Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/57

Rh supply the wants of mankind. If a man, for instance, is employed in removing a heap of stones from one place to another, and from thence back again, and so repeatedly; if he is paid for so doing, where is the harm? it is said. The harm would be evident if a greater number were employed in that way; or, if the whole of the people were so for some time, we should then be destitute of the necessaries of life. Hence, notwithstanding the price of hire is paid, not only the public, but that individual labourer, is injured, by being deprived of that share of the product of his labour which, if the labour had been properly directed, would have flowed from it. Hence the delusion is evident. It will, moreover, be afterwards proved that he does not receive sufficient for his hire.

But it will be found that the principal cause which draws off the labour from the cultivation of the land, is the last mentioned, viz., compulsion.

By the unequal distribution of wealth in most civilised states, the people are divided into the two orders before mentioned, namely, the rich and the poor. In the hands of the former are lodged those things of every kind which compose what is generally called wealth. In one class of the rich all the lands are vested; in another, the cattle and the corn raised on them; in a third, the raw