But though I may not, consistently with rectitude, attempt to put myself in possession of many things wliich it is right I should have, yet this sort of right is by no means futile and nugatory. It may prove to be a great truth, resting upon irresistible evi- dence, and may, in that case, be expected to make hourly pro- gress in the convictions of mankind. If it be true, it is an interesting truth, and may therefore be expected to germinate in the mind, and produce corresponding effects upon the conduct. It may appear to be a truth of that nature, which is accustomed to sink deep in the human understandmg, insensibly to mix itself with all our reasonings, and ultimately to produce, without shadow of violence, the most complete revolution in the maxims of civil society.
218 BENEFITS ATTENDANT ON CHAP. III.
BENEFITS ATTENDANT ON A SYSTEM OF EQUALITY.
Contrasted with the mischiefs of the present system — 1. a sense of dc' pendence. 2. the perpetual spectacle of injustice, leading men astray in their desires — and perverting the integrity of their judgments. — The rich are the true pensioners. — 3. the discouragement of intel- lectual attainments. — 4. the midtiplication of vice — generating the crimes of the poor — the passions of the rich — and the misjortunes of war. — 5. depopulation.
Having seen the justice of an equal distribution of the good things of life, let us next proceed to consider in detail, the bene- fits with which it would be attended. And here with grief it must be confessed, that however gi'eat and extensive are the evils that are produced by monarchies and courts,* by the imposture of priests f and the iniquity of criminal laws, J all these are im- becile and impotent, compared with the evils that arise out of the established administration of property.
Its first efiect is that we have already mentioned, § a sense of dependence. It is true that courts are mean-spirited, intriguing, and servile, and that this disposition is transferred by contagion from them to all ranks of society. But accumulation brings home a servile and truckling spirit, by no circuitous method, to every house in the nation. Observe the pauper fawning with ab- ject vileness upon his rich benefactor, speechless with sensations of gratitude, for having received that which he ought to have claimed, not indeed with arrogance, or a dictatorial and overbear- ing temper, but with the spirit of a man discussing with a man, and resting his cause only on the justice of his claim. Observe the servants that follow in a rich man's train, watcliful of his looks, anticipating his commands, not daring to reply to his insolence, all their time and their efforts under the direction of his caprice. Observe the tradesman, how he studies the passions of his customers, not to correct, but to pamper them, the vileness of his flattery and the systematical constancy with which he ex- aggerates the merit of his commodities. Observe the practices of a popular election, where the great mass are purchased by obsequiousness, by intemperance and bribery, or driven by unmanly threats of poverty and persecution. Indeed "the age of chivalry is" not " gone!''|| The feudal spu:it still survives, that reduced the great mass of mankind to the rank of slaves and cattle, for the service of a few.
We liave heard much of visionary and theoretical improve- • Book V. + Book VI. i Book VII.
A SYSTEM OF EQUALITY. 219 ments. It would indeed be visionary to expect integiity from mankind, while they are thus subjected to hourly corriiption, and bred, from father to son, to sell their independence and their con- science, for the vile rewards tliat oppression has to bestow. No man can be either useful to others or happy in himself, who is a stranger to the grace of firmness, or who is not habituated to pre- fer the dictates of his own understanding, to the tyranny of com- mand, and the allurements of temptation. Here again, as upon a former occasion,* religion comes in to illustrate oiu- thesis. Religion was the generous ebullition of men, who let their ima- . gination loose on ^e grandest subjects, and wandered without re- straint in the unbomided field of enquiry: It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if they brought home imperfect ideas of the sublimest views that intellect can furnish. In this instance, religion teaches that the pure perfection of man is to arm himself against the power of sublunary enticements and sublunary ter- rors; that he must suffer no artificial wants, sensuality, or fear, to come in competition with the dictates of rectitude and reflec- tion. But to expect a constancy of this sort from the human species, under the present system, is an extravagant speculation. The enquu'er after truth, and the benefactor of mankind, will be desirous of removing from them those external impressions, by which their evil propensities are cherished. The true object that should be kept in view is to extirpate all ideas of condescension and superiority, to oblige every man to feel that the kindness he exerts is what he is bound to perform, and to examine whether the assistance he asks be what he has a right to claim.
