Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital [19]
idle capitalist -- and from the manner in which capitalists have treated labourers, even within our own recollection, they have no claim on the gratitude of the labourer -- but they will augment the wages and rewards of industry, and will give to genius and skill their due share of the national produce. They will also increase prodigiously the productive power of the country by increasing the number of skilled labourers. The most successful and widest spread possible combination to obtain an augmentation of wages would have no other injurious effect than to reduce the incomes of those who live on profit and interest, and who have no just claim but custom to any share of the national produce. It has indeed been said by some sapient legislators, both Lords and Commoners, that the journeymen will do themselves incalculable mischief by driving capital out of the country; and one of the reasons urged for the new law was that it would prevent the journeymen injuring themselves. Whenever the devil wants to do mischief he assumes the garb of holiness, and whenever a certain class of persons wish to commit a more than usually flagrant violation of justice it is always done in the name of humanity. If the labourers are disposed blindly to injure themselves I see no reason for the legislature interfering to prevent them; except as a farmer watches over the health of his cattle, or a West India planter looks after the negroes because they are his property, and bring him a large profit. The journeymen, however, know their own interest better than it is known to the legislator; and they would be all the richer if there were not an idle capitalist in the country. I shall not enter into any investigation of the origin of this opinion that the workmen will injure themselves by driving away capital; but it would not be difficult to show that it springs from the false theory I have opposed, and that it is based on a narrow experience. Because there are a few instances of political and religious persecution, driving both masters and journeymen, or a large quantity of national stock of skilled labour, from different countries, greatly, I admit, to the injury, and justly so, of the remaining inhabitants who permitted or practised this persecution, it has been asserted that this injury was caused by the banishment, not of the men but of the capital; and it being, therefore, now concluded that the proceedings of the workmen will in like manner banish capital from this country it has been affirmed that they will injure both themselves and the rest of the inhabitants. But they carry on neither political nor religious persecution, and it is somewhat preposterous in the race of politicians, by way, perhaps, of throwing a veil over their own crimes, to attribute to the actions of the workmen the same consequences as have been produced by some of the absurd and cruel proceedings of their own class. If the workmen do not frighten away the skill of the contriver and the master -- and where can that be put to so good a use as where there are plenty of skilful hands -- and even if they should, the wide spread of education among the mechanics and artisans will soon repair the loss, they will frighten away no other part of the national advantages. The merest tyro in political economy knows that the capitalist cannot export any great quantity of food, clothing and machines from this country, nor even the gold and silver which forms the current coin of the realm, to any advantage; either he must bring back an equivalent, which returns him a profit when consumed here, or he must carry with him those skilled labourers who have hitherto produced him his profit as they have consumed his food and used his instruments and machines. There is not a political injury on the one hand and both masters and workmen on the other; but on the one side is the labourer and on the other the capitalist, and however successful the workmen may be, the smallest fraction of their produce which the capitalist can scrape up he will assuredly stay to collect. The combination of the