The facts thus far given rest, as the reader will have seen, on the
highest English authority. It is scarcely possible to study them
without arriving at the conclusion that the labouring people of
England are gradually losing all control over the disposition of their
own labour--or in other words, that they are becoming enslaved--and
that with the decay of freedom there has been a decay of morality,
such as has been observed in every other country similarly
circumstanced. To ascertain the cause of this we must refer again to
Adam Smith, who tells us that--

"No equal quantity of productive labour or capital employed in
manufacture can ever occasion so great a reproduction as if it were
employed in agriculture. In these, nature does nothing, man does all,
and the reproduction must always be proportioned to the strength of
the agents that occasion it. The capital employed in agriculture,
therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive
labour than any equal capital employed in manufacture; but, in
proportion, too, to the quantity of productive labour which it
employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual value of the land
and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its
inhabitants. Of all the ways which a capital can be employed, it is
by far the most advantageous to society."

This is the starting point of his whole system, and is directly the
opposite of that from which starts the modern English
politico-economical school that professes to follow in his footsteps,
as will now be shown. The passage here given, which really constitutes
the base upon which rests the whole structure of Dr. Smith's work, is
regarded by Mr. McCulloch as "the most objectionable" one in it, and