The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-21 00:00:00

S N, DECEMBER 21, 1848.

the receipt from which always swells with the general
diffusion of comfort.
This advance of 300,000,000 francs would, therefore,
be no sacrifice, but a splendid investment. And when
the State thinks of the end, how could it refuse this ad-
vance—the State which spends annually 46,000,000
for the purpose of preventing or of punishing the attacks
at property, which sacrifices every year 300,000,000 to
fashion the nation to a military life, and at this moment
purposes 120,000,000 for the construction of new prisons!
Ina word,could thecountry whieh without ruin has given
two milliards to its invaders—which without a murmur
has paid one milliard to emigrants—which without
flinching spends two or three hundred millions upon the
fortificaions of Paris—could such a country hesitate to
pay 300,000,000 in four years for the purpose of de-
stroying pauperism, of emancipating the unions (" corn-
unines'!)• from the immense burden imposed on them by
destitution, and, in fine, of augmenting our territorial
wealth by more than a milliard?
3. ORGANIZATION.—The masses are nothing without
organization; they are everything with discipline. With-
out
organization they cannot speak, nor even make them-
selves understood; they cannot hear—they cannot re-
ceive a common impulse. On the one side the voice of
20,000,000 of persons, scattered over a vast territory, is
lost, without even an echo; and on the other side nu
words are loud and persuasive enough to convey from a
common centre to the consciences of 20,000.000, without
recognised intermediaries, the ever harsh doctiines of
authority.
Now-a-days the reign of castes is over: you can go
vern by the masses only; they must, then, be organised,
that they may give form to their will—and be. disci-
plined, that they may be directed and enlighteued,on the
subject of their own interests:
Domineering by violence over a people is no longe-r
now to govern it; togovern it is to conduct it to a better
future, by appealing to its reason and its heart. But as
the masses require to be instructed and moralised, and
as, in its turn, authority re quires to be restrained and
enlightened with respect to the interests of the majority,
it is quite necessary that there should be two co-
ordinate movements in society—the influence of autho-
rity upon the masses, the influence of the masses upon
authority. Now, these two agents cannot operate with-
out a collision, if there be net mediators who may pos-
sess at once the confidence of those whom they repre-
sent and the confidence of those who govern. These
mediators will have the confidence of the former when
by the former they shall be freely elected; and of the
latter they will ,deserve the confidence when they come
to fill an important place in society; for, in general, it
may be said that man is what his office makes him.
Guided by these considerations, we should like to see
between the operatives and their employers an interme-
diate class created, which should have legally recognised
rights, and should be elected by the whole body of ope-
ratives.
This intermediate class should be an order of
umpires ("prud'honzmes").
We would, each year, have all the labourers or opera-
tives assemble at the corporation to choose their repre-
sentatives or umpires, at the rate of an umpire to every
ten workmen. Good conduct should be the only quali-
fication. Every master-manufacturer and master-farmer,
every contractor whosoever, should be obliged by law, if
he employed more than ten workmen, to have an umpire
to superintend them, and to pay this umpire double the
salary of the common journeymen.
These umpires would discharge in the worldng
community the same functions which the non com-
missioned officers discharge in the army. They would
form the first minor order in the social hierarchy,
stimulating the laudable ambition of all by showing
them the example of a reward easy to obtain.
Exalted in their own eyes by the very duties which they
would have to perform, they would be compelled to ex-
hibit a model of good conduct. By this means every
decade of workmen would contain within itself the germ
of perfection. What improves men, is to present con-
tinually to their eyes an object at once honourable and
honoured.
As for the impulses which would have to be imparted
to the masses, in the way of instruction, of communica-
tions, of suasives to action, the question would be sim-
plified precisely in a tenfold degree; and taking twenty.
five millions of persons who live by their work from day
to day, there would be two millions five hundred thou-
sand of mediators with whom communications could be
maintained with a confidence the more complete, inas-
much as such mediators would share at once in the
interests of those who obey and in the ideas of those who
command.
These moderators should be divided into two classes.
One class would remain in the world of private industry,
the other would be employed in the agricultural esta-
blishments. And (we repeat) this twofold mission would
be the result of a direct election accorded to the whole
of the operative class.
CHAPTER lII.—AGRICULTURAL COLONIES.

