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LABOUR, WAGES, AND TRADES' UNIONS. 



IT is the misfortune of those that adopt an anti-popular opinion to 

 have their motives mistaken by the unreflecting, and misrepresented 

 by the interested. We have endeavoured throughout to advocate, to 

 the best of our ability, the rights of the humbler classes of society 

 against what we conceived to be the undue influence of rank and 

 wealth. The unjust preponderance of this influence has been adjusted 

 by the Reform Bill a measure for which the country cannot be too 

 grateful. Its wholesome effects we are already beginning to expe- 

 rience in the flourishing state of our finance, and in the general pros- 

 perity of our commerce. But as friends to real freedom, we are 

 equally bound to discountenance a monopoly whether of wealth or 

 labour ; both are unjust in principle, and tyrannical in execution ; 

 we therefore feel it an imperative duty to combat such mensures, 

 however unfriendly the spirit may be in which our motives are can- 

 vassed by those with whom we would more gladly be upon terms of 

 companionship than of opposition. 



I. On the Study of Political Economy. 



MUCH has been written during the last few years to urge the im- 

 portance, and induce a study of what is termed the science of politi- 

 cal economy. It is not our intention here to enter into a recapitula- 

 tion of the arguments already advanced, nor to add any new ones to 

 them, in recommendation of this branch of inquiry. Life being in 

 this world the first object of every one's impulse, and life being 

 constantly dependant upon external resources for its continuance, it 

 becomes at once a subject of interest to all to inquire what those ex- 

 ternal resources are, and how they may be most profitably appro- 

 priated to our use. These considerations form the basis of political 

 economy. It is, therefore, undoubtedly a study of the first and most 

 universal importance ; and it would seem natural that being a study 

 of such universal application and such common interest, it should 

 also be so simple in its truths as to be generally appreciable by the 

 common understandings of mankind. And so it would be if men 

 would but view it so. It is a study which every man who wears a 

 coat or a pair of shoes, or eats his loaf of bread, is daily illustrating 

 by those very means, and which he ought to be able to understand 

 if he but thought of it as he should do ; that is, as a study as simple in 

 its principles as the very illustrations of it, which, as we have said, 

 he is daily affording. Then why is it that political economy, instead 

 of being looked upon in this useful and comprehensive light, is re- 

 garded by all as abstruse and difficult, and avoided by many as dan- 

 gerous and fanciful ? It is because those who have stood forward as 

 its professors, and arrogated unto themselves the sole dominion in this 

 field of inquiry, have hitherto gratified their vanity by treating it as 

 a sort of charmed or fairy ground, instead of a vast mart of bread, 

 and beef, and shoes, and stockings. To simplify what in itself was by 



M.M. No. 101. 3N 



