28 quotes
Slave-owners and rich men, among a crowd of slave-descended famishing labourers, lead probably a more anxious and toilsome life in protecting their property, and in enforcing obedience to their orders, than the slaves whose labour they extort.
Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827)
[T]he real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.
Travels in the North of Germany (1820)
[G]overnments are not producers, they have no commodities on their road to the market, and can have no claim whatever to issue paper-money. Even exchequer bills are wrong,…
Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827)
The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation….
The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)
Among the legislative classes embodied into, and constituting the government, we must place the landed aristocracy. In fact, the landed aristocracy and the government are one—the latter being nothing more than the organized means of preserving the power and privileges of the former.
The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)
Now we know from all history, that unjust appropriation, that every long-continued attempt in one class of men to escape from the necessity of labour imposed on our race, that every infringment of a man's right to use, consume, and enjoy his own produce, has ever been attended with disastrous consequences. It is a violation of a natural law which never passes unpunished.
Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827)
The law, as to preserve life is that of individuals, is a set of rules and practices … intended to appropriate to the law-makers the produce of those who cultivate the soil, prepare clothing, or distribute what is produced among the different classes, and among different communities.
The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)
It would be better for men to be deprived of education than to receive their education from their masters; for education, in that sense, is no better than the training of cattle that are broken to the yoke… The workers of London must proceed, like those of Glasgow, and found the new institution at their own expense.
Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825)