Category: Economics

26th November 2025

Edwin Chadwick, THE ENEMY OF SOCIALISM, was powerfully influenced by Bentham and Ricardo

S.E. Finer’s 1952 book, The Life and Times of Edwin Chadwick has a superb discussion of his philosophy.

In a nutshell, he was a staunch classical economist and believer in capitalism. He rejected socialism outright. But he also would not suffer any private efforts that caused harm and reduced productivity.

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The influence of Bentham’s jurisprudence and of the French penal codes was … of paramount importance in determining Chadwick’s approach to social problems. It extended over the whole field of his social vision. [From a footnote: [S]uch admiration of the French system was a commonplace of the Benthamites among whom Chadwick was moving as early as 1824, and that he imbibed his views not from the written Code of the Master himself, but alongside of, and in the same way as, the other disciples.]

… Chadwick would interfere where necessary ; but where necessary for what? ‘The problem for the statesman (viz. Chadwick) is to define obligations and punishments in such a way that private interest shall be brought by artificial means to coincide with the public interest.’ What then was this public interest?

… Once again, his debt was to the Benthamite circle. This time it came not from Bentham himself (although in his Rationale of Reward the master had laid down the essentials) but from those epigones who developed this particular branch of philosophic Radicalism—the Mills and their friends Ricardo and McCulloch.

…Political economy grew up with the industrial age and the young Edwin Chadwick grew up with the science of political economy. … Its exponents were a tiny clique, their doctrines unknown … to the great mass of the people. It was Chadwick’s fate to grow up among the very people who formulated them. As James Mill had lamented in 1808, ‘the salutary doctrines of political economy’ were propagated only with great difficulty. Even in 1832 it was never heard of outside the Political Economy Club, except among students of Adam Smith’. … It was, paradoxically, on these very accounts that the economists, despite their paucity of numbers and their repellent prose, were able to command such respect from legislators. They were the only people who had studied legislation as a science. They followed up topics in the daily press, they collected statistics, and formed reasoned conclusions.

… This political economy of the circle to which Chadwick belonged and which he so thoroughly absorbed, was of a special and narrow type. … Of the two schools of economists, the ‘harmony’ school of bourgeois economists and the conflict school of socialist writers—birth, acquaintance, finally marriage and interests, all attracted Chadwick to the former. He regarded the socialist doctrines not merely as socially dangerous but as deluded and unscientific. The findings of orthodox political economy were laws. That unfettered private initiative was the mainspring of social progress he never doubted. Nor did he doubt that free competition could alone give free play to such initiative.

… That man and his environment could be improved and that improvements should be made, was so basic a creed for Chadwick that he rebelled against [the] fatalistic pessimism [of Malthus]. He was in good company when he argued that there was no reason why wages should not increase indefinitely, or why subsistence should. not far outrun the numbers of the population.

Typically he based his opinion upon a statistical study. In his study of ‘ Life insurance’, he pointed out that although the population of England had increased, its standard of living was higher than before. This phenomenon was general. History showed that as population increased so the standard of living rose. Nevertheless some theoretical explanation was needed. Chadwick gave this in the terms of orthodox Ricardianism. For every mouth at Nature’s feast’, he wrote, ‘there was also a pair of hands’. It was argued that an increased population entailed an increased competition for the means of subsistence, and therefore a lowered rate of wages. But the ‘means of subsistence’ were not in his opinion a constant element. Wages would have fallen ‘if the newcomers had added nothing to the fund out of which their wages came. The fund is in fact periodically consumed and reproduced by the labourer, assisted by the land and the farmer’s capital and all other things remaining the same, the amount of that fund and consequently his share of it, or in other words the amount of his wages, depends upon his industry and skill.’ Chadwick amplified this statement by cataloguing the various stages in the productive process. ‘More efficient labour makes the return to the farmer’s capital larger, and the consequent increase of the fund for the employment of labour enables and induces the capitalist to give better wages.’

The impact of this political economy upon Chadwick was very great. Fused with Benthamite penal law it turned Chadwick into the organizer, par excellence, of the state of the English manufacturing interest.

