Socialism, as well in this country as in France, may be regarded as an
offset of the French Revolution. It is true that, in all times, the
striking disparity between the conditions of men has given rise to
Utopian speculations--to schemes of some new order of society, where the
comforts of life should be enjoyed in a more equalized manner than seems
possible under the old system of individual efforts and individual
rights; and it may be added that, as this disparity of wealth becomes
more glaring in proportion as the disparity of intelligence and
political rights diminishes, such speculations may be expected in these
later times to become more frequent and more bold. Nevertheless we
apprehend that the courage or audacity requisite to attempt the
realization of these speculative schemes, must confess its origin in the
fever-heat of the French Revolution. It required the bold example of
that great political subversion to prompt the design of these social
subversions--to familiarize the mind with the project of reducing into
practice what had been deemed sufficiently adventurous as reverie.
What a stride has been taken since those olden times, when the
philosophic visionary devised his Utopian society with all the freedom,
because with all the irresponsibility, of dreams! He so little
contemplated any practical result, that he did not even venture to bring
his new commonwealth on the old soil of Europe, lest it should appear
too strange, and be put out of countenance by the broad reality: but he
carried it out to some far-off island in the ocean, and created a new
territory for his new people. A chancellor of England, the high
administrator of the laws of property, could then amuse his leisure with
constructing a Utopia, where property, with all its laws, would undergo
strange mutation. How would he have started from his woolsack if any one
had told him that his design would be improved upon in boldness, and
that such men as his own carpenter and mason would set about the
veritable realization of it! At the present time nothing is more common
or familiar than the project of changing entirely the model of society.
"To subvert a government," writes M. Reybaud of his own country men, "to
change a dynasty or a political constitution, is now an insignificant
project. Your socialist is at peace with kings and constitutions; he
merely talks in the quietest manner imaginable of destroying every
thing, of uprooting society from its very basis."
Indeed, if the power of these projectors bore any proportion to their
presumption, our neighbours would be in a most alarming condition. To
extemporize a social system, a new humanity, or at least a new
Christianity, is now as common as it was formerly, on leaving college,
to rhyme a tragedy. The social projector, sublimely confident in
himself, seems to expect to realize, on a most gigantic scale, the fable
of Mesmerism; he will put the whole world in _rapport_ with him, and it
shall have no will but his, and none but such blind, imitative movements
as he shall impress on it. And it is to a sort of _coma_ that these
projectors would, for the most part, reduce mankind--a state where there
is some shadow of thought and passion, but no will, no self-direction,
no connexion between the past and present--a state aimless, evanescent,
and of utter subjugation. Fortunately these social reformers, however
daring, use no other instruments of warfare than speech and pamphlets;
they do not betake themselves to the sharp weapons of political
conspiracy. They must be permitted, therefore, to rave themselves out.
And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too
many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and
distract each other's efforts; the _fixed idea_ that is in them will not
fix any where else. Those who, in the natural order of things, should
be dupes, aspire to be leaders, and the leaders are at a dead struggle
for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have, for instance,
M. Pierre Leroux, most distinguished of the _Humanitarians_, the last
sect which figures on the scene, bidding for disciples--with what, will
our readers think?--with the doctrine of metempsychosis! It is put
forward as a fresh inducement to improve the world we live in, that we
shall live in it again and again, and nowhere else, and be our own most
remote posterity. We are not assured that there is any thread of
consciousness connecting the successive apparitions of the same being;
yet some slight filament of this kind must be traceable, for we are
informed that M. Leroux gives himself out to have been formerly Plato.
He has advanced thus far in the scale of progression, that he is at
present M. Leroux.[29]
Still the frequent agitation of these social reforms cannot be, and has
not been, without its influence on society. It is from this influence
they gain their sole importance. Such schemes as those of St Simon, of
Fourier, and of our own Robert Owen, viewed as projects to be realized,
are not worth a serious criticism. In this point of view they are
considered, at least in this country, as mere nullities. No one
questions here whether they are feasible, or whether, if possible, they
would be propitious to human happiness. But the constant agitation in
society of such projects may be no nullity--may have, for a season, an
indisputable and very pernicious influence. As systems of doctrine they
may not be ineffective, nor undeserving of attention; and in this light
M. Reybaud, in the work we now bring before our readers, mainly
considers them.
M. Reybaud has given us a sketch of the biography and opinions of the
most celebrated of those men who have undertaken to produce a new scheme
of human life for us; he has introduced his description of them and
their projects by some account of the previous speculations, of a
kindred nature indeed, but conducted in a very different spirit, of
Plato, Sir Thomas More, and others; and he has accompanied the whole
with observations of his own, which bear the impress of a masculine
understanding, a candid judgment, and a sound, healthy condition of the
moral sentiments. The French Academy has distinguished the work by
according to it the Montyon prize--a prize destined annually to the
publication judged most beneficial to morals; and in this judgment of
the Academy every private reader, unless he has some peculiar morality
of his own, will readily acquiesce.
