Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Cool link of the week

The Economist has put its first issue online. It's in the same format as its regular edition, which gives one the pleasantly funny shock of reading a web article datelined 1843. And the articles are priceless--here's just a taste:

John Hulme, alias “Cast-metal Jack,” was indicted for the wilful murder of Thomas Garland, on the road between Ashton and Manchester, on the 31st of October, 1840. The circumstances of the murder are still fresh in the recollection of most readers. There had been a turn-out of sawyers, and Garland and three others, who were working there as knobsticks, were returning to Manchester (it being Saturday evening), when about half a mile from the new church, four men rushed from behind a cart going the opposite way, and which had concealed them, and attacked Garland and the others with bludgeons and rods of iron. Garland received a cut of the thumb, was afterwards made an out-patient of the infirmary, but the wound mortified, produced lock-jaw, and death ensued.—Evidence affecting the prisoner did not come out that he was one of the men till subsequent to a second murder by the turn-outs, when he had gone to America. He returned from America only a few months since.—The jury, after an absence of ten minutes only, returned a verdict of Manslaughter.—His Lordship, addressing the prisoner, said: The jury had acquitted him of murder, but had found him guilty of manslaughter under very aggravated circumstances, which morally as well as legally left his offence but one step short of murder. The injury he had done was not the result of sudden heat of blood or quarrel, but of a deliberate determination to commit violence, for the purpose of preventing others working for the wages they chose to work for. Every man in England had a right to work for whom he would, and any attempt to prevent it was not only illegal, but an attempt to exercise an odious tyranny, utterly intolerable in a free country like this. The safety of society requires that an example be made in your case, and the sentence of the court is, that you be transported for the term of your natural life.

But let us not forget free trade:

True or false, there is a sublimity in the speculations of geologists which fascinates the imagination. They tell us of successive formations of the crust of the earth; of long periods, during which repeated, renewed, and wholly different races of creatures basked in the sunshine, or preyed in the waters; and of successive revolutions subverting all that had pre-existed, and all leading, through a sort of eternity in time, to the grand result of the world as it now is, inhabited by the human race.

It may be very fanciful: but the moral and social progress of the human race seems to bear some resemblance to these geological speculations. For there are those amongst us, who, amid doubt, discouragement, decayed enthusiasm, and even chilling sneer, still cling to the belief, that a better, a higher, a nobler destiny still awaits the family of man. Not an imaginary perfectibility, not a visionary millennium, not such a change of the organic structure, body and mind, as would make the human being other than he is. But man as he is, in many respects helpless, in much imperfect, and in all feeble, when viewed individually, is still capable of social elevation such as society has not yet beheld. Christianity is to be the prime agent of the change. Its divine truths, thoroughly pervading the atmosphere of public opinion; working upon all thought, upon all mind, upon all education; calling to their aid the wondrous resources of science, and all appliances of art; gradually, from generation to generation, elevating the common standard of morals and of knowledge; and achieving the prime result of making HUMAN LAW subservient to the prime object of ministering to the best interests of humanity; these are capable—perfectly capable—of changing man as he is, into man as he ought to be; and to this end wait all whom the bustle of the world has not yet rendered incapable of reflection, nor its corruptions and disappointments rendered insensible to those generous emotions which animated their younger years.

These men are not disheartened by appearances, which, to superficial observers, would seem to indicate that man, so far from advancing, is sometimes retrograding; and that the human race is, after all, much the same from age to age, merely different in external characteristics. They can see a Cromwell, the type of daring and courageous usurpation, succeeded by a Charles, the concentration of selfish profanity and disgusting profligacy, and yet not lose their faith in the conviction that the world moves. They can witness the volcanic eruption of French revolution without the absorbing fear, that the “boiling lava” is destined to encrust the globe, and embrace religion, honour, truth and social order in one petrifying deluge; nay, the world may rise in arms, and though deprecating the misery and the mischief which the folly and the passion of man inflicts upon his kind, still they feel that “all things work together for good.” The world does move; that is their conviction, and it is ours; were it not so, THE ECONOMIST should not have appeared.

All great changes have been preceded by a general conviction of a WANT—a something which all concurred in testifying they felt to be essential. The introduction of Christianity itself was preceded by a general decay of Pagan superstition, which, even before the birth of Our Saviour, was losing its hold over all education and intelligent minds. Nay, the Hebrew polity was already waxing old, and preparing to vanish away, at the period of the Advent. And when the Apostles set forth on their great mission, the way was cleared before them; the Roman empire comprised what was considered as the known world; and though troubles prevailed here and there, the universal peace was but little broken. Similar concurring causes may be remarked as coincident with other great changes in the moral and social condition of the human race; old errors decaying; new truths dawning on the horizon; commotion, controversy, and even revolution ensuing; and at last the new condition of humanity becoming as much an essential of the race, as if we had lived under it since Adam was created.

