The Advantages, Even To The Few Who Reap Them, Would Be
Seen To Be Mostly Physical, While The Wide-Spread
Moral and
intellectual evils resulting from unceasing labour, low wages,
crowded dwellings, and monotonous occupations, to perhaps as
large a
Number as those who gain any real advantage, might be
held to show a balance of evil so great, as to lead the greatest
admirers of our manufactures and commerce to doubt the
advisability of their further development. It will be said: "We
cannot stop it; capital must be employed; our population must be
kept at work; if we hesitate a moment, other nations now hard
pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin will follow." Some
of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult
problem which we have to solve; and I am inclined to think it is
this difficulty that makes men conclude that what seems a
necessary and unalterable state of things must be good-that its
benefits must he greater than its evils. This was the feeling of
the American advocates of slavery; they could not see an easy,
comfortable way out of it. In our own case, however, it is to be
hoped, that if a fair consideration of the matter in all its
hearings shows that a preponderance of evil arises from the
immensity of our manufactures and commerce-evil which must go on
increasing with their increase-there is enough both of political
wisdom and true philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to
turn their superabundant wealth into other channels.
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