Our author is not one of those who at once, and without a question,
reject all schemes for the amelioration of society; nor has he sat down
to write the history of these social reformers for the mere purpose of
throwing on them his contempt or irony. He has even been accused, it
seems, by some of his critics, of manifesting too much sympathy with the
enthusiasts he has undertaken to describe. He tells us, in the preface
to his second edition, that he has encountered the contradictory
accusations of being too severe, and too indulgent, towards them; from
which he concludes, that he cannot have widely departed from the tone
which truth and impartiality would prescribe. This is a conclusion which
authors are very apt to draw; they very conveniently dispatch their
several critics by opposing them to each other. But this conclusion may
be drawn too hastily. Two contradictory accusations do not always
destroy each other, even when they are made by judges equally
competent. The inconsistency may be in the author himself, who may, in
different portions of his work, have given foundation for very opposite
censures. In the present case, although we have already intimated that
M. Reybaud writes with a spirit of fairness and candour, we cannot admit
him to the full benefit of the conclusion he draws in his own favour,
from the opponent criticisms he has met with. There are individual
passages in his work which it would be difficult to reconcile with each
other, and which invite very different criticisms. On some occasions he
appears to attribute a certain value to these tentatives at social
reform, and intimates that they may probably be the precursors, or may
contain the germ, of some substantial improvement; whilst at other
times, he scourges them without pity or compunction, as a species of
moral pestilence. He seems not to have been able, at all moments, to
defend himself from the _vertige_ which possesses the personages of whom
he is writing; like a certain historian of witchcraft, whom we have
somewhere read of, who had so industriously studied his subject that a
faith in the black art imperceptibly gained upon him. The narrative goes
on to say, that the unfortunate historian of witchcraft attempted to
practise the knowledge he had obtained, and was burned for a wizard. But
there the analogy will certainly fail. M. Reybaud soon recovers from the
visionary mood, and wakes himself thoroughly by inflicting the lash with
renewed vigour upon all the other dreamers around him.
This shadow of inconsistency is still more perceptible when speaking of
the lives and _characters_ of his socialists. Sometimes the reader
receives the impression that an egregious vanity, an eccentric ambition,
and perhaps a little touch of monomania, would complete the picture, and
sufficiently explain that conduct, of a hero of socialism. At another
time his enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing
his fortune, abjuring the patronage of the court, dying in extreme
poverty--Charles Fourier refusing all entrance into commerce that would
implicate him with a vicious system, and pursuing to the end, amidst
want and ridicule, the labours of social regeneration--our own Robert
Owen quitting ease and fortune, and crossing the Atlantic for the New
World, there to try, upon a virgin soil, his bold experiment of a new
society;--these men rise before us endowed with a certain courage and
devotion which ought to command our admiration. We see them in the light
of martyrs to a faith which no one shares with them--sacrificing all,
enduring all, for a hope which _is_ of this world, for schemes which
they will never see realized, for a heaven which they may prophesy, but
which they cannot enter; manifesting, in short, the same obstinacy of
idea, and the same renouncement of self, which distinguish the founders
of new religions. And indeed we are not disposed to deny, that in their
character they may bear a comparison, in many points, with religious
impostors. There is this striking difference, however, in the effect of
their teaching: the religious impostor has often promised a paradise of
merely voluptuous enjoyment, but he has promised it as the reward of
certain self-denying virtues to be practised here on earth; whilst the
socialist insists upon bringing his sensual ill-ordered paradise,
wherein all virtue is dispensed with as superfluous, here, at once, upon
this earth we have to live and toil in.
The first volume of the work contains an account of the life and
writings of St Simon, Fourier, and Owen. The second is very
miscellaneous. We encounter, to our surprise, the name of Jeremy Bentham
in the category of socialists, and are still more startled to learn that
the Utilitarians derive their origin from Robert Owen! It is a jumble of
all sects, religious and political, in which even our Quakers are
included in the list of social reformers--our excellent _Friends_, who
assuredly have no wish whatever to disturb the world, but seek merely to
live in it as it is, with the additional advantage of being themselves
particularly quiet and comfortable. But we are so accustomed to the
haste of negligence of the majority of French writers whenever they
leave their own soil, (unless the literature or concerns of a foreign
country be their special subject,) that we are not disposed to pass any
very severe censure on M. Reybaud; and still less should we do him the
injustice to prejudge his qualifications as an historian of his own
countrymen, by the measure of accuracy he may display in that part of
his work which relates to England. It is a part of his work which we
have but slightly perused; our attention has been confined to the
socialists of France.
Amongst these founders of society, and constructors of Mahometan
paradises, Fourier is, we believe, the least known in this country. Some
brief account of him will, we think, be acceptable; more especially as
some of his ideas, leaving the narrow circle of his disciples, have
found partisans amongst men who, in other respects, have a reputation
for sobriety of thought. Our readers need not fear that we shall
overwhelm them with all the institutions, plans, projects,
arrangements--the complete _cosmogony_, in short, of this most laborious
of the tribe. A very little of such matter is quite enough. One may say
with truth that it is such stuff,
"Whereof a little more than a little
Is by much too much."
