total product of the land, and to one-nineteenth of its actual value. Much of it being exempt from taxation, it follows, necessarily, that the weight presses yet more heavily than this upon the small proprietors, most of whom pay to the government, in addition to their local taxes, no less than a third of the total product of land and labor.*

The right to labor is there held to be a privilege, to be paid for in the form of a tax, by the payment of which the party becomes "entitled to protection from the law like other any proprietor against whatever would diminish its value and injure his means of living and paying his tax;"† and, as a consequence of this, the coppersmith cannot so far depart from the regular line of his trade as to cast the metal he needs to use. Regulations abound impeding the free circulation of labor, and preventing the growth of commerce. Smelting-furnaces and iron-works are licensed for particular quantities, which cannot be exceeded, on pain of confiscation. These licenses are granted by the College of Mines, which controls all the works having local colleges in all the districts, with officers of various ranks; and every furnace and every forge pays a tax, in proportion to its capacity, for the maintenance of people charged with throwing obstacles in the way of commerce, and thus preventing the development of the resources of the earth.

So far as regards the intercourse of her own people with those of foreign nations, Sweden has followed in the direction indicated by Colbert, but she yet needs a Turgot for the removal of obstacles to commerce at home.‡

*Tour in Sweden, p. 271.

+ Ibid. p. 81.

How great are the obstacles to commerce existing in all countries that are chiefly, even where not wholly, devoted to agriculture - how certainly the absence of the power of combination renders man the slave of nature and of his fellow-man-and how great is the tendency of diversity of employments to produce steadiness in the demand for labor and its productsare all well exhibited in the following passage from a review of M. Tegoborski's work:

"There is one remarkable fact mentioned by the same author elsewhere, relating to the difficulty of transport, which bears very much on this question of agricultural prices, and which illustrates also generally the backward condition of Russia, in respect of the non-development of its mineral resources; he tells us that it may be said, without exaggeration, that in Russia and Poland more than nine-tenths of the cart and wagon wheels of every description are without iron hoops, and that, except in equipages of luxury, all the axles are of wood.'-p. 210. But the variations in price, which rises and falls rapidly under the influence of local and chance circum

17. We have now studied the operations of six import ant communities of the North and South of Europe, differing altogether in race, habits, manners, and religions, and agreeing only in the adoption of a system tending to increase in the power of association, and in the development of the various faculties of their members; and in the results thereby obtained. In all of them there is a steady increase of the proportion of the labor of the community given to the development of the powers of the land, and decline in that required for the work of trade and transportation in all, there is a great increase in the power to maintain commerce at home, with large increase in the value of land and reward of labor: in all, a large increase in the power to maintain commerce with distant people: in all, society is taking, from year to year, more and more its natural form: in all, population and wealth steadily increase: and with all, there is a growing individuality, enabling them more and more to occupy an independent position among the various nations of the earth.

Directly the reverse of this, is what we have seen among the Catholics of Ireland and Portugal, the Turks of Eastern Europe, the Hindoos of India, and the white and black races of the Western Indies. Differing in all else, they have been agreed

stances, effectually prevent the application of capital to agricultural purposes, or the undertaking of permanent improvements. The proprietor is glad to obtain from year to year such income as he can from the compulsory labor of the serfs upon his estate, and is often obliged to sell his produce for a trifle, unable to wait for a rise in the price, or to transport it to a better market. The surplus in the abundant years is thus mostly waste, while the deficiency in the bad years brings excessive suffering. And, on the whole, it is observed that the fluctuations of price are greater in those governments which produce a surplus, than in those which do not raise a sufficiency of grain for their own consumption. Thus, during the period from 1833 to 1841 prices differed at Petrozavodsk, St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Moscow, in proportions varying from 10 to 22 at the former place, to 10 to 42 at the latter; while at Simbirsk, Ekaterinoslav, Saratov, Tula, Stavropol, they ranged from 10 to 48 at the first-named of these places, and 10 to 111 at the last. It is evident that even in time of peace, it must be long before the improvement of internal communications, and the steadiness of a foreign demand, can give sufficient stability to prices to encourage a systematic extension of agriculture. But in time of war, the surplus grain produce of the corn-growing districts will be thrown in waste on the local markets, leaving the distant and poorer regions unrelieved. From recent information, also, it appears, that the stoppage of the outlets of exportation for the surplus grain has caused a local plenty in some provinces, the effect of which will be the ruin, by comparative cheapness of produce, of the proprietors of the local estates, without any relief to the hunger of the distant members of the population." -Westminster Review, January, 1856.