A second evil that arises out of the established administration of property is, the continual spectacle of injustice it exhibits. The effect of this consists partly in the creation of wrong propen- sities, and partly in a hostility to right ones. There is nothing more pernicious to the human mind than the love of opulence. Essentially active, when the original cravings of appetite have been satisfied, we necessarily fix on some object of pursuit, bene- volent or personal, and, in the latter case, on the attainment of some excellence, or something wliich shall command the esteem and deference of others. Few propensities, absolutely con- sidered, can be more valuable than this. But the established ad- ministration of property directs it into the channel of the acqui- sition of wealth. The ostentation of the rich perpetually goads the spectator to the desire of opulence. "Wealth, by the senti- ments of servility and dependence it produces, makes the rich man stand forward as the principal object of general esteem and deference. In vain are sobriety, integrity, and industry, in vain the sublimest powers of mind, and the most ardent benevolence, if their possessor be narrow in his circumstances. To acquire wealth and to display it, is therefore the universal passion. The "Whole structure of hiunan society is made a system of the nar- • Chap. I., p. 806.
220 BENEFITS ATTENDANT ON rowest selfishness. If the slate of society were such that self-love and benevolence were apparently reconciled as to their object, a man might then set out with the desire of eminence, and yet be- come every day more generous and philanthropical in his views. But the passion we are here describing is accustomed to be grati- fied at every step, by inhumanly trampling upon the interest of others. Wealth is acquired by over-reaching our neighbour, and is spent in insulting him.
The spectacle of injustice which the established administration of property exhibits, operates also in the way of hostility to right propensities. If you would cherish in any man the love of recti- tude, you must see that its principles be impressed on him, not only by words, but actions. It happens, perhaps, during the period of education, that maxims of integrity and consistency are repeatedly enforced, and the preceptor gives no quarter to the base suggestions of selfishness and cunning. But how is the lesson that has been read to the pupil confounded and reversed, when he enters upon the scene of the world? If he ask, " Why is this man honoured?" the ready answer is, "Because he is rich." If he enquire further, *' Why is he rich?" the answer in most cases is, " From the accident of birth, or from a minute and sordid attention to the cares of gain." Humanity weeps over the distresses of the peasantry in all civilised nations; and when she turns from this spectacle, to behold the luxury of their lords, gross, imperious, and prodigal, her sensations certainly are not less acute. This spectacle is the school in which mankind have been educated. They have been accustomed to the sight of in- justice, oppression, and iniquity, till their feelings are made callous, and their understandings incapable of apprehending the principles of virtue.
In beginning to point out the evils of accumulated property, we compared the extent of those evils with the correspondent evils of monarchies and courts.* No circumstances, under the latter, have excited a more pointed disapprobation than pensions and pecuniary corruption, by means of which hundreds of in- dividuals are rewarded, not for serving, but betraying the public, and the hard earnings of industry are employed to fatten the ser- vile adherents of despotism. But the rent-roll of the lands of England is a much more formidable pension-list than that which is supposed to be employed in tlie purchase of ministerial majorities. All riches, and especially hereditary riches, are to be considered as the salary of a sinecure office, where the laboiurer and the manufacturer perform the duties, and the principal spends the income in luxury and idleness.f Hereditary wealth is in * r. 212.
+ This idea is to be found in an Essay on the Eight of Property in Land, published about twelve years ago by an ingenious inhabitant of North Bri- tain, Part I., Sect, iii., par. 38, 39. The reasonings of this author have some- times considerable merit, though he has by no means gone to the soxirce of the evil.
