American press been treated as ably as in Congress, they have continually been discussed by both Congress and the American press with a degree of wisdom and fairness far greater than any which have marked the English economists generally since Adam Smith. It has been unfortunate for economic science that it has been deemed a point of political good-breeding in England since 1846 to bow when the term "free trade" is mentioned as if it were the host, to lift one's hat as if it were the queen, and to shed tears of patriotism as if it were the flag. In fact it is only a mixed experiment, freighted with evils not easy to calculate. Its partial trial cost indeed the expatriation of millions of farmers, the fortunes of some, and even the lives of not a few of those of the poorer class. But so long as the prowess of the British army extends British markets adequately to keep British spindles going, the ruin of the farmers can be atoned for by the prosperity of the manufacturers. To perceive this has constituted the distinctive function of the Manchester school.

CHAPTER II.

WEALTH.

18. Wealth and Poverty-Social. -Wealth, in ordinary speech, is applied to a large accumulation of property in one person, or as brought into one point of view, as when we speak of the wealth of some one person, city or state. In political economy the term wealth expresses the abstract idea or quality wherein these large masses of wealth are identical, in substance, with the smallest quantity, though it be the sum paid to a laborer for a day's work, or by him to a restaurant proprietor for a meal. Wealth, therefore, in the economic sense, rejects the element of quantity which is associated with the term in colloquial usage, and retains only the quality wherein a small sum of wealth is identical with a large one. Wealth, in the colloquial sense, stands to wealth in the economic sense, as the term ocean does to the term water," ocean conveying the idea of a vast quantity, while "water" is as fully met by a glassful as by a sea. So a bootblack's fee is as truly wealth, economically, as the largest estate.

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Economic wealth would be the power to satisfy one's desires, provided desire were not in itself an illimitably expansive quantity, and therefore incapable of satisfaction in any absolute sense. Wealth is, therefore, a power to command the services of our fellow men. When these services are commanded by force only, as in slavery, and under barbaric despotisms, force becomes the chief source of wealth. Wealth then takes on the form of slaveowning, or seigniorage, or lordship, over many retainers, servants, henchmen, or soldiers. In commercial periods the exercise of force is relegated to the government and its army and police. Wealth then becomes the power to command the voluntary services of men by paying for them. In the degree that a man possesses much of this power he is wealthy. Possessing little of it renders one poor. But even the poor obtain all the material comfort they enjoy through such share of wealth as is theirs. Wealth, therefore, does not consist in commodities, services,

money, lands, or pleasures, but in the power to control them at will by compensation.*

Wealth may again be defined as the removal of poverty. Indeed if the logical, historical order were observed, poverty, as the antithesis and antecedent of wealth, would be entitled to the prior definition. Poverty is the condition of unsupplied want— of hunger, thirst, nakedness, destitution and inability to command the services of one's fellow men. It pertains to all human beings at birth, except in so far as law, originating in parental affection, may have invested them with a title to the affectionate care of their parents, or to certain rights to inherit property from their ancestors or relatives. It is the characteristic of all nomadism, like that of the Australian natives, and of all savageism. It diminishes with barbarism-the drift toward civilization being always proportionate to the growth of the wealth of the aggregate society. Civilization is the intellectual aspect, or name, for the same increase in the complexity of individual rights and powers, and the same development of personal liberty, relatively to communal, tribal or state power, of which the growth of capital, or wealth is the economic aspect, or name.

* Adam Smith ("Wealth of Nations " by McCulloch, p. 13), says: "Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can [or can not] afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences and amusements of human life. But after the division of labor has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labor can supply him; the far greater part of them he must derive from the labor of other people. And he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labor which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase.

H. C. Carey says wealth consists in the power to command the ever gratuitous services of nature.-Soc. Sci., by McKean, p. 100.

Bastiat ("Harmonies of Economics," tr. by Stirling, p. 181), says: "The vulgar employ the word wealth in two senses. They say 'the abundance of water is wealth to such a country.' In this case they are thinking only of utility. But when one wishes to reckon up his own wealth, he makes what is called an inventory, in which only commercial value is taken into account.

"With deference to the savants I believe the vulgar are right for once. Wealth is either actual or relative. In the first point of view we judge of it by our satisfactions. Mankind become richer in proportion as they acquire a greater amount of ease or material prosperity, whatever be the commodity by which it is procured. But do you wish to know what proportional share each man has in the general prosperity? In other words, his relative wealth. This is simply a relation, which value alone reveals, because value is itself a relation."

"Goods are any

Roscher seems to use the term "goods" for "wealth," and says: thing which can be used, whether directly or indirectly, for the satisfaction of any true or legitimate human want, and whose utility for this purpose is recognized.' ("Pol. Econ. by Lalor," vol. i, p. 53; chap. 1, sec. 1.) He therefore defines economy as the systemized activity of man to satisfy his need of external goods.

