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0.Y I-t'DUSTA'I.+l L PARTAVERSHIPS. 1-47
reach of distress. But I am confident that the richer amtion of
the working-classes may soon despise all notions of m&bnm
and dependence. By the Post Office Life Assumnos system
they can provide for their widows aud children in cme of accident
or early death ; by deferrod annuities they can insum
comfort for old age and remove every risk of the workhouse ;
sick societies will insure them from the pressure of prolonged
illness; and he who can further accumulate a sum in tho Post
Office or other savings banks can meet a period of bad trade,
or can emigrate at will. It is only by accumulation and providence
in some of these modes that he who depends upon his
labour can be raised above the chances and almost inevitable
vicissitudes of lifo. Weekly wages cannot be depended on;
and it. is only in becoming small capitalists that the workingclasses
mill acquire the real independence from misfortune,
which is their true and legitimate object.
XII.
Before concluding I may say that it is an unpleasant circumstance
concerning discussions upon capital and labour,
that the sympathies and antipathies of large numbers of men
are involved in the question, and that it is hardly possible to
discuss the subject without prejudice, or at least the imputation
of prejudice. I am much inclined to fear that some who
are the professed teachers of the science, and should view it as
a matter of science in the most unbiased manner, allow their
sympathies to lead their judgment. It speaks much indeed
for the character of English statesmen that the three greatest
popular leaders of our time-Cobden, Bright, and Gladstonehave
been the foremost to uphold the doctrines of free trade
and free labour, whether they were popular or unpopular.
The emphatic condomnation which Mr. Gladstone pronounced
at Oldham, upon some of the more common objects and rnlee
of Trades Unions stamped him, it seemed to me, as one of the
most upright and fearless of ministers. It is the statesmen
of England, rather than the political economist8, who have
upheld the inestimable principle of freedom in laboar.
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