ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have been devoted almost exclusively to a consideration of the wrongs endured by the productive classes of the United Kingdom, and the cause of those wrongs; but no particular remedy has yet been examined, nor has any plan been pointed out, beyond the general recommendation to establish First Principles. We have considered these principles, and they have taught us, that the rights of all men are equal—that all men ought to labour—that the earth is the common property of all its inhabitants. We have looked, likewise, at the institution of human society; the true intention of which is, to neutralise that trifling inequality of bodily and mental powers in men which nature has created, and to equalise the benefits which a wise and judicious application of the varied powers of men may call into existence. We have also regarded the three conditions laid down by the political economists—“that there shall be labour—that there shall be accumulations—that there shall be exchanges.” These conditions are themselves based on the acknowledgment of human equality; and they merely shew the manner in which first principles are to be acted upon, and equality of rights maintained, in a state of society. A consideration of the subject has taught us, however, that all the wrongs and evils which man has suffered since his creation, are to be attributed solely to the infraction of these conditions by individuals and classes. We have learnt, that unless there be labour, there can be no capital or accumulations—unless there be accumulations, there cannot be exchanges; and from this dependency it follows, that he who has not laboured, and who will not labour, cannot be an exchanger, for he can have nothing to exchange, there being nothing exchangeable but labour, or the produce of labour. To make this principle of exchange subservient to the intention of society and the happiness of man, exchanges must always be equal, or the gain of one man will ever be the loss of another. A consideration of the subject of exchanges has shewn us, that inequality of exchanges, and not inequality of political power, generates inequality of condition, and the gradation of classes, and divides society into rich and poor; and that, so long as there are unequal exchanges amongst men, there must be idlers and labourers—there must be rich and poor —as the poverty of the last is a necessary consequence of the wealth of the first. We have seen, likewise, that inequality of condition, and the division of society into capitalists and producers—into employers and employed—leaves the last class entirely at the mercy of the first;—that such dependence necessarily dooms the working class, no matter what may be their intelligence or their morality, to a state of hopeless slavery to other classes, and keeps them in perpetual poverty or the fear of poverty;—and that, therefore, inequality of condition is, from its nature, subversive of all equality of rights and laws, whatever may be the form of government instituted, and whatever may be the mere political power possessed by the people. The truth of this conclusion was made manifest to us by a consideration of the condition of the working classes in ancient and modern times, and under republican as well as monarchical governments; for we find that every wrong which is suffered by the working class of the United Kingdom at the present day is likewise suffered in degree by their brethren in republican America, and has been endured by the whole of their order since the very commencement of history. It has been seen, too, as well as it has long been felt, that the wrongs of the working class of the United Kingdom are not imaginary, as their enemies would have them to believe; but that they are as substantial as the annual sum of nearly three hundred millions of pounds sterling can make them,—and this, too, apart from, and independent of, the wrongs originating from the particular form of their government.