A SYSTEM OF LQUALITY. 221 reality a premium paid to idleness, an immense annuity expended to retain mankind in brutality and ignorance. The poor are kept in ignorance by the want of leisure. The rich are furnished indeed with the means of cultivation and literature, but they are paid for being dissipated and indolent. The most powerful means that malignity could have invented, are employed to prevent them from improving their talents, and becoming useful to the public.
This leads us to observe thirdly, that the established adminis- tration of property is the true levelling system with respect to the human species, by as much as the cultivation of intellect is more valuable, and more characteristic of man, than the gratifications of vanity or appetite. Accumulated property treads the powers of thought in the dust, extinguishes the sparks of genius, and re- duces the great mass of mankind to be immersed in sordid cares; beside depriving the rich, as we have already said, of the most salubrious and effectual motives to activity. If superfluity were banished, the necessity for the greater part of the manual industry of mankind would be superseded; and the rest, being amicably shared among the active and vigorous members of the community, would be burthensome to none. Every man would have a frugal, yet wholesome diet; every man would go forth to that moderate exercise of his corporeal functions, that would give hilarity to the spirits; none would be made torpid with fatigue, but all would have leisure to cultivate the kindly and philanthropical aflfections, and to let loose his faculties in the search of intellectual improve- ment. What a contrast does this scene present to the present state of society, where the peasant and the labourer work till their understandings are benumbed with toil, their sinews con- tracted and made callous by being for ever on the stretch, and their bodies invaded with infirmities, and surrendered to an im- tiraely grave? What is tlie fruit they obtain from this dispropor- It might be amusing to some readers, to recollect the authorities, if the citation of authorities were a proper mode of reasoning, by which the system of accumulated property is openly attacked. The best known is Plato in his treatise of a Kepublic. His steps have been followed by Sir Thomas More in his Utopia. Specimens of very powerful reasoning on the same side, may be found in Gulliver's Travels, particularly Part IV., Chap. VI. Mably, in his book De la Legislation, has displayed at large the advantages of equality, and then quits the subject in despair, from an opinion of the incorrigibleness of human depravity. Wallace, the contemporarj- and antagonist of Hume, in a treatise entitled, Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence, is copious in his eulogium of the same system, and deserts it only from fear of the earth becoming too populous; see below. Chap. IX. The great prac- tical authorities are Crete, Sparta, Peru, and Paraguay. We should swell the list to an inconvenient size, if we added examples where an approach only to these principles was attempted, and authors who have incidentally confirmed a doctrine so interesting and clear as never to have been wholly eradicated from any human understanding.
It would be trifling to object that the systems of Plato and others are full of imperfections. This rather strengthens their authority; since the evi- dence of tlie truth they maintained was so great, as still to preserve its hold on their understandings, though they knew not how to remove the difficulties that attended it.
222 BENEFITS ATTENDANT ON tioned and unceasing toil? In the evening they return to a family famished with hunger, exposed half naked to the in- clemencies of the sky, hardly sheltered, and denied the slenderest instruction, unless in a few instances, where it is dispensed by the hands of ostentatious charity, and the first lesson communicated is unprincipled servility. All this while their rich neighbour — but we visited him before.* How rapid would be the advances of intellect, if all men were admitted into the field of knowledge? At present ninety-nine per- sons in a hundred are no more excited to any regular exertions of general and curious thought, than the brutes themselves. What would be the state of public mind in a nation where all were wise, all had laid aside the shackles of prejudice and implicit faith, all adopted with fearless confidence, the suggestions of reason, and the lethargy of the soul was dismissed for ever? It is to be presumed, that the inequality of mind would, in a certain degree, be permanent; but it is reasonable to believe, that the geniuses of such an age would greatly surpass the utmost exer- tions of intellect hitherto known. Genius would not be depressed with false wants and niggardly patronage. It would not exert itself with a sense of neglect and oppression rankling in its bosom. It would be delivered from those apprehensions that perpetually recal us to the thought of personal emolument; and, of conse- quence, would expatiate freely among sentiments of generosity and public good.
