that animal warmth, and the development of animal motive power, may be sustained in a vigorous man during a period of a year by means of ten bushels of wheat. They contain the elements which, during that period, vital chemistry transforms into motive power.

Looking upon a human labourer, then, just as we would upon a steam-engine, we see that the amount of force which he is capable of exerting, depends upon the amount of food supplied to him-a part of it answering the purpose of the coal which gives heat, another answering to the water that is converted into steam and generates motion. A sheet-iron jacket put around the boiler prevents the waste of heat in the one case, just as a woollen jacket about the body of the labourer does in the other.

But food, clothing, and shelter are supplied to the human machine in the shape of wages. To stint them, and to keep the labourer down to the lowest quantity that will induce him to live, without deterring him from propagation, is precisely the same kind of economy which would keep the steam-engines of a nation at half their working power, to save wood, and water, and sheet-iron.

The rate of wages which such considerations would demand, has been attained in very few regions of the world. Suppose it anywhere to have been just reached, the labourer is only brought up to the condition of an ox. But he has intelligence, which the ox has not, and it is the great element of his industrial power. In the lowest descriptions of labour, there is occasion for judgment in the selection of means, in the modes of exerting force most advantageously, and in the adoption of tools and simple mechanical principles, to economize time and strength. As we rise to labour in connection with more complicated machinery, the value of general intelligence becomes distinctly apparent. The Board of Education in Massachusetts procured from the overseers of factories in that State, a return of the different rates of wages paid, and of the degree of education among those who received them; from which it appeared that the scale began with those foreigners who made a mark as the signature to their weekly receipts for wages, and rose to the girls who taught school in the winter months and worked in the factories in summer. This was not the result of any concert among the proprietors of mills; as to that portion which was paid for piece-work, concert was

precluded by the nature of the case. The difference in the effectiveness of American operatives, resulting from their superior intelligence, has been estimated as an advantage to our manufactories, over those of foreign countries, equivalent to twenty per cent.

But, to educate himself, a man must have more leisure from bodily toil than is merely sufficient to restore physical energy. He must be able to obtain such a subsistence as will maintain him in high animal working order, in a less number of hours than he could endure to work without impairing his health and strength. To educate his children, he must be able to support them after the period when they become capable of contributing to the support of the family, and must have the means of paying for their schooling and books. This consideration requires a further increase of wages, and repays it to the capitalist with interest and profit, in the increased efficiency of the labour which it procures. In truth, a little reflection will induce the conclusion, that intelligence is the only quality in human labour that it is good economy to employ and to pay for. So far as mere motive force is concerned, it is supplied at a cheaper rate by the natural agents, through the intervention of machinery, and therefore it is that machinery is more and more supplanting the mere animal power of man, and leaving him dependent upon his higher nature to earn him wages. Intelligence in the body of labourers, devises and perfects machinery and improved processes. It diffuses and propagates itself; that of the individual acts upon the community, improving its physical, moral, and political condition, and these in their turn react upon the individual, increasing his security, his power, and his inducements to industry, honesty, and thrift.

Muscular contraction is originated by the will, and every repetition depends upon a repetition of the mandate conveyed from the brain by the nerves. Nervous excitement cannot be maintained without a constant stimulant. Hope is a more powerful and constant stimulant than fear, because it is agreeable, and the mind loves to protract and foster it; while fear is painful, and the mind shrinks from entertaining it, and repels it as an unwelcome guest. Hope, therefore, is the great stimulant to toil, and the toil which feeds hope, by ensuring a present surplus, which may serve as the basis of

future progress, and may open to the imagination a vista of indefinite advancement to the labourer, and to the children whom he may expect to start, by the aid of his savings, at a stage much beyond his own commencement, has always proved to be toil to the extremest tension, physical and mental, that our nature is capable of sustaining. It is this which makes American activity the marvel of European travellers. It is the absence of this which has ever made slave labour dear at any price, compared with that of freemen. As long ago as when Pliny wrote, it had been found out, "Coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est, et quicquid agitur a desperantibus." An author* who has looked closely into the subject, informs us that the Greeks and Romans valued the labour of the slave at half that of the freeman; and Homer sings,

That makes man slave, takes half his worth away."

The conclusion to which these facts lead us, is the same as that involved in the law of Distribution, elucidated in the preceding chapters. It is that the highest wages attend the highest gross production. We contemplated them then as the result, as we have now as the cause, of a more than commensurate increase of productive power. It follows that low wages procure dear labour, and high wages cheap labour, to the capitalist and to the community.

Several of the English Economists have observed facts corroborative of this law, but without deducing any principle from themas indeed they could not do without overthrowing the theory which lies at the basis of their system. Thus, Professor Jones, in his essay on the Distribution of Wealth, says,

"Two Middlesex mowers will mow in a day as much grain as six Russian serfs; and, in spite of the dearness of provisions in England and their cheapness in Russia, the mowing of a quantity of hay, which would cost an English farmer half a copeck, will cost a Russian proprietor three or four copecks. The Prussian Counsellor of State, Jacob, is considered to have proved that in Russia, where everything is cheap, the labour of a serf is doubly as expensive as that of a labourer in England."