in a single point; and that is, in the necessity for submitting to a policy adverse to association, and preventive of the development of the various faculties of their people. In all of them, consequently, their labors are of a most superficial kind-being given to scratching the earth with poor machinery, because of inability to obtain that which is better: in all, there is little motion of society and little power in all, the proportion of labor given to the work of trade and transportation tends to increase and in all, the value of land and labor tends steadily to decline, with daily diminution in wealth and population, and in the power to maintain commerce at home or abroad: and with all, there is declining individuality— the communities becoming more and more dependent upon the will of others, and losing their position among the nations of the earth.

§ 18. Man seeks association with his fellow-men. To have association, there must be diversity of employment and development of individuality. As these are obtained, and as the consumers and the producers more and more take their places by each other's side, the prices of raw materials and finished products steadily approach each other, with constant decline in the value of all, and increase in the wealth, the power, and the value of man; and with constant tendency to have society assume the form of greatest stability—that of a true pyramid, as here is shown:

Appropriation.

Transportation.

Conversion.

Agriculture.

Such are the tendencies in all the countries that follow in the lead of France, and in France herself.

When, on the contrary, they are not obtained, and when, consequently, the prices of raw materials, and of finished products. recede from each other, the reverse is seen society then taking upon itself the form that is here exhibited :

Appropriation.

Transportation.

Conversion.

Agriculture.

Such are the tendencies in all the countries that follow in the lead of England, and in England herself. Instability is, therefore, the distinguishing characteristic of all those countries.

American policy has been in harmony with that of neither one of these great sections of the human race. While recognizing, generally, the expediency of protection, and the propriety of creating a domestic market for the planter's and farmer's products, powerful parties have held that it was to be regarded, not as a measure of national policy, promotive of the good of all, but, as a special favor to certain classes, whose interests were to be promoted at the cost of all; and, for that reason, to be granted only so far as was consistent with the raising of the largest public revenue. Instability has, therefore, been the especial characteristic of American policy-protection having been resorted to, whenever the public treasury was empty, and abandoned, whenever it had been filled. As a consequence of this it is, that we are now afforded the opportunity of studying, on the same ground, the working of both the systems already examined in reference to so many, so different, and so widely-scattered nations; and to that examination it is proposed that we now address ourselves.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

§ 1. FRANCE is a country of "contrasts" resulting from the fact, that its social and political systems are perpetually at war with each other the former tending towards increase in the value of land and man, and the latter towards diminution in the value of both. The one tends to the creation of local centres and the establishment of freedom; the other, to the centralization of wealth and power in the capital, and to the reduction of men to the condition of mere machines.

In the American Union, too, we find a country of "contrasts," whose existence is due to the fact that it has a social system which looks towards centralization and slavery, standing in the presence of a political one based upon the idea of local activity and perfect self-government. In France, a sound social system is gradually correcting the errors of the political one, with constant tendency towards increase of freedom; whereas, in the United States, social error is gradually triumphing over political truth, with growing tendency to the dispersion of man-to the absorption of local centres of action to the centralization of power in great cities, and to the increasing subjection of those who labor to the will of those who live by the exercise of their powers of appropriation. First among the nations to declare that "all men are born equal," they stand now alone among civilized communities of the world in having among them distinguished teachers who assert, that "free society has proved an utter failure"-that "slavery," whether for the white man or the black, "is a legitimate, useful, and expedient institution"—and that it is a duty to strive "not merely to retain it where it is, but to extend it to regions where it is yet unknown."

In no part of the world does the political system-based, as it is, upon the idea of local centres, counteracting the great central VOL. II.-12