Economic Sophisms/151

139

IV.

LOWER COUNCIL OF LABOUR. " you have the face to demand for all citizens a right to sell, buy, barter, and exchange; to render and receive service for service, and to judge for themselves, on the single condition that they do all honestly, and comply with the demands of the public treasury? Then you simply desire to deprive our workmen of employment, of wages, and of bread?" This is what is said to us. I know very well what to think of it; but what I wish to know is, what the workmen themselves think of it. I have at hand an excellent instrument of inquiry. Not those Upper Councils of Industry, where extensive proprietors who call themselves labourers, rich shipowners who call themselves sailors, and wealthy shareholders who pass themselves off for workmen, turn their philanthropy to account in a way which we all know.

No; it is with workmen, who are workmen in reality, that we have to do—joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors, shoemakers,