Let us suppose that the three foregoing measures 'are
adopted.
The twenty-five actual millions of journeymen possess
representatives, and the fourth part of the agricultural
domain of France is their property.*
In each department, and above all where waste lands
are in the greatest quantity, agricultural colonies arise,
offering bread, instruction, religion, work to all who
want them--and God knows whether there be not innu-
merable persons in such want throughout France.
These charitable institutions, in the midst of an ego-
tistical world, delivered up to the feudalism of money,
must have the same beneficial effect which was produced
by those monasteries of the middle ages which were,
amid forests and among warriors and serfs, the germs of
light, peace, and civilization.
The association possessing unity of operation through.
out France, the unequal distribution of waste lands, and
even the paucity of those lands in certain departments
would be no impediment. The poor families of a de-
partment which, at first, might not have an agricultural
colony, would repair to the next department ; the great
advantage of partnership king to distribute help equally
and to relieve all distresses, without being checked by
the consideration which at present exculpates every in-
humanity--" he is not of this union" (commune).
The agricultural colonies would have two ends to
fulfil—the first, to support a great number of poor fami-
lies, by making them till the lands, tend the cattle, &c. ;
the second, to afford a temporary refuge to that floating
mass of labour to which the prosperity of industry im-
parts feverish energy, and which the stagnation of trade
or the introduction of new machines plunges into the
deepest misery. Every poor man, every person out of
work, would in the places mentioned find means to turn
their strength and intelligence to their own account and
to the profit of the community at large.
Thus there would be in these colonies, b( sides; the
number of men, women, and children strictly necessary
for the farming works, a great number of labourers
incessantly employed either in clearing new lands or in
building new establishments for the infirm and the old;
the advances granted to the association and its ul-
terior profits would enable it to employ annually a
considerable amount of capital in these productive dis-
bursements.
When private capital shall want hands, it will seek
for them at these central emporiums, which, from that
very fact, will maintain wages at a remunerative rate;
for it is clear that.tbe labourer, certain to find in the
agricultural colonies an assured existence, will not ac-
cept work at the hands of private capital, except in pro-
portion as the latter offers him a profit over and above
that strictly necessary remuneration constantly supplied
to him by the general association.
To stimulate these barters and to excite the emula-
tion of the labourers, a sum could be charged on the
profits of each establishment, for the purpose of creating
for each operatives particular fund. This accumulation
would constitute a real savings bank, which, over and
above wages, would yield to every workman at the
moment of his discharge a share, the amount of which
should be determined by the days of his labour, by his
zeal, and by his good conduct. In this manner the dili-
gent workman will be able, at the end of a few years, to
accumulate, by means of his particular fund, a sum suffi
cient ta provide for him during the remainder of his days,
even out of the colony.
In order better to define our system, we will employ
an illustration. When through the midst of a country
flows a great river, it is a general cause of prosperity;
but, occasionally, the too great abundance, or the
extreme scantiness of its waters, leads to inundations
or to drought. What is done to obviate these two
scourges ? The Nile affords us an example ; great
basins are dug, into which the stream pours the sur-
plusages of its waters when they swell too high, and
whence it receives them back when they sink to
insufficiency; and by this means is secured that constant
and level flow which begets abundance. Well, that is
what we propose with respect to the working class, that
other river which may alike cause ruin or fertility, ac-
cording to the manner in which its course may be traced.
We seek on behalf of the floating mass of the population
great places of refuge where their strength and their
mind might be sedulously developed, and where during
times of general depression the surplus of unemployed
labour should be preserved with a view to its subsequent
redistribution in due proportions. We seek, in a word,
real escapes for the population and useful tanks of its
industry, which might maintain at a constant and equable
level the observance of that ordinance of Divine justice
which commands that the sweat of the poor man shall
receive its just hire.
The umpires or representatives of the labourers are
to be the regulators of this continual undulation. The
umpires of private industry,f conversant with all the '
wants of their subordinates, are to share with the
mayors of corporations the right of dispatching their
unemployable hands to the agricultural colonies. The
umpires of the colonies, conversant with each man's
powers, will seek to place advantageously under the
sphere of private capital all whom the latter may re-
quire. Some practical inconveniences will perhaps be
found in this exchange; but what institution is without
such inconveniences at the outset? Ours would have
the immense advantage of multiplying the instruction of

+ We have supposed that the operative association
would at first but farm the land, since they would pay
to the actual proprietors the slender revenues which they
derive from the waste lands and from the commons; but
by degrees the association would buy up the fee simple.
t We thus translate here the word " industrie," which
it is well known that the French often employ in this
sense, and often also in the meaning which we attach to
the expression " capital,' l'industrie et le travail" com-
monly correspond to our " capital and industry."

