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    940 The Saturday A ^ah jst ' and Leader....

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    Mr. Bright On Social Science. Mr . ¦ ¦B ...

    tion -will be among the employers ; wages will rise towards a maximum , and profits be proportionately diminished , sinking to . wards a minimum . Now , the cases thus put are simply illustrations of the universal practice , which the political economists did not originate , but have only described ; of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest . As a general rule human beings have always and everywhere done this ; ages upon ao-es before Quesjstay and Adam Smith were born , and as much in Turkey ( where political economy is unknown , the first treatise in that language having recently been written by the prizeman of an English college ) as in England itself , the country of political economy ,- pen : excellence . But when

    political economy tells its that wages and prices are regulated by the law of supply and demand , and that people buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market , it merely states the real principle of which it has caught a part : glimpse , in a very crude and imperfect manner . These axioms cited above are mere " rough generalizations . " The fact in view may be correctly generalized in the following proposition : society , in its present state of development , is a system of individual acquisition for individual emolument , each individual having to live by making as much out of others , in his dealings with them , as he can . Every person is compelled to this by the ir . exorable pressure of circumstances . AVe know how Mr . Rxjskin has been attacked for saving that

    the workman should have enough wages to subsist tip on ; whatever is the state of trade . *" We are far from denying that the common stock and all the resources of the community , produced and contributed to by every one of its members ^ should also bo available , as far as they will extend , for the best possible satisfaction of the wants and requirements of every one of its membars ; but that is utterly impossible in a system of individual acquisition for individual emolument , in which each is driven by the necessities of his position to live by making as much as he possibly can out of his dealings with others . Just imagi n e an employer paying

    Ms work -people , not such wages as their labour will fetch in the state of the labour market fdr the time being , supposing that insufficient to live upon , but a larger sum ; the inevitable consequence would be that he could not hold his ground aguinst his competitors in the same trade , whose profits would be as much greater than his as the wages they paid were less . We have supposed the case of only one single employer attempting this , and even that supposition is

    extremely improbable , not to say without a single precedent that we are aware of ; to suppose that all the employers in a particular trade would do such a thing would be wilder still ; bat if they did , then the whole trade would be ruined , that ' s all . And if all trades , if all who live by what they make by their business with others—and all do so live , directly or indirectly—then the whole country would be ruined . Imagine ' the landlord fixing his rent , not according to what his house would fetch in the " house-market , " but

    according to the tenant ' s means ; for if this prmoiple be introduced at all , it ought of course to be fairly and consistently carried out through the whole system . If we look deeply Juto the question , we see here one of those attempts to piit a new piece of cloth into a rotten garment , which only makes the rent worse than it was ; we see one of those strange anomalies with which all bad systems which cannot bo made to work with , logical consistency , are sought to be patched together , and bolstered up . No , in the present system , things generally and in the long run will be best if each be left perfectly free to drive the best bargain he can for

    himself , and make the most out of his dealings with others that he possibly can . But , it may bo objected , is one man . to take advantage of another who happens to bo weaker in a mental or a monetary sense , as in the early days of savagery , b efore the origin of society , men used their physical strength to rob and reduce each other to slavery ? Is one man to prey upon another ' s necessities , because the latter happens to be helpless and dependent upon him . Is one man , because ho happens to be rich , to say to another who happens to bo poor , como and work for me , give me your whole labour

    and its produce , and I will return you ns small a portion ns I possibly can , in thu shape of . wages ? Wo answer that that is vorily the logicul consequence of a system of individual acquisition for individual . emolument , in which each has to livo by making all ho can got out ; of his dealings with others ; nay , it is tho very ossonco of the system itself ; und what ; is more , if you attempt to altar it by any ill-judged tinkering , you will only nmko bad worse . If you « ro dissatisfied Avith this , alter the fundamenta l prinoiple of the system *—reform it altogether—but do not

