daily and hourly waste of capital now resulting from a total absence of demand for the exertion of physical or mental capacity— with the decline and death of commerce the ruin of Dacca and other famous and flourishing cities the abandonment of rich lands the unceasing exhaustion of the soil the resolution of society into a body of grasping money-lenders on the one hand, and wretched cultivators on the other and the inauguration of famine and pestilence as the chronic diseases of a people inferior to none in moral and intellectual qualities, and embracing a tenth of the population of the world. The booty obtained by Nadir was estimated at five hundred millions of dollars; and yet, large. as was its amount, very far greater is that annual tax imposed upon the people of Hindostan by a system that-by forbidding association by forbidding combination of effort by forbidding the development of the human faculties and by forbidding the existence of that commerce by help of which alone capital is accumulated converts the whole body of the people of that great country into candidates for admission into the public service, as the only possible means of advancement. Greatly superior as is the loss inflicted, as greatly inferior is the gain to those by whom the loss is caused. Nadir did obtain an enormous amount of plunder, but the English people have gained nothing but the privilege of employing themselves as transporters, spinners, and weavers of a trivial quantity of cotton; a privilege obtained at the cost of the sacrifice of the rights of a hundred millions of people abroad, and the establishment at home of the doctrine proclaimed by Mr. Huskisson, in 1825, that "to enable capital to obtain a fair remuneration, the price of labor must be kept down;" or, in other words, that to enable trade to thrive, men must be enslaved. The destruction of the temple of Ephesus by the torch of the incendiary Erostratus, animated thereto, as he was, by a desire to perpetuate the recollection of his existence, will probably appear to future ages to have been an act of the highest wisdom, when compared with the annihilation of commerce throughout immense communities under the mistaken idea that prosperity to any single one was to be obtained under a system like that denounced by Dr. Smith-looking solely and exclusively to the purchase of all the raw material of manufacture, labor included, at low prices, and the sale of cloth at high ones.

Turning to the West Indies, to Portugal, and to Turkey, we meet everywhere, as the reader has already seen, the same result -the power to purchase the products of English labor having perished with the loss of the power to sell their own. All of those countries are paralyzed. In all, circulation has so far ceased, that they more resemble dead than living bodies; and England now presents the extraordinary spectacle of a nation possessing, more than any other, the power to render service to mankind, yet surrounded by colonies and allies, all of whom are slowly, but certainly, passing towards entire inanition while. she, herself, is exhausting her energies in the ceaseless effort to extend throughout the world the system by means of which they have been so much reduced.

§ 7. In the natural order of things, the prices of all the rude products of the earth tend to rise, and for the reason, that as population increases, as the power of association becomes more complete, as individuality is more and more developed, and as circulation becomes more rapid, the men engaged in developing the resources of the earth are enabled more readily to maintain commerce with each other. In one country, silver or gold is mined; in another, corn, or cotton, is raised; and in a third, coal, iron, and other ores, are extracted from the earth; but, in their rude state, none of these can readily be transported. The gold-miner needs clothing, paper, books, and iron instrumentsbut he has no use for wool, rags, or iron ore; and until the producers of these latter obtain the means of diminishing the bulk of their commodities-compressing the rags and the food into paper

the wool and the food into cloth-or the food and the ore into instruments useful for the miner there can be no direct intercourse between them.

That such intercourse may exist, it is, then, indispensable that employments become diversified-the producer and the consumer of corn taking their places by each other's side, in accordance with the idea so well expressed by Dr. Smith. As that idea is more and more fully carried out, commerce between the producers of corn and wool on the one hand, and of gold on the other, becomes more and more direct—the necessary result of constant diminution in the quantity of labor required for changing the

places, or the forms, of the rude products of the earth. With every diminution in the obstacles to direct commerce, thus produced, the prices of raw materials and of finished commodities approximate more nearly to each other-those of the former tending steadily to rise, while the others tend as steadily to fall; and thus, while one obtains more cloth for his gold, another obtains more gold for his food and his wool - all, therefore, profiting by that increase in the power to command the services of nature which constitutes wealth.