Nothing is more charming to the imagination than the first general idea
of some new community, where all men are to be happy, every body active,
benevolent, reasonable. But the moment we leave this general idea, enter
upon particulars, and set about the arrangements necessary for this
universally comfortable state of things, there is nothing in the world
more tedious and oppressive. Proposals for new political institutions
are sufficiently wearisome; but proposals for earthly elysiums, which
are to embrace the whole circle of human affairs, become insupportably
dull. It is child's play, played with heavy granite boulders. No; if we
were capable of being seduced for a moment into the belief of some
golden age of equality, where a parental government, presiding over all,
should secure the peace and prosperity of all, we should need no other
argument to recover us from the delusion than simply to _read on_, and
learn how this parental government intends to accomplish its purpose.
When we find that, in order to be relieved from domestic cares, we are
to have _no home at all_; that our parental government, in order to
provide for our children, begins by taking them away from us; when we
picture to ourselves the sort of wooden melancholy figures we must
become, (something like the large painted dolls in a Dutch garden, stuck
here and there without choice or locomotion of their own,) we speedily
lose all inclination to enter upon this discipline of happiness. We quit
with haste this enchanted garden, which turns out to be an enormous
piece of clockwork, and embrace with renewed content the old state of
personal freedom, albeit attended with many personal inconveniences.
Whilst reading of Utopian schemes, the idea has very vividly occurred to
us: suppose that some such society as this, where land and wives, money
and children, are all in common, had been for a long time in existence,
and that some clever Utopian had caught an inkling of the old system so
familiar to us, and had made the discovery that it would be possible,
without dissolving society, to have a wife of one's own, a house of
one's own, land and children of one's own. Imagine, after an age of
drowsy clockwork existence, one of these philosophers starting the idea
of a free society, of a social organization based upon individual rights
and individual effort--where property should not only be possessed, but
really _enjoyed_--where men should for the first time stretch their
limbs, and strain their faculties, and strive, and emulate, and endure,
and encounter difficulties, and have friendships. What a commotion there
would be! How would the younger sort, rebelling against the old rotten
machine in which they had been incarcerated, form themselves into
emigrating bands, and start forth to try upon some new soil their great
experiment of a free life! How would they welcome toil in all its
severity--how willingly practise abstinence, and suffer privation, for
the sake of the bold rights which these would purchase!--how willingly
take upon themselves the responsibility of their own fate to enjoy a
fortune of their own shaping! Hope herself would start from the earth
where she had been so long buried, and waving her rekindled torch, would
lead on to the old _race_ of life!
_Charles Fourier_ was the son of a woollen-draper at Besançon. Two
circumstances in his early history appear to have made a strong
impression upon him. When he was a child, he contradicted, in his
father's shop, some customary falsehood of the trade, and with great
simplicity revealed the truth; for this he was severely reprimanded.
Afterwards, when he was of the age of nineteen, and a clerk in a
merchant's house at Marseilles, he was present at a voluntary submersion
of grain, made in order to raise the price in the market. These
circumstances, he used to say, opened his eyes to the nature of human
relations. Falsehood and selfishness, systematic falsehood and
selfishness without a shadow of scruple, were at the basis of all our
commercial dealings. It was time, he thought, that a new order of things
should arise, founded upon veracity and a harmony of interests.
For himself, his part was taken. He became the man of one idea. "We
might rather say of him," writes M. Reybaud, "that he traversed the
world, than that he lived in it." He refused to enter into any
commercial dealings that might implicate him in the existing system, and
warp his feelings in favour of it; and exercised to the last, for a bare
subsistence, the mere mechanical employment of a copying clerk. He never
understood the art of making for himself two separate existences: one in
the domain of fiction or of thought; the other in the land of reality.
He passed all that might be called his life in the ideal world of his
own creating.
According to Fourier, there is but one deep and all-pervading cause of
the miseries of man: it is, that he does not comprehend the ways of God,
or, in other words, the laws of his own being. If humanity does not
_work well_, and with the same harmony that the planetary system
exhibits, it is because he is determined to impress upon it other
movements than those the Creator designed. Between the creature and the
Creator there has been, as he expresses it, a misunderstanding for these
five thousand years past.
The great error, it seems, that has been committed, is the supposing
that there are any passions of man which require to be restrained. God
has made nothing ill--nothing useless. You have but to let these
passions quite loose, and it will be found that they move in a beautiful
harmony of their own. These _attractions_--such is his favourite
word--are as admirably adjusted as those which rule over the course of
the planets. _Duty_, he says, is human--it varies from epoch to epoch,
from people to people. _Attraction_--that is to say, passion--is divine;
and is the same amongst all people, civilized and savage, and in all
ages, ancient and modern. At present the passions are compressed, and
therefore act unhappily; in future, they shall be free, satisfied, and
shall act according to the law they have received from God. To yield to
their impulse is the only wisdom; to remove whatever obstacles society
has placed in the way of their free exercise, is the great task of the
reformer.
Fourier does not hesitate to place himself by the side of Newton, in
virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison
can be made, we think--inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is
a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets--that
Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton.
Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that Newton's
law explains existing phenomena, while Fourier's explained phenomena
that do _not_ exist--that are, however, to exist some day.
