of wealth' is one of the
master-evils, and with sinecures will disappear the systems of entails
and unequal distribution of inheritance.[460] Such institutions have
encouraged the use of fraud and force, and indirectly degraded the
labourer into a helpless position. He would sweep them all away, and
with them all disqualifications imposed upon women.[461] This once
done, it will be necessary to establish a universal and thoroughgoing
system of education. Then the poor man, freed from the shackles of
superstition and despotism, will be able to obtain his rights as
knowledge and justice spread through the whole community. The desire
to accumulate for selfish purposes will itself disappear. The labourer
will get all that he creates; the aggregate wealth will be enormously
multiplied, though universally diffused; and the form taken by the new
society will, as he argues at great length, be that of voluntary
co-operative associations upon Owen's principles.

The economists would, of course, reject the theory that the
capitalists should have no profits; but, in spite of this, they might
agree to a great extent with Thompson's aspirations. Thompson,
however, holds the true Socialist sentiment of aversion to Malthus. He
denies energetically what he takes to be the Malthusian doctrine: that
increased comfort will always produce increased numbers.[462] This has
been the 'grand scarecrow to frighten away all attempts at social
improvement.' Thompson accordingly asserts that increased comfort
always causes increased prudence ultimately; and looks forward to a
stationary state in which the births will just balance the deaths. I
need not inquire here which theory puts the cart before the horse. The
opposition possibly admits of reconciliation; but here I only remark
once more how Malthus stood for the appeal to hard facts which always
provoked the Utopians as much as it corresponded to the stern
Utilitarian view.

Another writer, Thomas Hodgskin, honorary secretary of the Birkbeck
Institution, who published a tract called _Labour defended against the
Claims of Capital, or the Unproductiveness of Capital proved_ (1825),
and afterwards gave some popular lectures on political economy, has
been noticed as anticipating Socialist ideas. He can see, he says, why
something should go to the maker of a road and something be paid by
the person who gets the benefit of it. But he does not see why the
road itself should have anything.[463] Hodgs