Part 4 (1/2)

”Let it not disgrace me, If I demand, before this royal view, What rub, or what impediment, there is, Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births, Should not, in this best garden of the world, Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?

Alas! she hath from France too long been chas'd; And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, Corrupting in its own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned, dies; her hedges even-pleach'd, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas, The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory Doth root upon; while that the coulter rusts, That should deracinate such savagery: The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility: And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness; Even so our houses, and ourselves and children, Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time, The sciences that should become our country.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: d.y.k.es of Holland: destruction by bursting.]

We have heard it said that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands. The meaning of the saying is, that the capital which was appropriated to keep out the sea from that part of the Kentish coast was diverted to the building of Tenterden steeple; and there being no funds to keep out the sea, it washed over the land.[14] The Goodwin Sands remain to show that man must carry on a perpetual contest to keep in subjection the forces of nature, which, as is said of fire, one of the forces, are good servants but bad masters. But these examples show, also, that in the social state our control of the physical forces of nature depends upon the right control of our own moral forces. There was injustice, doubtless, in misappropriating the funds which restrained the sea from devouring the land. Till men know that they shall work with justice on every side, they work feebly and unprofitably. England did not begin to acc.u.mulate largely and rapidly till the rights both of the poor man and the rich were to a certain degree established--till industry was free and property secure. Our great dramatic poet has described this security as the best characteristic of the reign of Queen Elizabeth:--

”In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Under his own vine”]

Shakspere derived his image from the Bible, where a state of security is frequently indicated by direct allusion to a man sitting under the shade of his own fig-tree or his own vine. In the days of Elizabeth, as compared with previous eras, there was safety, and a man might

”sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.”

We have gone on constantly improving these blessings. But let any circ.u.mstances again arise which may be powerful enough to destroy, or even molest, the freedom of industry and the security of property, and we should work once more without certainty. The elements of prosperity would not be constant and uniform. We should work with the apprehension that some hurricane of tyranny, no matter from what power, would arise, which would sweep away acc.u.mulation. When that hurricane did not rise, we might have comparative abundance, like the people of Egypt during the inundation of the Nile. We then should have an inundation of tranquillity. But if the tranquillity were not present--if lawless violence stood in the place of justice and security--we should be like the people of Egypt when the Nile did not overflow. We should suffer the extremity of misery; and that possible extremity would produce an average misery, even if tranquillity did return, because security had not returned. We should, if this state of things long abided, by degrees go back to the condition of Colchester in the fourteenth century, and thence to the universal marsh of two thousand years ago. The place where London stands would be, as it once was, a wilderness for howling wolves. The few that produced would again produce laboriously and painfully, without skill and without division of labour, because without acc.u.mulation; and it would probably take another thousand years, if men again saw the absolute need of security, to re-create what security has acc.u.mulated for our present use.

