There are, in every fully-peopled country, large numbers of persons
whose lives are passed in hardship and misery, and whose greatest
exertions can do no more for them than procure the barest means of
subsistence. These are greatly to be pitied, and it should be the
study of the government, and of all who possess the means, to remove,
as far as possible, the causes of their misfortune. It cannot,
however, be said that any competition, save only that which they
themselves naturally and necessarily exhibit among their class, for
obtaining the inadequate amount of employment for which they are
fitted, is chargeable with the hardships they endure. It is a
melancholy truth, as concerns the individuals, that we cannot extend
to them any indirect relief without tending to increase the evil by
raising an addition to their number. How, then, is their condition to
be mended? The only way, it appears to me, is to fit them for entering
into competition with others above them in the social scale by means
of instruction, which shall enable them to give a greater value to the
services which they render, and thus entitle them to command a greater
value of services in return. We need entertain no fear lest, by this
letting in competition upon the class above them, we shall lower these
latter in the scale of society. So long as the capital in the country
shall continue to increase in a greater proportion than its
population, there must always be found additional employment and
better remuneration for those whose labour is capable of adding to the
national wealth. It may with more truth be stated, that the
consequence to the community of the existence of any large number of
destitute persons, is to keep down the general rate of wages,
positively, through the absorption of capital required for their
relief, and, negatively, through the absence of those additions to
capital which the surplus services of instructed artisans always
occasion.--_G. R. Porter's Lecture at Wandsworth, entitled 'Services
for Services.' London: Clowes._ 1851.