Having established his fundamental law of the attraction of the
passions, (which, he finds, amount to the number of twelve, and, in this
respect, to bear some occult analogy to the sidereal system, the
prismatic colours, and the gamut,) he has nothing to do but to set them
fairly at work. This he does, and discovers that they form men into
delightful communities, or _phalanges_, of about eighteen hundred men
each. Here nothing shall be wanting. Whether it is love or labour,
_attraction_ supplies all. "Labour will be a charm, a taste, a
preference--in short, a passion. Each man will devote himself to the
occupation that he likes--to twenty occupations, if he likes twenty. A
charming rivalry, an enthusiasm always new, will preside over human
labour, when, under the law of attraction, men will be associated by
_groups_, the last social fraction--by _series_, which are the
association of groups--by _phalanges_, which are the association of
series."--(P. 123.)
The dwelling-place of a _phalange_ will be called a _phalanstère_--an
edifice commodious and elegant, wherein, while the convenient
distribution of the interior will be first considered, the claims of
architecture will not be forgotten. It will be a vast structure of the
most beautiful symmetry, testifying by its magnificence to the splendour
of the new life of which it is to be the scene. Galleries, baths, a
theatre, every thing conducive to a pleasurable existence, will be found
in it. A strict equality of wealth is no part of the scheme of our
socialist; but every one will have a sufficiency, and will obtain
apartments and provisions in the _phalanstère_ suitable to his fortune.
M. Fourier further guarantees, that there shall be no vanity amongst the
rich, and no mortification felt by the poorer brethren of the
establishment.
As to the expense of this _phalanstère_, M. Fourier undertakes to
construct it for what the building of four hundred miserable cottages
would cost, which would not accommodate a much greater number of
individuals, and which would fall to pieces after a few years. And as to
housekeeping, would not one enormous kitchen replace to advantage four
hundred small and ill-appointed kitchens? one vast cellar four hundred
little cellars? one gigantic washhouse four hundred damp, wretched
outhouses, not worthy of the name? Add to which, that much may be done
in these gigantic kitchens and washhouses by the judicious introduction
of a steam-engine, which might also be employed in supplying all the
apartments with water.
Labour, proceeding with such facility, such ardour, such enthusiasm,
as it will do in the _phalanstère_, must bring in enormous
profits--quadruple, as M. Fourier thinks, of what our present
ineffective means produce. It is in the division of these profits that
our socialist has been thought particularly happy; here it is that he
introduces his famous formula, "to associate men in capital, labour, and
talent," (associer les hommes en capital, travail, et talent.) The whole
profits of the community are first to be divided into three portions;
one for capital, one for labour, and one for talent--say four-twelfths
for capital, five-twelfths for labour, and three-twelfths for talent.
The portion allotted to the capitalists can create no difficulty--it
will be divided amongst them in proportion to the amount of capital they
severally supply. But a difficulty presents itself in the distribution
of the other two portions. Are all species of labour, and all
descriptions of talent, to be equally remunerated, or by what rule shall
their several rewards be determined? M. Fourier declares that the
labours _necessary_ to the community shall be most highly recompensed;
then those that are _useful_; and last of all, those which administer,
as the fine arts, only to pleasure and amusement. For this determination
he gives a sound reason, but one which we ought not to have heard from
the centre of a _phalanstère_; it is, that necessary labours are nearly
all of a repugnant nature, and should therefore be most amply rewarded.
To determine the degree of talent the individual has displayed, the
principle of election is called in. There is, however, a high order of
talent which is considered quite apart. Great artists, great
mechanicians, great writers--these belong to no _phalange_, but to
humanity. The world will charge itself with their remuneration. They
will be relieved from the usual condition of labour; and when, after a
long repose, they have produced a work, (how it comes to be known what
bird will lay the golden egg till the egg is laid, we are not told,)
then will a jury, assembled at the metropolis of the world, which will
be built on the site of Constantinople, vote them a recompense.
"Imagine, for example, Jacquart or Watt, Newton or Corneille, presenting
themselves before this august tribunal--Jacquart with his loom, Watt
with his steam-engine, Newton with his theory of attractions, Corneille
with his most beautiful tragedy. At the instant, to the exclusion of all
delays and hazards of fame, there would be voted to these great men a
remuneration, to be levied on all the _phalanges_. Suppose only five
francs on each _phalange_, and that there were five hundred thousand
_phalanges_ on the globe, the jury would have accorded a sum of
2,500,000 francs; Jacquart would not have been compelled to die in a
state bordering on indigence, after having enriched the universe."
Fournier was in person short, thin, and pale, but his melancholy and
pensive physiognomy bore traces of his long, unquiet, and ungrateful
labours. A simple clerk, he did not venture, when he published his
writings, to sign them with any other name than that of _Charles_,
declaring himself ready, under that name, to answer any objections that
might be addressed to him. Alas! there were few objections addressed to
him; Charles got no readers; men pitied or ridiculed him as a visionary.
Repulsed by the surrounding world, there remained nothing for him but to
live in that creation of his own, in which, at all events, he reigned
supreme. In his reveries he found his only happiness. He walked glorious
in the midst of joyful enthusiastic multitudes, who saluted him as their
benefactor, and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these
beings, the children of his dreams, in a language which he alone
comprehended; he built his _phalanstère_, peopled, organized it;
conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups, founded his towns,
his capitals, nay, his capital of the world, which he erected on the
Bosphorus, uniting the east and west, the north and south. There he
placed with his own hand the laurel, decreed by his million of
phalanges, on the brow of the greatest philosopher of his age. "These
festivals of the imagination," says M. Reybaud, "were the only pleasures
that relived the long, and gloomy, and proud poverty of Fourier."