From ideas of intellectual, let us turn to moral improvement. And here it is obvious, that the great occasions of crime would be cut off for ever.f The fruitful source of crimes consists in this circumstance, one man's possessing in abundance that of which another man is destitute. We must change the nature of mind, before we can prevent it from being powerfully influenced by this circumstance, when brought strongly home to its perceptions by the nature of its situation. Man must cease to have senses, the pleasures of appetite and vanity must cease to gratify, before he can look on tamely at tlie monopoly of these pleasures. He must cease to have a sense of justice before he can clearly and fully approve this mixed scene of superfluity and want. It is true that the proper method of curing this inequality is by reason and not by violence. But the immediate tendency of the established adminis- tration is to persuade men that reason is impotent. The injustice of which they complain is upheld by force; and they are too easily induced by force to attempt its correction. All they en- deavour, is the partial correction of an injustice which education tells them is necessary, but more powerful reason afiirras to be tyrannical.
Force grew out of monopoly. It might accidentally hare oc- eurred among savages, whose appetites exceeded their supply, or A SYSTEM OP EQUALITY. 223 •whose passions were inflamed by the presence of the object of their desire; but it would gradually have died away, as reason and civilisation advanced. Accumulated property has fixed its empire; and henceforth all is an open contention of the strength and cunning of one party, against the strength and cunning of the other. In this case, the violent and premature struggles of the necessitous, are undoubtedly an evil. They tend to defeat the very cause in the success of which they are most deeply in- terested; they tend to procrastinate the triumph of justice. But the txue crime, in every instance, is in the selfish and partial pro- pensities of men, tliinking only of themselves, and despising the emolument of others; and, of these, the rich have their share.
The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established adminis- tration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual and moral improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and re- venge, are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide, with anxiety and pain, for his restless wants, each would lose his in- dividual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no sub- ject of contention; and, of consequence, philanthropy would re-, sume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be de- livered from her perpetual anxiety about corporeal support, and. free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the enquiries of all.
Let us fix our attention for a moment upon the alteration of principles and habits, that immediately grows out of an imequal distribution of property. Till it was thus distributed, men felt what their wants required, and sought the supply of those wants. All that was more than this was regarded as indifferent. But no sooner is accumulation introduced than they begin to study a variety of methods, for disposing of their superfluity with least emolument to their neighbour, or, in other words, by which it shall appear to be most their own. They do not long continue to buy commodities before they begin to buy men. He that pos- sesses, or is the spectator of, superfluity, soon discovers the hold which it affords him on the minds of others. Hence the passions of vanity and ostentation. Hence the despotic manners of such as recollect with complacence the rank they occupy; and the restless ambition of those whose attention is engrossed by the possible future.
Ambition is, of all the passions of the human mind, the most extensive in its ravages. It adds district to district, and kingdom to kingdom. It spreads bloodshed and calamity and conquest over the face of the earth. But the passion itself, as well as the means 224 BENEFITS ATTENDANT ON of gratifying it, is the produce of the prevailing administration of property.* It is only by means of accumulation that one man obtains an unresisted sway over multitudes of others. It is by means of a certain distribution of income that the present govern- ments of the world are retained in existence. Nothing more easy than to plunge nations, so organised, into war. But, if Europe •were at present covered with inhabitants, all of them possessing competence, and none of them superfluity, what could induce its different countries to engage in hostility? If you would lead men to war, you must exhibit certain allurements. If you be not en- abled, by a system already prevailing, and which derives force from prescription, to hire them to your purposes, you must bring over each individual by dint of persuasion. How hopeless a task, by such means to excite mankind to murder each other? It is clear, then, that war, in all its aggravations, is the growth of un- equal property. As long as this source of jealousy and corrup- tion shall remain, it is visionary to talk of universal peace. As soon as the source shall be dried up, it will be impossible to ex- clude the consequence. It is accumulation that forms men into one common mass, and makes them fit to be played upon like a brute machine. Were this stumbling-block removed, each man. would be united to his neighbour, in love and mutual kindness, a thousand times more than now: but each man would think and judge for himself. Let then the advocates for the prevailing ad- ministration at least consider what it is for which they plead, and be well assured that they have arguments in its favour which will weigh against these disadvantages.
