portional sum.* Though landowners dominated Parliament, their economical position was of course very different from that of their feudal predecessors. The nobles and squires of the eighteenth century, though still to a great extent tied to their own property and neighbourhood, were really divorced from any duty towards the labourers, and had become sleeping partners in the profits of the farmer. The manufacturers, bankers, merchants, &c., exercised a pressure from without on the legislature similar in kind, though greater in degree than the working-classes exert upon our capitalist House of Commons now.

The artisans were in a period of transition like the rest. The old system was falling into ruins; the new class antagonism was but slightly felt. Already, however, the introduction of machinery cast its shadow before, and one thinker at least saw very early in the day what a complete social revolution its uncontrolled operation might bring about in the condition of the people. Sir James Steuart, writing in 1767, ten years before the publication of Adam Smith's work, says:-" Neither can a machine which abridges the labour of man be introduced all at once into an extensive manufacture without throwing many people into idleif a number of machines are all at once introduced into the manufacture of an industrious nation (in consequence of that freedom which must necessarily be indulged to all sorts of improvement, and without which a State cannot thrive), it becomes the business of a statesman to interest himself so far in the consequences as to provide a remedy for the inconveniences resulting from the sudden alteration."

ness

But the power of the individual capitalist over the *See Rodbertus-Jagetzoff in Appendix.

whole process of production and exchange had got too far by this time for any heed to be paid to such wise counsels. Each for himself had become almost the only guiding principle of the community. Everything led relentlessly up to the formation of a destitute proletariat in the country as well as in the great cities, entirely at the disposal of the possessing class. "Why do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry," asks the writer last quoted, "but by coming nearer to the simplicity of slaves?" The simplicity of slaves indeed! Such is the lot provided for the mass of the English people from the end of the last century. The remainder of this work will trace the record of its development. From the yeoman and lifeholder to the vagrant and farmer's hind; from the vagrant and farmer's hind to the agricultural labourer and artisan; from the artisan and agricultural labourer to the slave to the machine: Here is the sad evolution. The nobility and gentry who now owned the State and controlled the political business were as anxious for the extension of commerce as the trading class. Still, up to the latter half of the eighteenth century, England differed from other countries only in having larger commercial interests, in proportion to her population, than any other European nation. great economical revolution that was all the time preparing had not yet become manifest. France, Germany, Italy, might, to all appearance, have as well taken the lead in the new processes of production as ourselves. That they did not was due to causes geographical, geological, social, and economical, which can now be clearly seen.

The

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CHAPTER IV.

LABOUR AND SURPLUS VALUE.

IN the last three chapters I have briefly passed through the economical and social transition from the England of the feudal times, when men were for the most part in command of their means of production which they handled for the purpose of obtaining articles of immediate use, only the superfluity being brought forward for exchange, they themselves also being bound to one another to their feudal superiors and to the Church by personal and not by mere pecuniary relations-from this period, which in the main represented rude wealth and prosperity for the people, the development of a race of landless families has been traced contemporaneously with a growth of large landowners, considerable farmers and capitalists, and an artisan and agricultural-labourer class, but few of whom could become masters of a business, or who could hope to obtain, either as owner or tenant, any large extent of land. During the whole of this 250 or 300 years, the condition of the mass of the people had been becoming more and more dependent upon the good pleasure of the classes above them. Exchange, which in the earlier period had been a secondary consideration for production, now gradually became the paramount object; the means of production also, as well as the control of individual exchange, instead of being very widely distributed, had become concentrated to a large

extent in the hands of a class. Banking, credit, the funding system, the world-wide character of the market for goods, and the expansion of commerce thence resulting, all tended in the same direction.

The developments of the power of human production, whether in agriculture or in manufacture, are necessarily due to a long series of circumstances, failing any one of which the improvement could not have been made. The introduction in agriculture of the turnip, of the potato, of artificial grasses, of rotation of crops; the vast improvement in the breed of domestic animals, which has enabled meat and beasts of burden to be produced of so much better quality than heretofore; the properties of manures and their right application; the preservation of fish by salting and curing, which added so enormously to our food supply, extending the cod, ling, and herring fisheries to the propor- . tions of great industries: all these inventions are due to the combined observation and steady industry, not of one or two, but of thousands or millions of our race, though some lucky individuals may be honoured for the last crowning bit of work. Division of labour again, whether adapted to special advantages of soil and climate in particular regions-as wool-growing in Australia, cotton-growing in Louisiana, hunting and forestry in the Tyrol, &c.-or devoted to the abridgement of toil in workshops and factories, this, one of the most powerful engines for the domination of nature and the increase of produce, arises from the long, general, neverceasing progress of human society, and is in nowise to be laid to the account of one or more men of individual genius. Precisely the same with shipping and navigation. No man knows who invented the mariner's compass, or who first hollowed out a canoe from a log. The power to

observe accurately the sun, moon, and planets so as to fix a vessel's actual position when far out of sight of land, enabling long voyages to be safely made; the marvellous improvements in shipbuilding, which shortened passages by sailing vessels, and vastly reduced freights even before steam gave an independent force to the carrier-each and all were due to small advances, which together contributed to the general movement of mankind.

So with the great industrial inventions and machines, simple or complicated. Who can fix upon the actual discoverers of the application of wool or flax, silk or cotton, hemp or jute, madder or indigo to human use, or adornment, or luxury? Their names are legion, doubtless; but all have been swept away as time has slowly passed its effacing finger over the records of the past. With machines the same is true, from the simple wheel, the pump, the forge, the stencil-plate, and the potter's-wheel, onwards to printing, steam, electricity, and the great machine-making machines. Each owes all to the others. The forgotten inventors live for ever in the usefulness of the work they have done and the progress they have striven for. We of to-day may associate mythical or noble names with the advances we specially remember; but too often even then the real worker and discoverer, if such there were, remains unknown, and an invention, beautiful but useless in one age or country, can be applied only in a remote generation, or in a distant land. Mankind hangs together from generation to generation; easy labour is but inherited skill; great discoveries and inventions are worked up to by the efforts of myriads ere the goal is reached. Those, therefore, who hold that the individual is all, who contend that these organisers or that class have the right to take from their fellows in return for