gencies of the labouring multitude,
that degree of ability to regulate the price of labour, which is
indispensable for the reasonable interest of arts and manufactures,
cannot, in Great Britain, be upheld.

* * * * *

II. In a poem of the foregoing collection, allusion is made to the state
of the workmen congregated in manufactories. In order to relieve many of
the evils to which that class of society are subject, and to establish a
better harmony between them and their employers, it would be well to
repeal such laws as prevent the formation of joint-stock companies.
There are, no doubt, many and great obstacles to the formation and
salutary working of these societies, inherent in the mind of those whom
they would obviously benefit. But the combinations of masters to keep
down, unjustly, the price of labour would be fairly checked by them, as
far as they were practicable; they would encourage economy, inasmuch as
they would enable a man to draw profit from his savings, by investing
them in buildings or machinery for processes of manufacture with which
he was habitually connected. His little capital would then be working
for him while he was at rest or asleep; he would more clearly perceive
the necessity of capital for carrying on great works: he would better
learn to respect the larger portions of it in the hands of others; he
would be less tempted to join in unjust combinations: and, for the sake
of his own property, if not for higher reasons, he would be slow to
promote local disturbance, or endanger public tranquillity; he would, at
least, be loth to act in that way _knowingly_: for it is not to be
denied that such societies might be nurseries of opinions unfavourable
to a mixed constitution of government, like that of Great Britain. The
democratic and republican spirit which they might be apt to foster would
not, however, be dangerous in itself, but only as it might act without
being sufficiently counterbalanced, either by landed proprietorship, or
by a Church extending itself so as to embrace an ever-growing and
ever-shifting population of mechanics and artisans. But if the
tendencies of such societies would be to make the men prosper who might
belong to them, rulers and legislators should rejoice in the result,
and do their duty to the State by upholding and extending the influence
of that Church to which it owes, in so great a measure, its safety, its
prosperity, and its glory.