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Jan. 25, 1851.] .. &f)£ ILiaDrtt* - - S3
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Social Reform. Epistolie Obsctjrorum Vie...
till the appropriate seed has ripened into the appointed harvest . " " Patient because eternal . " All this is excellently said . Let us pursue the enquiry on those conditions ; I invite you to do it . But if you do so you will find that your claim on behalf of the «* thinkers , " or the ceconomists of the old school , as contradistinguished from the " feelers" or the Communists , is very inaccurate . Contrasting the " feelers" with the " thinkers , " you say : —
" Far different is the course of the latter class : their life is spent in a laborious research into remote and hidden causes ; in a patient and painful analysis of the operation of principles from the misapplication or forgetfulness of which our social disorders ha-ve sprung ; in sowing seeds and elucidating laws that are to destroy the evil at a distant date which they themselves may never gee , — while sometimes its pressure may be aggravated during the period which they do see
11 Little do the mere impulsive philanthropists know , and ill can they appreciate , the strenuous effort , the stern and systematic self-control by which the votary of ( Economic science , the benevolent man of principle , keeps his head cool and clear in the midst of the miseries he is calle d upon to contemplate ; and the resolute nerve which is needed to throw cold water on the mischievous schemes of sanguine and compassionate contrivers . While these men rush fiercely on social evils , fancying it possible to sweep them away by a coup de main , and always insist upon scrambling out of the bog on the wrong side eimply because it is the nearest . "
Now I for one , assure you that I never " rushed fiercely on a social evil "; nor " insisted upon scrambling out of the bog on the wrong side . " You do not seem to be aware of the fact that many Communists at the present day have been students of Political ( Economy ; that there are some of us , indeed , who trace our theoretical pedigree , not less than yourself , up to Adam Smith . To use your own words , you should have taken " due pains in the first instance to assure yourself of the unexaggerated correctness of these facts . " And you might usefully urge that injunction upon many of
your brother ceconomists ; for you are mistaken if you think that they uniformly follow that rule . Head , for example , what Mr . Porter says in his Progress of the Nation , of pigeon-breeding and idleness as fertile causes of the poverty in Spitalfields ! I will not , however , make you answerable for the rashness and imperfect logic of all standard ceconomists ; and you will yourself outgrow the habit of doing so in regard to Communists when you have become a little more familiar with the substance , the thiny which they are endeavouring to make out , and are less dazzled or diverted from
your purpose by the mere trivialities or laxities in what they say . As to " due pains" of every kind , we may all of us improve ; and you and I , who are aware of these necessities , ought especially to beware of rashness in judgment . We are , however , making decided progress . You and I—to borrow your own words—agree " that the world can never have been intended to be , and will not long remain , what it is . " You admit the
associative principle so far as it is applied to working associations , and so long as " these schemes are not announced as great discoveries and mighty engines ior the rescue and redemption of society "; and you allow more generally that " the doctrines of Communism or Socialism have acquired an importance , and spread to an extent which entitle them to serious and dispassionate consideration . " What I should most desire students so earnest and candid
as yourself to do would be , not to discuss the "right" or " wrong . " as a matter of controversy between you and me—what does it matter which of ub shall be "in the right" ?—but to concentrate your attention upon the great social question—What is the necessity which impels men to these Communistic impulses , what is tho nature of the sense which suggests Communism as a remedy for social evils ? The confirmation or refutation of