There is one other circumstance which, though inferior to those above enumerated, deserves to be mentioned. This is population. It has been calculated that the average cultivation of Europe might be so improved as to maintain five times her present num- ber of inhabitants.f There is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. Thus, among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never fmd, through the lapse of ages, that population has so increased as to render necessary the cultivation of the earth. Thus, among the civilised nations of Europe, by means of territorial monopoly, the sources of subsistence are kept within a certain limit, and, if the population became overstocked, the lower ranks of the inhabitants would be still more incapable of procuring for themselves the necessaries of life. There are, no doubt, extraordinary concurrences of circumstances, by means of which changes are occasionally introduced in this respect; but, in ordinary cases, the standard of population is held in a manner stationary for centuries. Thus the established administration of property may be considered as strangling a considerable portion of our children in their cradle. Whatever may be the value of • Book v., Chap. XVI.
+ Essay on Troperty, Part I., Sect, iii., par. 35.
A SYSTEM OF EQUALITY. 225 ihe life of man, or rather whatever would be his capability of happiness in a free and equal state of society, the system we are here opposing may be considered as arresting, upon the threshold of existence, four-fifths of that value and that hap- piness.
CHAP. IV.
. OBJECTION TO THIS SYSTEM FROM THE FRAILTY OF THE HUMAN MIND.
Recapitulation. — Objection stated. — General ansrcer to this oljection. — Particular answer, — Infiuence of public opinion upon the conduct of individuals.
Having proceeded thus far in our investigation, it may be pro- per to recapitulate the principles already established. The dis- cussion under each of its branches, as it relates to the equality of men,* and tlie inequalities of property, f may be considered as a discussion either of right or duty; and, in that respect, runs parallel to the two great heads of which we treated in our original development of the principles of society.^ I have a right to the assistance of my neighbour; he has a right that it should not be extorted from him by force. It is his duty to afford me the sup- ply of which I stand in need; it is my duty not to violate his pro- vince in determining, first, whether he is to supply me; and, se- condly, in what degi-ee.
Equality of conditions, or, in other words, an equal admission to the means of improvement and pleasm-e, is a law rigorously enjoined upon mankind by the voice of justice. All other changes in society are good, only as they are fragments of this, or steps to its attainment. All other existing abuses are to be de- precated only as they serve to increase and perpetuate the in- equality of conditions.
We have however arrived at another truth not less evident tlian this. Equality of conditions cannot be produced by individual compulsion, and ought not to be produced by compulsion in the name of the whole. There remains therefore but one mode of arriving at this great end of justice, and most essential improve- ment of society, and that consists, in rendering the cession, by him that has, to him that wants, an unrestrained and volimtary action. There remain but two instruments for producing this volition, the illumination of the understanding and the love of distinction.
• Chap. I., III. + Chap. II. X Vol I., Book II., Chap. IV., V.
30. — VOL. II. Q 226 OBJECTION FROM These instruments have commonly been supposed wholly in* adequate to their object. It has usually been treated as " the most visionai-y of all systems, to expect tiie rich to ' sell all that they have, and give to the poor.'* It is one thmg to convince men, that a given conduct, on their part, would be most con- ducive to the general interest, and another to persuade Ihem, actively to postpone, to considerations of general interest, every idea of personal ambition or pleasure. The sober calculator will often doubt w^hether it be reasonable, in consistence with the nature of a human being, to expect from him such a sacrifice: and the man of a lively and impetuous temper, even when satis- fied that it is his duty, will be in hourly danger of deserting it, at the invitation of some allurement, too powerful for mortal frailty to resist."