From the moment that the industry of this country began to work with security, and capital and labour applied themselves in union--perhaps not a perfect union, but still in union--to the great business of production, they worked with less and less expenditure of unprofitable labour. They continued to labour more and more profitably, as they laboured with knowledge. The labour of all rude nations, and of all uncultivated individuals, is labour with ignorance. Peter the wild boy, whom we have already mentioned, could never be made to perceive the right direction of labour, because he could not trace it through its circuitous courses for the production of utility. He would work under control, but, if left to himself, he would not work profitably. Having been trusted to fill a cart with manure, he laboured with diligence till the work was accomplished; but no one being at hand to direct him, he set to work as diligently to unload the cart again. He thought, as too many think even now, that the good was in the labour, and not in the results of the labour. The same ignorance exhibits itself in the unprofitable labour and unprofitable application of capital, even of persons far removed beyond the half-idiocy of Peter the wild boy. In the thirteenth century many of the provinces of France were overrun with rats, and the people, instead of vigorously hunting the rats, were persuaded to carry on a process against them in the ecclesiastical courts; and there, after the cause of the injured people and the injuring rats was solemnly debated, the rats were declared cursed and excommunicated if they did not retire in six days. The historian does not add that the rats obeyed the injunction; and doubtless the farmers were less prepared to resort to the profitable labour of chasing them to death when they had paid the ecclesiastics for the unprofitable labour of their excommunication. There is a curious instance of unprofitable labour given in a book on the Coal Trade of Scotland, written as recently as 1812. The people of Edinburgh had a pa.s.sion for buying their coals in immense lumps, and, to gratify this pa.s.sion, the greatest care was taken not to break the coals in any of the operations of conveying them from the pit to the cellar of the consumer. A wall of coals was first built within the pit, another wall under the pit's mouth, another wall when they were raised from the pit, another wall in the waggon which conveyed them to the port where they were s.h.i.+pped, another wall in the hold of the s.h.i.+p, another wall in the cart which conveyed them to the consumer, and another wall in the consumer's cellar; and the result of these seven different buildings-up and takings-down was, that after the consumer had paid thirty per cent. more for these square ma.s.ses of coal than for coal shovelled together in large and small pieces, his servant had daily to break the large coals to bits to enable him to make any use of them. It seems extraordinary that such waste of labour and capital should have existed amongst a highly acute and refined community within the last forty years. They, perhaps, thought they were making good for trade, and therefore submitted to the evil; while the Glasgow people, on the contrary, by saving thirty per cent. in their coals, had that thirty per cent. to bestow upon new enterprises of industry, and for new encouragements to labour.

The unprofitable applications of capital and labour which the early history of the civilization of every people has to record, and which, amongst many, have subsisted even whilst they held themselves at the height of refinement, have been fostered by the ignorance of the great, and even of the learned, as to the causes which, advancing production or r.e.t.a.r.ding it, advanced or r.e.t.a.r.ded their own interests, and the interests of all the community. Princes and statesmen, prelates and philosophers, were equally ignorant of

”What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so; What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat.”

It was enough for them to consume; they thought it beneath them to observe even, much less to a.s.sist in, the direction of production. This was ignorance as gross as that of Peter the wild boy, or the excommunication of rats. It has always been the fas.h.i.+on of ignorant greatness to despise the mechanical arts. The pride of the Chinese mandarins was to let their nails grow as long as their fingers, to show that they never worked. Even European n.o.bles once sought the same absurd distinction. In France, under the old monarchy, no descendant of a n.o.bleman could embark in trade without the highest disgrace; and the principle was so generally recognised as just, that a French writer, even as recently as 1758, reproaches the sons of the English n.o.bility for the contrary practice, and asks, with an air of triumph, how can a man be fit to serve his country in Parliament after having meddled with such paltry concerns as those of commerce? Montesquieu, a writer in most respects of enlarged views, holds that it is beneath the dignity of governments to interfere with such trumpery things as the regulation of weights and measures. Society might have well spared the interference of governments with weights and measures if they had been content to leave all commerce equally free. But, in truth, the regulation of weights and measures is almost a solitary exception to the great principle which governments ought to practise, of not interfering, or interfering little, with commerce.

Louis XIV. did not waste more capital and labour by his ruinous wars, and by his covering France with fortifications and palaces, than by the perpetual interferences of himself and his predecessors with the freedom of trade, which compelled capital and labour to work unprofitably. The naturally slow progress of profitable industry is rendered more slow by the perpetual inclination of those in authority to divert industry from its natural and profitable channels. It was therefore wisely said by a committee of merchants to Colbert, the prime minister of France in the reign of Louis XIV., when he asked them what measures government could adopt to promote the interests of commerce,--”Let us alone, permit us quietly to manage our own business.” It is undeniable that the interests of all are best promoted when each is left free to attend to his own interests, under the necessary social restraints which prevent him doing a positive injury to his neighbour. It is thus that agriculture and manufactures are essentially allied in their interests; that unrestrained commerce is equally essential to the real and permanent interests of agriculture and manufactures; that capital and labour are equally united in their interests, whether applied to agriculture, manufactures, or commerce; that the producer and the consumer are equally united in their most essential interest, which is, that there should be cheap production. While these principles are not understood at all, and while they are imperfectly understood, as they still are by many cla.s.ses and individuals, there must be a vast deal of unprofitable expenditure of capital, a vast deal of unprofitable labour, a vast deal of bickering and heart-burning between individuals who ought to be united, and cla.s.ses who ought to be united, and nations who ought to be united; and as long as it is not felt by all that their mutual rights are understood and will be respected, there is a feeling of insecurity which more or less affects the prosperity of all. The only remedy for these evils is the extension of knowledge. Louis XV. proclaimed to the French that the English were their ”veritables ennemis,” their true enemies. When knowledge is triumphant it will be found that there are no ”veritables ennemis,” either among nations, or cla.s.ses, or individuals.

