ABSTRACT
Sir – I have lately read your pamphlet on the Land, the only remedy for national poverty and impending ruin, 2 addressed to the landlords of Ireland, I assume to myself the task of considering the effects of the small-farm system therein proposed on the condition of the working classes, and of contrasting it with the system of association as discovered by Charles Fourier. 3 I perceive that an unjust and tyrannical system of society has compelled you to address your pamphlet from a felon's prison. The same iniquitous system compels me to address you from what is little better than a prison, in which I have now been confined 21 years, and am obliged to labour 15 or 16 hours a-day in its damp and health-destroying atmosphere and cannot earn as much as will supply myself and family with the commonest necessaries of life; and yet mine is not a solitary instance, but the lot of the great majority of the working classes, and the hope of improvement is banished from the minds of many. The impression on my mind is, that so long as this system lasts, that the prospect of the future is still more dismal than the present. Under these circumstances I am naturally anxious to discover a remedy for the national ruin which appears to be fast approaching. Since the French Revolution of 1830, and the passing of the Reform Bill here, I have been led to consider the effects of political revolutions and reforms on the condition or the toiling order to which I belong; I find that in all the political reforms that have taken place none of them have been the means of permanently elevating the condition of the great mass of the labouring population; the reorganization of labour is not even contemplated by any of the political agitators; so that whatever changes may take place in the administrative department, none 178whatever is effected in the industrial system; consequently the labourers are left to toil and drudge from day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, without being able to obtain an equitable share of the wealth which they produce for all. I have, therefore, after a due examination of the effects of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy on the condition of the toiling many, come to the conclusion, that no political reform can improve our condition without a reorganization of our system of industry, by which labour, capital and talent will be rewarded in an equitable manner. Before endeavouring to show the inefficacy of your small-farm system, let me briefly insist on the necessity of a reform in our system of labour. The mass who compose the vast majority of society are engaged in labour; their days are spent in it, and upon its mode of exercise depends necessarily their happiness and welfare. How can the labouring classes enjoy real liberty, that liberty which the nature of man demands, when they have to toil and drudge six days out of the seven in filthy workshops and manufactories, or in lonesome fields, and then have to beg degradingly of a master or employer their pay. Would they be compensated for this state of industrial slavery by the possession of a few political rights? Not at all: these delusive compensations would be a mockery of all justice; and you, Sir, appear to be aware of this when you say in page 12 of your pamphlet, that no human being has a more thorough contempt for a mere politician than you have, whether he be Whig, Tory, Radical or Chartist, except he has some great social object in view. This great social object must be a reorganization of labour where industry will meet with an equitable reward in place of the scanty pay which the labouring mass now receive for their monotonous drudgery, which will scarcely afford them the common necessaries of life, much less its refinements. They cannot cultivate their minds to any extent; and art, and science, and all the higher intellectual pleasures which come from mental cultivation, and which give to life one-half of its charms, are necessarily shut out from them. Their destiny in our false society is to toil to be ignorant and to suffer, not to know and to enjoy.
