Ginx's Baby [34]
of rescue. Ah! if an elastic trade comes back to-morrow, you can never make those people what they were; ought we not to have forecast that they should not be what they are? But I contend that depression has become chronic, the poverty more wide-spread and persistent--how then shall we, who represent these classes among the rest, face the prospect?" Here interposed a gentleman high in office, a pure, keen, rigid economist of the highest intellectual and political rank. "My dear Sterling, pardon me if I say you are talking wildly. Perhaps you don't see that you are verging on rank communism. The working of economic laws can be as infallibly projected as a solar eclipse. You can secure no class from periodic calamity, and so regulate laws of supply and demand by guiding-wheels of legislation and taxation as to save every man from penury. You wish us to send away our bone and sinew because we have no present employment for it, and next year, or the year after, under a recovered trade you will be wringing your hands and cursing the folly that prompted you to do it." "I should be too glad of the opportunity," replied Sir Charles, sturdily, "but in truth there is an incubus of excessive numbers that no revival of trade will provide for, even if it is beyond our extremest hopes, and I for one will not be guilty of the inhumanity of keeping fellow-creatures in misery till we can find a use for them. You have forgotten that there are other economic laws besides those you glance at. Several millions of acres of unoccupied land belonging in a sense to the people of this country are to be kept untilled in defiance of the plainest policy that nature and God have indicated to us, namely, that labor should come in contact with land! For want of this conjunction our colonies are to be checked, while at home miserable millions are gaping for work and food." "Oh! let them take themselves out. There are too many going already. They will follow natural laws, and where labor is required thither the stream will flow." "Mere surface talk, my clever friend," replied the other, "the men who are trooping out at their own expense are our most sober, careful, and energetic workmen. Else they could not go. They go because here so many indifferent ones are weighing down their shoulders. And where do most of them go to? Not to strengthen and develop our colonies, but the United States--a not always friendly people, and just now your free-trader's bugbear!" "Well, well," said the minister, "drop that question. It's utterly impracticable at this time. We couldn't entertain the demand for State-help for an instant. I tell you again you're a Fourierite. You virtually propose to put your hand in the pocket of the upper classes to pay all sorts of expenses for the lower."
"You may call me a communist if you please," replied Sir Charles Sterling; "I do not shrink from shadows. Perhaps I am in favor of something nearer to communism than our present form of society. One thing I am clear about: no state of society is healthy wherein every man does not own himself to be the guardian of the interests of the community as well as his own--does not see that he is bound, morally and as a matter of public policy, to add to his neighbor's well-being as well as his own. Does not society, by its protection and aggregation, make it possible for the rich to grow rich, the genius and the ambitious man to pursue their aims, the merchant to gather his vails, the noble to enjoy his lands? For these privileges there is more or less to pay, and it may be that the proper proportion which the capable classes should be called upon to contribute to the common weal has never been correctly adjusted. The first fruit of practical Christianity was community of goods, and but for human selfishness we might hope for an Eutopian era--when, while it should be ruled that if a man would not work neither should he eat, there should also be brought home to every man the care of his poorer, or weaker, or less competent brother. I never expect to see that.
"You may call me a communist if you please," replied Sir Charles Sterling; "I do not shrink from shadows. Perhaps I am in favor of something nearer to communism than our present form of society. One thing I am clear about: no state of society is healthy wherein every man does not own himself to be the guardian of the interests of the community as well as his own--does not see that he is bound, morally and as a matter of public policy, to add to his neighbor's well-being as well as his own. Does not society, by its protection and aggregation, make it possible for the rich to grow rich, the genius and the ambitious man to pursue their aims, the merchant to gather his vails, the noble to enjoy his lands? For these privileges there is more or less to pay, and it may be that the proper proportion which the capable classes should be called upon to contribute to the common weal has never been correctly adjusted. The first fruit of practical Christianity was community of goods, and but for human selfishness we might hope for an Eutopian era--when, while it should be ruled that if a man would not work neither should he eat, there should also be brought home to every man the care of his poorer, or weaker, or less competent brother. I never expect to see that.