislative sins which
have wrought, or must work, their own destruction.
As for that species of consumption which has been always regarded
with the least complacency,—the too long unprofitable consumption of
government,—nothing can be more cheering than to mark the changes in
its character from an early period of our empire till now. Viewed by
itself, our government expenditure is a mournful spectacle enough;
but the heaviest of the burdens we now bear were imposed by a former
age; and our experience of their weight is a sufficient security
against such being ever imposed again. We are no longer plundered by
force or fraud, and denied the redress of a parliament; we are no
longer hurried into wars, and seduced to tax our children’s children
for their support. The sin is now that of omission, and not of
perpetration. We do not shake off old burdens, or provide for public
order and social improvement as we should; but we do not neglect the
one and despise the other, as was done in days of old; and what is
left undone there is a spreading movement to effect. The only
irreclaimable human decree,—that of an enlightened multitude,—has
gone forth against the abuses of the Church and the Law. The Army
will follow; and there is reason to hope that a force is being
already nourished which may grapple with the gigantic Debt itself.
New and noble institutions are being demanded from all quarters as
the natural growth from the renovation of the old ones. Religion
must yield Education, and Law a righteous Penal Discipline. Schools
must spring up around our churches, and prisons will be granted
where the law must, if possible, mend criminals as effectually as it
has hitherto made them. In time, we shall find that we have spare
barracks, which may be converted into abodes of science; and many a
parade may become an exercising place for laborious mechanics
instead of spruce soldiers. Such are some of the modes of public
expenditure which the nation is impatient to sanction. What further
institutions will be made to grow out of these, we may hereafter
learn in the schools which will presently be planted wherever
families are congregated. All that we can yet presume is, that they
will be as much wiser than ours as our extravagances are more
innocent than the savage pageantries of the Henries, the cruel
pleasantries of the Charleses, and the atrocious policy of the
“heaven-born Ministers” who figure in our history.
--------------
All the members of a society who derive protection from its
government owe a certain proportion of the produce of their labour
or capital to the support of that government—that is, are justly
liable to be taxed.
The proportion contributed should be determined by the degree of
protection enjoyed—of protection to property; for all are personally
protected.
In other words, a just taxation must leave all the members of
society in precisely the same relation in which it found them.
This equality of contribution is the first principle of a just
taxation.
Such equality can be secured only by a method of direct taxation.
Taxes on commodities are, from their very nature, unequal, as they
leave it in the choice of the rich man how much he shall contribute
to the support of the state; while the man whose whole income must
be spent in the purchase of commodities has no such choice. This
inequality is aggravated by the necessity, in order to make these
taxes productive, of imposing them on necessaries more than on
luxuries.
Taxes on commodities are further injurious by entailing great
expense for the prevention of smuggling, and a needless cost of
collection.
They could not have been long tolerated, but for their quality of
affording a convenient method of tax paying, and for the ignorance
of the bulk of the people of their injurious operation.
The method of direct taxation which best secures equality is the
imposition of a tax on income or on property.
There is so much difficulty in ascertaining, to the general
satisfaction, the relative values of incomes held on different
tenures, and the necessary inquisition is so odious, that if a tax
on the source of incomes can be proved equally equitable, it is
preferable, inasmuch as it narrows the province of inquisition.
There is no reason to suppose that an equitable graduation of a tax
on invested capital is impracticable; and as it would equally affect
all incomes derived from this investment,—that is, all incomes
whatsoever,—its operation must be singularly impartial, if the true
principle of graduation be once attained.
A graduated property-tax is free from all the evils belonging to
taxes on commodities; while it has not their single recommendation—
of favouring the subordinate convenience of the tax-payer.
This last consideration will, however, become of less importance in
proportion as the great body of tax-payers advances towards that
enlightened agreement which is essential to the establishment of a
just system of taxation.
The grossest violation of every just principle of taxation is the
practice of burdening posterity by contracting permanent loans, of
which the nation is to pay the interest.
The next grossest violation of justice is the transmitting such an
inherited debt unlessened to posterity, especially as every
improvement in the arts of life furnishes the means of throwing off
a portion of the national burdens.
