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work, and obtain barely the return of the food expended in their working, while the human labourer exacts a profit-more food than supplies his muscular waste.

Men reckon their gains by a comparison between what they previously possessed and what is added to it. The capitalist reckons his profits, not by his proportion of the product which has been won by the combination with labour, but by the ratio the increment bears to the previous stock. He says he has made so much per cent. on his capital; he rents it for so much per cent. for a year. The difference is one of arithmetical notation, not of fact. When his proportion of the product is small, it being composed of the original capital and the increment, the ratio of the latter to the capital will also be small. The fact will be expressed, according to the nature of the capital of which it is predicated, by saying that Rent, Profit, or Interest, are at a low rate. The undisputed fact, that the rate of interest constantly falls with the progress of communities in numbers and wealth, is an evidence of the tendency we have sought to demonstrate.

If we conceive the course of Nature to be reversed, so that the general mass of wealth should bear a decreasing instead of an increasing proportion to population, then it is plain that the law of distribution would be reversed also. If the number of labourers increased more rapidly than the supply of materials for them to work upon, of tools for them to work with, and of food to replace the energy which they expended, then the capitalists of each succeeding generation, would find labourers competing with each other, to offer a larger proportion of the proceeds of their labour, to escape the necessity of starving in idleness. .bstituting in increasing proportion the force of human muscles for the potent agencies of Nature, by reason of the deficiency of tools, and with that muscular force decreasing with the inferiority in quantity and quality of food, their labour would constantly decrease in efficiency and productiveLabour thus becoming more costly when measured by its results, the increased proportion of the capitalist would give him a smaller absolute quantity. His power to command men would indeed grow; he would find himself the chief of a little band of barbarians, and soon endeavour, by plundering the vassals of a neighbouring

ness.

chief, to make up the leanness of his revenue. Continual strife and destruction would accelerate the common ruin; for Life is valued cheaply, where the labour of a life produces little. Disease, induced by bad food, bad clothing, and bad shelter, would rapidly thin out those who escaped the casualties of war. Population would dwindle, and society relapse into barbarism.

Social progress consists in the growth of population and capital. Both begin at zero together, and go on continually increasing. As labour becomes continually more effective, each unit of population in one generation makes a larger contribution to the stock of capital than a unit in the preceding generation. It follows that capital increases in a more rapid ratio than population. It certainly follows, unless the increasing power of man is attended with a decreasing disposition to exercise it. Such would be the case if his wants and desires were constant. But it is the characteristic of his nature, that which distinguishes him from the brute, that his desires are insatiable. The satisfaction of one creates another; and he is thus goaded by his intellectual and moral nature the human constitution-to ceaseless activity. from generation to generation, have the same uniform powers and the same wants. Nature gives them an early maturity of frame, and an instinct which makes no progress. They win from her no further powers. They are contented, and devise no machine, no art. With all the imitative faculty of the monkey, and his opportunities of seeing its great convenience to man, it is said that he has never yet learned to make a fire.

the angel element in The lower animals,

The law which regulates the distribution of the proceeds of labour, which assigns to the labourer a constantly increasing proportion, and to the capitalist a constantly diminishing one, with increased quantity to both tending therefore to the production of equality among menwas the discovery of Mr. Carey. It was a contribution to social science, more fruitful in consequences than any made before it. It is the key to History, and enables us to understand and explain an interminable series of facts, which are incomprehensible and incredible, upon the theory of the Economists who follow Malthus and Ricardo, and, upon that of other writers, appear to be a mass of accidents, not resulting from or connected by any pervading law.

84 CO-OPERATION OF NATURAL AGENTS WITH HUMAN LABOUR.

Bastiat was not extravagant when, announcing it in 1850, thirteen years after Carey, he declared, "Such is the great, admirable, consoling, and necessary law of capital. To demonstrate it, is, as it appears to me, to overwhelm with discredit the declamations, with which our ears have so long been assailed, against the avidity and tyranny of the most potent instrument of civilization and equalization, that human faculties ever produced."