the people, of giving it healthful work, and of teaching
it agriculture; and would render general that practice
introduced by the culture of beet-root sugar, and eat( n
by that of silk, that practice on the part of journeymen
of passing alternately from the labours of the field to the
labours of the workship. The umpires would be one in
ten, as in the sphere of private capital.
Besides the umpires, there are to be superintendents
commissioned to teach tillage.
These superintendents are to be elected by the um-
pires and workmen together. Proofs of earticider
knowledge of agriculture will be required of them .•s
tests of eligibility. F.n.ll,ie a goy, rnor in each eel ,ey
is to be set over these superintendents, umpires• anti
workmen. This governor will be nominated by the su-
perintendents and umpires together.
The administration is to consist of the governor and of
a committee composed of a third of the superintendents
and two-thirds of the umpires.
Every year the accoun:s are to be printed, communi-
y
beeattreadyetod tthheeigreinnecroawl (E)facwhorkmen, and laid be-
toree. fence,
ycon outlay,ehai
geAeis
ithi
1i
heie obit prhst
reni:stc:
cashiering
u,sesgss
eanrbe
au
onyubone
fei
faghl rtrtschatrualil
al
nit
enteru
icppsi Olijosisrf
n(eaciltroeee:droio,ililnhri
wellur.
asor, t
tusef thus
tp)6utotet:shwhri
eiei
weot department,
n (l e
1) s as
mwho
have will
have to sanction them, and will possess the right of
are to repair to Paris, and there, under the presidency of
treceipts
iueltd,
llabourers
yearer)discussoaiebpuvdeter theeemftxrcoh cx) uedhesnebaehgdi ene.oosduxnty,
exceeded
use to
h,
.tnrrenlos.
et filch to put the profits standing to the account of the
generel association.
of creating these agricultural colonies without establish-
the earlier stages, be barracked, like our troops.; It is
nsupplementary buildings will ari-e, where civil and re
tigious instruction will he supplied to the members of
the colony and to the children. Finally, vast hospitals
will be formed fur the infirm and supetannuat. d.
Severe discipline will prevail in these colonies ; a rude
but healthful life will there be led, for their end is net
to feed sluggards, but to ennoble men, by vigorous and
remunerative labours, and by a moral education.
The workmen and families employed in these colonies
will be maintained in the simplest manner. L doings,
pate food, raiment, will be regulated after the military
tariff; for the military is the only organization bastd a;
once on the well-being of all its members and on the
strictest economy.
Nevertheless these colonies would not be military at
all, they would borrow from the army its admirable
order, nothing more.
The army is but an organization; the working class
would form an association. These two bodies would
therefore have very different principles, and a very dif-
ferent end.
The army is an organization which, having to execute
the commands of its leader blindly and promptly, must,
above all things, have a system of ranks graduated from
above.—(" Une hierarchie qui part den haut.")
The working class, consisting of an association whose
officers' only duty would be to regularise and execute
the common will, should have an electoral system of
ranks. Our proposal, therefore, has no relation to mili-
tary colonies.
To render our plan mere plain, we will give an esti.
mate of the probable receipts and outlays of an agricul•
tutal colony. Our calculations are grounded on official
figures. Still every one will understand how difficult
such a budget must be. There is nothing h ss exact than
a minute calculation of the productions of the earth. We
claim not that we have foreseen everything. The best
foresight, says Montesquieu, is that which feels it cannot
foresee all. But, if our figures can lead to discrepant
conclusions, we will not grant as much for our system
in itself. It may be, in spite of the care with which we have
made our valuations, that we have omitted some expenses
or even some receipts, or reckoned the returns of the
earth at too high a rate; but such omissions affect not at
all the main idea, which we hold to be just, true, fertile
in good results; the following simple arguments will
prove this.
The returns of the soil, exclusive of what belongs to
the fiscal department, are commonly divided into three
portions—the gains of the labourer, the pre fit of the
tanner, the property of the landowner.
In our model firms, the working class would absorb
all these three products, and would at once be wo:kman,
farmer, and owner. Its returns, then, would be immense,
and the more so because, in a well-formed association,
the expenses are always smaller than in private specula-
tions. The first resource would enable a great number
of poor families to live in modest competence; the second
would form those individual funds already mentioned;
the third would not only build houses of charity, but
would incessantly augment the capital of the society by
she purchase of new lands.
Phis is one of the greatest advantages of our own
plan. For every system devoid of a principle of conti-
nued increase is defective; it may, perhaps, lead to tem-
porary benefits, but, when its object is attained, the
distress which it sought to annihilate revives—it is as if
nothing frid been done. the poor-law i❑ England and
the workhouses afford striking examples of the truth
of this.
Bore, on the contrary, once the agricultural colonies
are in full bearing, they will always be able to extend
rkmen.
bstat
hthipaleeile,ti
appointment
part
torptomfth
moee
thisrtn.
more
trp,
er,ty. andaci:
rtroeteefioas
tchsmaaebpu:;:tt. riutnshTeglesrhtieaw:ce:elni:steha. mtnordfeaynnheitststai:nf.
wnodertsaopout(hbl,adie.;
scot the cultivated lands he on this account neglected.
The supernumerary workmen already mentioned would
re enter the general field, until some new public stagna-
tion should drive them back to the agricultural colony.
Thus, while on the one hand, property becomes more
and more subdivided by our equalising law, the operative
association will reconstruct property and cultivation on
the grand scale.
While• capital continually draws our population to
the towns, the colonies will attract them back to the
country.