One trait we cannot pass over, as it seems, so to speak, to have a
psychological value. Such was his habit of ordering and arranging all
things, that _Charles_ not only undertook to regulate the affairs of
men, and redress the inequalities of their several destinies, but he
took into his consideration the inequalities of the several climates of
the earth, and very seriously occupied himself with redressing their
anomalies. To him, as he walked the streets of Paris, the severe cold of
the North Pole was disquieting, and a subject of uneasiness; it was part
of his mission to temper and subdue it, and tame it for the habitation
of men. Perhaps the heat from those gigantic kitchens in his
_phalanstères_ might help him in his task. At all events, this and other
gross atmospheric irregularities were not be endured in the world which
he was planning.
There are two things, M. Reybaud remarks, especially reprehensible in
the theory of Fourier and of kindred socialists--First, the confounding
happiness with enjoyment, and the legitimating of all our passions; and
Secondly, the egregious expectation of moulding mankind by an external
or social organization, without calling in aid the virtues of the
individual. The one necessarily follows on the other. The chain of error
is manifest, and leads, as a chain of error may be expected to do, to
inextricable confusion. If mere enjoyment, if the gratification of our
senses and passions, be the highest aim and condition of the human
being, it follows that all moral discipline, all self-denial, must be
regarded as so much defect, so much imperfection, so much manifest
failure in the world-scheme. That lofty gratification which men have
been accustomed to attribute to self-control, to abstinence practised
under a sense of duty, or in the cause of justice, this is to be
measured off as so much simple misery, or so much negation of enjoyment.
Let all restraint be discarded: let man be free; but yet, as the good of
the whole is to be consulted in all societies, and in the new society is
consulted in an eminent degree, the individual thus released from all
self-control must be ruled despotically, or, if you will, moulded,
fashioned, mechanized by the laws of the community; for we suppose it
will be admitted, whatever M. Fourier tells us of his discovered law of
attraction, that a very stringent legislation must bind together that
harmonic society, which begins by giving loose rein to all the passions
of mankind. How the two are to be practically reconciled--how the utmost
license of the individual is to be combined with the utmost and most
minute supervision of the laws, we leave the socialist to determine.
Such is the miserable tissue of error and confusion which these projects
present to view.
These socialists are fond of inventing new Christianities, and in some
_salons_ in Paris it is, or was till very lately, the fashion to have a
new Christianity propounded every full moon. New enough! They present at
least a sufficient contrast with the old Christianity, and in no other
point more than in this--the complete dependence for the formation of
the character of individuals on the art of grouping and regimenting
them. Christianity has supported for ages monastic institutions,
institutions the most counter to the passions of men, solely by its
strong appeal to the individual conscience. St Simonian institutions, or
delightful _phalanstères_, will in vain flatter every passion and
indulge every sense; if they leave the conscience inert, if nothing is
built on the sense of duty, they will no sooner rise but they will
crumble back again into dust.
But we do not touch upon these fundamental errors of the socialists,
with the superfluous view of showing the impossibility of realizing
their schemes; we note them because their recognition demonstrates at
once the ill influence which must attend on the teaching and constant
agitation of such schemes. On the one hand, all our desires authorized,
and self-control put out of countenance as a mere marplot; on the other
hand, perpetual representations that a government or social organization
could effect every thing, or almost every thing that can be desired for
the happiness of man. What must follow but that men learn to indulge
themselves in a very lax morality, and to make most extravagant demands
on the government, or the legislative force of society? Their notions of
right and wrong, and their ideas of the duty and office of government,
become equally unsettled and erroneous.
We have the authority of M. Reybaud--and we could bring other
authorities if it were necessary--for saying that, in France, the habit
of attributing the vices of individuals, not to their own weakness or
ungoverned propensities, but to the malorganization of society, has
shown itself in a strange and ominous indulgence to crime. It was the
old fashion, he says, upon hearing of any enormity, to level our
indignation against the perpetrator; it is now the mode, to direct it
against that culpable abstraction, society. Society is, indeed, the sole
culprit. When the novelist has detailed some horrible assassination, or
gross adultery, he exclaims, Behold what society has done! The criminal
himself passes scathless; if, indeed, he may not put in a claim to our
especial sympathy, as having been peculiarly ill-used by that society,
whose duty it manifestly was to make him wise, and humane, and happy.
Man, in his individual capacity, is not to be severely criticised; the
censure falls only upon man in his aggregate and corporate capacity.
Polite, at all events. No one can possibly take offence at reproofs
leveled at that invisible entity, the social body; or suppose for a
moment that he is included in the censure. It used to be thought that
the aggregate was made up of individuals, and that, in order to
constitute a well-ordered community, there must be virtuous and
well-ordered men. The reverse is now discovered to be the truth.
_First_, have a well-ordered and divinely happy community, and then the
individual may do as he likes; as our comedian says, "his duties will be
pleasures."
It is a perilous habit to fall into at the best--that of regarding the
present condition of society as something doomed to destruction. But the
evil is unmistakeable and most pernicious, when it is proclaimed, that
in the new and expected order of things, the old morality will be
entirely superfluous, a mere folly, an infliction on ourselves and
others. Why take care of the old furniture, that will be worse than an
incumbrance in the new premises? Why not begin at once the work of
battery and destruction?
