AND ON THE CONTINENT.

5

Postlethwait and Nathaniel Foster join with this writer insupporting the same view (10). Postlethwait starts on the samelines as Vandeiiint, firstly in the matter of consumption. Wher-ever are many poor people, there, he maintains, the home marketis insignificant. The luxury of the few cannot by any meansreplace the consumption of many; therefore too great an inequalityof wealth is against the trade interests of the country. Fromthis point of view high wages and low prices of food are to bepromoted. The latter caused, in addition, an increase of the popu-lation, and, therewith, of the quantity of work accomplished. Inclose connection appears also the second standpoint; the idlenessof the working classes was not a consequence of an hereditaryfault, but rather depended upon the fact that they lacked theincentive for labour. In order to make them work more theremust be the motive of bettering their position placed beforethem (11). In like manner Postlethwait defends the granting of acheap leisure time to the workers (12).

Foster (13), clearly influenced by Mirabeau, Rousseau , and kin-dred writers, takes a similar position. He is indebted to themfor a criticism of the question more from the stand-point of the workmen. The opinion that high prices of food andlow wages were desirable was “ a teaching which avarice hasgrasped with eagerness and turned to account for its own object.”Men believe nothing easier than an untruth which brings thempersonally an advantage. To prove this he points to- the physio-logical experience that want certainly stimulated to energy, butonly that want which could be overcome by energy. It wasquite different if the exertion was not sure of success. A manwho the more he laboured was so much the more highly taxedworked, according to experience, as little as possible. Foster,

10. Postlethwait, in his “ Great Britain’s Commercial Interest Explainedand Improved ” (2nd. ed., London , 1775), especially pp. 13, 16, 43. TheSupplement to the “ Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,” quoted byMarx, I have not succeeded in finding in the Library of the British Museum .N. Foster : “ Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Prices of Provisions ”(London , 1767), pp. 56, GO. Similarly, Dangueille recommends (“ Avantageset Desavantages de la France et Grande Bretagne .” p. 293) high wages in theinterest of consumption ; quoted by A. Young, “ Farmer’s Letters,” p. 38.

11. “ I take it for a maxim that no class of people will ever want industry ifthey do not want encouraging motives thereto ” (p. 43).

12. “ Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. ” I.—Preliminary Discourse, p. 751.

13. “ Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Prices of Provisions”(London , 1767), pp. 56—62