THE NATION AND THE LABOURER. 37
method of finding employment for the additional labourers,
 and providing the payment of the wages by the
nation at large ; the difficulty about the competition from
outside would be surmounted, and the question only
remains whether the benefit thus bestowed upon its
labourers by affording them opportunity of intellectual
improvement, greater enjoyment of their lives, and, also,
by furnishing the means of self support to a greater
number would not be, on the part of the nation, a
worthy, rightful, and every way beneficial mode of
employing a part of the wealth entrusted to it.
In stating, ‘however, ax we have just done, that it
would be equivalent to. the payment of the wages
of a certain number of workmen, to them, by the
nation,—we mean that it would be so, compared with
the state of things previously existing. But it by no
means follows that it would be correctly considered asin
any degree an act of romantic liberality or unfair favouritism
 towards the labourers, and still less as a sort of
charitable gratuity on the part of the nation. The
labourer would be, we opine, quite as honourably entitled
 to his wages at whatever increased rate the nation
might see well (by diminishing the hours of labour)
to fix the amount, as if he, under the compulsion of
necessity, were obliged to work for a much less sum.
To fully appreciate the whole case, however, it is
necessary to apprehend distinctly, and to bear in mind,
the uses of wealth, whether possessed by the one individual
 or by a nation of individuals; at the same time,
remembering that wealth, which merely passesout of the
hands of certain of those individuals into the hands of cer-