Whin no more sufficiently cheap land shall remain in
France, the society will establish ancillary branches in
Algeria and even in America. Some day yet it will
engross the world; for wherever there will remain an
acre to clear, and a poor man to feed, that association
will appear with its capital, its host of labourers, and its
ceaseless activity.
Let no one accuse us of being dreamers of impossibili-
ties. We should only have to point to the example of
the famous English East India Company. What was
the latter it not just such another society as we propose,
but with effects, though amazing, yet less favourable to
humanity than would be those of the institution which,
with all our hearts, we pray may arise. Before piercing
so far into the future, let us calculate the probable re-
ceipts and outlays of these establishments.
CHAPTER IV.—RECEIPTS AND OUTLAYS.
According to our hypothesis, the operative association
would have to clear two-thirds of 9,190,000 hectares of
ground now uncultivated, that is, 6,127,000 hectares.
To know what these hectares would bring, if subjected
to skilful culture, without the fallow land, we have made
the following calculation:—
The number of cultivated hectares in all
France is
Of meadows, natural and artificial

Total of foreign and domestic consumption 24,929,925
Deducting this sum from the amount produced, there re-
main 11,853,298 hectolitres unused.
These figures show at Once the cause and the remedy
of the distress; they prove the superiority of the na-
tional to the export market, for if by the means indi-
cced the impulse impressed upon the home traffic in-
creased consumption only by one-tenth, an event rot
out of probability, the increase would accordingly be of
2,357,824 hectolitres, which is nearly double our entire
exports.
On the other hand, if the policy of our rulers succeeded
and we are far from auguring that it will, in augmenting
our exports even by one-fifth, that increase would be but
270,334 hectolitres.
Labour creating competence, and competence creating
consumption, are the true foundations of a country's pros-
perity. The first duty, then, of a wise and able Ministry
is to strive, by the improvement of agricultoreend of the lok
Ofthe majority, to increase home consumption, which is far
from having reached itsheight. For, statistically speaking,
in Franc? each inhabitant consumes yearly, on art ave-
rage—of wheat, merlin, rye, 271 hectolitres, which gives
328 rations of bread annually to such indivi,!nal; of
meat, 20 kilog.; of wine, 70 litres; of suLzar, 3 to 4
kilog.; which, humanly speaking, amounts to this, that
in France there are many millions of individuals who
eat not bread, or meat, or sugar, and who drink not
wire. For all the rich consume much more than the
average, that is to say, 365 rations of bread, instead of
328; 180 kilog. of meat, instead of 20 kilog.; 365 litres
of wine,
of 3 2 5.
instead of 70; and 50 kilog. of sugar, instead
-
We do not produce too much, but we consume too little.
Instead, then, of going to China in quest of consumers,
let us augment the riches of our own territory; let us
employ all idle hands to the benefit of every existing
distress and trade; or rather, if it be wished, let us do
both; but, above all, let us not forget that a country like
France, which has been so richly endowed by Heaven,
contains within itself all the elements of its prosperity,
and that it is a disgrace to our civilisation to think that
in the nineteen! h century at least the tenth part of our
population are in rags and are dying of hunger in the
presence of millions of manufactured produce, which
cannot be sold, and of millions of agricultural produce
which cannot be consumed.
To sum up all, the system which we propose is the
result of all the ideas and wishes put forth by the most
competent economists of the last half century.
In M. Govin's report to the King, which stands at
the head of the official agricultural statistics, the Minister
(p. 28) declares that one of the greatest possible ita-
provements would be the clearing of those lands which
yield but Bf. by the hectare. Our plan realises this
