Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/156

 husbandry, others in weaving cloth, others in making shoes, others in building houses, others in making roads, others in buying and selling, others in fetching and carrying what the others want. All will be employed in something that they want themselves, or that others want. In such a state of society, nothing will be given for nothing. If a man has a bushel of wheat, and only wants half of it, he will give the other half to some one, for making him a coat or a pair of shoes. As every one will be paid for what he does out of the earnings of the labour of others, no one will waste his time or his strength in doing any thing that is not wanted by some one else, that is not as useful and necessary to his subsistence and comfort, and more so, than the commodity which he gives in exchange for it. There will be no unproductive labour. What each person gets will be either in proportion to what he has done for himself, or what he has added to the comforts of others. Exchange there will be no robbery. The wealth of all will be the result of the exertions of each individual, and will circulate equally and beneficially, because those who produce that wealth will share it among themselves. This is an untaxed state of society, where wealth changes hands indeed, but finds its level, notwithstanding.—Now suppose two other individuals to be fastened upon this society of ten persons—a government-man and a fund-holder. They change the face of it in an instant. The equilibrium, the balance is upset. The amount of the wealth of the society before was a thousand pounds a-year, suppose. The two new-comers take a writ out of their pockets, by which they quietly lay hands on five hundred of it as their fair portion. Where are the ten persons now of Mr. Burke, Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Vansittart, The Courier, say—Just where they were before! We say. No such thing. For three reasons: 1. It cannot be denied that the interlopers, the government-man and his friend, the fund-holder, who has lent him money to sport with on all occasions, are substantial bonâ fide persons, like other men, who live by eating, drinking, &. and who, if they only shared equally with the other ten what they had got amongst them,