Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement:  from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are precluded.  A state which should combine the advantages of both would be subjected to the evils of neither.  He that is deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half a man:  hence it follows that to subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burthen.

English reformers exclaim against sinecures,—­but the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors:  wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit.  The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims:  they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the loss of all real comfort.

’The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue:  they demand from us but a slender portion of industry.  If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued.  If the labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each man’s share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample.  There was a time when this leisure would have been of small comparative value:  it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes.  Those hours which are not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of enjoyment.

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’It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist.  Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period affords.  But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state of barbarism.’—­Godwin’s “Enquirer”, Essay 2.  See also “Pol.  Jus.”, book 8, chapter 2.

It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour two hours during the day.