rather an ornamental appendage than a vital part of the machinery. The landlords kept the ascendency in the House of Commons and controlled its policy according to their supposed interests, down to the repeal of the Corn Laws; but that was a triumph of the representatives of machinery. The millocracy has now the upper hand of the squirearchy. Its numbers and influence are continually growing, and its property is distributing itself with a constant tendency towards equalization, as property in land would do were it permitted to obey natural laws. But the feudal instinct which struggled to prevent the alienation and division of landed property by the law of primogeniture, by the practice of entails, by withholding real estate from sale under judicial process, and permitting only its temporary use and rents to be applied to the satisfaction of debts, is still strong in the landlord class, and fences their ranks against the intrusion of those who would swell their power, if the impediments were removed, which fetter the disposition of real estate by cumbrous forms, great risks, and onerous expenses. While the ownership of land was the basis of a military aristocracy, governing the nation by the physical force of its dependants, its policy was that of a close corporation: Now that its monopoly of political power has been wrested from it, the exigencies of defence require that the number of landholders should be recruited. However long the landholders may cling to the feudal policy, and endeavour to keep the land from being marketable like other commodities, we may be sure that power goes with knowledge and capital, and that, as their progress necessarily involves the distribution of a constantly increasing proportion to the many, the many will peacefully rise to equality of political rights. As government comes to be administered by the many, it is confined to the objects in which the many can agree. Its actual power is largely increased, while the practical exercise of it is limited. It is impartial, broad-based and stable. There is scarce a nation of Europe, in which greater and more numerous changes of internal administration have not been effected in the last thirty years, than in the United States since the landing of the Pilgrims, two hundred and thirty years ago. What changes have been effected with us have been almost silent and imperceptible, without convulsion or the dread of it. No constitutional alteration

in any of the old States of our Confederacy, has been comparable in magnitude to the English Reform Bill of 1832. The revolution which disconnected us from the British Empire, only affected our foreign relations, without modifying in any substantial respect the internal political system which has prevailed in the States from their earliest settlement. That system has always rested in the free States-it must rest in all the States upon the doctrine that the labourer is worthy of his hire - that his hire should be such as not merely to nourish his vegetative life, not merely to feed animal appetites, but to enable him to cultivate the powers and affections of a man, the lord and master of the natural forces, in virtue of that reason by which he ascertains their laws, conforms to them, and controls them, and valuable to his employer above all cattle, in the degree to which that reason is cultivated and active-who can be induced to the exercise of his purely human powers, by appealing to the angel in man, the sense of justice that urges him to hearty work for fair wages, and the undying affections of his better nature, which enable him to reap the richest harvest of comfort in sowing prosperity for his children-a system under which, and under no other, the design of our common Father is accomplished, and for the poor labourer as for the rich capitalist it is true, "Like as the arrows in the hands of a giant, even so are the young children; blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them."

We have thus far spoken of wages in general, without referring to the specific differences which characterize their rate in various employments. That difference of compensation which is given for skill in a particular employment, above the current rate, may obviously be discriminated as being, in fact, the profits of capital. Time, labour, expenses, laid out in acquiring skill in any species of industry, are not the less capital to the labourer because they are inseparable from his person. They demand and obtain a higher rate of profit than is paid for the use of more enduring capital, because they die with him. The price to be paid for the rent of a machine must not only compensate its present use, but furnish a fund to keep it in repair, or renew it when it is worn out. The labourer should get for his skill, not simply the interest upon the capital which it represents, but an amount in addition which will insure his life for

a sum equal to its value. inducement for him to make the sacrifice necessary to purchase skill. It is not necessary to suppose that a close calculation is generally made upon the basis furnished by the tables of the Expectation of Life; but that a rough approximation should be attempted, upon some balancing of known hardship and abstinence, with rewards uncertain in their duration, is not to be doubted. Man forms his expectations, lays his plans, and follows them, with some eye to their net result in his entire lifetime, and does not voluntarily expend labour without the expectation that its equivalent will be returned to him, with a profit to remunerate him for any intervening delay, within what he reckons his probable life.