…The economic version of the ‘greatest happiness principle’ was for him either ‘greatest national product’ or (according to the context), ‘greatest national profit’. But his emphasis was on the term ‘national’, the stress was on public rather than private. Let each firm maximize its gains, but only so far as this contributed towards the greatest possible public gain. In fact, what Chadwick was dimly looking at, for he never formulated his difference from a Senior or a John Mill, was a social net product as against a private net product. The latter was the sum of the products of the various industries and individuals; the former, the social product, was the sum of the products of such industries minus any waste they might have caused in the course of production.

…It was the Manchester school of the ‘forties, the Cobdens and the Brights who were the anarchists’ in the economic field, insisting as they did upon the complete freedom of every firm and industry to go where it would. By contrast it was Chadwick who tentatively raised the point that the goal of such individual initiative, its ‘social role’ … was the maximization of net social product; and that in those cases where a private interest blocked such a maximization it might be necessary to step in forcibly to remove it.

This did not lead Chadwick to doubt the Ricardian theories in so far as these stated that, given the free play of interests, the national dividend would be increased. He differed by maintaining that certain private interests might actually block ‘free play’. … [H]e justified his action[s] on [these] grounds: he was not preventing the free play of self-interest but was making it possible. He was ‘enforcing competition’.

Thus Chadwick framed his legislation around the Ricardian concept of man and his institutions, but buttressed the … free trade school by a ruthless levelling of ‘sinister’ interests.

As a lawyer looking at political economy rather than an economist looking at legislation, Chadwick injected into the conception of the laisser-faire state his maxim of the tutelle [guardianship]. He propped up, and organized the regime of free competition, profitability, and individualism by the stringent sanctions of Benthamite administration. Cobden thought that the best way to prevent child labour in the mills was to leave their father free to emigrate; Chadwick simply illegalized such employment.

… His [work] was a ruthless and bureaucratic attempt to keep the ring clear for individual initiative wherever customs or vested interests stood in its way. It meant not merely the removal of obstructive and obsolete laws such as the law of settlement, but a new framework of laws devised to break the connexions between the individual and any institution which prevented him from standing on his own feet, whether it was parish aid or trade union activity, the B.M.A. or monopolist water companies.

Again, it meant not merely the maximum self-help by every institution or individual, but one which must serve the social purpose of amassing more and more capital. … Capital meant productivity; more capital, more productivity; and more productivity, more well-being.

And furthermore, blurring the outlines between the lawyer’s approach and the economist’s approach, Chadwick would look beyond the immediate effects of a law, coming to the problem with a wider analysis than either economist or lawyer could provide. It might, for instance, have been consistent with pure economics that there should be no Poor Laws at all; for Chadwick the pure economics did not count much against the increase of vagrancy and mendicancy that would follow the abolition of Poor Laws. … Thus the two great influences, of Benthamism on the one hand and the orthodox Ricardian economics on the other, merged in Chadwick into a social outlook of great dynamism.

… He believed in progress through the most ruthless exercise of individual initiative, and held that Labour depended upon those whose possession of the means of production could alone guide the social structure along this path. When, finally, such a social philosophy was urged into action by an intelligence of a high order, obstinate, zealous, and humourless, we have a picture of Chadwick at the age of thirty, ripe (too early perhaps) and ready to organize and remake society.

25th October 2025

Edwin Chadwick’s wideranging, amazing achievements by the age of 53

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EDWIN CHADWICK.

Source: “Edwin Chadwick.” Eliza Cook’s Journal, no. 223, 6 Aug. 1853, pp. 229+ [Relevant extract from journal]

EDWIN CHADWICK has not yet been done ordinary justice to by his contemporaries. He has been one of the most indefatigable and successful workers of this age, and yet the world knows comparatively little of him. Though he has, more than any other single man, influenced the legislation of his time, and given a powerful impetus to beneficial legislation for all time to come, we hear less of him than we do of many a fifth-rate parliamentary babbler. Mr. Horne has written a Spirit of the Age, but Edwin Chadwick has no place among the representative men there delineated; and another book, called Men of the Time, has been published, in which not a word is said of Edwin Chadwick, although Chaplin the carrier, and Soulouque the black Emperor of Hayti, are not omitted.

Whether Edwin Chadwick be entitled, or not, to a place among the men of the time, whether he is, or is not, a man who has largely influenced the spirit of the age, let the following brief sketch of his works and career bear witness.

