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laws of the government. Inquiry, discussion, argument, are esteemed deadly enemies to aristocracy, extortion, fraud, and oppression of all kinds, that denude the people, and fatten the few of the high privileged classes. It is the attitude of capital to intimidate, repress, silence! But if the people will speak, it is then made a point to cover them with ridicule-to treat them with contempt -to tell them they are not initiated, and speak too much upon subjects they know nothing of. To all this I stand opposed, and against it shall never fail to array the little strength that nature has given me.

Before the Revolution, it was esteemed absurd to question the right of the king to tax the colonies. Be fore the reign of English king John, it was ridiculous to doubt the divine right of the monarch. There was a time when it was judged the height of folly to declare that the earth moved: and it was punished as impiety, to say, that the other planets also had their revolutions! The application of steam, as now used, would in ancient times have been termed madness. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people has only been rational, since it has been reduced to practice; in despotic countries, it is still thought to be silly and absurd. When the working people gain their just rights, to controvert the doctrine of extortion will no longer be deemed illogical, dangerous, unscientific, and absurd. That time must arrive, and if I can do aught that will tend to accelerate it, I shall esteem it the most happy, honourable, and fortunate effort of my existence.

Yet it is not, after all, a party object, merely, for which we are struggling. It extends to higher and nobler aims; it reaches to the expansion of our national resources-the consolidation of the national strengththe increase of our moral, as well as physical energies.

Congenial to all her principles, customs, and habitudes of mind, was the manner in which the gothic ages enveloped science in mystery, or mistook mystery for learning. The refuge which literature found in the cells of the Christian monasteries, necessarily associated her in habits of such intimacy with religion, as reciprocally to impart to one another their peculiar properties; so that when science at last emerged from her retirement, she appeared babbling the cant of superstition, and covered with the rags of fanaticism and the mummery of priestcraft. So inveterate is habit-so deep the sense of reverence for antiquity, that even the present age has not yet wholly shaken off the trammels of mystification that encumbered science in the darkness of the cloister. It is still held as heresy, that a man who labours shall dare to think; and that he who thinks shall venture to write, unless under the license of a diploma, or the authority of a literary title. To obstruct the passage of the populace to the temple of knowledge, as much as possible, the impediments of an obsolete language, and a hieroglyphic character, were industriously thrown in their way. The union of church and state presented powerful motives to withhold from the multitude those beams of intellectual light which would expose their oppressions, and reveal their rights. The safety of a system based upon wrong, depended upon darkness. As mankind, however, gradually tore the veil from their eyes, they partially redressed their wrongs; but as the light has never been full and effulgent, the wrong has never been entirely removed. Progressive developements have been made in defiance of the systematic opposition of the combined power of government and aristocracy. Further advances are still obstinately resisted by the same powerful influences.

Every inch of ground is disputed; and every fresh conquest of reason, truth, and justice, only tends to add vigilance to capital, power to monopoly, and rancour to aristocracy.

When we reflect, therefore, that the first discovery and true doctrine of the rights of man, and the title to property, are not more than a century old from their first glimmerings of pale uncertainty; we need not express astonishment that they have advanced no farther, and still retain the rude proportions of an imperfect structure, partaking more of the heterogeneous gothic style, than of the fair and just proportions of science and taste. But the mind, although slow in its march, is yet sure in its progression. Every day adds new truths to science, and divests knowledge of its monkish garments of mysticism. Every day gathers fresh crowds of votaries to the shrine of scientific inquiry and research, and sends forth thousands to disseminate truth, invoke justice, and denounce fraud and oppression.

In the following pages, I have endeavoured to strike out some new truths-establish some disputed rightsand elucidate the operations of labour, capital, monopoly, credit, and commerce, in their natural and unsophisticated features. The principal object was, to divest science of the mummery of its pomp, the mystery of its trappings, and the cant of its phraseology, as well as to exhibit the real attitude and importance of the producers of labour, to the wealth, happiness, and independence of a nation. According to Lord Bacon's rule of philosophizing, I have drawn my theory from facts, and not deduced facts to suit my theory; resting upon the great fundamental doctrines of human happiness and freedom, however deficient they may

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prove in ingenuity, their origin and tendency will never fail to afford solace and consolation to the author, for the omissions of ignorance or the blunders of precipitancy-so long as he can escape the imputation of being inimical to the rights, or indifferent to the happiness of mankind. Proceeding on this plan, I have rather laboured to elucidate and break down antiquated forms, than to systematize and digest with scholastic precision. Truth is often "curtailed of her fair proportions," by a too rigid classification on scientific principles. A general division of political economy, however, may not be amiss, when founded on its chief fundamental principles-such for instance, as the production, distribution, and consumption of industry.

It has not, however, been so much owing to an ignorance of this science, as to the misapplication of its principles, and the great perversions and misrepresentations of the champions of capital, and the stock interest-that the people have hitherto derived no practical benefit from its labours. Thus far, science has only toiled to show to the idle few the means by which they acquired the industry of the many; and the facility with which imbecile minds, backed by wealth, could rule millions who were debased by eternal labour, and degenerated by penury, famine, and low diet. At the same time, that these feudal ministers of mercy, in the shape of abstinence and death, have the assurance to proclaim to the people, that the beneficence and wisdom of government have made them comfortable, affluent and happy. By confounding the wealth of the higher orders with the unity of the nation, the gross amount of industry in a country, has been represented as so much stock of comfort to the whole people; a fal. lacy which sagacity could not overlook, and which

nothing but conscious fraud, intent upon deception, could have devised. But such a cloak was necessary to cover oppressions, which no people, however debased, could perceive and yet endure. Among the foremost of these apologists of tyranny, and deceivers of the populace, stands Adam Smith, who, so late as in the last century, thus ventured to assure the English mechanic that justice entered into the system which stripped him of his earnings, to pamper the three orders, whose only title to respect was idleness and sensuality; speaking of the causes of the prosperity of Great Britain, he enumerates among them—"That equal and impartial administration of justice, which renders the rights of the meanest British subject respectable to the greatest, and which, by securing to every man the fruits of his own industry, gives the greatest and most effectual, encouragement to every sort of industry." B. 4. c. 7.-Wealth of Nations.

Here the equality of law in respect to the legal principle of the distribution of labour, is construed to mean the justice of the existing mode of distribution; and the impression is produced that every British subject enjoys in fact, and in law, an equitable proportion of the fruits of his industry! This announcement is made in the very teeth of the starving population of Britain; and it continues to be iterated even to the present day. But what is the law in fact ?--That it secures the distribution of property on the existing basis of capital, monopoly, extortion, and an idle stock-interest, which appropriates to themselves the fruit of every man's industry; leaving the producer barely sufficient to sustain life, on the most unwholesome and meanest dietso that the very reverse of Smith's proposition becomes manifest; and the fruit of every man's labour, instead

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