Unless he can obtain that, there is no

This consideration serves to account for the superior wages paid to those who labour in employments requiring a long apprenticeship, as well as for the premium paid to the possessor of unusual skill in any trade over those who have it in a less degree. There are, however, many employments in which individuals obtain wages vastly higher than others, who have devoted the same amount of labour to their education, even where they have brought to it the same grade of ability. Such differences are seen in the learned professions. One lawyer accumulates a fortune, while a dozen others, of equal talent and professional learning, obtain little if anything more than a decent subsistence, and another dozen spend years in waiting in vain for the first opportunity that shall enable them to demonstrate their ability, ekeing out a subsistence by other labour, in other walks than their profession, and finally abandon it in despair. In London, a great portion of the literary labour, editorial, reporting, &c., is the work of barristers waiting for their first brief; and many of them display every day a greater amount of mental ability, than makes the stock of men receiving the highest fees. Success at the bar is said to be like success in a lottery, where the few draw great prizes, that are made up from the losses of the many. Adam Smith thought that, at his day, the prizes were not high enough and numerous enough to make the lottery a fair one; and that this and some other professions and employments, in reference to which he uses this illustration, are on the whole underpaid; that is, that the entire gains of the whole body, if equally divided among them, gave

a very slender return for the expenses of their education. That men continue to embark in them, he attributes to the "absurd presumption in their own good fortune," which, the majority are prone to indulge. Mr. Senior, in commenting upon the passage, remarks that "Nothing sells so dearly as what is disposed of by a well-constructed lottery; and, if we wish to sell salaries dearly, that is, to obtain as much work and knowledge as possible for as little pay as possible, the best means is to dazzle the imagination with a few splendid prizes, and by magnificently overpaying one or two, to induce thousands to sell their services at half price." It is an unmixed evil that men should run a hazard of loss in training themselves for any services which the interests of society require. Where that hazard is unavoidable, however, a plain principle of justice demands that such a compensation as would induce the effort by all whom it is needful should attempt it, be distributed among those who succeed. If a thousand able-bodied Americans are required to work every day, to construct the Panama railroad, and they are to be paid by the day, and if it be ascertained that out of three thousand men on the ground two-thirds are each day found on the sick list, the least that is fair is, that every man who works should receive treble the wages that he would demand in a healthy climate. If it should happen that the misfortune of disabling sickness fall equally upon all, so that each should be sick two days out of every three, the equity of the arrangement would be manifest. If one or two of these, however, should have the good fortune to escape disease entirely, and go home at the year's end with three years' wages in his pocket, there would be just as little ground for complaint on the part of his employers or of his fellow-workmen. He took the risk of being sick all the while, for a premium, the amount of which was contingent; whether, in the event, it prove large or small, he has equally earned it. If the workmen were the slaves of a single owner, and the contractors for building the railroad should apply to him to rebate something from the extravagant pay he was entitled, by their agreement, to receive for the services of the two lucky individuals, he would have it in his power to silence them by footing up the pay-roll, and showing that though for John and Dick he got threefold, yet, taking the whole gang together, he received no more

than he would have done had he employed them at the ordinary wages in a healthy climate. The reasoning is at least equally valid in the mouths of John and Dick, when they own themselves, and when their employers, instead of being a corporation, are isolated individuals, acting without concert, and buying services or the product of services as their wants dictate.

We can account in the same way for the large wages obtained by persons having extraordinary natural advantages. Jenny Lind could get a thousand dollars for singing a single evening: she has doubtless sung at the opera, where young females who sung in the chorus received less than a single dollar. Suppose, however, that some enterprising Barnum should determine that he would train up a new Jenny Lind, or at least a tolerable rival for her, for his own profit. He would at once see it necessary to multiply his chances of success, by making the experiment with a large number of persons some hundreds or thousands. He would be at enormous charges for years in their musical education; and if at last he produced one prodigy of song, who could earn by her vocal powers the revenue of Jenny Lind, he would also have on his hands a number of inferior songstresses, who might draw crowded houses but for the superior attractions of his Prima Donna, and scores of chorus singers, whose earnings would not repay the outlay for their board, clothing, and education, to say nothing of the scores who died, lost their voices, or came to utter failure before earning anything.*

*This illustration is borrowed-substituting Jenny Lind for Rubinifrom an able article by M. Quijano, in the Journal des Economistes, for May and June, 1852, in which the imaginary capitalist who has succeeded in raising a Rubini, answers a remonstrance against the extravagant price put upon his singing, by pointing to the fact, that the average compensation of the 2043 performers of all kinds in the twenty-five Theatres, Operahouses, and Circuses of Paris, is but $328 per annum, and would be less, but for the fact that the Government grants in aid of the Theatres amount to about one-third of the aggregate salaries of their performers.

Quijano makes use of this illustration incidentally; the main purpose of his article being to show, that the enormous value of the Clos Vougeot, an estate producing a famous wine, is to be accounted for in the same way, and that it does not disprove the doctrine, that land derives all its value from labour. How many fortunes have been wasted in vain endeavours to find the proper spot, and make a vineyard which will produce such wine!