chase; while the early settler destroys the tree and sells its ashes to distant men who gladly pay for them, with all the enormous cost of transportation added to their original price. As wealth and population grow, the stem is made to yield planks for houses. and mills; the bark to help in fitting skins for being converted into shoes; and the branches to furnish the pegs with which those shoes are made. The rags of a poor and scattered settlement are wasted, but as numbers increase, mills appear, and these rags become converted into paper. The little and lonely furnace of the West wastes half the power afforded by its fuel; but the great one of the East applies its heat to drive the engine, and its gas to heat the blast. In the hands of the chemist, clay becomes alumina, and promises soon to furnish a cheap and perfect substitute for the expensive silver. "The horse-shoe nails dropped in the streets. during the daily traffic, reappear," says a recent writer, "in the shape of swords and guns. The clippings of the travelling tinker are," as he continues, "mixed with the parings of the horses' hoofs from the smithy, or the cast-off woollen garments of the poorest inhabitants of a sister isle, and soon afterward, in the form of dyes of the brightest hue, grace the dress of courtly dames. The main ingredient of the ink with which we write may have been part of the hoop of an old beer-barrel. The bones of dead animals yield the chief constituent of lucifer matches. The dregs of wine, carefully rejected by the port-wine drinker in decanting his favorite beverage, are taken by him in the form of seidlitz powders, to remove the effects of his debauch. The offal of the streets and the washing of coal-gas reappear carefully preserved in the lady's smelling-bottle, or are used to flavor blancmange for her friends." The pound of flax, having passed through the hands of the lacemaker, exchanges for more than its weight in gold. The leaves of the fir and the pine, in Silesia, become blankets. The scraps of leather become glue, and the hair that is cut from the human head may be exchanged for gloves and ribbons--and thus it is that as men are more and more enabled to associate, and to combine their efforts, each and every particle of matter is utilized, with constant decline in the value of commodities required for their use, and constant increase in the value of man himself. § 5. Widely different is the course of things in countries whose scattered population is compelled to waste its labors on the poorer soils. In Carolina, where men yet cultivate land an acre of which yields but five bushels of wheat, whole forests of pines are frequently destroyed in the process of obtaining a few crops of turpentine and then the refuse of the turpentine itself is wasted, because of its distance from any place at which it might be so changed in form as to fit it for serving the purposes of man.* The stalks of the cotton-plant, capable of producing flax of great strength and beautiful fibre, are burnt upon the plantation, because of the absence of that power which results from combination, and by help of which they might be rendered available for human purposes. The seeds of the same plant, capable of yielding oil, are, in like manner, wasted. At home and abroad, "exceedingly few of the fibre-yielding plants have been taken up by manufacturers, and yet," says Mr. Ewbank, "they abound everywhere — in reeds, sedges, and coarse grasses, and in the leaves of some of the commonest shrubs and trees. The banana and its relatives" would, as he says, yield, besides fruit, "from nine to twelve thousand pounds per acre of fibre of every fineness, from ropes to muslin." "Countless millions of tons of this, and kindred substances, spontaneously shoot up every year, and sink away into the ground, neglected by man ;" while, at the same time, countless millions of tons of the most valuable dye-yielding woods are growing in their vicinity, waiting his coming to yield themselves to his service. Every article here referred to, wheresoever found, is as capable of being useful to man as it would be were it in the neighborhood of Paris, or of London; but its utility is latent, and can be developed only by means of association and combination among men. Isolated, man finds himself unable to make the first and most difficult step, preparatory to the new and greater ones that would be sure to follow in its train. Population it is that makes the food come from the rich soils of the earth, and gives utility to all the matter of which that earth is composed; with constant decline * "I saw this day, as I shall hereafter describe, three thousand barrels of an article worth a dollar and a half in New York, thrown away, a mere heap of useless offal, because it would cost more for transportation than it would be worth." OLMSTEAD: Seaboard Slave States, p. 330. †The present crop, of three and a half millions of bales, is capable, as we are told, of yielding ninety millions of gallons of oil. The World a Workshop, p. 89. in the value of all the commodities required for the use of mar, and constant increase in his own value. Depopulation, on the contrary-compelling resort to the poor soils-deprives of utility the matter by which man is everywhere surrounded, with constant decline in his own value, and in his power to obtain supplies of food, clothing, or other necessaries of life. So, too, is it with intellect. Increase of numbers bringing into action all the various faculties of man, every individual finds his appropriate place, with steady increase of commerce. Depopulation, on the contrary-forcing all men back to the search for food-substitutes for intellect mere brute force, with constant decline of commerce. That commerce may exist, there must be difference; and the greater the diversity of employment, the more rapid must be the circulation, and the greater must be the commerce. The weight of any given community tends to accelerated increase-every addition to its numbers being attended with corresponding increase in the development of the latent faculties of the men