owth of manufactures, which is fostered by the
progress of social equality. Manufactures generally collect a multitude
of men of the same spot, amongst whom new and complex relations
spring up. These men are exposed by their calling to great and sudden
alternations of plenty and want, during which public tranquillity is
endangered. It may also happen that these employments sacrifice the
health, and even the life, of those who gain by them, or of those who
live by them. Thus the manufacturing classes require more regulation,
superintendence, and restraint than the other classes of society, and
it is natural that the powers of government should increase in the same
proportion as those classes.
This is a truth of general application; what follows more especially
concerns the nations of Europe. In the centuries which preceded that in
which we live, the aristocracy was in possession of the soil, and was
competent to defend it: landed property was therefore surrounded by
ample securities, and its possessors enjoyed great independence.
This gave rise to laws and customs which have been perpetuated,
notwithstanding the subdivision of lands and the ruin of the nobility;
and, at the present time, landowners and agriculturists are still those
amongst the community who must easily escape from the control of the
supreme power. In these same aristocratic ages, in which all the
sources of our history are to be traced, personal property was of small
importance, and those who possessed it were despised and weak:
the manufacturing class formed an exception in the midst of those
aristocratic communities; as it had no certain patronage, it was not
outwardly protected, and was often unable to protect itself.
Hence a habit sprung up of considering manufacturing property as
something of a peculiar nature, not entitled to the same deference,
and not worthy of the same securities as property in general; and
manufacturers were looked upon as a small class in the bulk of the
people, whose independence was of small importance, and who might with
propriety be abandoned to the disciplinary passions of princes. On
glancing over the codes of the middle ages, one is surprised to see,
in those periods of personal independence, with what incessant royal
regulations manufactures were hampered, even in their smallest details:
on this point centralization was as active and as minute as it can ever
be. Since that time a great revolution has taken place in
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