No More Learning

O pectora caeca!

Lucret. lib. 2.

5. 93, 94.

And statesmen boast
Of wealth!

There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of
gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn
the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In
consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is
enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of
his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of
disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of
opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter
of his country's prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the
manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only
to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who
employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until
'jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,' flatters himself that
he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of
vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its
continuance; and many a fete has been given, many a woman has eclipsed
her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage
trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it
palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to
labour,--for what?
Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets
for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable
hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man
is far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all
its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its
innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him:--no; for the
pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false
pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is
afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than
this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in
the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to
their usefulness (See Rousseau, "De l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes", note
7. ): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the
exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the
earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through
contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his
unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.

I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the
natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its
desirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it
is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an
equal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be
preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human
labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass
of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members,
is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to
approximate to the redemption of the human race.

Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from
the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor,
by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are
precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be
subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health,
or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to
subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly
depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and
that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease,
lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable
burthen.

English reformers exclaim against sinecures,--but the true pension list
is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by
the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which
support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity
of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against
the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by
the loss of all real comfort.

'The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the
human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a
slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and
sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the
labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among
the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each
man's share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would
be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small
comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it
will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are
not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be
devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock
of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and
more exquisite sources of enjoyment.