Advice to Young Men / And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.

by William Cobbett

342. Here, young man of sense and of spirit; here is the point on which you are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause of the rich; enough and enough to echo the woes of the fallen great; but, be it your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their rights. Poverty is not a crime, and, though it sometimes arises from faults, it is not, even in that case, to be visited by punishment beyond that which it brings with itself. Remember, that poverty is decreed by the very nature of man. The Scripture says, that 'the poor shall never cease from out of the land;' that is to say, that there shall always be some very poor people. This is inevitable from the very nature of things. It is necessary to the existence of mankind, that a very large portion of every people should live by manual labour; and, as such labour is pain, more or less, and as no living creature likes pain, it must be, that the far greater part of labouring people will endure only just as much of this pain as is absolutely necessary to the supply of their daily wants. Experience says that this has always been, and reason and nature tell us, that this must always be. Therefore, when ailments, when losses, when untoward circumstances of any sort, stop or diminish the daily supply, want comes; and every just government will provide, from the general stock, the means to satisfy this want.

343. Nor is the deepest poverty without its useful effects in society. To the practice of the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, care, frugality, industry, and even honesty and amiable manners and acquirement of talent, the two great motives are, to get upwards in riches or fame, and to avoid going downwards to poverty, the last of which is the most powerful of the two. It is, therefore, not with contempt, but with compassion, that we should look on those, whose state is one of the decrees of nature, from whose sad example we profit, and to whom, in return, we ought to make compensation by every indulgent and kind act in our power, and particularly by a defence of their rights. To those who labour, we, who labour not with our hands, owe all that we eat, drink and wear; all that shades us by day and that shelters us by night; all the means of enjoying health and pleasure; and, therefore, if we possess talent for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if we omit any effort within our power to prevent them from being slaves; and, disguise the matter how we may, a slave, a real slave, every man is, who has no share in making the laws which he is compelled to obey.

344. What is a slave? For, let us not be amused by a name; but look well into the matter. A slave is, in the first place, a man who has no property; and property means something that he has, and that nobody can take from him without his leave, or consent. Whatever man, no matter what he may call himself or any body else may call him, can have his money or his goods taken from him by force, by virtue of an order, or ordinance, or law, which he has had no hand in making, and to which he has not given his assent, has no property, and is merely a depositary of the goods of his master. A slave has no property in his labour; and any man who is compelled to give up the fruit of his labour to another, at the arbitrary will of that other, has no property in his labour, and is, therefore, a slave, whether the fruit of his labour be taken from him directly or indirectly. If it be said, that he gives up this fruit of his labour by his own will, and that it is not forced from him. I answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and drinking and may go naked; but, then he must die; and on this condition, and this condition only, can he refuse to give up the fruit of his labour; 'Die, wretch, or surrender as much of your income, or the fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.' This is, in fact, the language of the rulers to every man who is refused to have a share in the making of the laws to which he is forced to submit.

345. But, some one may say, slaves are private property, and may be bought and sold, out and out, like cattle. And, what is it to the slave, whether he be property of one or of many; or, what matters it to him, whether he pass from master to master by a sale for an indefinite term, or be let to hire by the year, month, or week? It is, in no case, the flesh and blood and bones that are sold, but the labour; and, if you actually sell the labour of man, is not that man a slave, though you sell it for only a short time at once? And, as to the principle, so ostentatiously displayed in the case of the black slave-trade, that 'man ought not to have a property in man,' it is even an advantage to the slave to be private property, because the owner has then a clear and powerful interest in the preservation of his life, health and strength, and will, therefore, furnish him amply with the food and raiment necessary for these ends. Every one knows, that public property is never so well taken care of as private property; and this, too, on the maxim, that 'that which is every body's business is nobody's business.' Every one knows that a rented farm is not so well kept in heart, as a farm in the hands of the owner. And as to punishments and restraints, what difference is there, whether these be inflicted and imposed by a private owner, or his overseer, or by the agents and overseers of a body of proprietors? In short, if you can cause a man to be imprisoned or whipped if he do not work enough to please you; if you can sell him by auction for a time limited; if you can forcibly separate him from his wife to prevent their having children; if you can shut him up in his dwelling place when you please, and for as long a time as you please; if you can force him to draw a cart or wagon like a beast of draught; if you can, when the humour seizes you, and at the suggestion of your mere fears, or whim, cause him to be shut up in a dungeon during your pleasure: if you can, at your pleasure, do these things to him, is it not to be impudently hypocritical to affect to call him a free-man? But, after all, these may all be wanting, and yet the man be a slave, if he be allowed to have no property; and, as I have shown, no property he can have, not even in that labour, which is not only property, but the basis of all other property, unless he have a share in making the laws to which he is compelled to submit.