The influence which these speculations exert in unsettling men's notions
upon the duties of government, on the first principles of political or
social economy, is less glaring, but not, on this account, the less
prejudicial. Men, who are far from embracing entirely any one of the
schemes of these socialists, fall into the habit of looking for the
relief and amelioration of society to some legislative invention, some
violent interference with the free and spontaneous course of human
industry. The _organization of industry_ is the phrase now in high
repute; repeated, it is true, with every variety of meaning, but always
with the understanding, that government is to interfere more or less in
the distribution of wealth, in the employment of capital, and the
exercise of labour. The first principles on which modern civilization is
based, are taxed as the origin of all the evils that afflict society.
All our soundest maxims of political economy are discarded and
disgraced. That each man shall be free in the choice and practice of his
trade or calling--that the field of competition shall be open to
all--that each individual shall be permitted to make the best bargain he
can, whether for the wages of his labour or the price of his
commodities--all these trite but invaluable maxims are incessantly
decried, and nothing is heard of but the evils of competition, and the
unequal recompense of labour. In their fits of impotent benevolence,
these speculative physicians assail, as the cause of the existing
distress, those principles which, in fact, are the conditions of all the
prosperity we have attained, or can preserve, or can hope in future to
attain.
This title of the individual, whether workman or capitalist, to the
control and conduct of his own affairs--this "fair field and no favour"
system--is not to be described as if it were a mere theory of political
economy, and disputable like some other branches of a science not yet
matured. It is the great conquest of modern civilization; it is the
indispensable condition to the full development of the activity and
enterprise of man. The liberation of the artisan and the labourer, is
the signal triumph of modern over ancient times whether we regard
classic or Gothic antiquity. Viewing things on a large scale, it may be
considered as a _late_ triumph; and, without depreciating its value, we
may easily admit that there remains much to be done in the cultivation
of the free artisan, to enable him to govern himself, and make the best
of his position. But any scheme, which, under the pretext of
ameliorating his position, would place him again under tutelage, is a
scheme of degradation and a retrograde movement. He is now a freeman, an
enrolled member of a civilized state, where each individual has, to a
great extent, the responsibility thrown upon himself for his own
well-being; he must have prospective cares, and grow acquainted with the
thoughtful virtue of prudence. That release from reflection, and anxiety
for the future, which is the compensating privilege of the slave or the
barbarian, he cannot hope any longer to enjoy. Whatever its value, he
must renounce it. He must become one of us, knowing good and evil,
looking before and behind. In this direction--in the gradual improvement
of the labourer--lies our future progress, progress slow and toilsome,
little suited to the socialist who calculates on changing, as with the
touch of a wand, the whole aspect of society.
We said that some of the ideas of Charles Fourier had been adopted by
men who do not exactly aspire to the rank of social reformers. We will
give an instance, which at the same time will illustrate this tendency
to introduce legislation on those very subjects from which it has been
the effort of all enlightened minds, during the last century, to expel
it. A M. Ducpetiaux, a Belgian, who comes vouched to us for a safe and
respected member of society by the number of titles, official and
honorary, appended to his name, in a voluminous and chiefly statistical
work, _Sur la Condition des Jeunes Ouvriers_, wherein his views are in
the main temperate and judicious, declares himself a partisan of some
system similar to what Fourier points out in his famous
formula--_associer les hommes en capital, travail, et talent_. He
requires a union of interest, a partnership in fact, between the
capitalist and the workman. M. Ducpetiaux does not lay down the
proportion in which the profits are to be divided between them; he is
too cautious to give any figures--there are some ideas which do not bear
the approach of arithmetic--but he adopts the principle. It is thus that
he speaks in his introductory chapter.
"In so conflicting a state of things[30] there remains but one
remedy: to re-establish violated equity, to restore to the
producers their legitimate share of what is produced, to bring
back industry to its primitive aim and object--such is the work
which is now, by the aid of every influence, individual and
social, to be prosecuted. It is not a partial relief that is
called for, but the complete restoration (réhabilitation
complète) of the labourer. The mark which ages of servitude
have impressed upon his front, cannot be effaced but by an
energetic and sustained effort. The palliatives hitherto
employed, have only exposed the magnitude of the evil. This
evil we must henceforth attack in its origin, in the
organization of labour, and the constitution of society.
"What is the existing base of the relations between master and
workman? Selfishness. Every one for himself, that is, every
thing for me and nothing, or the least quantity possible, for
others. Here is the evil. A blind and bitter contest must
spring from this opposition of interests. To put an end to this
there is but one means: the recognition of the law of union,
(la loi de solidarité,) by virtue of which interests will
amalgamate and divisions disappear. This law is the palladium
of industry; refuse to acknowledge it, and every thing remains
in a state of chaos: proclaim it, and every thing is remedied,
every thing prospers. The capitalist comes in aid of the
workman as the workman comes in aid of the capitalist; it is a
common prosperity they enjoy, and if any thing menaces it, they
are united for its defence. The law of union puts an end to an
unfeeling employment of our fellow men, (_à l'exploitation
brutale;_) it replaces men in their natural position; it
re-establishes amongst them the relations of respect, esteem,
and mutual benevolence which Christian fraternity demands; it
substitutes association for rivalry; it restores to justice her
empire, and to humanity its beneficence."