Henry Fawcett ("Manual," p. 6), says: "Wealth may be defined to consist of every commodity which has exchange value,"

CAREY'S DEFINITION.

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Mr. Carey's definition of wealth as "the power to command the always gratuitous services of the great forces of nature" is excellent when understood in Mr. Carey's sense, and may be broader and more philosophical than that we have adopted; but it involves much study to comprehend, and its full meaning grows upon the mind only gradually, as it does in the class of truths called mystical. The word nature came into the English language with a religious meaning, as distinguishing what a man is at birth in contrast with what he becomes by grace or divine (supramundane) influence. From this it passed to mean the constitution which all things have under law, as distinguished from changes they may take on supernaturally. In both these old senses man is a part of nature, and in the first of them nature is the whole of man.

Gradually nature, which at first had meant what man was at birth, (from natus, born) came to be used by some as meaning the world exterior to man,* to which the root meaning of the word nature, viz., birth, has no application. Whatever there be in man, which obtains command of the forces of exterior nature, must of course

John Stuart Mill defines wealth as "all useful or agreeable things which possess exchangeable value, or in other words, all useful and agreeable things except those which can be obtained, in the quantity desired, without labor or sacrifice."

Jevons (" Primer," p. 13), says wealth is "what is transferable, limited in supply, and useful." Perry rejects the term wealth. George ("Progress and Poverty," pp. 3437), says it is natural products modified by human exertion, so as to gratify desire.

Henry Sidgwick ("Pol. Econ." p. 71), says: "The wealth of any individual is considered to include all useful things-whether material things, as food, clothes, houses, etc., which, being at once valuable and transferable, admit of being sold at a certain price."

Adam Smith again (" Wealth of Nations" by McCulloch, p. 14), says; Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him is the power of purchasing a certain command over all the labor, or over all the produce of labor which is then in the market. The exchangeable value of every thing must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner."

Roscher (vol. i, chap. 1, sec. 9), says: "The possession of large, and also of potentially lasting resources; objectively such resources themselves we call wealth. But it must be large in a twofold sense, large as compared with the rational wants of its possessor, and large also as compared with the resources of other people. If all men were possessed of a great deal, but all of an exactly equal amount, each would be compelled to be his own chimney-sweep, scavenger and bootblack; and how could any one then be properly called wealthy?"

A New York financial journal entitled Wealth adopts the following well considered and apt definition: "Wealth is that positive and substantial share in the good of fortune which distinguishes an individual from his neighbors by putting him in possession of all that is commonly desired and sought after by man."

* It is so used in the title of Mr. George P. Marsh's book, "Man and Nature," a treatise on physical geography as influenced by human action.

be part of man's nature. It is not, therefore, a contest between man and nature, but between nature in man and nature exterior to man. The forces which wealth aids man to control are, perhaps, "the great forces of nature." But the forces, in man, which do the controlling, must be still greater forces in man's nature, or they would not control. Hence, minds educated in certain schools of thought, repel as ill-conceived and incongruous, the attempt, in a definition designed to be exact, to treat "man as being one distinct entity and nature another.

Another class of minds asks, "Why do we need any aid to command services which are rendered gratis?" They do not merely ask this question, but they find themselves unable to answer it. This inability renders it necessary to translate Carey's language into the dialect in which other minds think. When it is so translated it seems to mean that wealth is the power to obtain by exchange or payment such services on the part of other men as will bring within the reach of one's own enjoyment those properties of matter which, though at some time or place imparted to matter gratuitously, yet can not be enjoyed by me without the services of my fellows. Confessedly coal, iron, wood, wheat, wool, potatoes, flour, and the life that is in plants, animals, and our fellow men, come to society at large as the gratuitous gifts of nature. The fragrance and flavor of tea, wine, venison or game is the gratuitous gift of nature. Even the sharp flavor of the pepper with which we season the venison is the gratuitous gift of nature. This is all that we enjoy. We do not enjoy the labor the Chinaman performed in carrying the tea over the mountains on his back; nor any other of the labor necessary to place the tea or pepper or game on our table. Yet we pay for the labor and get the enjoyable properties gratis. Hence in the closest analysis we get what we enjoy gratis, from nature, by paying our fellow men to bring it to us. Hence, also, what we pay for seems to form no part of what we enjoy, but it is the means of getting it.

Man makes no property of matter or force which his fellow man can enjoy, whether it be the light of the stars, the hardness of ivory, the beauty of gold, the glint of the diamond or the warmth of fur. But men's toil makes the telescope, the paper knife, the coin, the solitaire, and the sacque. Hence while the properties we enjoy come gratis to society as a whole, they come to him who enjoys them, as wealth, only through his own labor or the labor of his fellows, and by exchange. Nature having affixed impassable limits to each man's power to consume, and not hav