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Untitled Article
and conceive , under certain arbitrary conditions , at length to mistake these conditions for laws of nature . Let us but be accustomed whenever we think to certain things , to figure them to ourselves as existing in one particular way , never in any other way , and we at last learn to think , or to feel as if we thought , that way
the natural and the only possible way : and we feel the same sort of incapability of adapting our associations to any change in the hypothesis , which a rustic feels in conceiving that it is the earth which moves and the sun which stands still . ( And this , we may observe , en passant , is one of the reasons why a literal understanding cannot be a good understanding , and w hy the greatest powers
of reasoning , when connected with a sluggish imagination , are no safeguard against the poorest intellectual slavery—that of subjection to mere accidental habits of thought . ) It is in this manner that in all countries the lawyer , from the habit of making the existing system his standard of comparison , and asking himself in each case as , it occurs no question but this , how the case is provided for by the law as it is , becomes usually a sworn foe to all reform ,
merely because he cannot , for the life of him , realize the conception of any other system , or fancy what it could be like . ^ Vnd we think there is some danger of a similar result in the case of the English political economists . They revolve in their eternal circle of landlords , capitalists , and labourers , until they , seem to think of the distinction of society into those three classes , as if it were one of God ' s ordinances , not man ' s , and as little under human control as
the division of day and night . Scarcely any one of them seems to have proposed to himself as a subject of inquiry , what changes the relations of those classes to one another are likely to undergo in the progress of society ; to what extent the distinction itself admits of being beneficially modified , and if it does not eveu , in a certain sense , tend gradually to disappear . >
We are unable at present to enter into the extensive field of speculation which these topics open to us . There is much acknowledged evil to be got rid of , before these ulterior inquiries come into immediate contact with practice : society has many incumbrances to throw off , before it can start fair on that new journey . We have to abolish all monopolies , and restrictions on trade
or production for the benefit of particular classes ; to pay off our debt by an impost on all kinds of property ; to new-model our whole fiscal system , with a view to raise no more revenue than is necessary , to raise it in the least costly manner , and to avoid favouring any class of contributors at the expense of another ;
and finally , we have to lessen the pressure on the labour-market , by systematic colonization adapted specially to that end , by ceasing to give , through the maladministration of the poor laws , artificial inducements to the increase of population , and on the contrary , giving all the force we can to the natural checks . The political economists of the last and present age have taught us all this ,
Untitled Article
$ 8 # Miss Martineau ' s Summary of
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 320, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/8/
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