of decomposition; but the poor settler has no power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hill-side; but with the increase of his family, and the improvement of his machinery of cultivation, we find him descending the hill, and obtaining not only more food for himself, but also the means of feeding the horse, or the ox, required to assist him in his labors. Aided by the manure yielded to him by the better lands, we see his successors next retracing his steps, improving the hill-side, and compelling it to yield a return twice greater than had been at first obtained. With each step down the hill, they obtain still larger reward for labor; and from each they return, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. They have now horses and oxen; and while, by their aid, they extract from the new soils the manure that had for ages accumulated, they have also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and with every additional step, their rewards become increased, while their labors are lessened. They go back to the sand and raise the marl, with which they cover the surface; or return to the clay and sink into the limestone, by aid of which they double their products. They are all the time making a machine which feeds them while making it, and which increases in its powers the more there is taken from it. At first, it was worthless; but now-having fed and clothed them for years it has become so greatly useful, that those who might desire to use it would pay largely for the permission so to do.

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. The more he fashions it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last-requiring less labor and yielding larger return. The labor of clearing is great; yet the return is small, the earth being covered with stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the latter decay, and the ground becomes enriched; while the labor of ploughing is diminished. At length, the stumps having disappeared, the return is doubled, while the labor is less by onehalf than at first. To forward this process, the owner has done nothing but crop the ground-nature having done the rest. The aid she thus grants him, yields far more food than had been at first obtained in return to the labor of clearing the land. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given

him the means of improving the poorer lands-furnishing manure with which to enrich them--and thus has he trebled, or quadrupled, his original return without further effort; that which he saves in working the new soils, sufficing to carry the manure to the older ones. He is thus obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth.

With every operation connected with the subjection of the earth to the control of man, the result is the samethe first step being, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive.* The drain commences necessarily near the stream, where the labor is heaviest; yet it frees from water but little land. Further distant, the same quantity of labor, profiting by what has been already done, frees thrice the extent; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less effort than had been at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labor than had been the clearing of a single one; yet the process doubles the return for every acre of the fifty. The man who requires a little fuel for his own use, expends much labor in opening the neighboring vein of coal. To enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small effort; as is the next enlargement, by which he is enabled to use a wagon, giving him a return fifty times greater than had been obtained while still dependent upon his own unassisted powers. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steamengine, are expensive operations—but then to sink to a second, and tunnel to a third, are trifles in comparison with the first; yet each is equally productive. The first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by a few hundred thousand persons Little branches are next made, costing altogether far less labor than the first, but bringing into connection with it probably thrice the amount of population. The trade increasing, a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one facilitating

* The French proverb- Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute is true in regard to all the relations of life; but in none is it more emphatically so than in reference to the occupation of land. Such being the case, it will readily be seen how destructive of the best interests of man must be a system which, looking to the constant exhaustion of the soil, produces a perpetually increasing necessity for commencing the work of cultivation on new lands, to be in their turn exhausted.

the passage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, three new ones may now be made for less than had been expended upon the first.

All labor thus given to fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to its further application, with increased returns and rise of wages; and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less labor than they have cost. The man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work— but with the progress of himself and his neighbors down the hill, into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels may be now required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels - but it requires the labor of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each; and the surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years' purchase, this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas it may have cost-in the labor of himself, his sons, and his assistants-the equivalent of a hundred years of labor, or perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all; and the farm has been produced by insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.

It is now worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries, accumulating power to serve the purposes of man, it was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. The more there is taken from it the more there is found to exist. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since, being held in low esteem, leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes; although the amount of ore elsewhere known to exist, is probably a hundred times increased.

The rich lands above described--the coal, the lime, and the ore —were, a century since as much as they are now, possessed of the power to contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of man; yet they were not wealth, because he himself was deficient in the knowledge required for enabling him to compel them to labor in VOL. I.-13

his service. Their utility was latent, waiting the action of the human mind for its development.

In the man of that day we find, however, a state of things precisely similar. His powers were then as great as are those of the men of the present day; but they, too, were latent. His brain was ready to serve him, had he made the demand for its services; but that he could not do. It, too, would have labored gratuitously; not only so, but by lessening the demand upon his muscular powers, it would largely have diminished the quantity of food required for repairing the waste consequent upon exertion. The time required for the supply of his necessities would thus have been reduced, with corresponding increase in the quantity at his command for further study of the powers of nature and for preparation of the machinery needed for subjecting them to his service.

Wealth consists in the power to command the always gratuitous services of nature whether rendered by the brain of man, or by the matter by which he is surrounded, and upon which it is required to operate. The greater the power of association-the greater the diversity of the demands upon the human intellect the greater, as we have seen, must be the development of the peculiar faculties or individuality of each member of the society; and the greater the capacity for association. With the latter comes increase of power over nature and over himself; and the more perfect his capacity for self-government, the more rapid must be the motion of society—the greater the tendency towards further progress — and the more rapid the growth of wealth.

The supply of power waiting the demands of man is, as has been said, unlimited. To the world at large, it is what the accumulations in the robbers' cave were to Ali Baba, who needed but the magic word to make the doors fly open, and thus to become master of their wealth. To enable man to do the same, and thus to do, in his case, all that the genii, in the other, had power to do, he has only to qualify himself for crying "open sesame," by combining his efforts with those of his fellow-men.

§ 2. The greater the tendency towards combination of action among men, the greater is the rapidity with which knowledge is diffused, power is gained, and wealth accumulated. That there.

may be combination, there must be difference-and that the latter may exist, there must be diversity of employment. Where that is found, man is seen to be obtaining constantly increasing power over nature and over himself— thus acquiring freedom in the direct ratio of the development of his latent powers.

In the early periods of society, when men cultivate the poor soils, there can be little association, and, consequently, little combination of action. Having neither horse nor cart, the solitary settler is dependent, mainly, upon his hands and arms for power to harvest his little crop. Carrying a hide to his place of exchange, distant many miles, he seeks to obtain for it leather, shoes, or cloth.-Population increasing, roads are made, and richer soils are cultivated. The store and the mill coming nearer to him, he obtains shoes and flour with the use of less machinery of exchange; and having now more leisure for the preparation of his machine, the returns to labor are increased. More people now obtaining food from the same surface, new places of exchange appear. The wool being, on the spot, converted into cloth, he exchanges directly with the clothier. The saw-mill being at hand, he exchanges with the miller. The tanner gives him leather for his hides, and the paper-maker exchanges paper for his rags. His power to command the use of the machinery of exchange is thus a constantly augmenting one; whereas his necessity for its use is a constantly decreasing one - there being, with each successive year, a greater tendency towards having the consumer and the producer take their places by each other's side. With each, he finds increase of power to devote his time and mind to the process of fashioning the great instrument to which he is indebted for food and wool; and thus it is that increase of the consuming population is essential to the progress of production.

The loss from the use of machinery of exchange, is in the ratio of the bulk of the article to be exchanged. Food stands first; fuel next; stone for building, third; iron, fourth; cotton, fifth ; and so on. diminishing until we come to laces and nutmegs. The raw material being that in the formation of which the earth has most co-operated, and by the production of which the land is most improved the nearer the place of exchange or conversion can be brought to the place of production, the less must be the loss in the process, and the greater the power of accumulat