    blow hot and cold with the same breath ; do not be guilty of the paradox involved in Tirging that in a system , the watchword of which is " everyone for himself , and the devil take the hindmost , " you can ever get people in general , and in . the long run , to take such good care of the interests of others as they will take of their own . True it may be , ' that the difference between each seeking primarily his own good on the one hand , and on the other , seeking primarily the good of others , is this—that the former is equivalent to each individual having the whole community for competitors in a combination against him ; while in the latter case the

    effect would be as if each individual had the whole community united together for promoting his interests ; true , this may be ; but in the present system there can , as a general rule , be no such thing as primarily seeking the good of others ; the very " conditions of existence " in such a system rigorously exclude it . Individuals there maybe ( like angels ' visits , which we believe to have somewhere heard do not often , take place , and then not many at a time ) who may primarily seek the good of others ; but even they could not pursue such a course in commercial transactions ; if they did , they would soon find it terminate in Basinghall or Portugal Street .

    We readily admit that enlightened self-love , taking a broad and extensive view in the present , and looking forward to what we call " the long run , " in the future , would prefer a system in which , by each primarily seeking- to promote the good of others , each would have the whole community banded together for his benefit ; enlightened self-love sees clearly enough that a system in which benevolence would be most gratified is precisely the one . in which even short-sighted , narrow selfishness would be most gratified ; because it is where each would be best off and most comfortable , that each would have the consciousness that others were happy and well off . But

    enlightened self-love has very little to do with the present mercantile system ; men have to Jive from hand to mouth , and from day to day ; the necessity of providing for their daily subsistence compels them , nolens volens , whether they like it or not , to loose a great remote good for a trifling present profit . No : a short-sighted selfishness , grasping at the shadow and losing the substance , is an absolute necessity of the present system—a part of its very essence . It may be perfectly true that the interests of all men are identified upon a general and permanent view ; but it is not so practically in particular localities at a given time . Granted that the invention of

    machinery has done immense good for mankind at largegranted that for the very class whose hand labour was supplanted by it , it has , in the long- run , done immense good , given employment to thousands in a subsequent generation where only dozens were employed in a former one ; granted all this ; but remember that you are speaking of the human race , and of classes which are " corporations , " at least in the attribute of " never dying , " and this confuses your ideas and sinks out of sight the ' workpeople thrown out of employ by the original introduction of machinery ; the workpeople whose daily wages were barely sufficient for the day ' s needs ; the

    workpeople whose enforced idleness for three days made them starving paupers . We have adduced thts case for the purpose of illustrating the difference there is between permanent and general good on the one hand , and immediate and private on the other ; and though in a better system the former might be maximized without the sacrifice of the latter , it is in the present system , and must be of necessity , tin ' and not that which is the primuin mobile of human conduct . Indeed , it would be superfluous to point out further how ndmirably the direct immediate personal interest of each being brought into the hardest and sharpest collision with that of others , through each having

    to live by making the most he can out of everybody he deals with , ia a ' dapted to intensify selfishness and a callous disregard for the welfare of others , and to obliterate everything like sympathy nnd benevolence from the human mind . Such , then , being the system and its logical workings , we really cannot see how men can be shown to be logically inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the system , in trying to enforce combination prices , und to make a scarcity in tho articles in which they deal . The grand principle of free trade is that men ba and

    left perfectly free to buy and sell how and at what prices in what markets they choose ; that production and distribution bo left entirely to take place as men pleaso to engage in either , without any ^ leg islative restrictions whutsocvor . Well , then , may not tin individual logically and consistently ask what price ho chooses for anything' he has to dispose ofP Mny not two individuals , may not any number of individuals , do it ; nnd Uu it either in concert or not ? May not a class agree upon whut prioo it will soil something it happens to possess and which

    940 The Saturday A ^Ah Jst ' And Leader....

    940 The Saturday A ^ ah jst ' and Leader . [ Nov . 17 , I 860

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 17, 1860, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_17111860/page/4/