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M. BASTIAT. been remarked that is
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the . first revision of constituencies in 1832 , and those which have since grown up , are so startling and so scandalous , that it is Tain to hope for any political rest until they shall have been rectified . . . ' ' ' ' . Take the case of Chelsea , for example . " Within the confines of the extensive parish of St . Luke , a great town has slowly but steadily risen up . Evei-y portion of the region , once orchard ; meadow , or marsh , is now covered with human habitations . Of these there are 8250 , forming one-and-ticekty miles of streets , and rated in the county assessment at £ 234 , 000 a-year . Here , then , is an amount of rateable property—all of it of a town , and none of it of a county , description—three or four times as large
as that of half the boroughs in the kingdom : yet these continue to send representatives to Parliament , while Chelsea is forbidden to send even one . For it is a mere mockery to say that , being included in the county of Middlesex , it has a reasonable share in the election of Messrs . Hanbuby and Byjjg . The present constituency of the county is upwards of fourteen thousand ; while the total number reg istered for 1860 in respect of property in Chelsea is but six hundred and sixty-four . IN or would the reduction of the county franchise , with or without the division of Middlesex , a s proposed last session , satisfy in any sense the
reasonable requirements of the people . They are not a rural , they are an urban community . There is no one essential of industrial life in common between the two . The broad distinction between town and county representations is as old and as marked as the constitution itself ; and , if ever there was a case for its . application , it is here . The citizens of Chelsea would naturally regard such a proposal as the offer of a mere makebelieve , in lieii of a substantial benefit ; and their discontent at the signal injustice of which they , would be the objects , woiild remain as bitter as before .
But if the claim of Chelsea be strong in point of property , it is still stronger on the score of population . ] S o fewer , than 70 , 000 persons dwell in the 8250 houses that constitute the large imrepresented town we have described . A more intelligent or industrious community does not exist . There are no great factories , indeed , with their loosely-collected bodies of dependent workmen ; but an infinite variety of employments occupy the physical energies of the many , and the intellectual attention of the few . There is , besides , a numerous class of individuals who live upon the incomes they have realised , for the most , part , by commercial pursuits elsewhere ; and who , possessing leisure and independence ,, are especially qualified
to exercise a right electoral power . Schools are numerous , ' , and well maintained . Benevolent institutions of all kinds abound ; and places of religious worship , erected , with one exception , by voluntary contributions , are many and well filled . Liable , to the faults and errors that beset us all , it can , at least , be said in their behalf that they are politically stainless , and electorally uncorrupt , " Are Harwich and Gloucestei" , Norwich and Wakefield , Ponfcefract and Dover to retain the privilege they have so shamelessly abused , and shall a new and unsullied community be left to mingle indistinctly in the crowd that throng tlie county hustings ? If there be no hardship' or injustice in thus confusing dissimilar callings , habits , and interests together , why not pass
a general law , that whenever a . borough constituency was found to be corrupt , its punishment should be to let its voters sink into the mass of county electors , who , it may be supposed , are too numerous to be bribed . This might be a clumsy sort of remedy , but , at all events , it would possess the merit of being impartial , if not critically just . The manner in winch Cholaca has hitherto been treated is precisely the reverse , for its inhabitants ore denied the separate representation which the most venal towns in tho kingdom retain j and this privation continues , to bo inflicted without tho shadow of imputation or suspicion . If tho forthcoming Reform Bill be good for anything , it will , assuredly put an end to an anomaly so migrant as this .
