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having no affinity to justice, labour, or the payment of an equivalent, it would indeed be strange if industry should receive a proper and equitable measure of its wealth.

Aristocracy has received the maxim from feudal Europe, and proclaimed it with all the bloated importance of imitative pride, that NATURE HAS DOOMED THE MANY TO LABOUR FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE FEW. It would be difficult, however, to show, that nature, when she gave faculties to all the human family to acquire more than is necessary for their comfort, at the same time ordained a principle, which has no trace but in the arbitrary laws of power, that the labour which was thus produced, should be snatched from the industrious, to pamper the idle voluptuary-the LORD of the soil, and accumulate in heaps, whilst the hands that produced it should famish. There is no such principle in nature, or in justice-and its existence in law is a fraud, and a perversion, whose evil fruits are the best evidence of its outrage on equity. This prejudice has its origin from the feudal passions and institutions of Europe, whose literature and polity have engrafted it on the minds of the superficial of our own country. It is a sentiment that royalty would embody in the national songs of a kingdom; and that the pensioned writers of the nobility would be paid for inculcating on the minds of an oppressed yeomanry, whose labour was plundered for the benefit of the three orders.

In this country we have no orders but the peopleno sovereign but the people-no rule of action but the happiness and safety of the community; and under our constitution and laws, founded on those of nature, INDUSTRY, not law, is the rightful distributer of property.

On this point, even David Hume, who was a tory, as well as a royalist-in other words, a disciple of the feudal system, admits the transcendent authority of

nature.

“What is a man's property? Any thing, which it is lawful for him, and for him alone, to use. But what rule have we by which we can distinguish these objects? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedent, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and HAPPINESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, than all, or most of the laws of justice and property." He continues: "It must, indeed, be confessed, that nature is so liberal to mankind, that, were all her presents equally divided among the species, and improved by art and industry, every individual would enjoy all the necessaries, and even most of the comforts of life; nor would even be liable to any ills, but such as might accidentally arise from the sickly frame and constitution of his body. It must also be confessed, that whenever we depart from this equality, we rob the poor of more satisfaction, than we add to the rich; and that the slight gratification of a frivolous vanity, in one individual, frequently costs more than bread to many families, and even provinces." Again he observes"Whatever is produced or improved by man's art, or industry, ought for ever to be secured to him, in order to give encouragement to such useful habits and accomplishments."

Agrarian laws have prevailed in many countries.

The Romans frequently made an equal division of lands, to restore the equilibrium between the poor and the rich. Such partial remedies, however, are as fleeting as ineffectual. The only sure and permanent reform of the present system, is to permit labour to regulate its own distribution, without the coercion of law, to force it into the channel of CAPITAL.

All combinations of labour, to resist the extortion of capital, are illegal; and they who combine, are punished as felons, conspiring against the welfare of the state.

All combinations of capital, to oppress industry, are legal, and receive a reward for their rapacity and despotism.

The cause of this injustice is obviously displayed in the history of all ancient countries, down to a very late period; in which the artisans and labourers were all slaves, who worked for the sole benefit of their lords. As this, then, was the principle of the distribution of labour, which now prevails; it is manifestly just, that the relation of slave and lord having been abolished, the laws and customs of society ought to conform to the dictates of natural equity, which ordains, that industry shall distribute the wealth it produces, for the common happiness and comfort of all the children of toil.

CHAPTER XVI.

Of Prices-Supply and Demand-Value.

PRICES have no connection, or influence on the wealth of nations; but they tend to make the fortunes of individuals, by transferring property from one to another, at different periods, according to their fluctuation, as caused by the increase of the supply and demand of commodities, or the variation of the current money. As money is abundant, prices will be low; as it is scarce, they will rise: or, as the supply is not adequate to the demand, they will be high, and as it exceeds the demand, they will fall.

In a country like ours, where the currency is fictitious, and composed of paper, liable to constant expansion and contraction, prices are liable to the most ruinous fluctuations; for although their instability cannot diminish the amount of industry, yet they tend to unsettle trade, manufactures, and commerce, to which stability and regular prices are the best friends. By making property change hands, without the intervention of labour, or equivalents, they beget a habit of idleness, speculation, and gaming; and create an order of men, whose business it becomes, not only to watch the fluctuation of prices, but to cause that fluctuation, by fraud, management, and stratagem, in order to avail themselves of the profits, or in other words, acquire the labour of the industrious by a lucky stroke of deception. Thus inequality of fortune is daily created

by the inflation and collapse of those paper balloons, denominated banks, and their air bubbles, paper credits.

Prices, therefore, whilst they neither augment, nor diminish value, which is the commodity, or product of labour itself—yet cause the transfer of values, from one to another, without the exchange of an equivalent; not necessarily, however, or of themselves, but by the operation of causes which control them. When the balloon of paper credit is in full expansion, an estate may cost 50,000 dollars; and when the same balloon has collapsed, it will only sell for 20,000 dollars, and the first purchaser may be a beggar. Yet the estate, the real value, remains the same, neither augmented, nor diminished in value. This is one of the evils attending the paper money system, which causes pieces of paper to represent commodities, and substitutes the fiction for the reality of labour.

An idea of the real deleterious influence of paper credits upon trade, prices, value, &c. may be obtained from the fact, that a counterfeit detector, in the form of a weekly journal, has been found necessary to protect traders from the spurious and depreciated bank notes which always maintain a circulation.

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