TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TOO MUCH WORK, TOO LITTLE ENJOYMENT Ice copying our last week's suggestion on the policy of abridging the hours of labour, the Morning Post pays us the compliment to say- ,. There is so much of good sense in the following remarks, (albeit not pre- cisely the sort of good sense that we expected to find in the Spectator,) that we transfer them to our own columns with great pleasure. They are very creditable to the acuteness and right feeling of our contemporary : that they do not quite cohere with his general theories on Free Trade is his affair, not ours. Leaving that matter to him, we give his observations, in order to slow our readers the practical views of an enlightened writer, who, nevertheless, usually differs from ourselves."
It is not to be expected that the Morning Post should keep close watch upon the Spectator, or our civil opponent might have known that the moral of which be approves is not newly advocated in our columns. That is matter of fact: a little reflection would have taught the matter of reason, that there is no difficulty in reconciling such views with our opinions on Free Trade : we should say that the two necessarily go together. We advocate free trade as the obvious means of promoting the greatest amount of production with the least trouble, and promoting the completest distribution of the greatest plenty throughout the globe : but we have not attri- buted more to the science ; we never assumed it to teach the whole duty of man, or the art of life. If political economists have an overweening estimate of the power of their own systems' they are not more to be reproached than other teachers in special branches of knowledge, who almost all overrate the thing they teach. But students of the art of life would show no wisdom in rejecting poli- tical economy because it is not what it is not. We do not go to the baker for drugs or medical advice : we are satisfied if he gives good bread, though we forget not that man does not live by bread alone. An enthusiastic baker, especially if he is the patentee of some very pleasing and wholesome discovery in bread, will probably tell you that bread is the sole thing needful—the "staff of life":
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but, although you know that he is wrong, and still hold fast by the butcher and greengrocer, you do not leave off bread because the baker attributes to it undue virtue. In like manner, if you have a point to settle in metaphysics or morals, you do not turn to Mr. M'Cumocies Dictiona7 of Commerce: you go to that for com- mercial and statistical information; and if by the way you meet with frequent scholarly amenities and just reflections, you ac- knowledge that you have more than your bargain.
It is quite true that political economists are apt, in the spirit of didactic exaggeration, to carry their precepts to extremes, and to forget every thing beside their own special objects. It is their part to consider the means of increasing the material wealth of nations, and they set forth and advocate methods for the purpose. They recommend rules of parsimony, of industry, and of free trade, the sole aim of which is to increase the mass of accumulated products. There is no wisdom in neglecting their lessons—which are indeed but formulae drawn from the experience of ages—because they do not teach something besides the amassing of wealth. It is surely a very useful art to know how to amass wealth, though it is not all we wish to know. We need not suppose that because there is money in a country all men must be misers and do nothing but hoard coin ; or that, because money gives opportunity to avarice, i
and men actually become misers, t would be wise to abolish money. To the neglect of some of the plainest dictates of common sense, belonging to that section of the wisdom of the age called political economy, we owe some of the worst of existing evils ; not one of the least being, that improvements cannot be cau- tiously begun — like those of Sir ROBERT PEEL - without pro- ducing much dread and some injury to those whose habits have been warped to the vicious system.
If, instead of idly denouncing political economy, the advantages of which are too tangible not to be generally though gradually appreciated, effort had been made to teach an art which ought to have accompanied it, and which may be called wsthetical economy, more good might have been done. Here have been the political economists teaching that there are certain advantages derivable from saving, from industrious producing, and from incessant inter- change ; and traders, in search of those benefits, have saved, pro- duced, and exported to excess. They were taught nothing else ; for, not to take "religious destitution" into account, the doctrines of religion present no antagonism to parsimony, industry, and com- mercial activity. One of the best uses, however, to which political economy—the art of producing the most out of a given amount of means—can be put, is abridging the period of labour and enlarging the period of enjoyment. To instance an hypothetical case—for we have said there is none extant—if it take an average individual daily labour of eight hours to provide necessaries for all the souls of a population, political economy, with its auxiliary mechanical skill, might teach how to provide the necessaries in four hours; devoting one more hour perhaps to obtain a surplus means for enjoyment, and the remainder for the enjoyment itself. But that lesson is not one within the province of mere political economy. The rules of a craft—of the weaver's craft, for instance—would teach the weaver how to produce the greatest quantity of cloth in a given tune; but, literally rendered, they would only teach him to make so much more cloth in a day : they alone would not supply him with the means of deciding whether or not it were better to make the same or rather a larger amount of cloth in a leas time than before, but to take more time to other pursuits.
But the neglect has been yet worse. Not only have the people not been taught that it is desirable, on practical gronndsrte devote- less time to toil, but they have not been taught how to employ their time, if they take it. If the working-classes had so many hours a day, or a clear day in the week, what have they been taught to do with it ? They cannot walk all day ; even visits to the British Museum, and similar exhibitions, must sometimes pall. Nay, the very course of our Legislature—the popular practical in- structor—has been to forbid all occupations but handicraft work— all the class of employments most accurately called recreations. The people of this country are utterly ignorant of the art of em- ploying leisure; while the public-house courts their use with the coarsest of all enjoyments. Even if they had means, therefore, to purchase enjoyment, they do not know how to lay out the pur- chase-money.
It is not that we want restricted trade in things material to dis- place political economy,—which can have bad no hand in existing evils, since it has only now barely begun to dictate the course of lawmakers,—but we want free trade in things intellectual, and a popular education in the accidence of testhetical economy.
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