We do not know much about Edwin Chadwick’s birth or ancestry: that is a matter of no consequence. We know, however, that he was born near Manchester, and belongs to a Lancashire family. He received his education chiefly in London, and having chosen the law for his profession, he was enrolled a student of the Inner Temple in his twenty-sixth year. There he “ate his way,” as the saying goes, to the Bar maintaining himself, as Lord Campbell at one time in his life did, by reporting and writing for the daily press. He was not a man of brilliant powers, or of any extraordinary amount of learning. But he was a most sagacious and persevering man, and was ready to confront any amount of labour in prosecuting an attainable object, no matter how remote its attainment might at first sight appear.

At an early period in his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed of an idea. And it is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea, provided its aim and end be beneficent. It gives a colour and a bias to the whole of a man’s life. The idea was not a new one; but being now taken up by an earnest, energetic, and hardworking man, there was hope for the practical working out of this idea in the actual life of humanity. The idea was neither more nor less than the Sanitary Idea the germ of the sanitary movement.

We must now briefly state how he worked his way to the practical realization of his idea, in the sanitary movement. It appears that Mr. Morgan, the Government actuary, having been examined before a Parliamentary committee as to the soundness of the Government annuity tables, stated that, though the circumstances of the middle classes had improved, their “expectation of life” had not lengthened. This being diametrically opposed to our student’s idea, he forthwith set to work to demonstrate the fallacy of the Government actuary’s opinion. He laid aside, for a time, the dreary law papers on which he had been engaged, and entered upon an equally dreary course, of reading and sifting of statistical documents, blue hooks, life-tables, and population-tables. His practice of sifting evidence for the attorneys in private cases doubtless helped him in this investigation. He bored his way through the cumbrous pile, working his way to the light, and bringing an accumulation of facts from the most unlooked-for quarters, to illustrate his idea and elucidate his master-thought. The result was published in an able article which appeared in the Westminster Review for April 1828. He there demonstrated, by an extraordinary array of facts and arguments, that the circumstances which surround human beings must have an influence upon their health; that health must improve with an improvement of these circumstances; that many of these circumstances which were unfavourable to the healthy lives of men were under man’s control, and capable of being removed; that the practice of vaccination, the diminution of the ancestral vice of hard drinking, the increase of habits of cleanliness, the improvements in medical science, and the better construction of streets and houses, must, according to all medical and popular experience, have contributed, a priori, to lengthen life; and these he proved by a citation of facts from numerous authentic sources. In short, Mr. Morgan was wrong. The “expectancy of life,” as is now universally admitted, has improved and is rapidly improving; but it was never so thoroughly demonstrated until Edwin Chadwick undertook the discussion and proof of the entire question.

The article in the Westminster attracted the notice of Lord Melbourne, who had a remarkable tact for discovering the qualities of men; and he determined to enlist Mr. Chadwick in the public service. Though no “eloquent” writer, Mr. Chadwick’s pen thus carved out for himself a highly useful, if not a brilliant career in life. Let no one say that the Pen has lost its power in these days!

In like manner, another article, which Mr. Chadwick published in the London Review, in 1829, on Preventive Police, was read by Jeremy Bentham, then in his 82nd year, who so much admired it, that he craved an introduction to the writer. The consequence was, the formation of a friendship that lasted without interruption till the peripatetic philosopher’s death, in 1832. Mr. Bentham wished to engage his young friend entirely in aiding him in the preparation of his Administrative Code, and offered to place him in independent circumstances if he would devote himself exclusively to the advancement of his works. The offer was, however, declined, Mr. Chadwick probably foreseeing that the inheritance of the old Jurist’s principles might hinder his freedom in life; and, with a manly independence, he doubtless felt desirous of carving out for himself his own true career.

Mr. Chadwick completed his law studies, and was called to the Bar in November 1830, and he was preparing for practice in Common Law, occasionally contributing articles to the Westminster, when he was (in 1832) appointed a commissioner, in conjunction with Dr. Southwood Smith and Mr. Tooke, to investigate the question of Factory Labour, which Lord Ashley and Mr. Sadler were at that time strongly pressing on public attention. The sanitary idea again found opportunity for expression ill the report of the commission, which referred to “defective drainage, ventilation, water supply,” and the like, as causes of disease, acting, concurrently with excessive toil, to depress the health and shorten the lives of the factory population.

