We believe, for example,
with him, that in the future there will be no class of landlords living
at ease on their rents, but every landlord will be a capitalist trained
to agriculture, himself superintending and directing the cultivation of
his estate. No one but he who guides the work, should have the control
of the tools. In M. Comte's system, the rich, as a rule, consist of the
"captains of industry:" but the rule is not entirely without exception,
for M. Comte recognizes other useful modes of employing riches. In
particular, one of his favourite ideas is that of an order of Chivalry,
composed of the most generous and self-devoted of the rich, voluntarily
dedicating themselves, like knights-errant of old, to the redressing of
wrongs, and the protection of the weak and oppressed. He remarks, that
oppression, in modern life, can seldom reach, or even venture to attack,
the life or liberty of its victims (he forgets the case of domestic
tyranny), but only their pecuniary means, and it is therefore by the
purse chiefly that individuals can usefully interpose, as they formerly
did by the sword. The occupation, however, of nearly all the rich, will
be the direction of labour, and for this work they will be educated.
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