Translating all this into simple language, there is to be a partition by
the legislature, according to some rule of natural equity, between the
capitalist and the labourer, of the proceeds of their common enterprise.
We confess ourselves utterly incapable of devising any such rule of
equity. The share which falls to the capitalist under the name of
profits, and the share which falls to the labourer under the name of
wages, is regulated under the present system by the free competition
amongst the labourers on the one hand, and the capitalists on the other;
it is the result of an unfettered bargain between those who possess
capital and those who practise industry. This is, at all events, an
intelligible ground, and has in it a species of rough equity; but if we
desert this position, and appeal to some natural rule of justice to make
the division, we shall find ourselves without any ground whatever. For
what are the rights of capital in the face of any _à priori_ notions of
justice? We shall stumble on from one vague proposition to another, till
we find ourselves landed in the revolutionary doctrine of the equal
imprescriptible rights of man. This is the first stage at which we can
halt. Judged by this law of equality, the capitalist is but one man, and
capital is but another name for the last year's harvest, or the
buildings, tools, and manufactures which the labourers themselves, or
their predecessors, have produced. The utmost the ex-capitalist could
expect--and he must practise his handicraft before he can be entitled
even to this--is to be admitted on a footing of equality in the
extensive firm that would be constituted of his quondam operatives.
We often observe, in this country, an inclination manifested to regulate
by law the rate of wages, not with the view of instituting any such
naturally equitable partition, but of establishing a _minimum_ below
which life cannot be comfortably supported. These reasoners proceed, it
will at once be admitted, not on the rights of man, but on the claims of
humanity. To such a project there is but one objection; it will
assuredly fail of its humane intention. It is presumed that the
competition amongst the workmen to obtain employment has so far
advanced, that these cease to obtain a sufficient remuneration for their
labour. The thousand men whom a great capitalist employs, are
inadequately paid. The legislature requires that they should be paid
more liberally. But the amount which the capitalist has to expend in
wages is limited. The same amount which sustained a thousand men, can,
under the new scale of remuneration, sustain only nine hundred. The nine
hundred are better fed, but there is one hundred without any food
whatever. Our well-intentioned humanity looks round aghast at the
confusion she is making.
Suppose, it may be said, that a law of this description should be passed
at so fortunate a conjuncture, that it should not interfere with the
existing relations between the capitalist and the workman, but have for
its object to arrest the tendency which wages have to fall; suppose that
the legislature, satisfied with the existing state of things, should
pronounce it a punishable offence to offer or accept a lower rate of
remuneration, would not such a law be wise? The answer is obvious. If
there is a tendency at any time in wages to fall, it is because there is
a tendency in population to increase, or in capital to diminish;
circumstances, both of them, which it is not in the power of criminal
jurisprudence to wrestle with.
We hear political economy frequently censured by these advocates for
violent and legislative remedies, for paying more attention to the
accumulation than the distribution of wealth. But in what chapter of
political economy is it laid down, that the distribution and enjoyment
of wealth is a matter of less moment than its production and
accumulation? The simple truth is, that the same law of liberty, which
is so favourable to the accumulation of wealth, provides also the best
distribution which human ingenuity has yet been able to devise. Less has
been said on this head because there was less to say. But surely no sane
individual ever wished that property should accumulate merely for the
sake of accumulation, that society should have the temper of a miser,
and toil merely to increase its hoards. Still less has any one
manifested a disposition to confine the enjoyment of wealth to any one
class, treating the labourer and the artisan as mere tools and
instruments for the production of it. The fundamental principles of
political economy to which we have been alluding, and with which alone
we are here concerned, will be always found to embrace the interests of
the _whole_ community. They should be defended with the same jealousy
that we defend our political liberties with.
It was with regret we heard the argument we have just stated against the
legislative interference with the rate of wages, introduced in the
discussion of the _ten-hours' bill_, and applied against the principle
of that measure. It was plainly misapplied. Why do we not relish any
legislative interposition, on whatever plea of humanity, between workmen
and capitalist? Because it will fail of its humane intention. We should
heartily rejoice--who would not?--if a reasonable _minimum_ of wages
could be established and secured. But it cannot. Is the legislature
equally incompetent when it steps in to prevent children and very young
persons from being overworked; from being so employed that the health
and vigour of ensuing generations may be seriously impaired, (which
would be a grave mistake even in the economy of labour;) from being so
entirely occupied that no time shall remain for education? We think not.
The legislature is not in this case equally powerless. It may here
prevent an incipient abuse from growing into a custom. The law cannot
create an additional amount of capital to be distributed over its
population in the shape of an advance of wages, but the law can say to
all parents and all masters--you shall not profit by the labour of the
child, to the ruin of its health, and the loss of all period for mental
and moral discipline. Such an overtasking of the child's strength has
not hitherto been an element in your calculation, and it shall not
become one.
