isitive power of capital with that of the lance
and sword; the only difference being that the levy of black mail in old
times was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver
frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night; the modern one
merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy
it. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating pedlar; but the
result, to the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of
course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless
ones; and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a
certain direct good. It is far better to spend four thousand pounds in
making a good gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in
idleness. Only do not let it be called 'political economy.' There is
also a confused notion in the minds of many persons, that the gathering
of the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate
harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last,
and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been
again and again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the same apology
may, of course, be made for black mail, or any other form of robbery. It
might be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation
that the robber should have the spending of the money he extorts, as
that the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse for
the theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my
own gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, the
public would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on
my part that 'it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should
spend their shillings, as that they themselves should.' But if, instead
of out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come in
and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my
ground, I may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as
a public benefactor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And this
main question for the poor of England--for the poor of all countries--is
wholly omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even
by the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded only
in its effect on their immediate interests; never in the far more
terrific power of its appointment of the kind and the object of labour.
It matters