Knowledge is Power:

rty the principle of exchange-Alexander Selkirk and Robins

higher estimation of the wages than of the profitless ease and freedom of remaining unemployed;-and, on the contrary, the employer who purchases his labour feels that he shall be more benefited by the results of that labour than by retaining the capital which he exchanges for it. In a simple state of society, when one man exchanges a measure of wheat for the measure of wine which another man possesses, it is evident that the one has got a greater store of wheat than he desires to consume himself, and that the other, in the same way, has got a greater store of wine;-the one exchanges something to eat for something to drink, and the othe

the least idea of making a formal exchange with another. The modes by which the inferior animals communicate their thoughts are probably not sufficiently determinate to allow of any such agreement. The very foundation of that agreement is a complicated principle, which man alone can understand. It is the Security of individual Property. Immediately that this principle is established, labour begins to work profitably, for it works with exchange. If the principle of appropriation were not acted upon at all, there could be no exchange, and conse

er the wild animals by which he was surrounded-over the land and over the water. He was, in truth, the one proprietor-the one capitalist, and the one labourer-of the whole island. His absolute property in the soil, and his perfect freedom of action, were both dependent upon one condition-that he should remain alone. If the Moskito Indian, for instance, had remained in the island, Selkirk's entire sovereignty must have been instantly at an end. Some more definite principle of appropriation must have been established, which would have given to Selkirk, as well as to the Moskito Indian, the right to appropriate distinct parts of the island each to his particular use. Selkirk, for example, might have agreed to remain on

man is by his nature, and without any agreement, a social being. He is a being whose rights are balanced by the uncontrollable force of their relation to the rights of others. The succour which the infant man requires from its parents, to an extent, and for a duration, so much exceeding that required for the nurture of other creatures, is the natural beginning of the social state, established insensibly and by degrees. The liberty which the social man is thus compelled by the force of circumstances to renounce amounts only to a restraint upon his brute power of doing injury to his fellow-men: and for this sacrifice, in

sts. He knew that he possessed a commodity which they did not possess. He had fresh meat, whilst they had only salt. Of course what he had to offer was acceptable to the sailors; and he received in exchange protection, and a place amongst them. He renounced his sovereignty, and became once more a subject. It was better for him, he thought, to be surrounded with the regulated power of civilization, than to wield at his own will the uncertain strength of solitary uncivilization. But, had he chosen to remain upon his island, as in after-years he regretted he had not done, although a solitary man he would not have been altogether cut off from the hopes and the duties of the social state. If he had chosen to remain after that visit from his fellow-men, he would have said to them, before they had left him once more alone, "I have hunted for you my goats, I have dug for you my roots, I have shown you the fountains which issue out of my rocks;-these are the resources of my dominion: give me in exchange for them a fresh supply of gunpowder and shot, some of your clothes, some of the means of repairing these clothes, some of your tools and implements of cookery, and more of your books to divert my solitary hours." Having enjoy

. (From a desig

e property which had been created. The course of improvement that we have imagined for Selkirk supposes that he should continue in his state of exclusive proprietor-that there should be none to dispute his right. If other ships had come to his shores-if they had trafficked with him from time to time-exchanged clothes and household conveniences, and implements of cultivation, for his goats' flesh and roots-it is probable that other sailors would in time have desired to partake his plenty;-that a colony would have been founded-that the island would have become populous. It is perfectly clear that, whether for exchange amongst themselves, or for exchange with others, the members of this colony coul

when he has gathered them, but which has not reached the last step of a division of land-imperfect appropriation such as this raises up the same invincible obstacles to the production

ch of all he surveys. Let us trace the course of another man, advanced in the ability to subdue all things to his use by association with his fellow-men; but carrying on that association in the rude and unproductive relations of savage life;-not desiring to "replenish the earth" by cultivation, but seeking only to appropriate

s Lectures on Po

s Miscellan

ded in Captain Woodes Rogers' Cru