the power of association and combination that the richer ones are brought into activity; that, to have combination, there must be differences of employment, tending to the development of the individual faculties; and that, where such differences are not found, the whole course of man is towards the exhaustion of the land first cultivated towards diminution in its value, and increase in that of all the commodities required for his use and towards his enslavement by nature and by his fellow-man. Under that system it is that Ireland wastes, weekly, more labor than would, if applied once for all, give her machinery enabling her to make a domestic market for all her food and all her labor; that Portugal and Turkey waste, daily, more muscular and intellectual power than would, if applied once for all, give them machinery for making all the cloth they now consume; that Jamaica has been exhausted; and that India has seen her people condemned to remain idle, when they would desire to be employed-to relinquish her rich soils, and retire to poor ones-to abandon cities in which once lived hundreds of thousands of poor, but industrious and happy, men-foregoing all the advantages of commerce, and becoming dependent altogether on the chances of trade.

Following in the lead of France, the people of Northern Europe, generally, have protected themselves against this systemthe result being seen in the facts, that the prices of raw materials and finished commodities are there steadily approximating — that gold flows rapidly in that the circulation of society becomes from day to day more rapid and that the proportion borne by fixed to floating capital is a constantly increasing one- all of these phenomena being evidences of advancing civilization, consequent upon the determination, once for all, to make the investments required for bringing the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus relieving the farmer from the wasting tax of transportation.

Guided, or governed, by England, Ireland, Turkey, Portugal, and the United States have refused to make the effort, once for all, to relieve themselves from that oppressive and daily recurring tax-the result being seen in the facts, that the prices of raw materials and finished products steadily recede from each other. that gold flows regularly abroad-that circulation becomes more languid and that the proportion borne by floating capital to

that which is fixed is a constantly increasing one- all of these phenomena being evidences of declining civilization.

§ 8. "The general industry of society," says Adam Smith, never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of society can increase the quantity of industry in any direction beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a portion of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous than that into which it would have gone of its own accord." *

It would be difficult to find a passage in the Wealth of Nations tending more than this to the production of error in the modes of thought it being for that reason, probably, that it is so frequently quoted. The whole turns, as the reader perceives, upon the word "capital;" but to what description of capital does it refer? Not, certainly, to land and its improvements - constituting so large a portion of the accumulated wealth of a nation. Neither is it to the labor-power daily produced by, and resulting from, the daily consumption of food; yet millions of human engines capable of physical and intellectual effort, are quite as much capital as hundreds of iron ones digesting coal and producing steam. Neither is it to money-that constituting always, according to Dr. Smith, "the most unprofitable part" of the capital of a nation; and it being quite unimportant whether the quantity be large or small, which could not be the case if "the general industry of society" were in any manner dependent thereupon. It could not be houses, mills, or ships, for these do not "employ" industry, but merely enable men to profit by the help of various forces of nature. There remains, then, nothing to be included under this head of "capital" but the trivial quantity of commodities remaining in a transition state, produced and yet unconsumed cotton, wool, flax, rags, coal, and other commodities - the total * Wealth of Nations, book 4, chap. ii.

value of which, in any well-organized and advancing society, will not exceed three per cent. of that of the land, labor, and other machinery employed in their production; whereas, in societies that are retrograding, it always bears a large proportion. The nearer the consumer to the producer, the less must it be, and the more rapid the tendency to new and increased production - the smaller must be the proportion of that capital to the whole- and the greater the tendency to increase in the value of labor and land; as is shown in all advancing countries. The more distant the consumer from the producer, the greater must be the quantity of the products of labor waiting for consumption the less must be the tendency towards increase of production — and the larger the proportion of that capital to the whole, as is shown in Virginia, Jamaica, Ireland, India, Turkey, and other declining countries. Wherever association exists, consumption is rapid, and the more it increases, the more promptly will consumption follow production, with daily and hourly increase in the power of accumulation. To enable men to associate, however, they must possess the power to increase their supplies of that machi nery of composition, decomposition, and recomposition, called money; and that they cannot have, unless the balance of trade with other countries is such as to enable them to purchase it. According to Dr. Smith, "parsimony, and not industry," is "the immediate cause of increase of capital "* an essential error that has been repeated by most economists from his time to the present hour. The generally prevalent idea among them is contained in the brief sentence "Les fortunes ne se forment, et n'augmentent, que par l'epargne" +-being merely the reduction into words, of ideas prevailing among the degraded portions of the human race.

