On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    kingslby ' s lecture . The Application of Associative Principles and Mellwds oj Aerict Uwe A Lecture , delivered on behalf of the Society for Promoting Working Men ' s Associations . By the Beverend Charles Kingsley . jun ., Hector of Eversley . Bezer . This is so admirable a production , so full of suggestive and important matter , and set forth in a temper so calm , moderate , and conrinced , that we shall best consult the interest of our readers , if we confine ourselves to the reproduction of as many passages as we can squeeze into our space : —

    POLITICAL ECONOMY V . JIORAIi LAW . «• I believe that we owe the most hearty thanks to the labours of political economists ; that without them we should be utterly at sea on such subjects as the present one . I should no more think of ignoring the natural laws which they have discovered , than I should those of geology or chemistry . If they are true , there is no use ignoring them . They will make their existence felt , whether we like or not ; and , like the rest of nature , they are only to be conquered by obeying them . But every science has its limits , and so has political economy . Questions of moral right and wrong are beyond its sphere , just as they are beyond that of geology or chemistry ; they belong

    to a higher , a spiritual sphere . I have no doubt whatsoever that the two will be found ultimately to be in perfect harmony ; that the highest morality will be found to be the truest economy . But in the meantime , right and wrong are not to be over-ridden by economic maxims . Where the two seern ^ to disagree , we must suspect the correctness of political economy on that point , not of the common instincts of morality and the economist no more becomes , by virtue of his economic science , an authority on ethics or politics , than a divine becomes , by virtue of his divinity , an authority on geology or astronomy . Wherever , therefore , the economist attempts , as too many have done , to make his science the test and

    gauge of all human questions , or to give us a theory of human society and progress grounded exclusively on the laws of a very narrow , and as yet infant science , much more when he attempts to justify ( because it seems to him to promote the accumulation or distribution of wealth ) that which the heart and conscience of man , not to mention the Bible , declare to be unjust and wicked , he becomes in so far a syncretist , a pedant , and a bigot , to be driven , by every weapon which reprobation , argument , or ridicule can furnish , back on to his own ground to reconsider his opinions , as guilty of exactly the same ofFence against true philosophy as Primate Cullen , when he determines , on the ground of Church authority , the magnitude of the sun .

    " For instance , politico-economical works inform me that , for the general wenlth of a notion , it is of secondary moment whether a landlord reside at home or abroad , because when his rents are remitted to him , the shape in which they actually pass abroad is that of exported goodt » , to settle the balance with the country whose banking house pays him the funds ; and thus it performs the same function of giving employment in his own country , to which he , if he

    resided at home , would apply it . lhis is a strictly economic question , on which the writer is bound to be a better judge than I am ; and I accept it , and analyse it , and leirn it by heart , with the same expectation that I shall find it true , with which I Bhould believe in the correctness of any mathematical theorems which I was studying . I believe it , and receive fresh corroboration of my belief , that political economy and politics are distinct sciences , and that the former is a far narrower one than the latter . Hut

    if in a politico-economical work I find the assertion , that selfish competition ought to be the normal state of mankind , I simply answer , Ne sutor ultra crepidcm ( Let not the cobbler go beyond his last ) . This is not n question of economy , not even of politics , but of ethjcs , a subject for the moral philosopher ; one on which a man ' s nkill in political economy gives Mm no moro right to decide authoritatively , than his skill in fox-hunting would do . And this would be equally juat , whether he said that selfish competition was , or ought to be , the luw of human nature . Whether it is , or is not , is a question of fuct , not of economy ; whether it ought to be , is a question of right and wrong , not of economy . All that he , ub an economist , lms a right to nay is , that it is the form of Hociety Avhich produces and distributes wealth more

    rapidly than any other yet invented . An assertion which leaves untouched two questions : —first , "whether there are ure not forms of society moro in accordance with the true duties of man , and therefore capable of producing wealth still faster ; and Hccnndly , whether , there being other faculties , appetites , and passions in man , both right and wrong , and other facts concerning him—the existence of a ( lod , amongothcTH—whereof economy has no right to take note—some of these may not tend to render that competition , which seems in its first effects ho productive , in reality and in the long run destructive and suicidal , the eliseaHC , not the health of societycertain , in proportion aa it is allowed full course , to destroy by a convulsion the very woalth which it him produced . On all these questions , economy must be nlont . They are ( subjects of polity , ethics , the

    philosophy of history—perhaps , as I have been laughed at for believing , of Christianity ; at all events , whatsoever science has to deal with them , political economy has not . " Mr . Kingsley is an advocate for the existence of a landlord class ; but he is stern in denunciation of the reckless disregard of their function exhibited by many landlords : —

