against the spirit of fatalism which is now, under the doctrine of Natural Development, creeping over the whole face of society. Every wise man must perceive the inexorable limits which arise from natural conditions—but he will not admit the inexorable character of artificial conditions which are imposed by the selfishness or by the error of man. My labour as a politician is directed towards what seem to me to be the preventible causes of human suffering. If there are in this country during a single year no less than 5,000,000 people who are, at some time in it, either paupers or alms receivers, that terrible fact is largely due in my opinion to artificial conditions and circumstances, which result from human institutions and which come within the province of the legislature to improve or remove. The leaders of the two factions. Whig and Tory, who govern the country by means of political power, are constantly at pains to convince working men that there is no value in political power; and certainly, observing the obstacles they place in the way of working men possessing political power, there is every reason to believe that they are perfectly sincere. They value political power themselves too much to concede it to others. I wish to impress on you the value of political power. Political power affords the means of improving bad circumstances, which create poverty, and which are nevertheless wilfully preserved by politicians who only represent those, who are in good circumstances.
A bad land system, in spite of the amiability of landowners, makes bad circumstances, and by depriving people of the means of industry, creates poverty. It is political power in the hands of the few which upholds this bad land system, and agricultural labourers who are without political power mainly suffer from it.
Do you think if agricultural labourers had possessed power during the last 150 years—combined with an intelligence sharpened by a National system of education—that seven million acres of public commons would have disappeared? Would they not have said through their representatives "If these 7,000,000 acres are to be appropriated, they must be leased from the State in farms suitable to small cultivators as well as to large cultivators." What is it that has reduced agricultural labourers to their present condition? It is want of education and a bad land system. How is it that this land system, which every political teacher from Adam Smith to Mill has in vain condemned, remains in full blight? It is because those who are interested in its alteration have had no political power.