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1 'JL' has longago man placed under the empire of pleasure and pain , which woo him on from birth to death , and guide him from evil to good , from wrong to right . All consciousness is either ono or tho other , and mini would discard tho most profound knowlodgo as worse than worthless wore it always painful , and would hug 1 for ever to his bosom tho shallowest error , did it nevor give him a pang . In this system pain procodos fjlcasuro , and goads man on to secure enjoyment j appetite stimulates abour , and labour supplies abundance . Painful doubt or restloss curiosity urges inquiry , and ends in knowledge . Tho rule is general . "Want of some Icirid or other is the spur to all exertions . To losson distress , to reljoye poverty , to diminish disease are at present and for over tho objects of watehful philanthropy . The precedence of puin or want in the system , necessarily rivets attention first on it ; its pleasurable op useful consequences are only ascertained by assiduous and careful obsorvation . " Wo are slow to loarn that from
hun « -er and want , and doubt and suffering , spring all the wonders of industry by vyhich man has fertilised and adorned the earth ,. and all the knowledge he . has gained of the heavens . The persons who devote themselves to making such observations and ascertaining the consequences of tlie exertions of individuals to avoid pain , study social or political economy : they often incur reproach , because they have not yet discovered and classified all the consequences of the universal pursuit , and differ amongst themselves in describing them . From this circumstance , combined with the abstract nature of the subject , the progress of the public in this useful knowledge has not been great , and the pain or suffering that always impels exertion is ever better known , and ever more continually present to the mind of all , than the beautiful and wonderful social harmonies which result from the exertions it calls forth 1 To describe these , and trace the steps by , which they are brought about , is the object of the last work , " Harmonies Mconomi'iues ¦ , " of the late M . Fbedeeic Bastiat , the last and the greatest of tho political economists of France . * In our language a literal translation of the title would give rise to misunderstandings , and therefore we call these harmonies social rather thai ! economical , our term more truly expressing the great object of the work than the term employed by ¦ the-author . ¦ To describe the social harmonies ^ .. which-result' -from each individual exerting himself to get rid of pain , avoid suffering , and secure enjoyment , is the purport of M . Bastiat's . work . . Truly wonderful , when brought under our notice , do we find these results . Taking the first example M . Bastiat refers to , but adapting it to our day and country , let the reader carry back his views to the time when the late Lord Macauxay , the son of a mei--' . chant trading to Africa , was a student at Cambridge :. He obtained there subsistence ,. clothing , lodging , books , instruction , diversionsin short , a -multitude-of things , the production of which required the labour of a considerable number of persons in different places , and '¦ through- a considerable period . In return for the immense services of which he enjoyed the fruits he could render no services whatever . He was in training to render services hereafter . How . their , came it about that the many men whose labours produced -the things he enjoyed resigned them to him ? The explanation is familiar . His father had property—had many years before performed some similar labours for merchants or princes in Africa , and in return had- obtained , in the shape of hard cash or stock warrants ,, a right to require : * . at tiis convenience that the services of other men should be rendered to his son . Society ?—or those , labourers who supplied the wants of his son—paid him for labour performed long before . If we follow in . thought the course of the many tnuisactions which intervened between services rendered years before in Africa and yoimg Macatjlay nourished and taught at Cambridge , we shall see " that every person who took part in performing--, them , including , of course , tlie planter who grew tlie cotton and the spinner and weaver who manufactured it , of which the youth's shirts were made , liad been duly paid for his labour . A right to claim services accrued in Africa , passed in succession from hand , to hand , sometimes in wholesale masses , at others in retail fractions , till the consumption by the youth and the services of the father to society were -faivly ' balanced . Over such results penal and civil laws have obviously very little influence . They are specimens of similar results and similar harmonies to be found in every part of society ,. and these it is the business of political economists to ascertain and describe . Dr . WnATEJCiY has given an admirable description of the m miner in which London , with a fluctuating population , is . continually subsisted—the daily supplies of each article being so nicely adjusted to the wants of the people , that there never is any considerable waste , nor any risk of famine . AH this great work is done by producers , wholesale and retail dealers studying- only their own private interestdr iven , intact , by their own wants , and watching attentively the wants of others . The daily supply of the metropolis implies the . daily continued labour of Chinese , of nogroes in the West Indies , of slaves in tho United States , and of men in almost every part of the world , and engaged in almost evory known species of industry . The whole is the result , as i ) v . Whatei , y says , of the benevolent ! design of Providence , and ho doubts whether rational free agents thus made to co-opera to , by motives addressed to tho will , in a system indicating beneficent wisdom , bo not more admirable than tho arrangements of the material world formed by corporeal partiolosacted on by gravity and impulse . When wo remember , as MIJastiat would reniind us , that every ono of tho . industrious persons in evory part of tho world , w . ho ovory day-contribute to this great result , is duly paid for his services in spilo of restrictive ' tariffs and falsiliod coinage , and can in turn satisfy his own wants by labouring to satisfy thoso of others , distant in time and place , the phenomena cannot fail to excite wonder and reverence . Jn truth ,, they are so wonderful , that , woro they not made practically familiar to us by tlie impulse of want before we lire driven by curiosity to investigate them , we should bo lost in astonishment , and probably give ourselves up to worship and cease to- work . Wondor would absorb tho mind and extinguish the species . This is another specimen of tho many social harmonics winch M . Bastiat explores and explains . , Such results can only bo brought about by exquisite mechanism , which js , properly called •? t / to naluvctl organisation qf ' society . " lit this great machine tho main-spring- is individual want , cneh wheel or pinion being- capable of' learning-, comprehending , reasoning " ,. labouring , erring 1 , —discovering his error , and so rectifying and im «
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# g The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Jan . 14 , I 860 .
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* Harmonics JQoonoiniques , pnr M . I ^ iuti ) . Bastjat . Puria , Gulllamna ut Oo .
M. Bastiat. Been Remarked That Is
been remarked time is M . BASTIAT .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 14, 1860, page 38, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2329/page/10/
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