Again, when it comes to choosing between capitalists and workmen the issue is not long in doubt. It is quite clear from more than one passage that Smith’s sympathy was wholly with the workers. Several paragraphs could be cited in proof of this. Suffice it to recall the very sympathetic way in which he speaks of the high wages of workmen and contrast it with his discussion of profits. “Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed, and lodged.”[154] The tune changes when he comes to speak of profits. He is of opinion that high profits raise the price of commodities much more than high wages, and he dismisses the consideration of the problem with this ironical remark: “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”[155] The contrast is significant. It is still more deeply marked in that phrase which one is surprised not to see more frequently quoted by the champions of labour legislation. “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.”[156] This is not the tone of most of his contemporaries. Nor do we meet with this note in the writings of the appointed champions of the industrial system—the MacCullochs, the Ures, and the Babbages of the next fifty years. His words ring with that generous pity which proved a source of inspiration to Lord Shaftesbury and Michael Sadler in their efforts to secure the passing of the Factory Act of 1833.