[403] “There is one fundamental change which is still possible in society, amid this universal struggle created by competition, and that is the introduction of the proletariat into the ranks of human beings—the proletariat, whose name, borrowed from the Romans, is so old, but who is himself so new.” (Études sur l’Économie politique, vol. i, p. 34.)
[404] Revue mensuelle d’Économie politique, 1834, vol. ii, p. 124.
[405] Nouveaux Principes, vol. ii, p. 434.
[406] Études sur l’Économic politique, introd., pp. 39 et seq.
[407] “That everyone understands his own interest better than any Government ever can is a maxim that has been considerably emphasised by economists. But they have too lightly affirmed that the interest of each to avoid the greatest evil coincides with the general interest. It is to the interest of the man who wishes to impoverish his neighbour to rob him, and it may be the latter’s interest to let him do it provided he can escape with his life.
“But it is not in the interest of society that the one should exercise the force and that the other should yield. The interest of the day labourer undoubtedly is that the wages for a day of ten hours should be sufficient for his upkeep and the upbringing of his children. It is also the interest of society. But the interest of the unemployed is to find bread at any price. He will work fourteen hours a day, will send his children to work in a factory at ten years of age, will jeopardise his own health and life and the very existence of his own class in order to escape the pressure of present need.” (Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, pp. 200-201.)
[408] Ibid., p. 201.
[409] “Population will then regulate itself simply in accordance with the revenue. Where it exceeds this proportion it is always just because the fathers are deceived as to what they believe to be their revenue, or rather because they are deceived by society.” (Ibid., p. 254.) “The more the poor is deprived of all right of property the greater is the danger of its mistaking its revenue and contributing to the growth of a population which, because it does not correspond to the demand for labour, will never find sufficient means of subsistence.” (Ibid., p. 264.)
[410] Ibid., p. 286.
[411] We note that Sismondi does not accept Malthus’s theory of population. He never admits that population depends upon the means of subsistence; he holds that it varies according to the will of the proprietor, who stimulates or retards it according to his demand, but who is interested in its limitation in order to secure for himself the maximum net product. “Population has never reached the limits of possible subsistence, and probably it never will. But all those who desire the subsistence have neither the means nor the right to extract it from the soil. Those, on the contrary, to whom the laws give the monopoly of the land have no interest in obtaining from it all the subsistence it might produce. In all countries proprietors are opposed, and must be opposed, to any system of cultivation which would tend merely to multiply the means of subsistence while not increasing the revenue. Long before being arrested by the impossibility of finding a country which produced more subsistence population would be checked by the impossibility of finding the people to buy those means or to work and bring them into being.” (Nouveaux Principes, vol. ii, pp. 269-270.)