Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/121

 CHAPTER XVII.

RELIEF TO UNEMPLOYED OR DESTITUTE A RIGHT, NOT A CHARITY.

Inability of a People ignorant of Social Rights to choose Representatives—Duties of a wise Democracy—Omnipotency of a Knowledge of Social Rights—Facility of Application of Social Reforms—Exposition of the three Provisional Measures necessary.

We have stated, in a former chapter, that the repeal of unjust laws, and the enactment of a few just and salutary ones, upon Land, Credit, and Equitable Exchange (the latter including Currency), are all that is wanted to terminate poverty and slavery for ever; and that nothing is easier than for Parliament to enact such laws without infringing the rights of private property, without confiscating to the value of a shilling of any man's estate, or otherwise dealing with property than in the legitimate way of taxation and commutation which the laws of all countries recognise and practise, and none more so than our own.

The resolutions which we have before cited show clearly how it may be done. An honest Parliament is of course presupposed; for, without an honest legislature to begin with, reform is all moonshine. The first article of the League's creed is, therefore, a full, free, and fair representation of the whole people. To that end it demands the enactment of the "People's Charter"—not because it regards the Charter's plan of representation as perfect, but because that plan is sufficiently so for all practical purposes, and because, having already received the sanction of millions of the population, it would be unwise and mischievous to risk dividing the people by the propounding of any fresh scheme, the more especially as any defects in the "Charter" may be easily enough remedied hereafter by a parliament or convention elected upon Chartist principles.

But although the "People's Charter" is a sine qua non with the League, it is, after all, but a machinery for providing the means to an end. The means is parliamentary reform; the end is social reform, or a reformation of society through the operation of just and humane laws. The "Charter," in fact, but aims at restoring to the people the undoubted right of self-government—the right of making the laws according to which, and to which only, they are to be ruled. It leaves to the people themselves to do all the rest. It gives them the power to elect what sort of representatives they choose, and to exact from them what pledges they like in the way of social and political reform. With the people themselves, however, it must ultimately rest whether even the "People's Charter" shall give them veritable political and social rights.