Commust equally lie in the answer to those two questions . That there in some distinct motive , apart from " want , " which has not suggested tho doctrine in Ireland , or from mere tyranny , which has not . made Communists of the artizans in Egypt , in apparent from such facts . The want , whatever 11 ih , thus felt by large ; and encreasing numbers , not ( ' uly among tho bookmen of London , Turin , and New York , but among the peoples of England , I'ranee , Cermuny , and the United States , munt indicate this out ? remedy . You say that that remedy is wrongly adumbrated by Socialism ; but you might very usefully employ your labour *) in extracting from the aiasu of obscurity uad error the tun ; thing underneath , the substans of that erroneous doctrine . . You who so heartily admit the evils : ind tho inevitable change , cannot Herioiialy tako tho
remedies which you indicate here and there as sufficient . You propose that some " lady or gentleman , " instead of le rushing wildly to join or found a society for sending distressed needlewomen out of the country , should take in hand the individual case , " and put these poor girls in the way of regular employment . You advise that " each lady who subscribes a hundred pounds to Governess ' s Benevolent Institutions " should " keep her eye fixed upon two or three individual governesses " instead . You also appear to have in view " a remodelling of human nature by Divine or Christian influences ;
and , " you add in italic type , " when this remodelling has been achieved , all systems will become indifferent , for the evils of all systems will be wiped away . " It appears to me , from the context , that you indicate some millennial state of things , worked out through Political ( Economy of the old School and Christianity : now , are the two compatible ? You will not accuse me of resorting to cant when I say that the whole spirit of the hard self-reliance dogma of Political ( Economy , and the whole spirit
of the religion preached by Jesus , whose teachers and whose disciples were actually Communists in practice , are so incompatible , that no one man can , in sane reason , adhere to both—you must give up Christianity or that imperfect Political ( Economy . If Political ( Economy is true , Jesus preached what is not sense . I grant that the practice of English statesmen is more guided by the doctrine of Scotch philosophy than that of Jesus ; but how do you , who stand upon logic , stick to both ?
I observe , however , that you place Political ( Economy in a curious position . You emphatically deny that it " has hitherto had it all its own way , " you have a page to show that in practical life , and , in fact , Political ( Economy , has not ruled "this anomalous and enigmatic world . * ' "It is difficult , " , you say , "to name a single precept of that science which has not been lost eight of or habitually contravened . " You , therefore , place Political ( Economy on an equality with Communism , a 3 a theory in books which has never yet been carried
out in the practice of life ; a theory , in fact , which is competing on equal terms with the opposite theory . You assert , indeed , that the truth of " those principles of purely ceconomic science is confirmed alike by every instance of conformity , and every instance of disobedience" ; but , unless you were to explain clearly and fully some anomalies that we Communists observe in practical life , you cannot expect this assertion to be taken for granted . Can you tell by what specific breach of ceconomical laws Paisley sank again to poverty , after recovering from its depression on the demand for Paisley shawls ? You may say that Paisley , in
the first instance , had been " over-peopled "; but , if we are to trust to the laws of supply and demand , the demand for Paisley shawls justified the amount of population in Paisley ; and we do not know by what fault of the Paisley people they lost their commerce , since they could not see that capricious Fashion , the instigator of " demand , " would suddenly transfer its passion from sober grey to the more lively Yorkshire shawl . Did it never occur to you that there is some striking significance in this fact , which you so candidly mention — the " systematic violation of the principles of Political ( Economy " ? Possibly it might be that the' theoretical laws of that science are not workable .