In the same year (1832), an important Commission of Inquiry was appointed by Lord Grey’s Government, in reference to the operation of the Poor Laws in England and Wales. Mr. Chadwick was appointed one of the assistant commissioners, for the purpose of taking evidence on the subject; and the districts of London and Berkshire were allotted to him. His report, which was published in the following year, is a model of what a report should be. It is full of information, admirably classified and arranged, and so racy, by virtue of the facts brought to light, and the care taken to preserve the very words of the witnesses as they were spoken, that the report. may be read with interest by even the most inveterate enemy of blue-books.

Mr. Chadwick showed himself so thoroughly master of the entire subject his suggestions were so full of practical value, that he was, shortly after the publication of the report, advanced from the post of assistant commissioner to that of a chief commissioner: and he largely shared, with Mr. Senior, in the labours and honours of the commissioners’ report submitted to the House of Commons in 1834, and also in the famous Poor Law Amendment Act passed in August of the same year, in which the recommendations of the commissioners were substantially adopted and formalized.

One may venture to say now, without fear of being contradicted, that that law is one of the most valuable that has been placed on the statute-book in modern times. And yet no law was more unpopular than this was, for years after it was enacted. But Mr. Chadwick never ceased to have perfect faith in the soundness of the principles on which it was based, and he was indefatigable in defending and establishing it. He is a man who has never failed in the courage needful to enable him to do the right thing, even though it be the unpopular thing. It has been well said, that “to become popular is an easy thing; but to do unpopular justice, that requires a MAN.” And Edwin Chadwick was that man.

While burrowing amidst the voluminous evidence on the Poor Laws, he never lost sight of his sanitary idea. The reports were strongly impressed with it; and not less than one-fourth of the then existing pauperism was traced to preventible causes of disease. Mr. Chadwick’s minute investigations into the condition of the labouring population, and of the poor generally, gave him a thorough acquaintance with the physical evils that were preying on the community, carrying them prematurely out of existence by fevers, consumption, and cholera; and the sanitary idea took firmer possession of his mind than ever.

One day, in 1838, when engaged in his then official vocation of Secretary to the Poor Law Commission, “an officer of the Whitechapel Union entered hastily the boardroom of the Poor Law Commission, and, with a troubled countenance, informed the secretary that a terrible fever had broken out around a stagnant pool in Whitechapel; that the people were dying by scores; and that the extreme malignity of the cases gave reason to apprehend that they were allied to Asiatic cholera. On hearing this the Board, at our sanitary reformer’s instance, immediately appointed Drs. Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith, to investigate the causes of this alarming mortality, and generally to report on the sanitary condition of London. Drs. Arnott and Kay sent in a joint report, and Dr. Smith a separate supplemental one; in which, amongst other things, the pernicious effects of the foul water sold in London were ably set forth. These reports were circulated to the extent of 4,000 or 5,000 copies.”[1]

This inquiry ripened at length into the sanitary inquiry, into which Mr. Chadwick threw his prodigious industry and energy. In the mean time he had been engaged as a member of the Commission of Inquiry, “as to the best means of establishing an efficient constabulary force in England and Wales;” the evidence taken in which inquiry Mr. Chadwick embodied in a report as interesting as a novel of Dickens, and affording the most curious insight into the mode of living, the customs, and habits of the lowest classes of the population. When this question had been dismissed, Mr. Chadwick proceeded to devote himself almost exclusively to the great work of his life the sanitary movement. The Bishop of London, in 1889, moved in the Lords, that the inquiry which had been made at Mr. Chadwick’s instance by Drs. Southwood Smith, Amott, and Kay, into the sanitary state of the metropolis, should be extended to the whole population, city, rural, and manufacturing, of England and Wales. Some residents in Edinburgh also petitioned that Scotland might be included; and accordingly, in August 1839, Lord John Russell addressed a letter to the Poor Law Board, authorizing them by Royal Command to extend to the whole of Great Britain the inquiry into preventible disease which had already been gone through with regard to the metropolis. On Mr. Chadwick devolved the onerous task of setting on foot and superintending the inquiry throughout, of sifting evidence, and of afterwards classifying and condensing the information for the purposes of publication.

