Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the Press; But we grow old. Ah, when shall all men's good Through all the circle of the golden year?-TENNYSON. WE rarely hear of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is cverywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters, upon these occasions, are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.-SMITH's Wealth of Nations.' SOCIETY is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure-but the State ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership, not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular State is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible worlds according to a fixed compact, sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow. -Burke, THE people who live in small villages, or in scattered habitations in the country, have certainly not so many direct benefits from machinery as the inhabitants of towns. They have the articles at a cheap rate, which machines produce, but there are not so many machines at work for them as for dense populations. From want of knowledge they may be unable to perceive the connection between a cheap coat or a cheap tool, and the machines which make them plentiful, and therefore cheap. But even they, when the saving of labour by a machine is a saving which immediately affects them, are not slow to acknowledge the benefits they derive from the best of economy. The Scriptures allude to the painful condition of the "hewers of wood" and the "drawers of water;" and certainly, in a state of society where there are no machines at all, or very rude machines, to cut down a tree and cleave it into logs, and to raise a bucket from a well, are very laborious occupations, the existence of which, to any extent, amongst a people, would mark them as remaining in a wretched condition. In our own country, at the present day, there are not many houses, in situations where water is at hand, that have not the windlass, or what is better, the pump, to raise this great necessary of life from the well. Some cottagers, however, have no such machines, and bitterly do they lament the want of them. We once met an old woman in a country district, tottering under the weight of a bucket, which she was labouring to carry up a hill. We asked her how she and her family were off in the world. She replied, that she could do pretty well with them, for they could all work, if it were not for one thing-it was one person's labour to fetch water from the spring; but, said she, if we had a pump handy, we should not have much to complain of. This old woman very wisely had no love of labour for its own sake; she saw no advantage in the labour of one of her family being given for the attainment of a good, which she knew might be attained by a very common invention. She wanted a machine to save that labour. Such a machine would have set at liberty a certain quantity of labour which was previously employed unprofitably; in other words, it would have left her or her children more time for more profitable work, and then the family earnings would have been increased. But there is another point of view in which this machine would have benefited the good woman and her family. Water is not only necessary to drink and to prepare food with, but it is necessary for cleanliness, and cleanliness is necessary for health. If there is a scarcity of water, or if it requires a great deal of labour to obtain it, which comes to the same thing as a scarcity, the uses of water for cleanliness will be wholly or in part neglected. If the neglect becomes a habit, which it is sure to do, disease, and that of the worst sort, cannot be prevented. When men gather together in large bodies, and inhabit towns or cities, a plentiful supply of water is the first thing to which they direct their attention. If towns are built in situations where pure water cannot be readily obtained, the inhabitants, and especially the poorer sort, suffer even more misery than results from the want of bread or clothes. In some cities of Spain, for instance, where the people understand very little about machinery, water, at particular periods of the year, is as dear as wine; and the labouring classes are consequently in a most miserable condition. In London, on the contrary, water is so plentiful, that between thirty and forty millions of gallons are daily supplied to the inhabitants; which quantity is distributed to about two hundred thousand houses and other buildings, the supply to each varying from one hundred to three hundred and fifty gallons daily. To many of the houses this water is, by the aid of machinery, not only delivered to the kitchens and washhouses on the ground-floors, where it is most wanted, but is sent up to the very tops of the houses, to save even the comparatively little labour of fetching it from the bottom. All this is done at an average cost to each house of from less than a penny to about twopence a day; which is a less price than the labour of an able-bodied man would be worth to fetch a single bucket from a spring half-a-mile from his own dwelling. And how did the inhabitants of London set about getting this great supply of water? How did they get a sufficient quantity, not only to use as much as they please for drinking, for cooking, and for washing, but obtained such an abundance, that the poorest man can afford to throw it away as if it cost nothing, into the channels which are also provided for carrying it off, and thus to free his own room or house from every impurity; and by so doing to render this vast place one of the most healthful cities in the world? They set about doing this great work by machinery; and they began to do it when the value of machinery in other things was not so well understood as it is now. As long ago as the year 1236, when a great want of water was felt in London, the little springs being blocked up and covered over by buildings, the ruling men of the city caused water to be brought from Tyburn, which was then a distant village, by means of pipes; and they laid a tax upon particular branches of trade to pay the expense of this great blessing to all. In succeeding times more pipes and conduits, that is more machinery, was established for the same good purpose; and two centuries afterwards, King Henry the Sixth gave his aid to the same sort of works, in granting particular advantages in obtaining lead for making the pipes. The reason for this aid to such works was, as the royal decree set forth, that they were "for the common utility and decency of all the city, and for the universal advantage;" and a very true reason this was. As this great town more and more increased, more waterworks were found necessary; till at last, in the reign of James the First, which was nearly two hundred years after that of Henry the Sixth, a most ingenious and enterprising man, and a great benefactor to his country, Hugh Myddleton, undertook to bring a river of pure water above thirty-eight miles out of its natural course, for the supply of London. He persevered in this immense undertaking, in spite of every difficulty, till he at last accomplished that great good which he had proposed, of bringing wholesome water to every man's door. At the present time, the New River, which was the work of Hugh Myddleton, supplies seventeen millions of gallons of water every day; and though the original projector was ruined by the undertaking, in consequence of the difficulty which he had in procuring proper support, such is now the general advantage of the benefit which he procured for his fellow-citizens, and so desirous are the people to possess that advantage, that a share in the New River Company, which was at first sold at one hundred pounds, is now worth fifteen thousand pounds.-KNIGHT'S •Capital and Labour.' |