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]

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.

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]

Here is the statement of the evil and of one of the appropriate remedies.