    I . ANDI 1 OB . OS AS ECONOMISTS . " If political economists have made an idol of profits , and set them up as the object of agriculture , instead of asserting the maximum of production to be itself an absolute good , who have fallen more deeply into that error than the Protectionist landlords ? If political economists have preached against over-population , farmers and landlords have been acting on their theory for many a year . They have prevented the population of their parishes from increasing . They have replaced men by sheep over large districts of Scotland . They have let cottages—I speak of a frightfully common case—run to ruin , breeding disease and misery in the inmates during j

    the process of their decay , with the avowed intention of not replacing them when they fell down . They have driven away not only their surplus hands , but even , in too many cases , those which they already possessed , to increase the crowded filth and misery of the great cities , and , as in the case of the Dorsetshire labourers , to walk out from the towns four or five miles daily to their work , and as many back . The custom of hereditary leases has vanished , on ninety-nine estates out of a hundred . The custom of any lease at all has grown but too rare . The farmer has no longer a family interest and affection towards his land and his labourers , any more than he has towards his landlord . For the landlord lowers

    himself irremediably in the farmer ' s eyes in the very process of letting , when he hands over his farm to the man who will promise him most , and demand of him least , while he is utterly careless as to the farmer ' s character , morals , skill—even , strange blindness of covetousness!—as to the amount of capital he can put into the land . Hence , the actual average capital per acre , invested by farmers throughout England , is less than half the sum without which the Scotch farmer considers profitable or productive agriculture impossible . Hence the farmer is beaten down to promise a rent which it is uncertain whether he can pay , has to speculate on the chances of an

    arbitrary remipsion of part of it on his rent-day ; on his landlord ' s alms , in short ; and in the meantime , to make all sure , giinds the labourer as the landlord has ground him . And I am soiry to say , that the rank and education of landlords in a fearfully large number of instances , is no guarantee whatsoever for their honesty . What may be the state of tilings in the more remote and patriarchal districts of the north and west of England , I cannot say ; but I assert that throughout the midland , southern , and eastern counties there is not a market-town in which you may not hear stories by the half-dozen of farmers half-ruined by being cajoled into taking farms at high

    rents , on the promise of improvements at the landlord's expense—as a wealthy squire promised a friend of mine—which promise was utterly broken ; of leases promised , and then left unsigned , until on the tenant ' s pressing for the signature , he has been turned put of his farm—as a respectable baronet turned out another friend of mine—and the improvements which he had made , appropriated by the landlord ; of whole estates lying half-cultivated at rack-rents , the farmers not daring to improve , lest the rents should be raised upon them ; of other farms whose rental is as high now , with wheat £ 10 a load , as it was when wheat was £ 10 , though no

    corresponding permanent improvements have been made by the landlord in the meantime ; of estates in one county on which the landlord resides , bedizened out with model cottages , and schools , and churches , like that of one of the greatest and most respectable dukes in England , to the admiration of the unreflecting public , while the same man ' s property at the other end of England is the scene of extortion , pauperism , fever , and decay , delivered over to the tender mercies of an agent , boine parasite farmer or attorney of the neighbourhood , chosen because he is a good man of business—in plain English , more cunning , greedy , and hard-hearted than the average ; of appeals from cheated farmers ( labourers on such estates have invun

    up long ago appealing' to any one but Uod )— or from clergymen , pleading for the health , the decency , the morals , the education , the lives of their wretched HocIch , answered by a cold— ' I never interfere in such matters ; I leave them to my agent . ' 1 assert that 1 know parish after parish , 111 which the whole educuiion , almsgiving , and all appliances of mercy and civilization , depend utterly on the scanty purse of the clergyman , who has to support , at an expense Bometimes of one-third of Inn scanty income , necessary good works to which the landlord , drawing thousands a year from the same parish , oiten do < : « not contribute a five-pound note , aomctimcH not a shilling . " In consequence of which : — " The farmer hates the landlord ; the labourer

    hates the farmer . Everywhere is competition , and , therefore , everywhere distrust , meanness , disunion , discontent . And does this unrestrained competitive laissez-faire promote English agriculture ? Not a whit of it . English soil is almost the worst tilled of any inclosed soil in Europe . The farm-buildings , on estate after estate , are in a state utterl y disgracefulsuch as renders it impossible to save manure , or farm high in any way . The farmers dare not invest

    capital in land of which they have no permanent tenure . Not a district which does not give ocular demonstration of the general under-farming , by the presence of some one farm which is growing , even on the present clumsy system , half as much agaiit as those round it . And all agricultural improvements , with a very few exceptions , are originated either by freeholders , or gentlemen farming for their amusement , proving that something more than competition is required to give the proper spur to production . "