The first Report on the Health of Towns was ready for publication in 1842; and its preparation was altogether the work of Mr. Chadwick. It ought to have appeared as the Official Report of the Poor Law Board; but as the commissioners (some of whom were at variance with Mr. Chadwick with respect to the administration of the New Poor Law) refused to assume the responsibility of a document which contained much that must necessarily offend many influential public bodies, Mr. Chadwick took the responsibility on himself, and it was published as his report which, indeed, it was, and accepted from him as such by the commissioners.

The amount of dry, hard work encountered by Mr. Chadwick in the preparation of this and his other reports, can scarcely be estimated, except by those who know something of the labour involved in extracting from masses of evidence, written and printed, sent in from all parts of the empire, only the most striking results bearing on the question in hand which are worthy of being embodied in the summary report of the inquiry. The mountains of paper which Mr. Chadwick has thus bored through in his lifetime are immense; and could they now be presented before him in one pile, they would appal even his stout heart!

The sensation excited throughout the country by the publication of Mr. Chadwick’s Sanitary Report, was immense. Such a revelation of the horrors lying concealed beneath the fair surface of our modern Christian civilization had never been made before. But Mr. Chadwick had no idea of exciting a sensation merely; he had an object in view, which he persistently pursued. The report was nothing, unless followed by legislative enactments, which, indeed, shortly followed. A sanitary party was indeed formed; and the ministers for the time being, of both sides in politics, were its influential leaders, giving practical effect. to the sanitary idea.

Mr. Chadwick followed up this report in the following year by another elaborate report on the practice of interment of towns, a work which extended and enforced the views of Mr. Walker on this subject.

A Sanitary Commission was appointed in 1844, to entertain the whole question in its practical bearings. The Commission published two reports, with a view to legislation; but the Free Trade struggle interfered, and little was done for several years. Meanwhile our sanitary reformer was occupied as a commissioner in inquiring into the condition of the metropolis. This Commission published three reports, in which the defective drainage sewerage and water-supply of London were discussed in detail; but as yet, these recommendations have had little effect. Municipal abuses of all kinds, remedied everywhere else, generally find the last strongholds in the metropolis. While all other Corporations are reformed, that of London prides itself on exemption front the law of progress!

We will not venture to describe the character of Mr. Chadwick’s numerous valuable reports; but we cannot omit merely to mention his report (published in 1845) on the Drainage, Paving, Cleansing, and Water-supply of Towns, one of the ablest state papers ever issued from a Government office.

The sanitary idea had its triumph at length in the enactment of the Public Health Act of 1848, and in the appointment of a General Board of Health (of which Mr. Chadwick is a member) to superintend its administration. Numerous supplemental measures have since been enacted, with a view to carrying into practical effect the sanitary principles enunciated by Mr. Chadwick and adopted by the Board. They are also engaged in publishing reports, from time to time, full of valuable information: for instance, in reference to the application of sewerage water to agricultural purposes; on Epidemic Cholera; on Quarantine; on Drainage; on Public Lodging Houses; and such like. The sanitary movement, in short, is a “great fact;” and that it is so, we have mainly to thank Edwin Chadwick, the missionary of the Sanitary Idea.

Indeed, we do not know a more striking instance than that presented by this gentleman’s career, of the large amount of good which a man strongly possessed by a beneficent idea can accomplish, provided he have only the force of purpose and perseverance to follow it up. Mr. Chadwick also furnishes an illustration of this truth that a true man, of high and original powers, works for the service of humanity, and not for the honours which it has to bestow. He is not an actual legislator, and yet he has been the mover of more wise measures than any legislator that can be named. He has possessed the legislature with his leading Idea; and he has created a public opinion out of doors in favour of sanitary reform which will not let them lag, even if they would. Take him in all, Edwin Chadwick is one of the most useful practical men living; a leading man of the time, and a veritable embodiment of the spirit of Ike age. If he be not esteemed in future times as a Clarkson or a Howard, it will not be because he has not deserved this. He will, at all events, be regarded for many generations to come as one of the best practical benefactors of his kind.