Man seeks power to command and direct the forces of nature; and it is precisely as that power is obtained, that fortunes most rapidly augment the miserly feeling above described then ceasing to exist. Arkwright and Watt obtained power, by means of which they accumulated fortunes for themselves while doubling the value of all the land of Britain. Was this the result of "saving"?

* Wealth of Nations, book 4, chap. ii.

"Fortunes are created and increased only by means of saving."-Journal des Economistes, October, 1854.

Chaptal, Fourcroy, and Berthollet, took the command of great natural forces-thus enabling their countrymen greatly to improve their processes of conversion, and thus contributing largely towards the vast increase in the landed capital of France that the reader has elsewhere seen recorded. Is this a result of the " saving" propensity? Morse-seizing the power to direct electricity acquired fortune; but what in this proceeding savors of "parsimony"? Fulton taught mankind to apply steam in a manner fitted to relieve themselves from the oppressive tax of transportation thus adding countless millions to the value of land; but where, in this, was the evidence of a parsimonious spirit? Scott and Goethe possessed the power both to instruct and amuse their countrymen finding therein a capital by means of which they acquired wealth. Wealth consisting in the power to direct the forces of nature, the more rapid its growth, the more does "parsimony"- the feeling of the slave-tend to disappear from among the qualities of the being made in the image of his Creator, and designated by the word MAN.

Some men seek to obtain the power above described for selfish purposes alone. Others there are, who, like the Marquis of Worcester, Franklin, Washington, Humboldt, Davy, and Berzelius, seek it from an anxious desire to render service to their fellowmen. The first are "parsimonious" of their instructions to the world the latter, open and free as is the air we breathe. The difference between the two is well described in the following passage from an old Latin treatise of St. Bernard, worthy of the reader's careful consideration :

:

"There are those who wish to know, for the mere sake of knowing; this is a low curiosity. There are those who wish to know, that they may be known; and this is a low vanity. There are also those who wish to know, that they may sell their knowledge, so to speak, for money, for honors; and this is low venality. But there are those, also, who wish to know, that they may upbuild; and this is charity and likewise those who wish to know, that they may be upbuilt; and this is wisdom. Of those, the last two only do not pervert the real end of knowledge, which is to be good and to do good."*

:

This is as fully applicable to those who seek for material wealth,

* Translated for, and quoted in, the New York Courier and Enquirer.

as it is to those engaged in the acquisition of that which is intellectual. The class first described grows rapidly, under the system which looks to the extension of the dominion of trade. Desiring to increase the last, we must seek for the means of so doing, in the enlargement of the domain of commerce.

§ 9. The doctrine that it is to savings we are to look for all increase of capital, leads sometimes to results so strange as to render it remarkable, that conviction of the error should not be forced upon its teachers. Mr. Mill assures his readers, that "the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in England has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion indeed," as he continues, "was in existence ten years ago of the present productive capital of the country, scarcely any part, except farm-houses and factories, and a few ships and machines; and even they would not, in most cases, have survived so long, if fresh labor had not been employed within that period in putting them in repair." *

The first thing to be remarked in relation to this passage is the use of the words above italicized-wealth and capital-as being synonymous; and yet, while no one, the author of this, himself, not excepted, would fail to regard a man of large landed property as being wealthy, it would seem quite clear that Mr. Mill did not regard land, or the improvements upon it-resulting from thousands of years of occupation-as constituting any portion of a nation's wealth.

Leaving the land, its ditches, drains, and roads, however, altogether out of view, the amount that still remains is quite sufficient for our purpose. Houses, as we see, do come under the head of wealth their value, apart from the machinery they contained, having been estimated in 1842 at £625,000,000, or $3,000,000,000. The property now under insurance against fire, is £870,000,000; and insurance being rarely effected upon more than half the value-we have a right almost to double this great sum to obtain the real one. The total annual product of the efforts of the British people cannot be placed at more than £25 per head, giving, for the twenty-one millions, £525,000,000 as the total fund out of which savings are to be made; yet are we here assured, that "the * J. S. MILL: Principles of Political Economy, book 1, chap. v. § 6.