insecurity of property must have been so great that there could have been little accumulation, and therefore little production. Capital was destroyed on every side; and because profitable labour had become so scarce by the destruction of capital, one-half of the community sought to possess themselves of the few goods of the other half, not as exchangers but as robbers. As the robbers diminished the capital, the diminution of capital increased the number of robbers; and if the unconquerable energy of human industry had not gone on producing, slowly and painfully indeed, but still producing, the country would have soon fallen back to the state in which it was a thousand years before, when wolves abounded more than men. One great cause of all this plunder and misery was the oppression of the labourers.

QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER VI.

1. What is absolutely essential to the profitable employment of labour?

2. Give an instance of an unprofitable consumer.

3. Give an instance of a profitable economizer.

4. Give historical examples of these opposite courses.

5. Why is the destruction of property injurious to trade?

6. Give instances of unprofitable consumption in the feudal ages

7. What were the great obstacles to accumulation in the middle ages?

8. What caused the decay of towns?

9. How did the capitalists themselves impede accumulation?

10. Upon what principle were these restrictions founded?

11. What was the result of the oppression of labourers by capitalists? 12. What resulted from the destruction of capital by plunder?

13. What again resulted from the diminution of capital?

CHAPTER VII.

Rights of labour-Effects of slavery on production-Condition of the AngloSaxons-Progress of freedom in England--Laws regulating labour-Wages and prices-Poor-law-Law of settlement.

ADAM SMITH, in his great work, "The Wealth of Nations," says, "The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property." The right of property, in general, has been defined by another writer, M. Say, to be "the exclusive faculty guaranteed to a man, or body of men, to dispose, at their own pleasure, of that which belongs to them." There can be no doubt that labour is entitled to the same protection as a property that capital is entitled to. There can be no doubt that the labourer has rights over his labour which no government and no individual should presume to interfere with. There can be no doubt that, as an exchanger of labour for capital, the labourer ought to be assured that the exchange shall in all respects be as free as the exchanges of any other description of property. His rights as an exchanger are, that he shall not be compelled to part with his property, by any arbitrary enactments, without having as ample an equivalent as the general laws of exchange will afford him; that he shall be free to use every just means, either by himself or by union with others, to obtain such an equivalent; that he shall be at full liberty to offer that property in the best market that he can find, without being

limited to any particular market; that he may give to that property every modification which it is capable of receiving from his own natural or acquired skill, without being narrowed to any one form of producing it. In other words, natural justice demands that the working-man shall work when he please, and be idle when he please, always providing that, if he make a contract to work, he shall not violate that engagement by remaining idle; that no labour shall be forced from him, and no rate of payment for that labour prescribed by statutes or ordinances; that he shall be free to obtain as high wages as he can possibly get, and unite with others to obtain them, always providing that in his union he does not violate that freedom of industry in others which is the foundation of his own attempts to improve his condition; that he may go from place to place to exchange his labour without being interfered with by corporate rights or monopolies of any sort, whether of masters or workmen; and that he may turn from one employment to the other, if he so think fit, without being confined to the trade he originally learnt, or may strike into any line of employment without having regularly learnt it at all. When the working-man has these rights secured to him by the sanction of the laws, and the concurrence of the institutions and customs of the country in which he lives, he is in the condition of a free exchanger. He has the full, uninterrupted, absolute possession of his property. He is upon a perfect legal equality with the capitalist. He may labour cheerfully with the well-founded assurance that his labour will be profitably exchanged for the goods which he desires for the satisfaction of his wants, as far as laws and institutions can so provide. In a word, he may assure himself that, if he possesses anything valuable to offer in exchange for capital, the capital will not be fenced round with any artificial barriers, or invested with any unnatural preponderance, to prevent the exchange being one of perfect equality, and therefore a real benefit to both exchangers.

We are approaching this desirable state in England.

Indeed, there is scarcely any legal restriction acted upon which prevents the exchange of labour with capital being completely unembarrassed. Yet it is only within a few centuries that the working-men of this country have emerged from the condition of actual slaves into that of free labourers; it is only a few hundred years ago since the cultivator of the ground, the domestic servant, and sometimes even the artisan, was the absolute property of another man-bought, sold, let, without any will of his own, like an ox or a horse-producing nothing for himself -and transmitting the miseries of his lot to his children. The progress of civilization destroyed this monstrous system, in the same way that at the present day it is destroying it in Russia and other countries where slavery still exists. But it was by a very slow process that the English slave went forward to the complete enjoyment of the legal rights of a free exchanger. The transition exhibits very many years of gross injustice, of bitter suffering, of absurd and ineffectual violations of the natural rights of man; and of struggles between the capitalist and the labourer, for exclusive advantages, perpetuated by ignorant lawgivers, who could not see that the interest of all classes of producers is one and the same. We may not improperly devote a little space to the description of this dark and evil period. We shall see that while such a struggle goes forward—that is, while security of property and freedom of industry are not held as the interchangeable rights of the capitalist and the labourer-there can be little production and less accumulation. Wherever positive slavery exists-wherever the labourers are utterly deprived of their property in their labour, and are compelled to dispose of it without retaining any part of the character of voluntary exchangers-there are found idleness, ignorance, and unskilfulness; industry is enfeebled-the oppressor and the oppressed are both poor -there is no national accumulation. The existence of slavery amongst the nations of antiquity was a great impediment to their progress in the arts of life. The community,

in such nations, was divided into a caste of nobles called citizens, and a caste of labourers called slaves. The Romans were rich, in the common sense of the word, because they plundered other nations; but they could not produce largely when the individual spirit to industry was wanting. The industry of the freemen was rapine: the slaves were the producers. No man will work willingly when he is to be utterly deprived of the power of disposing at his own will of the fruits of his labour; no man will work skilfully when the same scanty pittance is doled out to each and all, whatever be the difference in their talents and knowledge. Wherever the freedom of industry is thus violated, property cannot be secure. If Rome had encouraged free labourers, instead of breeding menial slaves, it could not have happened that the thieves, who were constantly hovering round the suburbs of the city, like vultures looking out for carrion, should have been so numerous that, during the insurrection of Catiline, they formed a large accession to his army. But Rome had to encounter a worse evil than that of the swarms of highwaymen who were ready to plunder whatever had. been produced. Production itself was so feeble when carried on by the labour of slaves, that Columella, a writer on rural affairs, says the crops continued so gradually to fall off that there was a general opinion that the earth was growing old and losing its power of productiveness. Wherever slavery exists at the present day, there we find feeble production and national weakness. Poland, the most prolific corn-country in Europe, is unquestionably the poorest country. Poland has been partitioned, over and over again, by governments that knew her weakness; and she has been said to have fallen "without a crime." That is not correct. Her "crime" was, and is, the slavery of her labourers. There is no powerful class between the noble and the serf or slave; and whilst this state of things endures, Poland can never be independent, because she can never be industrious, and therefore never wealthy.

England, as we have said, once groaned under the evils