[1] Times, December 28,1851.

5th August 2025

Bentham’s amazingly sophisticated views on property rights as the driver of prosperity

I accidentally came across these views of Bentham and I’m amazed by their sophistication. He wrote this well over 200 years ago.

SOURCE

CHAPTER VIII.

Of Property.

THE better to understand the advantages of law, let us endeavor to form a clear idea of property. We shall see that there is no such thing as natural property, and that it is entirely the work of/law.

Property is nothing but a basis of expectation; the expectation of deriving-certain advantages from a thing, which we are said to possess, in consequence of the relation in which we stand towards it.

There is no image, no painting, no visible trait, which can express the relation that constitutes property. It is not material, it is metaphysical; it is a mere conception of the mind.

To have a thing in our hands; to keep it; to make it; to sell it; to work it up into- something else; to use it;–none of these physical circumstances, nor all united, convey the idea of property. A piece of stuff which is actually in the Indies may belong to me, while the dress I wear, may not.

The aliment which is incorporated into my very body, may belong to another, to whom I am bound to account for it.

The idea of property consists in an established expectation; in the persuasion of being able to draw such or such an advantage from the thing possessed, according to the nature of the case. Now this expectation, this persuasion, can only be the work of law. I cannot count upon the enjoyment of that which I regard as mine, except through the promise of the law which guarantees it to me. It is law alone which permits me to forget my natural weakness. It is only through the protection of law, that I am able to enclose a field, and to give myself up to its cultivation, with the sure though distant hope of harvest.

But it may be asked, what is it that serves as a basis to law, upon which to begin operations, when it adopts objects, which under the name of property, it promises to protect? Have not men, in the primitive state, a natural expectation of enjoying certain things,—an expectation drawn from sources anterior to law?

Yes. There have been from the beginning, and there always will be, circumstances, in which a man may secure himself by his own means, in the enjoyment of certain things. But the catalogue of these cases is very limited. The savage who has killed a deer, may hope to keep it for himself, so long as his cave is undiscovered; so long as he watches to defend it, and is stronger than his rivals; but that is all. How miserable and precarious is such a possession! If we suppose the least agreement among savages to respect the acquisitions of each other, we see the introduction of a principle to which no name can be given, but that of law. A feeble and momentary expectation may result from time to time, from circumstances purely physical; but a strong and permanent expectation can result, only from law. That which in the natural state was an almost invisible thread, in the social state, becomes a cable.

Property and law are born together, and die together. Before laws were made, there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases.

As regards property, security consists in receiving no check, no shock, no derangement to the expectation founded on the laws, of enjoying such and such a portion of good. The legislator owes the greatest respect to this expectation which he has himself produced. When he does not contradict it, he does what is essential to the happiness of society; when he disturbs it, he always produces a proportionate sum of evil.

CHAPTER IX.

Answer to an Objection.

BUT perhaps the laws of property, are good for those who have property, and oppressive to those who have none. The poor man perhaps, is more miserable than he would be without laws.

The laws, in creating property, have created riches only in relation to poverty. Poverty is not the work of the laws; it is the primitive condition of the human race. The man who subsists only from day to day, is precisely the man of nature, the savage. The poor man, in civilized society obtains nothing, I admit, except by painful labor; but in the natural state, can he obtain anything except by the sweat of his brow? Has not the chase its fatigues, fishing its dangers, and war its uncertainties? And if man seems to love this adventurous life; if he has an instinct warm for this kind of perils; if the savage enjoys with delight an idleness so dearly bought;—must we thence conclude that he is happier than our cultivators? No. Their labor is more uniform, but their reward is more sure; the woman’s lot is far more agreeable; childhood and old age have more resources; the species multiplies in a proportion a thousand times greater,—and that alone suffices to show on which aide is the superiority of happiness. Thus the laws, in creating riches, are the benefactors of those who remain in the poverty of nature. All participate more or less in the pleasures, the advantages, and the resources of civilized society. The industry and the labor of the poor, place them among the candidates of fortune. And have they not the pleasures of acquisition? Does not hope mix with their labors? Is the security which the law gives, of no importance to them? Those who look down from above upon the inferior ranks, see all objects smaller; but towards the base of the pyramid, it is the summit which in turn, is lost. Comparisons are never dreamed of; the wish of what seems impossible, does not torment. So that in fact, all things considered, the protection of the laws may contribute as much to the happiness of the cottage as to the security of the palace.

