Charles Hall

“ But whether the assumption of lands and other property, as it is called, naturally belonging to the whole people, into the hands of a few, can be supported on the principles of justice and reason, or not, it may, it has been said, on those of expediency or utility. Thus it has been alleged, that if property were not to be acquired, and held out as a reward of labour and industry, mankind would be indolent and inactive, having no stimulus to exertion. ”

“ Gold, silver, precious stones, and every other article of that kind, may be, on many occasions, and in many places and circumstances, of no value or use to the owner; and they are to be considered as wealth only in such places where they will be taken in exchange for, and command, such things as the possessor stands in need of, or has an inclination for; all which are the produce of the labour of man. The possession, therefore, of those things which can obtain and command the labour of man, is to be considered as wealth. ”

“ Property, as it is established in most civilised states, may be considered in a light in which it has been seldom seen. The possession of land, cattle, corn, and other things which the land produces, at the same time that it confers a benefit and an advantage on the possessor, occasions a prejudice and a disadvantage to the non-possessor; it is acquisition in the one, it is deprivation in the other. ”

“ And this power of the rich is as strong and effective as that of the most absolute monarch that ever lived, as far as relates to the labour of the poor; indeed, probably more so, since it is doubtful whether any power ever existed, in any kind of government whatever, that could impose on the people what is imposed on them by the power of wealth. ”

“ This slow increase of the people may be supposed by some to be not wholly attributable to the difficulties attending the rearing of the children of the poor, and consequent mortality; and that it might be in part owing to these difficulties being foreseen and dreaded, by the more prudent part of the poor; and their being, from that consideration, prevented from marrying. This, no doubt, may happen sometimes; but prudence is not the virtue of the youthful, especially when opposed by a passion the strongest and most difficult to be checked that human nature is subject to. ”

“ Among men, you see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together an heap of superfluities for one; getting nothing for themselves, all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own labour produces; and this one, too, oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole set—a child, a madman, or a fool; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of their labour spent or spoiled ”

“ Whatever things a man makes with his own hands, out of such materials as his proportionate share of land yields, must be allowed to be his own; and these may be accumulated, if they are not consumed by the maker of them; or they may be exchanged for other things, made by and belonging to other people, of an equal value; to be strictly estimated by the quantity of the labour employed in making the things exchanged. ”

“ It is easily seen that the acquisition of fortunes by tradesmen is in reality nothing but a participation of landed property, which is the basis, the source, and substance of all wealth, and into it all must be resolved. ”

“ But if we admit both the suppositions above mentioned, we still think that inequality of property is injurious to mankind; the effect of it being to bring poverty and misery on the many; whilst it only gives riches to the few, and does not render them happy.
It may be said that wealth might be justly acquired by industry and economy. ”

“ He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for human nature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and, consequently, of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of life. ”

“ It has frequently happened to me, and to all other physicians, that, after being called to a child of a man of fortune, ill of this disease, whom I have found in a large lofty room, well ventilated, clean, and sweet; bed soft, undisturbed by noise, anxiously attended by people relieving each other; furnished with everything the cellars, the kitchen, the garden, the druggist, can furnish; in short, everything the four quarters of the world can supply: after, I say, being with such a patient, we are frequently entreated to visit the child or children of a poor man, in the same illness ”

“ But if property or wealth is power, if it appears to be, in most civilised states, a power acting over the great mass of the people, to their disadvantage; it will not be easy to show on what principle, either of justice or expediency, it can be defended. ”

“ In such societies the varied occupations of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity which, in a civilised society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of the people."—Adam Smith, vol. ”

“ If a native of North America were to come to some European nation, he would probably, after having informed himself of the different states and conditions of the people in this society, be most struck with the great profusion and splendour of some among them, and the penury and obscurity of all the others ”

“ If we further consider the nature of the power that wealth gives the rich, in most civilised countries, over the poor, in our times, we shall find it very similar to, and that it arises from, the same source with that which anciently the great allodial lords, and the feudal barons of almost all Europe, exercised over their vassals. ”

