porting them from one country, district, or place, to another, as circumstances may require; and in various modes of preparing them for man's use. Those employed in these latter operations are as useful and necessary to the happiness of the community as those actually employed in productive labour, inasmuch as these exchanges and transportations constitute the means of supplying to each individual almost innumerable articles of use, comfort, and convenience, which otherwise could not be obtained. There is, however, a class of men, which we must by no means confound with these official labourers, I mean such as effect exchanges by proxy, without working at all themselves; and who accumulate the wealth which other people's labour has created, through the medium of profit. These will be noticed in their proper place. It is probable that productive labourers (taking the vast number of mechanical and manufacturing, as well as agricultural, occupations into consideration) are far more numerous in this country than official labourers. Be this as it may, these together constitute the WORKING CLASS, and as such, come equally under the notice of this address; there is no wealth in the nation but is either created or acquired by exchange, solely and exclusively through the labours of this class. They furnish every individual in the nation with all the real wealth, whether it be food, clothing, furniture, habitation, or any other article of convenience or luxury which it is possible for him to enjoy.— Anon. SECTION III. UNPRODUCTIVE LABOUR. LUXURY and extravagance, we are told, "makes good for trade;" and under the present system it does so. But, can any rational being suppose that society is founded on right principles, when we find its effects are to render luxury and extravagance advantageous? Have we really brought our minds to suppose, that the more we squander, the more we shall have? Are we for ever to be told, that the man who is spending thousands in the gratification of some absurd whim, is doing good, because he circulates ་ money amongst tradesmen, and because he furnishes employment for a number of working men? Every labouring man, so employed, is a useless member of society, for the produce of his labour is useless; and the effect is, a direct tax on the productive labourer usefully employed. This state of things will have an end; the system is as weak as it is absurd and destructive.....There is nothing like instances. The manufacture of lace is now brought to great perfection in this country. In some instances, a single dress is worth 100%. or more. That is, it may really have cost so much of the time and labour of an industrious man, that it would not pay his employer a reasonable profit to sell it for a less sum. Now, are we to consider the maker of such dresses a useful member of society, because by his labour a family is provided with the necessaries of life, during the time he is so employed? Most certainly not. The lace dress is the produce of his labour, and it is useless. It can neither be eaten nor drunk; and it forms no part of useful wearing apparel. It is made only to please the fancy, and to be looked at. It will not compare, in point of real utility, with a penny loaf, or a glass of cold water. The provisions that the maker of it has been consuming, the clothes that he has been wearing, and the house that he has been occupying, are the produce of other men's labour, not of his; and this useless, senseless plaything is the artifice by which he is enabled to supply himself with those necessaries which he requires, from the labour of others; who receive in exchange for themwhat? A lace dress? A carriage? An elegant mansion? No, none of these. A small sum of money, sufficient only to enable them to re-purchase about one-fifth part of the produce of their own labour, or of the equivalent labour of others! What, we would ask, does the purchaser of such a dress give for it? He gives one hundred pounds, taken, perhaps, by the rent of land, out of the produce of the industry of the agricultural labourer. He gives of that which is strictly his own, nothing! No! not the value of a straw. And what does the labourer give for his scanty pittance? He gives the remaining fifth of the produce of his industry, of which he has not been defrauded-and why? Not bercause any protection is afforded to it by the existing arangements of society; but, because without it he could not even exist, to be the slave of others. The rich man, who, in fact, pays nothing, receives every thing; while the poor man, who, in point of fact, pays every thing, receives nothing!—Gray. CHAPTER II. CAPITAL. CAPITAL is wealth employed in the production of other wealth. Political economists divide capital into two kinds. 