It is astonishing that a writer so judicious as Beccaria, has interposed, in a work dictated by the soundest philosophy, a doubt subversive of social order. The right of property, he says, is a terrible right, which perhaps is not necessary. Tyrannical and sanguinary laws have been founded upon that right; it has been frightfully abused; but the right itself presents only ideas of pleasure, abundance, and security. It is that right which has vanquished the natural aversion to labor; which has given to man the empire of the earth; which has brought to an end the migratory life of nations; which has produced the love of country, and a regard for posterity. Men universally desire to enjoy speedily, to enjoy without labor. It is that desire, which is terrible; since it arms all who have not, against all who have. The law which restrains that desire, is the noblest triumph of humanity over itself.

CHAPTER X.

Analysis of the Evils which result from Attacks upon Property.

WE have already seen that subsistence depends upon the laws which assure to the laborer the produce of his labor. But it is desirable more exactly to analyze the evils which result from violations of property. They may be reduced to four heads.

1st. Evil of non-possession. If the acquisition of a portion of wealth is a good, it follows that the non-possession of it is an evil, though only a negative evil. Thus, although men in the condition of primitive poverty, may not have specially felt the want of a good which they knew not, yet it is clear that they have lost all the happiness which might have resulted from its possession, and of which we have the enjoyment. The loss of a portion of good, though we knew nothing of it, is still a loss. Are you doing me no harm, when by false representations you deter my, friend from conferring upon me a favor which I did not expect? In what consists the harm? In the negative evil which results from not possessing that, which but for your falsehoods, I should have had.

2d. Pain of losing. Every thing which I possess, or to which I have a title, I consider in my own mind, as destined always to belong to me. I make it the basis of my expectations, and of the hopes of those dependent upon me; and I form my plan of life accordingly. Every part of my property may have in my estimation, besides its intrinsic value, a value of affection, as an inheritance from my ancestors, as the reward of my own labor, or as the future dependence of my children. Every thing about it, represents to my eye that part of myself which I have put into it;—those cares, that industry, that economy, which denied itself present pleasures to make provision for the future. Thus our property becomes a part of our being, and cannot be torn from us, without rending us to the quick.

3d. Fear of losing. To regret for what we have lost, is joined inquietude as to what we possess, and even as to what we may acquire. For the greater part of the objects which compose subsistence and abundance being perishable matters, future acquisitions are a necessary supplement to present possessions. When insecurity reaches a certain point, the fear of losing prevents us from enjoying what we possess already. The care of preserving, condemns us to a thousand sad and painful precautions, which yet are always liable to fail of their end. Treasures are hidden or conveyed away. Enjoyment becomes sombre, furtive, and solitary. It fears to show itself, lest cupidity should be informed of a chance to plunder.

4th. Deadening of industry. When I despair of making myself sure of the produce of my labor, I only seek to exist from day to day. I am unwilling to give myself cares which will only be profitable to my enemies. Besides, the will to labor is not enough; means are wanting. While waiting to reap, in the mean time, I must live. A single loss may deprive me of the capacity of action, without having quenched the spirit of industry, or without having paralyzed my will. Thus the three first evils affect the passive faculties of the individual, while the fourth extends to his active faculties, and more or less benumbs them.

It appears from this analysis, that the two first evils do not go beyond the individual injured; while the two latter spread through society, and occupy an indefinite space. An attack upon the property of an individual, excites alarm among other proprietors. This sentiment spreads from neighbor to neighbor, till at last the contagion possesses the entire body of the state.

