180 CAPITAL TILE MOTHER OF LABOUR. iv 



by the advocate of the doctrine that labour be- 

 stowed upon manufacture, without any interven- 

 tion of capital, can produce wages, proves to be a 

 delusion of the first magnitude; even though it 

 be supported by the dictum of Adam Smith which 

 is quoted in its favour (p. 34): 



The produce of labour constitutes the natural recom- 

 pense or wages of labour. In that original state of things 

 which precedes both the appropriation of land and the 

 accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour be- 

 longs to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor mas- 

 ter to share with him ("Wealth of Nations," ch. viii.). 



But the whole of this passage exhibits the in- 

 fluence of the French Physiocrats by whom Adam 

 Smith was inspired, at their worst; that is to say, 

 when they most completely forsook the ground of 

 experience for a priori speculation. The confident 

 reference to " that original state of things " is 

 quite in a manner of the Essai sur rinegalite. 

 Now, the state of men before the " appropriation 

 of land " and the " accumulation of stock " must 

 surely have been that of purely savage hunters. 

 As, by the supposition, nobody would have pos- 

 sessed land, certainly no man could have had a 

 landlord; and, if there was no accumulation of 

 stock in a transferable form, as surely there could 

 be no master, in the sense of hirer. But hirer 

 and hire (that is, wages) are correlative terms, 

 like mother and child. As " child " implies 

 " mother," so does " hire " or " wages " imply a 



