578 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



is a stimulant to industry, and an instrument of good, it becomes 

 a universal blessing. The insane, the blind, the deaf and dumb, 

 the maimed, the sick, the old and decayed, the fatherless and 

 friendless children, and, indeed, all who, by the dispensations 

 of Divine Providence, are deprived of the power of helping and 

 sustaining themselves, should be helped and sustained by the 

 community. But what is to be done for the able-bodied labor 

 ers, who are not unwilling to work, but who have no opportunity 

 of exerting their power? This is a great question, and involves 

 immense difficulties in the present organization of society. 



I see no grounds to hope for any immediate, speedy, or effec 

 tual remedy for the evils which exist. I am not looking for an 

 early millennium. The wealth of the world is every where 

 increasing at a rapid rate, and almost beyond the dreams of 

 avarice. The poverty of the world seems increasing, especially 

 in the old world, in a corresponding ratio. As wealth increases, 

 the value of money is diminished ; but as the wages of labor do 

 not increase as the value of money diminishes, and the prices 

 of the articles of human subsistence increase, and as the value 

 of labor is continually diminished by the increase of laborers, 

 and the augmentation of the population goes on rapidly in a state 

 of general peace, the condition of the laboring classes becomes 

 the more straitened, and the great evil of unemployed, though 

 willing labor, is augmented. 



One of the first duties of the state should be, not to give 

 labor, but, as far as can be, to secure to every one willing to work, 

 an opportunity of exerting his powers, and, as far as is consis 

 tent with the general good, and prejudicial to no just rights of 

 any, to do this in any way or form to which his inclinations may 

 lead him, or to which his talents may be adapted. Monopolies 

 of every description, excepting so far as they may be given as 

 premiums to inventive genius, are to be condemned. The mo 

 nopoly of land in the old world is a serious evil. The traveller 

 passes over miles and miles of unoccupied and unimproved land, 

 capable of sustaining its thousands and its millions in comfort, 



and on the borders of these immense tracts finds thousands of 

 I 



human beings suffering and perishing, for the want of an oppor 

 tunity of procuring their living out of this land, from which 

 they are excluded. This tract belongs to the crown ; that tract 

 belongs to the church ; these immense domains are held by some 



