if Industry is
ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World; if there be no
nobleness in them, there will never be an Aristocracy more." Can a man,
who has this destiny entrusted to him, imagine that his vocation consists
merely in getting together a large lump of gold, and then being off with
it, to enjoy it, as he fancies, in some other place: as if that which is
but a small part of his business in life, were all in all to him; as if
indeed, the parable of the talents were to be taken literally, and that a
man should think that he has done his part when he has made much gold and
silver out of little? If these men saw their position rightly, what
would be their objects, what their pleasures? Their objects would not
consist in foolish vyings with each other about the grandeur or the
glitter of life. But in directing the employment of labour, they would
find room for the exercise of all the powers of their minds, of their
best affections, and of whatever was worthy in their ambition. Their
occupation, so far from being a limited sphere of action, is one which
may give scope to minds of the most various capacity. While one man may
undertake those obvious labours of benevolent superintendence which are
of immediate and pressing necessity, another may devote himself to more
remote and indirect methods of improving the condition of those about
him, which are often not the less valuable because of their indirectness.
In short, it is evident that to lead the labour of large masses of
people, and to do that, not merely with a view to the greatest product of
commodities, but to the best interests of the producers, is a matter
which will sufficiently and worthily occupy men of the strongest minds
aided by all the attainments which cultivation can bestow.

I do not wish to assert a principle larger than the occasion demands: and
I am, therefore unwilling to declare that we cannot justly enter into a
relation so meagre with our fellow-creatures, as that of employing all
their labour, and giving them nothing but money in return. There might,
perhaps, be a state of society in which such a relation would not be
culpable, a state in which the great mass of the employed were cultivated
and considerate men; and where the common interests of master and man
were well understood. But we have not to deal with any such imaginary
case. So far from working men being the considerate creatures we have
just imagined them, it is