346. It is said, that he may have this share virtually though not in form and name; for that his employers may have such share, and they will, as a matter of course, act for him. This doctrine, pushed home, would make the chief of the nation the sole maker of the laws; for, if the rich can thus act for the poor, why should not the chief act for the rich? This matter is very completely explained by the practice in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There the maxim is, that every free man, with the exception of men stained with crime and men insane, has a right to have a voice in choosing those who make the laws. The number of Representatives sent to the Congress is, in each State, proportioned to the number of free people. But, as there are slaves in some of the States, these States have a certain portion of additional numbers on account of those slaves! Thus the slaves are represented by their owners, and this is real, practical, open and undisguised virtual representation! No doubt that white men may be represented in the same way; for the colour of the skin is nothing; but let them be called slaves, then; let it not be pretended that they are free men; let not the word liberty be polluted by being applied to their state; let it be openly and honestly avowed, as in America, that they are slaves; and then will come the question whether men ought to exist in such a state, or whether they ought to do every thing in their power to rescue themselves from it.

347. If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt by every man who lives under that want. If it were proposed to the shopkeepers in a town, that a rich man or two, living in the neighbourhood, should have power to send, whenever they pleased, and take away as much as they pleased of the money of the shopkeepers, and apply it to what uses they please; what an outcry the shopkeepers would make! And yet, what would this be more than taxes imposed on those who have no voice in choosing the persons who impose them? Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money to the will of another? Has it not always been, and must it not always be, true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is certain? And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community.

348. Aye, and experience shows us that it always has been the case. The natural and inevitable consequences of a want of this right in the people have, in all countries, been taxes pressing the industrious and laborious to the earth; severe laws and standing armies to compel the people to submit to those taxes; wealth, luxury, and splendour, amongst those who make the laws and receive the taxes; poverty, misery, immorality and crime, amongst those who bear the burdens; and at last commotion, revolt, revenge, and rivers of blood. Such have always been, and such must always be, the consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience.

349. Well, then, this right being that, without the enjoyment of which there is, in reality, no right at all, how manifestly is it the first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right where it exists, and to restore it where it has been lost? For observe, it must, at one time, have existed in every civil community, it being impossible that it could ever be excluded by any social compact; absolutely impossible, because it is contrary to the law of self-preservation to believe, that men would agree to give up the rights of nature without stipulating for some benefit. Before we can affect to believe that this right was not reserved, in such compact, as completely as the right to live was reserved, we must affect to believe, that millions of men, under no control but that of their own passions and desires, and having all the earth and its products at the command of their strength and skill, consented to be for ever, they and their posterity, the slaves of a few.

350. We cannot believe this, and therefore, without going back into history and precedents, we must believe, that, in whatever civil community this right does not exist, it has been lost, or rather, unjustly taken away. And then, having seen the terrible evils which always have arisen, and always must arise, from the want of it; being convinced that, where lost or taken away by force or fraud, it is our very first duty to do all in our power to restore it, the next consideration is, how one ought to act in the discharge of this most sacred duty; for sacred it is even as the duties of husband and father. For, besides the baseness of the thought of quietly submitting to be a slave oneself, we have here, besides our duty to the community, a duty to perform towards our children and our children's children. We all acknowledge that it is our bounden duty to provide, as far as our power will go, for the competence, the health, and the good character of our children; but, is this duty superior to that of which I am now speaking? What is competence, what is health, if the possessor be a slave, and hold his possessions at the will of another, or others; as he must do if destitute of the right to a share in the making of the laws? What is competence, what is health, if both can, at any moment, be snatched away by the grasp or the dungeon of a master; and his master he is who makes the laws without his participation or assent? And, as to character, as to fair fame, when the white slave puts forward pretensions to those, let him no longer affect to commiserate the state of his sleek and fat brethren in Barbadoes and Jamaica; let him hasten to mix the hair with the wool, to blend the white with the black, and to lose the memory of his origin amidst a dingy generation.

351. Such, then, being the nature of the duty, how are we to go to work in the performance of it, and what are our means? With regard to these, so various are the circumstances, so endless the differences in the states of society, and so many are the cases when it would be madness to attempt that which it would be prudence to attempt in others, that no general rule can be given beyond this; that, the right and the duty being clear to our minds, the means that are surest and swiftest are the best. In every such case, however, the great and predominant desire ought to be not to employ any means beyond those of reason and persuasion, as long as the employment of these afford a ground for rational expectation of success. Men are, in such a case, labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come; and therefore they should not slacken in their exertions, because the grave may close upon them before the day of final triumph arrive. Amongst the virtues of the good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one by one.