thought.
All men who are animated by the love of their fellow-
creatures demand a tardy justice for the working
classes, who seem to be disinherited from all the advan-
tages of civilisation ; our plan gives to those classes
everything that can raise the condition of man—cempe-
fence, instruction, order— and to ea&l indßidnai the
means of rising by his own merit and his own labour.
Our organization has no meaner tendency than to render,
at the end of some years, the class which is the poorest
now, the richest association in all France
At present the wages of labour are I,ft to ch/ince or
violence. Either the master oppresses or the workman
rebels. By our system wages are fixed, as human things
ought to be determined, not by compulsion, but by a just
equipoise between the wants of those who toil and the
necessities of those who make them toil.
At present, all is salt nee at Pari!,, the °en t.e alone
absorbs all the activity of the country ; our spttem,
without harming the centre, conveyes life to he , xtte•
unities, by calling into action under the high dir, etitni of
the Government 86 new indivolualitiestoilirg e( s'it'u-
ally towards perfection.
And what i, 1,. ces,aty to realise this ;I.ojeet? A
year's srtny estimate—fifteen times the sum wt,ich Inns
b_en ~:iven to America—a cost equal to that which is
laid out en the fortifications of Park
And this sdv.ince would, at the end of twenty yoears,
bring a milliard of francs to Franc- 800,000,000 t the
working classes, and 37,000,000 to the treasury.
Let the Gov( rnment carry out our id. a, with what-
ever modifications the expel.; ence of men conversant
with these complicated matters may suggest in the way
of useful information or new hints-- let the Government
take to heart the great 'national interests—let it es-
tablish the well-being of the- masses on an unshakeable
foundation, and it will be itself unshakeable. Poverty
will cease to be seditious when wealth ceases to be ty-
rannical ; opposition will disappear, and the obsolete
pretensions which, rightly•or wrongly, are ascribed to
certain men, will vanish as those bent bre. zes that skim
the surface of the sea under the Equator valdsh when
comes the real wind which fills the sails and bears the
ship onward,
The mission of soothing animosities is a great and
holy one, and worthy of moving the ambition of men
the mission of healing wounds, of appeasing the suffer-
ings of humanity by uniting the citizens of a single
country
of
yin one common interest, and in hastening the
a future which civilisation must sooner or
later bring to pass. . . .

In the century before last, La Fontaine uttered that
ser,tence, too often true, but yet so rad, so destructive
of all society, of all order, of all "hierarchy"—"Je vous
le dis en bon Francais : noire ennemi c'est noire maitre."
At present the aim of every able Government ought
to be to tend by its eflorts towards what may soon he
daid :—" The triumph of Chlistianity has destroyed
slavery ; the triumph of the French Itevoluion has de-
,.troy ed vill nage ; the triumph of democratic ideas has
destroyed pauperism."
Frahlos of figures follow, justifying the Prince's cal-
culations. j

EARLY CLOSING ASSOCIATION.—The Rev. George
Gilfillan, of Dundee, delivered last night, in Dr. Fletcher 's
Chapel, Finsbury-eireus, a lecture upon " the Christian
Bearings of Astronomy,",and at the same time reviewed
the arguments used by Dr. Chalmers, in his Astrono.
mietil Discourses. The h cturo was the second of a se-
ries proposed to be given by the Rev. Gentleman, gra-
tuitously, fur the benefit of the Early Closing. iumia.
Lion, and the abil.ty he displayed was duly appreciated
by a numerous audience.
ACCIDENT ON THE MIDLAND RAILWAY.—A rather
serious accident, though fortunately unattended with loss
of life, occurred on Tuesday morning, about a quarter
before six, at Segworth, Leicestershire. It appears that
the mail came in coutuet with a luggage tram, and a
tremendous crash was the result. Several carriages were
very much damaged, but none of the passengers sus-
,tettned material Injury, although more than one was
slightly bruited.