It will be found that a true system of political economy must rest upon a moral basis. Trust, freedom, and gradually evolved sympathy are the foundations on which all systems of industry are built up that permanently civilize races.
Trust.—Trust is the beginning of exchange. Nordenfeld, in his record of observation round the Arctic circle, relates how money or articles were left in perfect safety, and faithfully replaced by equivalent articles in exchange. A striking instance of the necessity of re-creating trust as the foundation of industry where it has been lost by long-continued oppression, is related by a gentleman who many years ago went as mineral viewer to the Nerbudda Valley. Almost alone, and far removed from the possibility of obtaining white labour, the natives refused to dig for him. He felt compelled to capture a few men and enforce a day’s work, which he at once honestly paid for with the copper currency of the region. But it seemed to the natives the grossest folly on his part that, having gained the labour, he should pay for what he had already obtained, and feeling sure that he would not repeat such folly, they hid away on the following day. The capture had to be repeated during many successive days, and the heavy coin brought at great inconvenience for the daily payment, before the habit of trust could be fairly established; then an oversupply of willing workers crowded round the encampment.
Freedom.—A great advance was made in the onward march of humanity, when the reasons for abolishing slavery became clear to the conscience of the minority, those nations who lead the van of human progress. The production and sale of human beings as articles of merchandise can be made extremely profitable as a money-making trade. It has been truly said that ‘if the reproduction of capital is the one great means of a nation’s wealth’; if demand and supply, the employment of labour by capital, and profits limited only by the wages of maintenance, are laws of political economy and the right guides of industry, ‘why should sentimental notions about justice and abstract rights of freedom interfere with the national good? Why not grow corn on the sweating system? Why not buy slaves? There is no reason, on so-called economic grounds, why slaves should not be bred like cattle—bred to the exact wants of the agriculturist, and when no more wanted melted down in the sulphuric acid tank and drilled in with the root crops. Any farmer who would have courage to carry on the economy of labour and the reproduction of capital in that way, would farm at a splendid profit.’
For long ages the trade in human beings has been, and is still, carried on. It has only very gradually dawned upon human intelligence, that short-sighted trading customs which destroy the conditions of human development, injure equally the sellers and the sold, and gradually degrade and destroy the societies that practise them. This second foundation of political economy—freedom—still remains unrecognised by the large majority of the human race. But when the destructive character or essential wrong of human slavery was once thoroughly understood by a portion of our nation, they never rested from the fight until it was abolished. The abolition of slavery was the revolt of conscience and intelligence against a false mercantile system which converts everything into money value.
The wisdom of Wilberforce and his heroic band made a great step in advance by laying down a permanent law for the guidance of human industry. They saw that the human being belongs to a different category of creation from the subjects of his industry, and that he may not be made a thing of trade, that he owes duties to himself and to his neighbours, and that he can neither sell another adult, nor his child, nor himself; that the purpose of human life and the methods of attaining it, are both destroyed when the condition of human freedom is violated by converting human bodies into chattels. The abolition of slavery forbade henceforward the purchase or sale of any individual, whether adult or child.
The same uprisings against injustice in the kindred nation of the United States, has produced a similar advance in intelligent conscientiousness. However much the American Revolution may be misunderstood, the facts remain which prove the great moral movement which preceded it—two generations of united and resolute lovers of freedom, although a minority, had fought to the death for the cause of justice, and prepared the way for the great Emancipation Act of 1863.
It could not be denied that temporary phases of political economy were being set at nought by the abolitionists. There was no flaw in the logic of maintaining slavery as a money-making machine. Vast tracts of land were to be cultivated, useful products raised, craving desires satisfied, great profits realized, and a clever, energetic race was able to abuse a weak, childish one. But the abolition of slavery united the two leading branches of the Anglo-Saxon race in setting a limit to trade. They established the law that no human being may be bought or sold. They recognised the fundamental conditions of human industry, trust, and freedom, and thus established that higher law that removes human beings from the operations of a mercantile system which measures all things by the standard of money.
Sympathy.—Another great step in advance has been made by the dawn of the Co-operative movement amongst us. As Abolition set a limit to the subjects of trade, so Co-operation is setting a limit to its methods. True co-operators clearly see that to arrest the slave-owner and the slave-dealer by the strong arm of the law, is but a first step to human progress; it is only compelling a necessary condition, not insuring a good end.
But co-operation will secure gradually the third necessary basis of progressive and durable human industry—viz., sympathy.
Doubtless this statement will at once bring to mind not only the selfish combinations of Civil Service supply, but the multifarious quarrels and departure from principle, in the great body of working people distinctively called co-operators.