Now, everything around us concurs to demonstrate that we are approaching a GREAT CHANGE, not only in pent-up Britain, but all over the earth. The social problem of this age is the rapid MULTIPLICATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. The great question is, by what means may this increase be met, by a corresponding increase of MATERIAL ENJOYMENT. Since the world began, no such phenomenon has met the eye of the observer. Particular countries may have risen, flourished, and faded; particular nations at particular periods may have swollen out into multitudinous combinations, afterwards leaving but a relic of themselves; and at this very day and hour particular races are unhappily disappearing from the earth. Yet it stands as the one vast and stupendous FACT of the present day, that within the now capacious bounds of what is called civilization, the human race is multiplifying at a rate unknown since man appeared on the globe. This is the fact which perplexes governments and amazes nations; which calls into existence hostile tariffs and perpetuates commercial blunders; which leads senates into the vain delusion that there is a shorter road to the WEALTH OF NATIONS than that which nature and providence point out; and which has created a war of social interests more momentous in its consequences than all the conquests of an Alexander, all the achievements of a Napoleon, all the victories of a Marlborough or a Wellington. Man multiplies within all the range of civilization, and is casting his swarms beyond it; man multiplies, not alone within Great Britain, where they say some 230,000 souls are annually added to our numbers, but in France, in Germany, in the United States, in Southern America, in India, in the South Seas. Turn back upon the by-past records of history, and ask if such a phenomenon was ever known before. No! the swelling flood of human life rises up to the topmost height of all its ancient barriers—way must be found for it, or it will overleap them all!

Yes!—the world is on the eve of a stupendous social change. The old delusions of seclusion, exclusion, restriction, interference, and protection are waxing old, and are even now ready to vanish away. No man believes in their permanence, who has a heart to feel, and a mind to think; and if events are in any way the interpretation and the index of Providence, we may with reverence affirm, that the finger of GOD himself points man onwards. Through much suffering, it is said, is the kingdom of heaven attained; through much suffering, it may also be observed, do nations as well as individuals learn those truths which are necessary to their temporal welfare. But at last, purged of their dross, they appear in native lustre; and a whole people, taught by bitter experience, receives them with humility, and applies them in earnestness and faith.

It must also be recollected, that there are certain periods or times in the application of truths, which are essential in their subservience to man’s use. Christianity, for instance, to recur to our primary illustration, was not promulgated until the “fulness of time;” and some of the greatest of those inventions which have blessed the human race have been, as it were, purposely retarded until the world had been prepared for it. Amongst other examples, that of Printing may be adduced, which was all but discovered two thousand years ago. The ocean has been at the service of man since the first bark was launched on it; and commerce has been proved to be the great medium of international intercourse since the earlier Phoenicians adventured on distant voyages, and, in exchange for their manufactures, distributed the metallic products of Britain over the then civilized world. But never, until now, was the ocean literally SUBDUED to our service. Scarcely a gun can boom along its surface, even in remotest seas, but the echo is heard almost instantaneously in Europe. There is scarcely a rock on which a buccaneer may take shelter; not an island where a pirate may safely nestle. From arctic to antartic circle, its utmost bounds are searched; it is now, of a verity and truth, the great HIGHWAY of the globe; and it waits but the application of universal FREE TRADE to be the means of pouring into every country the products of every clime; to diffuse the noblest gifts of religion, of science, of literature, and of art; and to effect, in the whole condition of the race, changes such as the most sanguine imagination may scarcely dream of.

Never, too, was there a time so favourable as this for the application of universal Free Trade. With the exception of some comparatively slight exceptions, there is universal Peace; while the great pressure of necessity, the accumulation of man and of capital, the unequal distribution of both, the impulsive cry which breaks out, not in England alone, for a something which will give employment to both—strong energy pent up within narrow bounds—science waiting the call of capital, art ready to minister to man’s comfort—yea, civilization standing at the threshold of all nations, and entreating for aid; these proclaim that Free Trade must come, and a thousand signs and symptoms return for answer that it shall come. Beginning, then, with the beginning; starting with the first of commercial nations, the one whose example carries force to every other, and from which Free Trade must first emanate, let us ask what are its chances in [there follows a list of nations and the conditions favorable or unfavorable to free trade]

Need I tell you to read the whole thing?

Posted by Jane Galt at September 8, 2003 4:42 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links