of whom it is composed. The motion of society tends likewise to increase at a constantly accelerated rate― every increase of individuality being attended with corresponding increase in the power of association and in the continuity of action. Momentum being the velocity multiplied by the weight, and both of these latter tending to constant acceleration in the rate of increase, we may now, without difficulty, understand why it is, that the force exerted by a community tends to grow at a rate so much more rapid than would be indicated by its increase in numbers. Taking ten for the present weight, and the same number for the velocity, the momentum would be a hundred. Doubling the numbers in a period of five-and-twenty years—and allowing the development of intellectual faculty to be in the same ratio, the weight, at the close of the term, would be quadrupled; and, allowing for increased facility of combination, resulting from increase of numbers and correspondent economy of labor, and of the products of the earth, we obtain the same quantity as representing the velocity; and the two, multiplied into each other, give now sixteen hundred, instead of the two hundred that would be obtained were the productive power of the individual to remain unchanged. The tendency to the development of the resources of the earth, and of the powers of man, being in the direct ratio of the motion of society, and being always attended with that increase of local attraction which produces love of home; it follows, necessarily, that a community must grow in individuality, and in force, with the growth of the power of, and the desire for, association among the individuals of whom it is composed. § 6. The motion of society, and the power of man, tend to increase in a geometrical ratio, whenever men are permitted to proceed onward, and undisturbed, towards the establishment of power over nature, to be acquired by means of combination with their fellow-men. Look, however, where we may, we see his progress in that direction to have been, at times, impeded, and sometimes altogether arrested; while at others he has so far retrograded as to have been compelled to abandon the most fertile soils, after having incurred the great expenditure of physical and mental force required for their subjugation-as in hither Asia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, of olden time; and in Ireland, India, Jamaica, Virginia, and Carolina, of the modern one-occurrences, into the causes of which we may now inquire. The history of the world, in its every chapter, presents the strong man trampling on the weak one, and the latter seeking, by means of combination with his fellow-men, to set limits to the power of those by whom he was oppressed. The former, as we see, has everywhere appropriated to himself large bodies of land -compelling the latter to cultivate it for him, and requiring him to use not only his land, but his mills, and his machinery of every description, whenever he sought to effect changes, whether in the places, or in the forms, of matter. At times, the former has compounded with his tax-payers for certain portions of the produce, taking sometimes three-fourths, two-thirds, or one-half; but even then has generally required that when they needed to convert their grain into flour, they should pay for the privilege of so doing; that another tax should be paid when they desired to convert it into bread; and a still further one when they sought to exchange their bread, or their grain, with their neighbors for other commodities required for their purposes. If they wished to change their wool into cloth, they were obliged to pay for that privilege in the form of excise, or other duties. If the people of the town and country sought to maintain commerce, the permission so to do was to be paid for in the shape of duties of octroi, as in France; or if, as in Spain, they desired to make any species of exchanges, those who performed the duties of government claimed a tenth on every transfer of property, as alcavala. The right to labor has been held to be a privilege, the exercise of which required a patent, to be paid for at a heavy price. In every form, the few who were strong and enabled to live by virtue of the exercise of their power of appropriation, have sought to prevent the many, who, individually, were weak, from combining their efforts except on conditions dictated by themselves. Slavery has existed in a variety of forms, sometimes more, and at others less, oppressive; but it has, in all cases, resulted from the efforts of those who were strong of body, or of mind, to deprive those who were weak, of the power to determine for whom they would work, or what should be their reward-and thus to prevent the growth of commerce. As, however, population has increased, men have been more and more enabled to combine together for the acquisition of power over their own actions, and over the natural forces by which their efforts might be so much aided — building towns, or local centres, in which the artisan and the trader could associate for self-defence. The more they could associate, the more individuality became developed; and therefore is it that we see freedom to have grown so rapidly in the towns and cities of Greece and Italy, in those of France and Germany, the Netherlands and England. Power thus resulted from association and combination, but its acquisition has but too generally been accompanied by a selfish desire for securing to the associates monopolies of its exercise, to be enjoyed at the expense of their fellow-men. The Phoenicians carefully guarded the secret of their dyes; and the Venetians were so jealous of their secrets, that they reduced their artisans to a condition approaching that of slavery, by prohibition of their emigration. The Flemings, in their turn-having succeeded in establishing among themselves the diversity of employments required for the development of intellectual force, for economizing human labor, and for utilizing the products of the earth exercised, during a long period of time, the power of association to an |