    It is because landlords have followed economical rather than social principles that the present mischief exists : — " Now let us look at this whole question from the side of simple justice . We shall all agree , I hope , that whatever is the object of agricultural production , the welfare of those who produce must be looked to also . That is but just . Else , why should we not grow corn on the sweating system ? Some may answer—well , why not , if the agricultural labour market is over-stocked ? I answer that on that principle you have a right to cultivate your land by slaves . If no moral consideration is to determine

    the condition of your free labourers , why should it determine their being free at all ? If you acknowledge one moral ground , you must acknowledge all . If you say a farmer has a right , by setting his labourers to compete against each other for work , and paying always the lowest price they will take , to make their numbers , and not any sense of justice , the criterion of their wages , where is the system to stop ? He has a perfect right to go on till he has pauperized them all ; and then he has a perfect right , according to political economy falsely so called , to hire gangs of paupers , i . e . of slaves , from the workhouse , and set them competing against the

    free labourers outside , as the slopsellers send part of their work to the union houses in London , and by that means beat down their free labourers to the union prices . And why should he stop there ? Why should not the agricultural labourers be as the labourers of other countries have been before now , absolutely and formally enslaved ? bought and sold as slaves , and made to work whether they like or not ? Because they-are free ? L ^ t us clear our minds of cant , gentlemen and ladies . What is the meaning of this word free ? How do you prove that a man ought to be free ? Ue-ause it is just ? Justice has nothing to do with economic considerations ,

    with the science of profits . If" they are the great object of social science , if the reproduction of capital is the one great means of a nation ' s wealth , then I do not see why these sentimental notioi . s about justice and ab-tract right * of frei .-doni are thuB t <> interfere with the national good . If it is profitable and right to make clothes by . sweating , it is profitable and right to cultivate land by paupers , and still moie profitable and right to cultivate it by slave :-:. I really do not see any reason upon economic grounds why you should care so much for the condition of those slaves , why you . should not breed them for your own use as you do caitle and horses , and breed

    no more ot them than you want—why you s-liould not ascertain carefully the age at which their powers of work begin to decline , and then , instead of unprofitably supporting them in alms-houses and unions , just make away with them painlessly by a few drops of strychnine , melt them down in iho sulphuric acid tank , and drill them with your xooicrops . I will engage that any farmer or nation that will have courage logically and consistently to carry out in that way the economy of labour and the reproduction of capital , will farm , in spite of all free

    trade whatsoever , at a . splendid profit , without , breaking a single law of what is now called Political Economy . Of course ; it would l . e cruel , and horrible , and unjust , and all that , but if you once allow such a thing as justice , to enter into your calculatio . is in one t / iiiif / , you mut , t . allow it , to enter in nil t / iitu / x . You have no right , to nay , I will be just hen ; and not there , or even , 1 will make it . my fir . st object hero and my secondary there . Tf justice ; exists at all , sin ; is above all things and below all things—by her all things consist-and lu ; r all thin <> H must obey . Whatever voice ; is called into council hern must 1 ) 0

    heard first . She must not mere-ly K ' ' ¦"" casting vote . She ; must explain herself 011 the ve ; ry object nnd ground of the debate . If then you are ; e-oiite ; nt not to keep your justice for Sunday * , or for the ) waving o ( your own semis , let me ; a . slt you , it * it just that the labourer tdiould have ; no profit whatHoever on his own labour ? lsay . no profit whatsoever . At , present , the agricultural labourer is able ) to save ; nothing . And only what a man hiivcm i » profit . A man a wages , if tluy are ; nil ttpcut u |><> ' » hi * necessary food , clotheM , and honne-rent , are ; n <» more profit * to him than the money spent in keeping a Hteum-cngine in

    Untitled Article

    Sept . 13 , 1851 . ] «!> * % t&tftt . 875

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1851, page 875, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1900/page/15/