Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital [22]
are now so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on the claims of capital. The weight of its chains are felt, though the hand may not yet be clearly seen which imposes them. Gradually as the resistance increases, as laws are multiplied for the protection of capital, as claims for higher wages shall be more strenuously and more violently repressed, the cause of this oppression will be more distinctly seen. The contest now appears to be between masters and journeymen, or between one species of labour and another, but it will soon be displayed in its proper characters; and will stand confessed a war of honest industry against the idle profligacy which has so long ruled the affairs of the political world with undisputed authority -- which has, for its own security, added honour and political power to wealth, and has conjoined exclusion and disgrace with the poverty it has inflicted on the labourer. On the side of the labourers there is physical strength, for they are more numerous than their opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common interest and a close and intimate union. The capitalist and labourers form the great majority of the nation, so that there is not third power to intervene betwixt them. The must and will decide the dispute of themselves. Final success, I would fain hope, must be on the side of justice. I am certain, however, that till the triumph of labour be complete; till productive industry alone be opulent, and till idleness alone be poor, till the admirable maxim that "he who sows shall reap" be solidly established; till the right of property shall be founded on principles of justice, and not on those of slavery; till man shall be held more in honour than the clod be treads on, or the machine he guides -- there cannot, and there ought not to be either peace on earth or goodwill amongst men. Those who of late have shown themselves so ready to resist the just claims of labour, who, under the influence of interest and passion, have hurried into the arena with their penal laws, and have come forward, brandishing their parchment statutes, as if they, poor beings, could whip mankind into patience and submission, when these weapons of theirs -- these penal laws and parchment statutes -- derive all their power, whether for evil or for good, from the sanctity with which we are pleased to invest them, and as if they also did not know that they are as powerless as the meanest individual whom they are so prompt to scourge, except as we are pleased to submit and to honour them -- they may thank themselves should their haste and their violence beget a corresponding haste and violence in others; and, should the labourers, who have hitherto shown themselves confiding and submissive -- losing that reverence by which laws are invested with power, and to which Government is indebted for its existence -- turn their attention from combining for higher wages, to amending the state, and to subverting a system which they must now believe is intended only to support all the oppressive exactions of capital. Ministers are undoubtedly, for the moment, very popular, but it does not require any very enlarged view to predict that by openly committing the Government during the last session of Parliament, when the great mass of the community are able both to scan the motives of their conduct and its consequences, and zealous in doing it, to a contest between capital and labour, taking the side of idleness against industry, of weakness against strength, of oppression against justice, they are preparing more future mischief than any ministry this country has ever seen. They profess liberal principles -- and they make laws to keep the labourer in thraldom. By their innovations they encourage inquiry, and convince us the system is neither sacred nor incapable of improvement. They have practically told the labourer there is nothing deserving his reverence, and have excited