All these various schemes--socialist or otherwise--of legislative
interference, take their rise from the aspect, sufficiently deplorable,
of the distress of the manufacturing population; and it is almost
excusable if the contemplation of such distress should throw men a
little off their balance. But it is not so easily excusable if men, once
launched on their favourite projects, endeavour to prove their necessity
by heightened descriptions of that distress, and by unauthorized
prophecies of its future and continual increase. What a formidable array
of figures--figures of speech as well as of arithmetic--are brought down
upon us with gloomy perseverance, to convince us that the manufacturing
population of this country is on the verge of irreparable ruin! We think
it right to put our readers upon their guard against these over-coloured
descriptions. Even when Parliamentary reports are quoted, whose
authority is not to be gainsaid, they ought to defend themselves against
the _first_ impression which these are calculated to make. The facts
stated may be true, but there are _other facts_ which are not stated
equally true, and which the scope and purpose of such reports did not
render it necessary to collect. If, in this country, there is much
distress, if in some places there is that utter prostration of mind and
body which extreme poverty occasions, there is also much prosperity;
there is also, in other places, much vigorous industry, receiving its
usual, and more than its usual recompense. If there are plague-spots in
our population, there are also large tracts of it still sound and
healthy. Set any one down to read list after list of all the maimed and
halt and sick in our great metropolis, and the whole town will seem to
him, for the time being, one wide hospital: he must throw open the
window and look on the busy, animated, buoyant crowd that is rushing
through the streets, before he shakes off the impression that he is
living in a city of the plague.
Without a doubt, he who approaches the consideration of the distress of
the labouring classes, should have a tender and sympathizing spirit; how
else can the subject possess for him its true and profound interest? But
it is equally necessary that he bring to it a cultivated and
well-disciplined compassion; that he should know where, in the name of
others, he should raise the voice of complaint, and where, in the name
of suffering humanity at large, he should be silent and submit. It
should always be borne in mind, that it is very difficult for persons of
one condition of life, to judge of the comparative state of well-being
of those of another condition. An inhabitant of cities, a man of books
and tranquillity, goes down into the country, without previous
preparation, to survey and give report of the distress of a mining or
agricultural district. In what age since the world has been peopled,
could such an individual be transported into the huts of peasants, or
amongst the rude labours of the miner, without receiving many a shock to
his sensibility? Perhaps he descends, for the first time in his life,
the shaft of a coal-mine. How foul and unnatural must the whole business
seem to him!--these men working in the dark, begrimed, half-naked, pent
up in narrow galleries. He has gone to spy out hardships--he sees
nothing else. Or perhaps he pays his first visit to the interior of the
low-roofed crazy cottage of the husbandman, and is disgusted at the
scant furniture and uninviting meal that it presents; yet the hardy
labourer may find his rest and food there, with no greater share of
discontent than falls to most of us--than falls, perhaps, to the
compassionate inspector himself. We have sometimes endeavoured to
picture to ourselves what would be the result if the tables were
turned, and a commission of agricultural labourers were sent into the
city to make report of the sort of lives led there, not by poor citizens
or the lowest order of tradesmen, but by the very class who are occupied
in preparing largo folio reports of their own distressful condition.
Suppose they were to enter into the chambers of the student of law--of
the conveyancer, for example. They make their way through obscure
labyrinths into a room not quite so dark, it must be allowed, nor quite
so dirty as the interior of a coal-mine, and there they find an unhappy
man who, they are given to understand, sits in that gloomy apartment, in
a state of solitary confinement, from nine o'clock in the morning till
six or seven in the evening. They learn that, for several months in the
year, this man never sees the sun; that in the cheerful season when the
plough is going through the earth, or the sickle is glittering in the
corn, and the winds are blowing the great clouds along the sky, this
pale prisoner is condemned to pore over title-deeds which secure the
"quiet enjoyment" of the land to others; and if they imitate the oratory
of their superiors, they will remark upon the strange injustice, that he
should be bound down a slave to musty papers, which give to others those
pastures from which he never reaps a single blade of grass, and which he
is not even permitted to behold. These commissioners would certainly be
tempted to address a report to Parliament full of melancholy
representations, and ending with the recommendation to shake out such
unhappy tenants into the fields. It would be long before they could be
brought to understand that he of the desk and pen would, at the end of
half an hour, find nothing in those fields but a mortal _ennui_. To him
there is no _occupation_ in all those acres; and therefore they would
soon be to him as barren as the desert.
If there is any apparent levity in the last paragraph we have penned, it
is a levity that is far from our heart. There is no subject which gives
us so much concern as this--of the undoubted distress which exists
amongst the labouring population, and the necessity that exists to
alleviate and to combat it. Coming from the immediate perusal of Utopian
schemes, promising a community of goods, and from the reconsideration of
those arguments which prove such schemes to be delusive and mischievous,
the impression that is left on our mind is the profound conviction of
the duty of government, to do whatever lies really in its power for the
amelioration of the condition of the working classes. The present system
of civilized society works, no doubt, for the good of the whole, but
assuredly _they_ do not reap an equal benefit with other classes, and on
them falls the largest share of its inevitable evils. May we not say
that, whatever the social body, acting in its aggregate capacity, _can_
do to redress the balance--whether in education of their children, in
sanatory regulations which concern their workshops and their dwellings,
or in judicious charity that will not press upon the springs of
industry--it is _bound_ to do by the sacred obligation of justice?