1. Fixed capital: 2. Circulating capital; or what, without encroaching on their capital, they can place in their stock reserved for immediate consumption. Fixed capital consists of the tools and instruments the labourer works with, the machinery he makes and guides, and the buildings he uses either to facilitate his exertions, or to protect their produce. The intention of this description of capital is to increase the productive powers of labour. Circulating capital consists of money, provisions, materials, and finished work; and its intention and use is to aid the labourer in producing those things upon which he is employed. Throughout the world, there exists a serious contest between capital and labour. The claims of capital are sanctioned by almost universal custom; and as long as the labourer did not feel himself aggrieved by them, it was of no use opposing them with arguments. But now, when the practice excites resistance, we are bound, if possible, to overthrow the theory on which it is founded and justified. It is accordingly against this theory that my argu ments will be directed. Wages vary inversely as profits; or wages rise when profits fall, and profits rise when wages fall; and it is therefore profits, or the capitalist's share of the national produce, which is opposed to wages, or the share of the labourer. The theory on which profits are claimed, and which holds up capital and accumulation of capital to our admiration as the main spring of human improvement, is that which the labourers must, in their own interest, examine, and must, before they can have any hope of a permanent improvement in their own condition be able to refute. They must be able to show the hollowness of the theory on which the claims of capital, and on which all the oppressive laws made for its protection are founded. "The produce of the earth," says Mr. Ricardo,-" all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community; namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers' by whose industry it is cultivated."* "It is self-evident," says Mr. M'Culloch, "that only three classes, the labourers, the possessors of capital, and the proprietors of land, are ever directly concerned in the production of commodities. It is to them, therefore, that all which is derived from the surface of the earth, or from its bowels, by the united application of immediate labour, and of capital, or accumulated labour, must primarily belong. The other classes of society have no revenue except what they derive either voluntarily or by compulsion from these three classes." The proportions in which the whole produce is divided among these three classes is said to be as follows:-" Land is of different degrees of fertility." "When in the progress of society, land of the second quality (or an inferior degree of fertility to land before cultivated) is taken into cultivation, rent immediately commences on that of the first quality, and the amount of that rent will depend on the difference in the quality of these two portions of land.”† Rent, therefore, or that quantity of the whole produce of the country which goes to the landlords, is, in every stage of society, that portion of this produce which is obtained from every district belonging to a politically organized nation, more than is obtained from the least fertile land cultivated by or belonging to that nation. It is the greater produce of all the land which is more fertile than the least fertile land cultivated. To produce this surplus would not break the back, and to give it up would not break the heart * Principle of Pol. Econ. 2d edit. preface, p. 1. + Principles of Pol. Econ.-This theory of rent has been exploded by the author of the Catechism on the Corn Laws; but the error is not material to the arguments that follow. of the labourer. The landlord's share, therefore, does not keep the labourer poor. The labourer's share of the produce of a country, according to this theory, is the "necessaries and conveniences required for the support of the labourer and his family; or that quantity which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution." Whatever may be the truth of the theory in other respects, there is no doubt of its correctness in this particular. The labourers do only receive, and ever have only received, as much as will subsist them; the landlords receive the surplus produce of the more fertile soils, and all the rest of the whole produce of labour in this and in every country, goes to the capitalist, under the name of profit for the use of his capital. Capital which thus engrosses the whole produce of a country, except the bare subsistence of the labourer, and the surplus produce of fertile land, is, "the produce of labour," "is commodities," " is the food the labourer eats, and the machines he uses;" so that we are obliged to give that enormous portion of the whole produce of the country which remains, after we have been supplied with subsistence, and the rent of the landlord has been paid for the privilege of eating the food we have ourselves produced, and of using our own skill in producing more. Capital, the reader will suppose, must have some wonderful properties, when the labourer pays so exorbitantly for it. In fact, its claims are founded on its wonderful properties, and to them, therefore, I mean especially to direct his attention. Several writers have endeavoured to point out the method in which capital aids production. Mr. M'Culloch says, "The accumulation and employment of both fixed and circulating capital is indispensably necessary to elevate any nation in the scale of civilization. And it is only by their conjoined and powerful operation that wealth can be largely produced and universally diffused."* "The quantity of industry," he further says, "therefore, not only increases in every country with the increase of the stock or capital which sets it in motion; but, in con * Article Political Economy in Supplement to Ency. Britan. |