180 CAPITAL— THE 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 Vlnegdlite. 

 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 



