GO 



MISS MARTINEAU AND THE MULTITUDE. 



THERE can be but one opinion of Miss Martineau as a woman of 

 genius : not so of Miss Martineau as a political econonomist. In 

 treating that subject she has proceeded on the old plan ; that of in- 

 viting the unprovided and the ignorant to act with the energy and 

 forethought that can only be expected from the provided and en- 

 lightened. The mass of institutions the burden of abuses that 

 press upon the poor, are scarcely touched ; how the poor may still 

 continue to crawl along under them is alone considered. Of this 

 order of argument, is her advocacy of large farms, and her attempt 

 to show that the small proprietor is not so well off, as the well-paid 

 labourer perhaps Miss Martineau has the peculiar felicity of disco- 

 vering where, at the present day, the well paid labourer is to be 

 found. 



That only is improvement which increases the general amount of 

 human happiness ; but the term is prostituted to the ingenuity that 

 increases wealth or capital. But what does the being whose extin- 

 guished soul, merely affords enough vitality to his frame, as to allow 

 him to toil twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, 

 at some minute branch of art that, in the division of labour, has been 

 allotted to him, know of improvement ? As little as the blind horse 

 of the contents of the mile he turns. 



Miss Martineau talks of the pauper fund of the poor as unproduc- 

 tive capital. What is the pauper fund of the rich ? If the idle con- 

 sumption of unearned produce be pauperism, is not the rich as well 

 as the poor man under its bane ? She sees the evil of the poor laws, 

 which she alledges give the poor man a premium for improvidence. 

 Does she see no evil in the fratrocidal law of primogeniture, which gives 

 the rich man a premium for monopoly, and sinks his nearest kindred 

 into paupers with all the moral ignominy, though not the external 

 debasement, that attaches to the wretched pensioner of the parish 

 poor-house ? 



Miss Martineau denies that every being born in a state has a 

 right to support from the State. She treats as a false analogy, that 

 the relation of a state to its members, is the same as that of a parent 

 to his children because, she says, a state has little influence over 

 the subsistence fund, and no controul over the numbers of its mem- 

 bers. Why has it little influence over the subsistence fund ? And 

 has a parent controul over numbers when a birth may produce 

 twins, and an annual increase occur in some cases, and not half that 

 in others ? The necessity of some sort of government in all commu- 

 nities is an admitted fact, and may therefore be taken as an unques- 

 tioned premise. The number governed can make no difference in 

 the principle of administration, which, as a religious member of so- 

 ciety, she must recognize between God and man ; as a social member 

 of society, between man and man, in the various relations of domestic 

 life, and why not as a political member of society, between the slate 

 and its members ? Or does she mean to say that in the latter only 

 there shall be power without responsibility r 