Power and will must unite for the development of industry. Will depends upon encouragement; power upon 4 means. These means are, what is called in the language of political economy, productive capital. When the question relates only to an individual, his productive capital may be annihilated by a single loss, while his spirit of industry is not extinguished, nor even weakened. When the question is of a nation, the annihilation of its productive capital is impossible; but a long time before that fatal term is approached, the evil may infect the will; and the spirit of industry may fall into a fatal lethargy, in the midst of natural resources offered by a rich and fertile soil. The will, however, is excited by so many stimulants, that it resists an abundance of discouragements and losses. A transitory calamity, though great, never destroys the spirit of industry. It is seen to spring up after devouring wars which have impoverished nations, as a robust oak, mutilated by tempests, repairs its losses in a few years and covers itself with new branches. Nothing is sufficient to deaden industry, except the operation of a domestic and permanent cause, such as a tyrannical government, bad legislation, an intolerant religion which drives men from the country, or a minute superstition which stupifies them.

A first act of violence, produces immediately a certain degree of apprehension; some timid spirits are already discouraged. A second violence, which soon succeeds, spreads a more considerable alarm. The more prudent begin to retrench their enterprises, and little by little, to abandon an uncertain career. In proportion as these attacks are repeated, and the system of oppression takes a more habitual character, the dispersion increases. Those who fly are not replaced; those who remain, fall into a state of languor. Thus the field of industry, beaten by perpetual storms, at last, becomes a desert.

Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, the coasts of Africa, so rich in agriculture, in commerce, and in population, at the flourishing epoch of the Roman empire, what have they become under the absurd despotism of the Turkish government? Palaces have been changed into cabins, and cities into hamlets. That government, odious to every thinking man, has never known that a state cannot grow rich except by an inviolable respect for property. It has never had but two secrets of statesmanship,—to sponge the people, and to stupify them. Thus the finest countries of the earth, wasted, barren, and almost abandoned, can hardly be recognised under the hands ‘of barbarous conquerors.

These evils ought not to be attributed to foreign causes. Civil wars, invasions, natural scourges, may dissipate wealth, put the arts to flight, and swallow up cities. But choked harbors are opened again; communications are reestablished; manufactures revive; cities rise from their ruins. All ravages are repaired by time, while men continue to be men; but there are no men to be found in those unhappy countries, where the slow but fatal despair of long insecurity, has destroyed all the active faculties of the soul.

If we trace the history of this contagion, we shall see its first attacks directed against that part of society which is easy and well off: Opulence is the object of the first depredations. Apparent superfluity vanishes little by little. Absolute need makes itself be obeyed in spite of obstacles, We must live; but when man limits himself to living, the state languishes, and the lamp of industry throws out only a dying flame. Besides, abundance is never so distinct from subsistence, that one can be destroyed without a dangerous blow at the other. While some lose only what is superfluous, others lose a part of what is necessary for by the infinitely complicated system of economical connections, the opulence of a part of the citizens is the only fund upon which a part more numerous, depends for subsistence.

But another picture may be traced, more smiling and not less instructive. It is the picture of the progress of security, and of prosperity its inseparable companion. North America presents to us a most striking contrast. Savage nature may be seen there, side by side with civilized nature. The interior of that immense region offers only a frightful solitude, impenetrable forests or sterile plains, stagnant waters and impure vapors; such is the earth when left to itself. The fierce tribes which rove through those deserts without fixed habitations, always occupied with the pursuit of game, and animated against each other by implacable rivalries, meet only for combat, and often succeed in destroying each other. The beasts of the forest are not so dangerous to man, as he is to himself. But on the borders of these frightful solitudes what different sights are seen. We appear to comprehend in the same view, the two empires of good and evil. Forests give place to cultivated fields; morasses are dried up, and the surface grown firm is covered with meadows, pastures, domestic animals, habitations, healthy and smiling. Rising cities are built upon regular plans; roads are constructed to communicate between them; every thing announces that men, seeking the means of intercourse, have ceased to fear and to murder each other. Harbors filled with vessels, receive all the productions of the earth, and assist in the exchange of all kinds of riches. A numerous people, living upon their labor in peace and abundance, has succeeded to a few tribes of hunters, always placed between war and famine. What has wrought these prodigies? Who has renewed the surface of the earth? Who has given to man this domain over nature—over nature. embellished, fertilized, and perfected? That beneficent genius is Security. It is security which has wrought this great metamorphosis. And how rapid are its operations? It is not yet two centuries since William Penn landed upon those savage coasts with a colony of true conquerors, men of peace, who did not soil their establishments with blood, and who made themselves respected by acts of beneficence and justice.

20th April 2025