THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT AND THE WORKING CLASSES. [From the Times, April 19.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 329, 23 September 1848, Page 3

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT AND THE WORKING CLASSES. [From the Times, April 19.]

i It is very desirable, as Sir Peel remarked last night, that the honest and intelligent of the working classes should correctly apprehend the force and tendency of those principles which are now proclaimed as operating for their peculiar profit and advantage. We are sure that there is not an industrious work* man in the United Kingdom who would for a moment endure those regulations which under 'the title of a new organization of labour the French Government has proposed to introduce. No maxims even of Robespierre's latest days have ever yet been developed into any system so destructively stupefying as this. The revolutionists of the last century attacked the rich and the noble ; the social reformers of last February attack the poor and the lowly. No privilege is too small or too natural for their denunciations ; no property too remote or too legitimate for their interdicts. The unit by which a whole population is to be measured — the pattern to which all capacities, professions, are to be trimmed, is not that of a middle-class tradesman, ,x»r a saving shopkeeper, or even an industrious workman, but that of an idle, ignorant, and careless

panper, unaffected by any wants of nature, and free from any necessities of competition. Such a day's work as a man ■ may do whose fare will be 'just the'sarae whether, he works or not — this is to be the standard' of daily labour. Such a day's pay as can be -permanently fojjnd to remunerate such production — this is to be the standard of daily wage. Do our readers know the principle on which the ateliers nationaux, the "Government workshops " of France are to be established and conducted ? These manufactories are to be originated by Government, and operatives of all trades and callings are to be admissible under such classifications as shall be found most convenient. They are then to work under the superintendence, for the first year of the establishment's existence, of Government commissioners ; subsequently, under Chat of overseers chosen by themselves. The wage of every man is to be equal, without reference either to his capacity, bis industry, or his calling. The yearly "^profits" of the whole establishment are to be divided into three paits, one to be distributed equally amongst the inmates of the manufactory, another to be applied to the support of the old and infirnr, and the third to provide means for propagating and extending so beneficial a system. It it presumed that no private enterprise can successfully compete with such associations as these, but that the " national manufactories " will at first rule all prices of production, and ultimately absorb all the labour of the country. When this has been done, it is proposed to establish the same affiliation between the manufactories of the different provinces as will already have been established between the associates of each manufactory, so that there may be no more possibility of competition between the looms at Lyons, for instance, and the looms of Lille than between any two individual looms of either of those cities. When this system has been carried out through the length of the land and in every department of industry, the "principles of association will have been substituted for the principle of competition," and the great social reform of the age will have been triumphantly achieved. Let our readers steadily reflect on the operation, and, if they can, conjecture the probable result of such principles as these. The project is nothing more nor less than an attempt to subvert the revealed conditons of our being, to annihilate the instinctive motives of nature, and to remove all the inducements which have been hitherto known to the rugged and toilsome paths of elevated virtue. Man is no longer to live by the sweat of his brow ;heis to live at any rate — if not by his own labour, then by that of somebody else. His lot is cast for biro, and he can no more diversify or evade it than he can add a cubit to his stature. There will be no temptations to employ a good capacity or improve a bad one ; no stimulus to industry, no motive for thrift. The most frugal and painstaking workman will get no more than his most idle and reckless companion. No sagacity or sobriety will enable him to rise above that average dole which the universal combination of his brethren has fixed. He has nothing to hope from activity, as his neighbour has notbiug to fear from sloth. He can lay out no plans for his future course, and conceive no designs for his private advancement, comfort, or protection. He will have no home of his own, nor any cheerful fireside, for it is admitted that life in common will be a necessary feature of these " social" establishments. All individuality of dispositions or talents, together with all consequent distinctions of fortune or fare, will be utterly lost. A man will be no longer an individual with his own private hopes and fears, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, to be regulated by his own temper and controlled by his own conduct. He will be a simple unit of an interminable series, identified by a number or a symbol like a ticketed convict, and the whole country will be nothing but a gigantic union workhouse, sustained by the partial labour of its inmates. But, it will be answered, supposing that every man thus fares as well as only the-for-tunate fare now, who will be the lcser ? Why should a man repine to see all his fellow-men raised to his own level without injury to himself ? These remarks can only be met by a reasonable conjecture as to that unit of remuneration which is to form the universal standard. Undoubtedly, if all the levelling is to be downwards, and not upwards — if the income in which every man, apajrt from his own exertions, is to be guaranteed by the State represents a supply sufficient for the. allowable wants of civilised nature, there will be something to counterbalance the loss which humanity must sustain in the destruction of all its known motives to exertion. But how is this ■to come to pass ? On what grounds are we justified in supposing that the cost of production will be decreased under the system in question, and the divisible profits increased ? The labourers are to receive, under any conditions, a greater salary ; that is a fundamental proposition. Theatre to labour, for. a

shorter period ; that is equally taken for granted. The profit, therefore, most be sought either in the augmentation of capital or in the aggregate increase of energy displayed by the association. As to the first of these sources, whether th« term " capital" be understood in its sense of realised means, or in that of individual skill, energy, or acquirement, every proposition of the system goes deliberately to circumscribe and exhaust it. As to the second, is it compatible with the present attributes of human nature that such performances should be expected from men so circumstanced ? No doubt it will be for the nominal benefit of each manufactory that its produce should be as large as possible ; but how will this reflection operate upon the exertions of each individual ? The gratifications he may derive from indolence are palpable and immediate ; the advantages he may gain from industry are inappreciable and remote. Each man's individual interest is directly opposed to the general interest : and can any person doubt the result of such conditions until the Provisional Government or the National Assembly shall first have succeeded in changing human nature itself ? The Minister of Labour has suggested that decorations should be the reward of the most industrious and successful of the workmen, and we have little doubt but that in such a case these aristocratic! and unfraternal symbols would again be tolerated, and that in an "association" of 1000 workmen, the 550 independents would willingly permit the 450 whose labour maintained the whole to be distinguished by red ribbands and stars ; but would not this be something like a reproduction of the old system of inequality ? The truth is, that the whole project is a monstrous attack upon those natural universal privileges which no declamation can destroy — upon the privileges, uot of wealth, or caste, or favour, but of capacity, industry, and thrift. It is literally an exploitation of the honest hardworking labourer for the benefit of his idle, dissolute, and clamourous fellow. It is levelling all workmen alike to the condition of those who will do nothing to raise themselves. It condemns every careful and thriving operative who sees his way to comfort and competence to the tyrannical dictation of an universal trades-union, and the palsy of a perpetual strike. And all this it does under the pretext of bettering the state -of those whom it would indeed reduce to a common level of indiscriminate distress.