o
the highest bidder. Labour only is awarded to the lowest.

A nation which has surrendered its government to the commercial classes,
and at the same time has a large population and considerable territorial
possessions, cannot fail to incur ruin if their rule is long continued.
The reason is, that their interest is adverse to that of the most
numerous, important, and valuable classes of society; and they never cease
to prosecute that interest till they have destroyed them. To import
largely is for their interest; therefore, they promote all measures
tending to favour the introduction of foreign productions, though their
effect must be to depress, and in the end extinguish, native industry.
They would have the people pay for these imports by enlarged exports; in
other words, they would convert society into a mere appendage of the
trading classes. To enlarge these exports, they make the most strenuous
effort in every possible way to cheapen production--that is, to lower the
wages of labour. Their idea of a perfect society is one in which the
labouring classes are reduced to the rank of mere attendants on machines,
because that is the cheapest form of production. They would have them
attend on these machines at sixpence or ninepence a-day, live chiefly on
potatoes, and eat no bread but what is imported in foreign vessels, and
from foreign countries, because they are cheaper than their own. In this
way both exports and imports would be elevated to the highest pitch; for
the main part of the national food would figure in the imports, and the
main part of national labour in the exports. Mercantile business would
come to supersede every other--it alone would be attended with any profit.
Meanwhile, domestic industry would languish and decline--the home market
would be destroyed--the rural population, the main stay of a nation,
gradually withered away and wasted. Poverty and misery would weaken and
alienate the working classes; and, amidst a constant increase of exports
and imports, and growth of commercial wealth, the nation would be
destroyed.

This is no imaginary picture. The ruin of the Roman empire in ancient, the
desolation of the Campagna of Rome in modern times, are permanent proofs
of its reality.

It is generally said that slavery was the devouring cancer which destroyed
the Roman Empire, and thence it is concluded by the Chrematists that, as
we have no slaves, we can never be ruined like them. They forget that the