To exhibit it in its universality, the indispensable test of a genuine law, we must show that it governs capital in land. This will be more conveniently done in treating of Rent; after which we shall present historic and statistical evidence, that the course of things in the actual going-on of the world's business has been such as the law requires, and that the supposititious cases we have imagined are fair illustrations of a principle, which works unremittingly, producing its effects by slow and imperceptible gradations. Nature never acts per saltum; though to elucidate her laws we are obliged, for the sake of contrast, to place things and events in juxtaposition, that are separated by wide tracts of space and time, and thus to present a long series of effects in the aspect of a single and rapid change.

CHAPTER IV.

RENT.

In the United States there are rarely more than two classes of persons occupied in the cultivation of the earth, the proprietors and those to whom they pay wages. The interest of the proprietors in the soil is absolute. They own it in fee simple. The term “fee” comes from the feudal law, and imports that the land is held of a superior lord, to whom the estate, on the happening of certain contingencies, as the failure of heirs, would revert. Except as affording a basis for the right of eminent domain, residing in the State, and in virtue of which it appropriates—according to the feudal theory, resumes—land, when required for public purposes, the word "fee" has no practical signification in most of the States of our ConfedeLand is allodial.

racy.

In England there are three classes concerned in the partition of the products of the soil-the landlords, the farmers, who rent of them and who furnish the capital expended in cultivation, and the labourers whom these employ. The English writers, therefore, discourse of the rent of the landlord, the profits of the farmer or capitalist, and the wages of the labourer. The separation of the proprietors and the tenants into distinct classes, undoubtedly suggested the notion, that the laws governing the remuneration received by them are different, and that there is some quality in Rent, by which it can be discriminated from other profits. It thus comes that Rent forms a distinct and prominent title in the treatises of the English Economists. They have been followed in this particular by Economists of the Continent, even where the usage upon which the English practice is founded has never prevailed. This is because the rent of land is the index of its value. In England, indeed, land is habitually valued in terms of its rent. It is said to be worth so many years' purchase, and is bought and sold at prices estimated in that and to way. To what circumstances is it that it owes its value?

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what circumstances does land owe its power to produce an income or rent to its owner? are obviously the same question. We propose to inquire whether it is any original quality, or is due to subsequent

causes.

Land in the Valley of the Connecticut sells for two hundred dollars the acre. Land of equal, if not superior fertility, and with advantages in point of climate, on the banks of the Genesee, can be bought for fifty dollars per acre. Land, in every respect equal in its native qualities to either, but lying in Wisconsin, can be bought for $1 25 per acre. The same laws and institutions prevail in the three localities. The settlers of the Genesee country were emigrants from Massachusetts and Connecticut. The settlers of Wisconsin were colonists from Western New York. If we proceed farther west, land can be had without asking, by any man who chooses to squat upon it. It is without value. Two hundred and thirty years ago the lands on the Connecticut-a little more than fifty years ago the lands on the Genesee, were in the same situation. What is it that has infused value into them?

A great share of the value can be traced to labour expended directly upon the land. It has been cleared of the trees which covered it—a slow and toilsome process when it was undertaken, and an expensive one, because the timber, everywhere abundant and cumbrous to transport, would bring no price. The stumps have been rooted out; ditches dug to drain it; fences, barns, and stables built; lanes made through it; the stones gathered into heaps; it has been ploughed, harrowed, manured. If it were possible to obtain an accurate account of the labour thus directly incorporated with the land, its value at present prices would be found to fall little short, if it did not equal or exceed that of the land. But this is not all. School-houses and churches have been erected in the vicinity; roads have been constructed, leading to market-towns, that have themselves been built up; bridges, canals, and railways have been made, and all of them contribute something to the value of the land. How largely improved means of transportation enhance the price of the soil, whose products are carried by them, is matter of familiar observation. It is impossible, however, to assign their shares with any accuracy to each of so many causes, many of them

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