There is a confused notion in the minds of many people that the gathering of the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm, since in whosever hands it may be, it must be spent at last, and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and again exposed but granting the plea true, the same apology may, of course, be made for blackmail, or any other form. of robbery. It might be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the notion that the robber should have the spending of the money he extorts, as that the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse for the theft. If I were to put a tollgate on the road where it passes my own gate, and endeavor to extract a shilling from every passenger, the public would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any pleas on my part that it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as that they themselves should. But if, instead of outfacing them with a tollgate, I can only persuade them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent and, moreover, be thanked as a public benefactor and promoter of commercial prosperity. And this main question for the poor of England—for the poor of all countries—is wholly omitted in every writing on the subject of wealth. Even by the laborers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded only in its effect on their immediate interests, never in the far more terrific power of its appointment of the kind and the object of labor. It matters little, ultimately, how much a laborer is paid for making anything, but it matters fearfully what the thing is which he is compelled to make. If his labor is so ordered as to produce food, fresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low, the food and the fresh air and water will be at last there, and he will at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars instead of them, the food and air will finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great and final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in political as in household economy, the great question is not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what you will buy with it and do with it. The author gives the example of a tollgate in the first paragraph to indicate that