1831.] Machinery. 193 



and will be, till violence wrench it, or wisdom withdraw it from them, 

 to make something like an equitable distribution. Let them, moreover, 

 give their tenants an interest in the land, something that deserves the 

 name of interest leases they may be made conditional and equitable 

 and tenants will soon again cultivate in a very different style from what 

 they now do, and employ, we verily believe, little short of double the 

 labour on the same space. There is nothing like high- farming now-a- 

 days. Let them, also, reduce the size of farms ; for adequate capitals 

 for small farms may far more readily be found than any thing like a 

 competent capital for a large one. Two or three hundred acres, perhaps, 

 should be the very maximum a, size which comes within the grasp of 

 easy management too, and is useful alike to the tenant, the labourer, 

 and, ultimately,, to the landlord himself. Let them, also, take the 

 labourer who, under heaven, has none else to help him under his 

 especial protection, and assign him, in addition to his amended wages, 

 small patches of land, on which he can spend his own hours, and his 

 family Contribute their aid. Machinery has stript of their wonted 

 employment the wives and children of the country labourer, and what 

 can be done in the way of compensation should in common equity and 

 humanity be done. Let them, above all, not listen to farmers and agents 

 in their opposition ; one will tell him, as Cobbett was told at Waltham 

 Chase in one of his laudable attempts, it will make the labourer "saucy ;" 

 another, he will demand higher wages; a third, he will only breed more 

 children. Let them not heed these things, but rather look at the 

 deplorable state of dependence and misery to which they have suffered 

 them to be sunk, by abandoning them to the uncontrolled dominion of 

 their merciless tenants. Wretches ! we once heard one of them boast 

 of his ability to take the strength of a labourer out of him in three 

 years, just as he did out of his horses but what else do the econo- 

 mists ? 



Here is much of the abnormis sapientia, and we are driven to it 

 by the force of facts, which conflict irresistibly with the dicta of our 

 pestilent philosophers. They have tak,en their" own imaginations for 

 realities ; their own maxims for the laws of nature ; Capital is their 

 idol, and the first duty of their new worship is to develope to their 

 full extent its hidden -powers in production, while they let distribution 

 take its own course. It is matter- of entire indifference to them whether 

 the labourer, the instrument, eat or not, so that he contributes to 

 produce, and adds to the capital of the employer. They affect to con- 

 sider the labourer as not coming at all within the pale and protection of 

 government. Nobody employs a labourer for the sake of the labourer, 

 but for his own sake what then has a government to do with the 

 matter ? Much ; it is not optional with capital to employ labour or 

 not. To make any thing of capital the owner must employ labour ; in 

 that employment he may oppress, and the duty of government is to 

 protect, or what is the good of it ? 



The distress of the country, for we must regard the people, p.s a 

 portion of the country, is immeasurably great. Much of it is the result 

 of excess of machinery ; much of it arises from pushing erroneous 

 theories into practice ; much of it from bad exercise of power, and a 

 worse conception of the best objects of society ; much of it from grasp- 

 ing passions and unfeeling haughtiness ; but it is not yet past a quiet 

 or at least a legal remedy. Let landlords cease to lend a ready ear to 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 62. 2 C 



