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Untitled Article
3 erf is sanctified , as well as that of the lord himself . This situation , incomparably superior to that of the slave , is still only provisional ; more advanced , the serf is detached from the glebe ; he obtains what may be called the ri ght of locomotion ; he may then choose his master . Doubtless after this , which may , strictly speaking , be called his emancipation , the serf remains in some respects marked with the impress of servitude ; he is still subject to personal services , to labours of vassalage ; he pays feudal dues ; but these exactions diminish daily
" At last , the whole of the laborious class as to bodily service , makes a decided progress ; it acquires a political capacity by the establishment of municipal bodies . ' * If , as we have seen , the situation of the poorest and most numerous class has been gradually ameliorated , there is still much to accomplish ; for the use of man , for and by man , has not ceased ; it continues to a great extent
between proprietors and labourers , between masters and those who work for hire . The relative condition of these two classes in the present day , is , without doubt , very different from that between master and slave , the serf and his lord—so different , that at the first glance there seems no connexion between them ; nevertheless , we must admit that they are but the prolongation of each other . The relation of the master with the hired labourer is the last change
which slavery has undergone ; it is enougli to take a glance at what passes around us , to be convinced that the workman is , excepting in degree , made use of materially , intellectually , and morally , as the slave was formerly . It is evident , in fact , that he can hardly provide by his labour for his own immediate wants , and that to work or not is not free to him . He aggravates the difficulties of his position , if he is imprudeut enough to believe himself
destined to participate in that which makes the happiness of the rich—if he takes a companion , and has a family around him . Can the workman , pressed down by the want to which he is reduced , find time for the expansion of his intellectual faculties , his moral affections ? Can he even entertain the desire for it ? Or , if he has an instinctive wish for improvement , who will furnish him the means ? Who will place science within his reach ? Who will receive the overflowings of his heart ? No one thinks of him ; physical suffering leads him to brutalization , brutalization to depravity , the source of new
misery ; a vicious circle in which every point inspires disgust and horror , when it ought only to call forth pity . Such is the situation of the greater number of labourers , those who compose in every society the immense majority of the population . And yet this fact , so revolting to every just feeling , is to the present day unnoticed by our political speculators . 1 he moral dogma that no man ought to be incapacitated by his birth , has long been admitted by enlightened minds ; political constitutions in these latter times have expressly
sanctioned it . It seems , then , that the making use of man by man—result of the classifications we have just pointed out—would lead us to think that these classes are necessarily varying , and that continued change takes place in the families and individuals composing them ; but , in fact , there is no such change : the advantages and disadvantages of each social position are transmitted by inheritance , and political economists have taken care to verify the fact of the hereditary transmission of misery . " The existing constitution of the rights of property , based as they are on conquest , is the * i considered and contrasted with natural rights , which claim for all the free exercise of their powers , without distinction of birth , and their classification according to their aptitudes anil tastes , and the conclusion ia , that the present system of property and mode of transmitting it , ought to be changed That important changes have been made in these rights of property is then bhewn in the instances , of transitions by legal enactments from slavery to villainage , and thence to feudal service , by the restrictions on eutuil » and other changes in the laws of inheritance . It is suggested that , as a sequel to
Untitled Article
The Saint Simonitee . 185
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 185, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/41/
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