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.