The same rule of morals which requires state-economy on behalf of
the present generation, requires, on behalf of future generations,
that no effort should be spared to liquidate the National Debt.
-------
No sign of the times is more alarming,—more excusably alarming,—to
the dreaders of change, than the prevailing unwillingness to pay
taxes,—except such as, being indirect, are paid unawares. The
strongest case which the lovers of old ways have now to bring in
opposition to the reforming spirit which is abroad, is that of
numbers, who enjoy protection of life and property, being reluctant
to pay for such protection.
This reluctance is a bad symptom. It tells ill for some of our
social arrangements, and offers an impediment, at the same time, to
their rectification; and thus gives as much concern to the reformers
as to the preservers of abuses. This eagerness to throw off the
burdens of the state is a perfectly natural result of the burdens of
the state having been made too heavy; but it does not the less
exhibit an ignorance of social duty which stands formidably in the
way of improvements in the arrangement of social liabilities. We are
too heavily taxed, and the first object is to reduce our taxation.
Indirect taxes are proved to be by far the heaviest, and the way to
gain our object is therefore to exchange indirect for direct taxes,
to the greatest possible extent. But the direct taxes are those that
the people quarrel with. What encouragement is there for a
government to propose a commutation of all taxes for one on
property, when there is difficulty in getting the assessed taxes
paid? How is it to be supposed that men will agree to that on a
larger scale which they quarrel with on a smaller? How can there be
a stronger temptation offered to our rulers to filch the payment out
of our raw materials, our tea, our beer, our newspapers, and the
articles of our clothing? The more difficulty there is in raising
the supplies, the more risk we run of being made to yield of our
substance in ways that we are unconscious of, and cannot check. The
less manliness and reasonableness we show in being ready to bear our
just burden, the less chance we have of the burden being lightened
to the utmost. It is more than mortifying to perceive that an
overburdened nation must, even if it had a ministry of sages, submit
for a long time to pay an enormous tax upon its own ignorance.
Such appears too plainly to be now the case with our nation, and
with some other nations. A party of gentlemen may be found in any
town, sitting over their wine and foreign fruits, repelling the idea
of paying a yearly sum to the state, and laughing, or staring, when
the wisest man among them informs them that they pay above 100 per
cent. on the collective commodities they use. Tradesmen may be found
in every village who think it very grievous to pay a house-tax,
while they overlook the price they have to give for their pipe of
tobacco and their glass of spirit and water. Some noblemen, perhaps,
would rather have higher tailors’ bills for liveries than pay so
much a head for their servants. As long as this is the case,—as long
as we show that we prefer paying thirty shillings with our eyes shut
to a guinea with our eyes open, how can we expect that there will
not be hands ready to pocket the difference on the way to the
Treasury; and much disposition there to humour us in our blindness?
The cry for retrenchment is a righteous cry; but all power of
retrenchment does not lie with the Government. The Government may do
much; but the people can do more, by getting themselves taxed in the
most economical, instead of the most wasteful, manner. It is a good
thing to abolish a sinecure, and to cut down the salary of a bishop
or a general; but it is an immeasurably greater to get a direct tax
substituted for one on cider or paper. All opposition to the
principle of a direct tax is an encouragement to the appointment of
a host of excisemen and other tax-gatherers, who may, in a very
short time, surpass a bench of bishops and a long gradation of
military officers in expensiveness to the people. It is time for the
people to take care that the greater retrenchments are not hindered
through their mistakes, while they are putting their whole souls
into the demand for the lesser.
Such mistakes are attributable to the absence of political knowledge
among us; and the consequences should be charged, not to
individuals, but to the State, which has omitted to provide them
with such knowledge. The bulk of the people has yet to learn that,
being born into a civilized society, they are not to live by chance,
under laws that have been made they know not why nor how, to have a
portion of their money taken from them by people they have nothing
to do with, so that they shall be wise to save as much as they can
from being so taken from them. This is the view which too large a
portion of us take of our social position, instead of understanding
that this complicated machine of society has been elaborated, and
must be maintained, at a great expense; that its laws were
constructed with much pains and cost; that under these laws capital
and labour are protected and made productive, and every blessing of
life enhanced; and that it is therefore a pressing obligation upon
every member of society to contribute his share towards maintaining
the condition of society to which he owes his security and social
enjoyment. When this is understood,—when the lowest of our labourers
perceives that he is, as it were, the member of a large club, united
for mutual good,—none but rogues will think of shirking the payment
of their subscription-money, or resist any particular mode of
payment before the objections to it have been brought under the
consideration of the Committee, or after the Committee has
pronounced the mode to be a good one. They will watch over the
administration of the funds; but they will manfully come forward
with their due contributions, and resent, as an insult upon their
good sense, all attempts to get these contributions from them by
indirect means.
