Knowledge is Power:

y-Instances of unprofitable labour-Former notions of co

r of the husbandman might not hope to command if employed during the whole year. But the Nile is a workman that cannot be controlled and directed, even by capital, the great controller and director of all work. The influences of heat, and light, and air, are pretty equal in the same places. Where the climate is most genial, the cultivators have least labour to perform in winning th

duction of this crop. It is this certainty that we have such a command of the productive powers of nature as will abundantly compensate us for the incessant labour of directing those forces, which has during a long course of industry heaped up our manifold accumulations, and which enables production annually to go forward to an extent which even half a century ago would have been thought impossible. The long succession of labour, which has covered this country with wealth, has been applied to the encouragement of the productive forces of nature, and the restraint of the destroying. No one can doubt that, the instant the labour of man ceases to direct those productive natural forces, the destroying forces imme

was

nd run wild, i

teps of those who

rees that shot i

nging from thei

ngs, had tempt

roken

by domestic tyranny of any kind, so that capital ceases to work with security. The fields suddenly become infertile, the towns lose their inhabitants, the roads grow to be impassable, the canals are choked up, the rivers break do

not disg

before this

what impedime

aked, poor, an

ts, plenties, an

this best garde

nce, put up her

rom France too l

usbandry doth

in its ow

merry cheere

s; her hedges

s wildly over

rder'd twigs:

hemlock, and

while that the

deracinate s

that erst broug

wslip, burnet,

ythe, all unco

idleness; and

s, rough thistle

h beauty a

ards, fallows, m

eir natures, gr

ses, and oursel

o not learn, fo

at should becom

nd: destructio

ontest to keep in subjection the forces of nature, which, as is said of fire, one of the forces, are good servants but bad masters. But these examples show, also, that in the social state our control of the physical forces of nature depends upon the right control of our own moral forces. There was injustice, doubtless, in misappropriating the funds which restrained the sea from devouring the lan

very man shall

wn vine wha

his o

ed by direct allusion to a man sitting under the shade of his own fig-tree or his own vine.

s

of peace to all

ndance, like the people of Egypt during the inundation of the Nile. We then should have an inundation of tranquillity. But if the tranquillity were not present-if lawless violence stood in the place of justice and security-we should be like the people of Egypt when the Nile did not overflow. We should suffer the extremity of misery; and that possible extremity would produce an average misery, even if tranquillity did return, because security had not returned. We should, if this state of things long abided, by degrees

d unprofitable application of capital, even of persons far removed beyond the half-idiocy of Peter the wild boy. In the thirteenth century many of the provinces of France were overrun with rats, and the people, instead of vigorously hunting the rats, were persuaded to carry on a process against them in the ecclesiastical courts; and there, after the cause of the injured people and the injuring rats was solemnly debated, the rats were declared cursed and excommunicated if they did not retire in six days. The historian does not add that the rats obeyed the injunction; and doubtless the farmers were less prepared to resort to the profitable labour of chasing them to death when they had paid the ecclesiastics for the unprofitable labour of their excommunication. There is a curious instance of unprofitable labour given in a book on the Coal Trade of Scotland, written as recently as 1812. The people of Edinburgh had a passion for buying their coals in immense lumps, and, to gratify this passion, the greatest care was taken not to break the coals in any of the operations of conveying them from the pit to the cellar of

ilst they held themselves at the height of refinement, have been fostered by the ignorance of the great, and even of the learned, as to the causes which, advancing production

nation happy,

gdoms, and lay

France, under the old monarchy, no descendant of a nobleman could embark in trade without the highest disgrace; and the principle was so generally recognised as just, that a French writer, even as recently as 1758, reproaches the sons of the English nobility for the contrary practice, and asks, with an air of triumph, how can a man be fit to serve his country in Parliament after having meddled with such paltry concerns as those of commerce? Montesquieu, a writer in most respects of enlarge

d in their interests; that unrestrained commerce is equally essential to the real and permanent interests of agriculture and manufactures; that capital and labour are equally united in their interests, whether applied to agriculture, manufactures, or commerce; that the producer and the consumer are equally united in their most essential interest, which is, that there should be cheap production. While these principles are not understood at all, and while they are imperfectly understood, as they still are by many classes and individuals, there must be a vast deal of unprofitable expenditure of capital, a vast deal of unprofitable labour, a vast deal of bickering and heart-burning between individuals who ought to be united, and classes who ought to be united, and nations who ought to be united; and as long as it is not felt by all that their mutual rights are understood and will be respected, there is a feeling of insecurity which more or less affects the prosperity of all. The only remedy for these evils is the exte

ight, on Resol

s Notes to