Mr. M'Culloch, writing in the Edinburgh Review, had more than once occasion to remark upon the difference between real and nominal cheapness, in comparing the current rates of wages in England and

* Dureau de La Malle: Economie Politique des Romains, vol. 1, p. 151.

France.* Mr. J. S. Mill sees that the truth may be generalized to a certain extent, but does not see that it is universal, as he would have done had he not been trammelled by his faith in the theory of Ricardo. He says,

"Nothing is more common than to say that wages are high or low, meaning only that the cost of labour is high or low. The reverse of this would be oftener the case; the cost of labour is frequently at its highest when wages are lowest."

* In June, 1827, the Edinburgh Review held the following language:— "We very much doubt whether wages are really higher in England than in France. That wages estimated by the day are higher in the former, is, we believe, true; but the question really at issue, is not whether the wages paid to workmen employed for a particular period are higher in France than in England, but whether the wages or sums paid for executing a particular piece of work are higher? Now, this is obviously a radically different question from the former. A very competent judge of such matters, the late Arthur Young, gave it as his opinion, that an Essex labourer, at 2s. 6d. a day, was decidedly cheaper than a Tipperary labourer at 5d. And upon the same principle, though a French manufacturer may be able to hire his workmen by the day or the week, for some twenty or thirty per cent. less than an English manufacturer pays to his, yet, as the British labourers, from their better training, the greater subdivision of employments among them, and their industrious habits, are able to execute a decidedly greater quantity of work in a given space of time than the French labourers, the wages or prices of labour may really be lower in this country than in France."Edinburgh Review, vol. 46, page 28.

He goes on to express the belief that "the English cotton, woollen, and hardware manufacturers and machine-makers, get any quantity of work cheaper and at the same time incomparably better executed than it could be done in France."

In July, 1835, the same Edinburgh Reviewer, grown somewhat more confident, says:

"If we knew the quantity of work done in the mills of which we know the wages, we have not the slightest doubt that the stories about the greater cheapness of labour on the continent, would be found to be about as authentic as Fairy tales. Mr. Edwin Rose, who had been practically employed as an operative engineer in different factories in France and Germany, on being examined by Mr. Cowell (of the factory commission), stated distinctly that it took twice the number of hands to perform most kinds of factory work in France, Switzerland, &c., that it did in England. Wages there, if estimated by any standard good for anything, that is by the work done, were higher than in England."-Edinburgh Review, vol. 61, p. 469.

This, he argues, may arise from two causes, the first of which is, that labour, though low-priced, may be inefficient. He instances Ireland, where wages are lower than in any other country of Europe. The remuneration of an agricultural labourer in the west of Ireland is not more, he states, than half the wages of even the lowest-paid Englishman, the Dorsetshire labourer. That a difference to the same extent really exists in the efficiency of the labour, is proved, he thinks, "Not only by abundant testimony, but by the fact that, notwithstanding the lowness of wages, the profits of capital are not higher in Ireland than in England." This explanation is satisfactory in the case where wages are reduced, and no increase of profit follows. But it is insufficient to account for a high rate both of wages and of profits, existing together. Such a state of facts is inadmissible, according to the theory of which Mr. Mill is a disciple. Accordingly he says, in reference to the United States:

"There the labourer enjoys a greater abundance of comforts than in any other country in the world, except some of our newest colonies; but, owing to the cheap price at which these comforts can be obtained, (combined with the great efficiency of the labour,) the cost of labour to the capitalist is considerably lower than in Europe. It must be so, since the rate of profit is higher, as indicated by the rate of interest, which is six per cent. at New York, when it is three or three and a quarter per cent. in London.". Political Economy, vol. 1, page 502.

But it is as true that the rate of wages, measured in coin, is higher in this country than in England, as it is that the rate of interest is higher. Yet, Mr. Mill is compelled to the tacit assumption that the difference of wages is not in the amount of money, but simply in the amount of comforts that an equal amount of money

will command-an assumption altogether at war with the well-known factbecause his theory does not permit him to believe that high wages and high profits can coexist. The English agricultural labourer can earn, according to Mr. Kay,* from 7s. to 9s. per week, on the ave

* Social Condition of the People, vol. 1, page 287. The estimate of Mr. Kay is somewhat lower than the average rate of agricultural wages stated by Mr. Caird, to which we have before referred. The latter remarks upon the very great and unnatural disparity of the wages paid for the same nominal amount of work in the various counties; the highest rate he met with having been 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire, and the lowest 6s. a week in South Wilts. This difference is unquestionably due in part to the operation of the Poor Law system, which ties the labourer to his parish,