Till they are enabled thus to view their own position, it is not
wonderful, however deplorable, that they should quarrel with a just
tax because it is unequally imposed, ascribing to the principle the
faults committed in its application. This is the less surprising
too, because their teeth have been set on edge by the sour grapes
with which their fathers were surfeited. A lavish expenditure and
accumulating debt have rendered odious the name and notion of every
tax under heaven. Great allowance must be made for the effects of
such ignorance and such irritation. Let the time be hastened when a
people, enlightened to its lowest rank, may behold its meanest
members heard with deference instead of treated with allowance, if
they shall see reason for remonstrance in regard to their
contributions to the state! When they once know what is the waste in
the department of the Customs, and the oppression and fraud in that
of the Excise,—what are the effects of taxes on raw produce, and on
the transfer of property, and how multiplied beyond all decency are
the burdens of local taxation, they will value every approach
towards a plan of direct levy, and will wonder at their own clamour
about the house and window taxes, (except as to their inequality of
imposition,) while so many worse remained unnoticed. I shall attempt
to exhibit the effects on industry and happiness of our different
kinds of taxes in a few more tales; and I only wish I had the power
to render my picture of a country of untaxed commodities as
attractive in fiction as I am sure it would be in reality. Meantime,
I trust preparation will be making in other quarters for imparting
to the people those political principles which they desire to have
for guides in these stirring times, when every man must act: those
principles which will stimulate them at once to keep watch over the
responsibilities of their rulers, and to discharge their own.
-------
What, then, is the moral of my fables? That we must mend our ways
and be hopeful;—or, be hopeful and mend our ways. Each of these
comes of the other, and each is pointed out by past experience to be
our duty, as it ought to be our pleasure. Enough has been said to
prove that we must mend our ways: but I feel as if enough could
never be said in the enforcement of hopefulness. When we see what an
advance the race has already made, in the present infant stage of
humanity,—when we observe the differences between men now living,—it
seems absolute impiety to doubt man’s perpetual progression, and to
question the means. The savage who creeps into a hollow tree when
the wind blows keen, satisfying his hunger with grubs from the
herbage, and the philosopher who lives surrounded by luxury which he
values as intellectual food, and as an apparatus for securing him
leisure to take account of the stars, and to fathom the uses of
creation, now exist before our eyes,—the one a finished image of
primeval man; the other a faint, shadowy outline of what man may
be.—Why are these men so unlike? By observing every gradation which
is interposed, an answer may be obtained.—They are mainly formed by
the social circumstances amidst which they live. All other
differences,—of bodily colour and form, and of climate,—are as
nothing in comparison. Wherever there is little social circumstance,
man remains a savage, whether he be dwarfed among the snows of the
Pole, or stretches his naked limbs on the hot sands of the desert,
or vegetates in a cell like Caspar Hauser. Where-ever there is much
social circumstance, man becomes active, whether his activity be for
good or for evil. In proportion as society is so far naturally
arranged as that its relations become multitudinous, man becomes
intellectual, and in certain situations and in various degrees,
virtuous and happy. Is there not yet at least one other stage, when
society shall be _wisely_ arranged, so that all may become
intellectual, virtuous, and happy; or, at least, so that the
exceptions shall be the precise reverse of those which are the rare
instances now? The belief is irresistible.
There has been but one Socrates, some say; and he lived very long
ago.—Who knows that there has been but one Socrates? Which of us can
tell but that one of our forefathers, or some of ourselves, may have
elbowed a second or a tenth Socrates in the street, or passed him in
the church aisle? His philosophy may have lain silent within him.