That the facts are so, will readily be seen by those who study the gradual increase in the prices of wheat, corn, and oats throughout our Western States; or, the yet greater changes resulting from the creation of local centres of exchange, at which hay, potatoes, turnips, or other of the most bulky articles, are converted into cloth, or iron—the former rising in price as regularly as the latter decline; as is shown in the fact before referred to, that, whereas, thirty years since, fifteen tons of wheat were required, in Ohio, to pay for a ton of iron, a similar quantity may now be had in exchange for two, or, at most, three, tons. In England, in the ten years ending in 1750, the power of a quarter of wheat to command gold in exchange was only, as has been seen, 21s. 3d. ; whereas, twenty years later, that power had become twice as great, because of the growing facility of intercourse with the gold-producing countries, consequent upon an increased control of the powerful forces of nature in the various processes required for changing the places, or the forms, of matter. The value of man steadily increased, for he could command more gold, more food, and more cloth in return for a given quantity of effort. The value of gold, in England, declined, because it would command less of the raw materials of manufacture — food, wool, and labor. To the gold-producer the utility of his commodity increased, because it would command in exchange a larger quantity of clothing and other commodities required for his consumption.

Approximation in the prices of raw materials and finished commodities is the one essential characteristic of civilization it being the manifestation of a diminution of the obstacles standing in the way of association, and impeding the growth of comAs the mill comes nearer to the farm, there is a constant increase in the proportion borne by the price of a bushel of wheat

merce.

to that of a barrel of flour; and that proportion still further increases as improvements are effected in the machinery of the mill itself. As the processes of converting hides are improved, the prices of leather, and of all commodities in the making of which it is required, tend steadily downward; but that of hides so steadily advances, that whereas, when certain kinds of leather sold for twenty cents, hides were worth but five cents a pound, now, when the same leather sells for fourteen cents, the price of the raw material is seven. In the last quarter of a century, rags have increased in price not less than fifty per cent., while paper has fallen thirty or forty per cent.; and whereas, it then required six pounds of the one to pay for a pound of the other, the same may now be obtained for less than three pounds. Five-and-twenty years since, raw silk was low in price, and silk goods were high; but since then, the first has advanced fifty per cent., while the last has so greatly declined, that silks have largely taken the place formerly occupied by cotton. The saw-mill lowers the price of planks; and the planing-machine does the same by that of doors and window-frames; but they increase the price of timber, and the farmer of the West is thus enabled to sell the trees that before he would gladly have seen destroyed. Look where he may, the reader will see that, in the natural course of things, the price of raw material of every kind—land, labor, cotton, wool, or corn- tends to rise with every increase in the facility of intercourse with the men employed in producing gold and silver. Everywhere around, he will find evidence of the truth of the proposition, that as population grows, as the power of association increases, as the faculties of man are more and more developed, and as wealth augments, the rnde products of the earth tend to increase in their power to command the precious metals in exchange, while finished commodities tend as steadily to decline-thus enabling all, whether producers of corn or gold, wool or silver, to profit by, and to rejoice in, the constantly increasing power of their fellow-men to command the services of nature. Among communities, as among individuals, the harmony of all real and permanent interests is perfect.

The British system looks, however, in a direction exactly opposite to this-being based upon the idea of cheapening all the raw materials of manufacture, labor included. Examine it where we may, we find it promoting extension of the cultivation of cotton,

wool, sugar, and corn, while limiting the commerce between the producers of those commodities and the consumers of cloth and iron, by requiring the whole to pass through the narrow strait afforded by ships and distant mills and thus augmenting the obstacles that intervene between the growers of corn and cotton and the miners of silver and of gold. So long as the people of India converted their cotton, rice, and sugar into cloth, they could maintain direct commerce with the producers of the precious metals; as a consequence of which the exchanges were in their favor with every part of the earth, with constant tendency to rise in the price of raw materials of every kind. Since the prostration of the cotton manufacture, the difficulty of maintaining commerce has increased the flow of the precious metals has been outward instead of inward and cotton has fallen to three halfpence a pound; while the difficulty of obtaining cotton cloth has so largely increased, that its consumption does not probably exceed a single pound per head. So has it been in Ireland, Jamaica, Portugal, and Turkey in all of which the obstacles to commerce have increased, with corresponding decline in the price of labor and of raw materials of every kind; and that decline has been in the direct ratio of the increase in the facilities for reaching the great central market. A quarter of a century since, the brown sugar of India would command in the market of England from 20s. to 30s. per hundredweight, whereas it will now commonly exchange for only 15s. or 20s. Forty years since, the cotton of Carolina commanded money in England at the rate of twenty pence a pound; whereas it now fluctuates between four and seven pence--and for the reason that the obstacles to direct intercourse with the world at large increase, when they should as regularly diminish. Forty years since, flour was exported from this country at eight dollars a barrel; whereas, in the years which immediately preceded the breaking out of the Crimean war, it had fallen to little more than half that price -- and that, too, notwithstanding the wonderful increase in the supply of gold that had resulted from the discovery of the Californian mines.

§ 8. The reader may perhaps understand the working of the system above described after an examination of the following com