John Morley

If men earned money by labour and the use of their time, why not require from them time and labour instead of money?

Those who substitute words for things, and verbal plausibilities for the observation of experience, could prolong these arguments indefinitely.

But then this only illustrates the unwisdom of arguing about economic arrangements in the abstract.

All depends on the conditions by which the given arrangement is surrounded, and a practice that in England was merely clumsy, was in France not only clumsy but a gross cruelty.

He had the bitterness of knowing that the advantage of the high-road was slight, indirect, and sometimes null to himself, while it was direct and great to the town merchants and the country gentlemen, who contributed not an hour nor a sou…

It was exactly the most indigent upon whose backs this slavish load was placed.

The wretch was sent to the part of the road most distant from his own house; or he was forced to work for a longer time than fell fairly to his share; or he saw a neighbour allowed to escape on payment of a sum of money.

The labourers, having little heart in work for which they had no wage, and weakened by want of food, did badly what they had to do.

The rich disdained to put a hand to the work; the poor, aware that they would be forced to the hated task in the following autumn or spring, naturally attended to their own fields, and left the roads to fall to ruin.

It need not be said that this barbarous slovenliness and disorder meant an incredible waste of resources.

It was calculated that a contractor would have provided and maintained fine roads for little more than one-third of the cost at which the corvee furnished roads that were execrable.

Condorcet was right in comparing the government in this matter to a senseless fellow, who indulges in all the more lavish riot, because by paying for nothing, and getting everything at a higher price on credit, he is never frightened into…

Well might Condorcet say that very often it needs little courage to do men harm, for they constantly suffer harm tranquilly enough; but when you take it into your head to do them some service, then they revolt and accuse you of being an…

For even in the case of this very reform, though Turgot was able to make an addition to the taille in commutation of the work on the roads, he was not able to force a contribution, either to the taille or any other impost, from the…

This is only an illustration of what is now a well-known fact, that revolution was made necessary less by despotism than by privilege on the one side, and by intense political distrust on the other side.

The first principle of the school of Economists was an 'enlightened people.' Nothing was to be done by them; everything was to be done for them.

Rousseau was the only writer of the revolutionary school who had the modern democratic faith in the virtue and wisdom of the common people.

Voltaire habitually spoke of their bigotry and prejudice with the natural bitterness of a cultivated man towards the incurable vices of ignorance.

The Economists admitted Voltaire's view as true of an existing state of things, but they looked to education, meaning by that something more than primary instruction, to lead gradually to the development of sound political intelligence.

This was one of the many springs in the old regime that fed the swelling and vehement stream of passion for social equality, until at length when the day came, it made such short and furious work with the structure of envious partition…

But, as we have seen, military service was only made obligatory on those who were already ground down by hardships.

Finally, as is uniformly the case in the history of bad government, an unjust method produced a worthless machine.

This may seem a very obvious course to follow; but no one who has tried to realise the strength and obstinacy of routine, will measure the service of a reformer by the originality of his ideas.

In affairs of government, the priceless qualities are not merely originality of resource, but a sense for things that are going wrong, and a sufficiently vigorous will to set them right.

I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration.