and so, to avoid that, they would have nothing but property
represented, at the same time that they pretend that if the elective
franchise were thrown open to the poor, they would be wholly at the
command of the rich, to the prejudice and exclusion of the middle and
independent classes of society. Property always has a natural
influence and authority: it is only people without property that have
no natural protection, and require every artificial and legal one.
_Those that have much, shall have more; and those that have little,
shall have less._ This proverb is no less true in public than in
private life. The _better orders_ (as they are called, and who, in
virtue of this title, would assume a monopoly in the direction of
state affairs) are merely and in plain English those who are _better
off_ than others; and as they get the wished-for monopoly into their
hands, others will uniformly be _worse off_, and will sink lower and
lower in the scale; so that it is essentially requisite to extend the
elective franchise in order to counteract the excess of the great and
increasing goodness of the better orders to themselves. I see no
reason to suppose that in any case popular feeling (if free course
were given to it) would bear down public opinion. Literature is at
present pretty nearly on the footing of universal suffrage, yet the
public defer sufficiently to the critics; and when no party bias
interferes, and the government do not make a point of running a writer
down, the verdict is tolerably fair and just. I do not say that the
result might not be equally satisfactory, when literature was
patronised more immediately by the great; but then lords and ladies
had no interest in praising a bad piece and condemning a good one. If
they could have laid a tax on the town for not going to it, they would
have run a bad play forty nights together, or the whole year round,
without scruple. As things stand, the worse the law, the better for
the lawmakers: it takes everything from others to give to _them_. It
is common to insist on universal suffrage and the ballot together. But
if the first were allowed, the second would be unnecessary. The ballot
is only useful as a screen from arbitrary power. There is nothing
manly or independent to recommend it.
COROLLARY 3. If I was out at sea in a boat with a _jure divino_
monarch, and he wanted to throw me overboard, I would not let him. No
gentleman would ask such a thing, no freeman would submit to it. Has
he, then, a right to dispose of the lives and liberties of thirty
millions of men? Or have they more right than I have to resist his
demands? They have thirty millions of times that right, if they had a
particle of the same spirit that I have. It is not the individual,
then, whom in this case I fear (to me 'there's _no_ divinity doth
hedge a king'), but thirty millions of his subjects that call me to
account in his name, and who are of a most approved and indisputable
loyalty, and who have both the right and power. The power rests with
the multitude, but let them beware how the exercise of it turns
against their own rights! It is not the idol but the worshippers that
are to be dreaded, and who, by degrading one of their fellows, render
themselves liable to be branded with the same indignities.
COROLLARY 4. No one can be born a slave; for my limbs are my own, and
the power and the will to use them are anterior to all laws, and
independent of the control of every other person. No one acquires a
right over another but that other acquires some reciprocal right over
him; therefore the relation of master and slave is a contradiction in
political logic. Hence, also, it follows that combinations among
labourers for the rise of wages are always just and lawful, as much as
those among master manufacturers to keep them down. A man's labour is
his own, at least as much as another's goods; and he may starve if he
pleases, but he may refuse to work except on his own terms. The right
of property is reducible to this simple principle, that one man has
not a right to the produce of another's labour, but each man has a
right to the benefit of his own exertions and the use of his natural
and inalienable powers, unless for a supposed equivalent and by mutual
consent. Personal liberty and property therefore rest upon the same
foundation. I am glad to see that Mr. Macculloch, in his _Essay on
Wages_, admits the right of combination among journeymen and others. I
laboured this point hard, and, I think, satisfactorily, a good while
ago, in my _Reply to Mr. Malthus_. 'Throw your bread upon the waters,
and after many days you shall find it again.'
There are four things that a man may especially call his own. 1. His
person. 2. His actions. 3. His property. 4. His opinions. Let us see
how each of these claims unavoidably circumscribes and modifies those
of others, on the principle of abstract equity and necessity and
independence above laid down.