The prejudices by which nations, cla.s.ses, and individuals are led to believe that the interest of one is opposed to the interest of another, are, nine times out of ten, as utterly absurd as the reason which a Frenchman once gave for hating the English--which was, ”that they poured melted b.u.t.ter on their roast veal;” and this was not more ridiculous than the old denunciation of the English against the French, that ”they ate frogs, and wore wooden shoes.” When the world is disabused of the belief that the wealth of one nation, cla.s.s, or individual must be created by the loss of another's wealth, then, and then only, will all men steadily and harmoniously apply to produce and to enjoy--to acquire prosperity and happiness--lifting themselves to the possession of good

”By Reason's light, on Resolution's wings.”

[14] Grey's Notes to Hudibras.

CHAPTER X.

Employment of machinery in manufactures and agriculture--Erroneous notions formerly prevalent on this subject--Its advantages to the labourer--Spade-husbandry-- The _principle_ of machinery--Machines and tools--Change in the condition of England consequent on the introduction of machinery--Modern New Zealanders and ancient Greeks--Hand-mills and water-mills.

One of the most striking effects of the want of knowledge producing disunions amongst mankind that are injurious to the interests of each and all, is the belief which still exists amongst many well-meaning but unreflecting persons, that the powers and arrangements which Capital has created and devised for the advancement of production are injurious to the great body of working-men in their character of producers. The great forces by which capital and labour now work,--forces which are gathering strength every day,--are acc.u.mulation of skill and division of employments. It will be for us to show that the applications of science to the manufacturing arts have the effect of ensuring cheap production and increased employment. These applications of science are princ.i.p.ally displayed in the use of MACHINERY; and we shall endeavour to prove that, although individual labour may be partially displaced, or unsettled for a time, by the use of this cheaper and better power than una.s.sisted manual labour, all are great gainers by the general use of that power.

Through that power all princ.i.p.ally possess, however poor they may be, many of the comforts which make the difference between man in a civilized and man in a savage state; and further, that, in consequence of machinery having rendered productions of all sorts cheaper, and therefore caused them to be more universally purchased, it has really increased the demand for that manual labour, which it appears to some, reasoning only from a few instances, it has a tendency to diminish.

In the year 1827 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to examine into the subject of Emigration. The first person examined before that Committee was Joseph Foster, a working weaver of Glasgow. He told the Committee that he and many others, who had formed themselves into a society, were in great distress; that numbers of them worked at the _hand-loom_ from eighteen to nineteen hours a day, and that their earnings, at the utmost, did not amount to more than seven s.h.i.+llings a-week, and that sometimes they were as low as four s.h.i.+llings. That twenty years before that time they could readily earn a pound a-week by the same industry; and that as _power-loom_ weaving had increased, the distress of the hand-weavers also had increased in the same proportion.

The Committee then put to Joseph Foster the following questions, and received the following answers:--

”_Q._ Are the Committee to understand that you attribute the insufficiency of your remuneration for your labour to the introduction of machinery?

”_A._ Yes.

”_Q._ Do you consider, therefore, that the introduction of machinery is objectionable?

”_A._ We do not. The weavers in general, of Glasgow and its vicinity, do not consider that machinery can or ought to be stopped, or put down. They know perfectly well that machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it.

They are aware that every implement of agriculture or manufacture is a portion of machinery, and, indeed, everything that goes beyond the teeth and nails (if I may use the expression) is a machine. I am authorized, by the majority of our society, to say that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in stating this.”