“ It seems, therefore, that it was never through choice that manufactures were entered into by any people; it must, therefore, be from one or both of the other causes, viz., delusion or compulsion.
By the laws of most civilised nations, no man is compelled to work at any particular trade or manufacture; but at some trade or other, every one who has no property must work; and as the employment of the husbandman is limited to such a number as the capital of farmers enables them to employ, all above that number must betake themselves to other kinds of employments ”

“ We have before said that wealth is usually supposed to consist in the possession of such things as mankind, by general consent, set a value on, as land, cattle, gold, silver, precious stones, &c. But it seems doubtful whether such things can be considered as constituting the essence and nature of wealth, since the possession of them may sometimes be so circumstanced that they may be of no value to the possessor ”

“ Long after men were first placed in the world, the land, no doubt, was common to all, as it is at this day to the inhabitants of many parts of the world, North America, Tartary, &c., where the people, notwithstanding, are very far from being barbarous or savage. In this situation of things, some daring spirits arose, and seized certain parts to themselves, and their conduct was imitated by others. This, probably, must be the original foundation of exclusive property in land ”

“ To enforce the execution of such punishments would require an army almost equal in number to the people so punished. The punishments of tyrants are generally confined to those that are near them; but the power of wealth pervades the whole country, and subjects every poor man to its dominion. ”

“ Fortunes may be acquired in a kind of intermediate way, that is, by a method between that by which wealth is raised, by assuming land in the manner as before represented; and that by which a fortune is made, by accumulating only such things as are the work of a man's own hand. ”

“ Civilisation has a two-fold effect on the morals of the people; first, by depriving them of their original share of things, and reducing them to a state of both comparative and absolute poverty, it subjects them to more and much stronger temptations. ”

“ The physician, therefore, is put in possession of more facts with respect to the condition of the people than any other person; and it is only from the collection of such facts that we can arrive at the knowledge of the causes of them—for the investigation of which, his education peculiarly fits him. ”

“ The individuals of each row standing close to each other, and every inferior one closely encircling the next above it, the whole body becomes compact, and, having now acquired a broad basis, it stands, firm and immovable, against the utmost efforts of all the rest of the people, how superior soever they may be in numbers. ”

“ We do not suppose that even this, the greatest increase that happens in America, is the greatest possible; or that it is so great as would actually be, if the people and their offspring were well supplied with everything nature requires, since in America, on account of the great labour in clearing the ground for cultivation, the quantity tilled by the first planters may frequently be too scanty. But if any European state, consisting of ten millions, were to increase in the proportion they do in America, viz., to double in twenty years, they would increase ten millions in every twenty years ”

“ Things of every kind being already appropriated and in the possession of certain persons, and firmly secured to them by the laws; the prizes, which might be held out to be gained by the many, are taken, as it were, out of the wheel; and the chance of a man, without education or connexion (which is the condition of the great mass of mankind) , of bettering his fortune by any efforts of his own, is a thousand to one against him, so as utterly to act as a discouragement to all attempts of that kind. ”

“ The food of man is of a mixed nature, partly animal, partly vegetable. A certain proportion of the former is necessary to the health, strength, and growth of the human species, and without it those things cannot be obtained. The appetites and the organs he is furnished with by nature plainly indicate this.
It would be difficult to discover whether the poor have a sufficiency of animal and vegetable food, by any other method than by considering the quantity of each sort which their nature requires, and their means of obtaining that quantity ”

“ If made by a minister of state, nothing is understood further than the financial state of a kingdom, the supplies and expenditure: if by a secretary at War, the state of the army is the object of inquiry: if by a merchant, the state of trade and commerce. But it seems that there is a subject of much more importance than any of these to a nation, that never enters into the thoughts of any one to make inquiries about ”

“ In America, the land is not engrossed by a few, in the manner it is in Europe. It is easy there for a man to procure ground sufficient to produce what nature requires for the preservation and health of his offspring: the consequence is, that the inhabitants increase much faster than they do in Europe ”

“ Now, therefore, this capitalist, this manufacturer, is in reality a possessor of land, and, like him, has in his power and disposal a certain quantity of the necessaries of life, and can grant or withhold these in the same manner as his joint proprietors, as they may be called, may do. ”

“ If a poor man is employed by a master, and is paid by him the price of his hire, no injury is supposed to be done; on the contrary, it is thought that the finding employment for the labourer is beneficial to the individual as well as the public. ”