Any laws advocated with so much ability and so much consentaneousness in the influential class of public writers as Political ( Economy has been , could scarcely have been so systematically neglected and violated unless there had been some essential impracticability ; and what I contend ih , that the imperfect Political ( Economy of your school is essentially impracticable and imperfect . It calls upon us to abrogate the most powerful natural instincts , and it teaches ua to convert commerce into a struggle between nation und nation , between man and man , instead of cultivating ft common understanding , a concert in labour . Jt is counter to
nature , and rude in its advice . You are very much mistaken , however , in supposing that CoininuuiHin in something opposed or adverse to real Political ( Economy ; and the Huppouition in < mo of the strong preHumptioiiH which pervade your excellently intended paper . If you view it in a leas prejudiced point of view , you will perceive that , right or wrong , Coininunnuu is a chapter added to the old book of . Political ( Economy . When we hud advanced no further than the writers who have followed Adam Smith , Free Trade was properly th « ultimate conclusion of the science ; and it is perfectly true that trade ou < fhl to be ircc . But . il is an c . xeeediu / jfly crude notion of ^ economy that Ira do can be tin :
general regulator of practical life , of the intercourse between individuals and nations , and even of industry . Trade relates solely to exchanges , and although the laws of trade must harmonize with those of production and supply , they must be in point of fact subordinate to the vital conditions and to the industrial faculties of mankind . We can have industry and provision for human wants without trade . Such things have been in the world ; and although commerce is a facility , it is as little a final law as it is a final end . Even partial truth , however , will accord with whole truth ;
and Communism does not gainsay that trade should be free , as trade . Communism , in fact , would carry freedom a great deal further : it would contend that there has been too much lawmaking in society , and that we may revert with advantage to simpler and more primitive master laws . It would argue that not only should trade be free but also the two great sources of trade , land and labour ; not only trade which is the active process of distribution , but also that other passive half of distribution , property . Habituated to carry it out , in theory , *' all their own way "—for the Protection theory
was an adversary not worth counting—the ( Economists of the old school have so far fallen asleep over their materials as to forget that much of what they see around them is not natural but artificialthat the exclusion of the People from the land , for example , is not a natural , but an artificial result of laws ; that the labourer is labouring under laws that . force him to work yet fetter him in his mode of working ; and that even the laws that erect property into an institution are artificial . A sense that Political ( Economy has hitherto been imperfect has been marked in some of its most distinguished ¦
professors , especially among the younger > and the tendency of all these most cultivated enquirers is to make additions to the old book of Political ( Economy drawn from the suggestions of Communism . William Thornton clean departs from the simple reliance on trade , and demands oeconomical arrangements specially devised for the benefit of the living men and women in a land . He says , indeed , that the cultivation of small farms is good ceconomy ; but it is a great departure from the old ideas of mere free trade . John Stuart Mill has made still more striking innovations upon the old doctrine : it was a great innovation to recognize " custom" as one of the chief instigators of
industry , besides the spur of necessity or want ; and Mill positively advocates association . Edward Gibbon Wakefield , who has surveyed the doctrines of oeconoiny and the Held of active , life in the comprehensive glance of a statesman , has declared , in writing , that the day will come lor Chartism and Socialism ; and he has been heard to remark , with his characteristic sagacity , that the Communists were wrong in arguing their doctrine on the basis of systems , for that they ought to turn their energies upon the discussion of the fundamental principle from which Communism takes its rise . This is precisely what the Communists of our day are beginning to do , and the Edinburgh Review is very usefully following and aiding them in the
discuson . You quote a passage from what I say on tl > c principle of concert in the division of employments , and you accuse me of " mixing up things totally distinct , as the produce of labour with the distribution of that produce " : this is an interesting example of the the habit of thinking , according to a certain fashion , that makes ko acute a writer as yourself unable to look at simple realities , until they are translated for you into tho jargon of your school , or into scientific diagrams totally stripped of original living nature—poor nature , by which Fuseli and Political ( Economists have been ho
" put out ! " My fundamental position is this : — The nrnt thing for us to consider is the well being , in body and feeling , of the living creatures who arc born to th « earth ; and we must , consider tlnit substantial well-being in body and heart befoic " the advancement of the nation , " wbicb generally means the-luxury and dignity of particular classes ; or "the advancement of commerce , " which means tho multiplication of goods , many of them not at
all necessary . An Englishman ou lua piece of laud 1 m able to provide for himself , mate , and progeny , un we see in other quarters ot the globe : when his industry produces itu fiuitn , ho huu a right to retain Uiomh fruits until the equivalent bo rendered to him ; and while artificial \ uwn debar an lilnglitthmaii from Htuuding on hi « land , lining hin hands upon it , and grasping the fruity in his owu I ' v . A , Society is bound to provide him with the equivalent , —the o ;>|> urt , unil . y of obtaining subsistence
Jan. 25, 1851.] .. &F)£ Iliadrtt* - - S3
Jan . 25 , 1851 . ] .. & f ) £ ILiaDrtt * - - S 3
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 25, 1851, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25011851/page/11/
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