Servitude may have chained his tongue; hunger may have enfeebled his
voice; he may have been shut up in the Canton Factory, or crushed
under a distraint for poor-rates or tithes. Till it has been known
how many noble intellects have been thus chained and silenced, let
no one venture to say that there has been but one Socrates.
Supposing, however, that there has been but one, does it follow that
the world has gone back, or has not got forward since his day? To
judge of the effect of social institutions on character and
happiness, we must contemplate a nation, and not the individual the
most distinguished of that nation. What English artisan would change
places with the Athenian mechanic of the days of Socrates, in
respect of external accommodation? What English artisan has not
better things to say on the rights of industry, the duties of
governments, and the true principle of social morals, than the
wisest orator among the Greek mechanics in the freest of their
assemblies? It is true that certain of our most refined and virtuous
philosophers are engaged nearly all day in servile labour, and that
they wear patched clothes, and would fain possess another blanket.
This proves that our state of society is yet imperfect; but it does
not prove that we have not made a prodigious advance. Their social
qualifications, their particular services, have not been allowed due
liberty, or received their due reward; but the very circumstance of
such men being found among us, banded together in the pursuit of
good, is a sufficient test of progress, and earnest of further
advancement. Such men are not only wiser, and more prosperous in
their wisdom, than they were likely to have been while building a
house for Socrates, or making sandals for Xantippe, but they have
made a vast approach towards being employed according to their
capacities, and rewarded according to their works,—that is, towards
participating in the most perfect conceivable condition of society.
When, till lately, has this condition of society been distinctly
conceived of,—not as an abstract good, to be more imagined than
expected,—but as a natural, inevitable consequence of labour and
capital, and their joint products, being left free, and the most
enlightened intellect having, in consequence, an open passage left
accessible, by which it might rise to an influential rank? Such a
conception as this differs from the ancient dreams of benevolent
philosophers, as the astronomer’s predictions of the present day
differ from the ancient mythological fables about the stars. The
means of discernment are ascertained—are held in our hands. We do
not presume to calculate the day and hour when any specified
amelioration shall take place; but the event can be intercepted only
by such a convulsion as shall make heaven a wreck and earth a chaos.
In no presumption of human wisdom is this declaration pronounced.
Truth has one appropriate organ, and principles are that organ; and
every principle on which society has advanced makes the same
proclamation. Each has delivered man over to a nobler successor,
with a promise of progression, and the promise has never yet been
broken. The last and best principle which has been professed, if not
acted upon, by our rulers, because insisted on by our nation, is
“the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Was there ever a
time before when a principle so expanding and so enduring as this
was professed by rulers, because insisted on by the ruled? While
this fact is before our eyes, and this profession making music to
our ears, we can have no fears of society standing still, though
there be brute tyranny in Russia, and barbarian folly in China, and
the worst form of slavery at New Orleans, and a tremendous pauper
population at the doors of our own homes. The genius of society has
before transmigrated through forms as horrid and disgusting as
these. The prophecy which each has been made to give out has been
fulfilled: therefore shall the heaven-born spirit be trusted while
revealing and announcing at once the means and the end—THE
EMPLOYMENT OF ALL POWERS AND ALL MATERIALS, THE NATURAL RECOMPENSE
OF ALL ACTION, AND THE CONSEQUENT ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE HAPPINESS OF
THE GREATEST NUMBER, IF NOT OF ALL.
THE END.
London: Printed by W. Clowes, Duke-street, Lambeth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Hyphens appearing on a line or page break have been removed if the
preponderance of other occurrences are unhyphenated. Those words
occurring midline are retained regardless of other occurrences. The
following variants were retained: land-owner(2), day-light(1),
On some occasions, a word spans a line break, but the hyphen itself
has gone missing. These fragments are joined appropriately without
further notice here.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original.
THE FARRERS OF BUDGE-ROW.
1.15.14 of which she had this afternoon heard.[”] Removed.
1.44.15 [“]Some other improvements Added.
1.69.14 for which t[k/h]e people Replaced.
1.78.29 Jane’s en[t]rance had baffled her calculations Inserted.
1.85.32 to each burner.[”] Removed.
1.126.32 before he calls you t[o] another! Restored.
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