Thus Locke, after shewing that the foundation of the right of appropriating portions of the earth and its products by private persons originated in the labour they bestowed on them, says,'"Nor is it so strange as perhaps before consideration it might appear, that the Property of Labour should be able to overbalance the community of land: for it is labour indeed that put the difference of value on everything; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labour; nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour. "There cannot be a clearer demonstration of anything, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i. e., a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance what might serve for food, raiment, and delight: yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniences we enjoy; and a king of a large and fruitful territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day labourer in England. "To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life through their several progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much of their value they receive from human industry. Bread, wine, and cloth, are things of daily use, and great plenty; yet, notwithstanding, acorns, water, and leaves, or skins, must be our bread, drink, and clothing, did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities; for whatever bread is more than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the food Essay on Civil Government. and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other, provisions which our industry and pains prepares for us; which, how much they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far greater part of the value of things we enjoy in this world; and the ground which produces the materials is scarce to be reckoned in, as any or at most, but a very small part of it; so little that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing. "An acre of land that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America which, with the same husbandry, would do the like, are without doubt of the same natural intrinsic value; but yet the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year is worth £5, and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued and sold here: at least I may truly say not one thousandth. It is labour, then, which puts the greatest part of the value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth anything: it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat is more worth than the product of as good land which lies waste, is all the effect of labour; for it is not barely the ploughman's pains, the reaper's and the thresher's toils, and the baker's sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being seed to be sewn to its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an effect of that; nature and the earth furnished only the almost worthless materials as in themselves. It would be a strange catalogue of things that industry provided and made use of about every loaf of bread before it came into our use, if we could trace them: iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dyeing, drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in the ship that brought any of the commodities used by any of the workmen to any part of the work: all which it would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up." We have given this passage at length because it is probably the most elaborate Economical analysis of price of its time: and the essay it is taken from is not the best known of Locke's works. The doctrine that all wealth is the produce of land and labour became very common among the early thinkers on Economics. We have seen that Smith constantly repeats the phrase, although we have shewn his inconsistencies on the subject. Ricardo perceiving the inconsistency of Smith's fundamental doctrines of Value, finally rejected exchangeability as the test of Value, and adopted Labour as the Cause, or Form, of Value."In speaking, however, of labour as being the foundation of all value." He also says that if a commodity were always produced by exactly the same quantity of labour, it would be invariable in value. McCulloch also maintained that Labour is the cause of all value" Nature is not niggard nor parsimonious. Her rude products, powers, and capacities are all offered gratuitously to man. She neither demands nor receives an equivalent for her favours. An object which may be appropriated, or adapted, to our use without any voluntary labour on our part may be of the highest utility, but as it is the free gift of nature, it is quite impossible it can have the smallest value." Also "In its natural state3 matter is very rarely possessed of any immediate or direct utility, and is always destitute of value. It is only through the labour expended on its appropriation, and in fitting and preparing it for being used, that matter requires exchangeable value, and becomes wealth." Mr. Carey, the well known American Economist, has also adopted the doctrine that Labour is the cause of all value, to its fullest extent. He says-It may be said that labour is not invariably a cause of value" and he quotes Senior, who says— "The fact that that circumstance (labour) is not essential to value, will be demonstrated if we can suppose a case in which value could exist without it. If, while carelessly lounging along the seashore, I were to pick up a pearl would it have no value? Mr. McCulloch would answer that the value of the pearl was the 1 Principles of Political Economy, ch. i., 1, 2. 3 Ibid., p. 43. 2 Introduction to Wealth of Nations, p. 32. result of my appropriative industry in stooping to pick it up." To this Mr. Carey answers-"Pearls may be found by those who do not seek them, and meteoric iron may be gift to those who little anticipate its reception, while others may seek for pearls, or dig for iron, without profitable results. These are accidents which do not in the slightest degree, militate against the assertion that all value is the result of labour. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand parts of those annually created are so, and the exceptions are too slight to be deserving of consideration. They are just sufficiently numerous to prove the rule!!" In Chap. 9, Mr. Carey gives the results of his investigations, the first two of which are (1). That all value is exchangeable. (2). That Labour is the sole cause of value. We need not quote from any more writers, as we think that it is well known that it is a very wide spread doctrine among Economical writers that Labour is the sole cause of Value, and is essential to Wealth. We have now to apply the principles of the Baconian Induction, to investigate the doctrine that Labour is the Form, or Cause, or Source, of Value. 8. Now we may lay down this Lemma:-That if Labour be the sole cause of Value, then whatsoever thing Labour has been bestowed upon must have Value. For if there be two things produced with the same amount of Labour, and the one has Value and the other not; then there must be some other cause of Value besides Labour, which is contrary to the hypothesis. We will now examine some of the necessary consequences of the doctrine that Labour is the cause of all Value: I.-All Variations in Value must be due to Variations in Labour. This doctrine, however, is contrary to all experience: because there are many material things which have Value, upon which no Labour was ever bestowed, as for example: 1.-The space of ground upon which a city stands is in no way the result of Labour. Land in the heart of London has often been sold at a rate exceeding £1,000,000 an acre, perfectly exclusive of any buildings upon it. When was any Labour ever bestowed upon it? Again, as we recede from the centre, the Value of Land rapidly diminishes. At Charing Cross it may be worth £100,000 an acre; by the time we reach Kensington, it has fallen to £10,000 an acre. Moreover land in the same locality is of very different values. A frontage in a main thoroughfare like Regent Street, Fleet Street, Cheapside, or Cornhill, is of far more Value than an equal space of ground in a back street. Again, as the tide of fashion, population, and wealth sets towards a locality, the ground in it rises rapidly in value; whereas when a neighbourhood is deserted by fashion and wealth, the ground rapidly diminishes in value. Now, how can these Variations in Value be due to different quantities of Labour, when, as we have seen, these spaces of ground are not in any way whatever the result of Labour at all? The space of ground in the centre of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, &c., has enormous value. There are places now desolate and lonely which were once the sites of great cities. When the chariots and the horsemen were pouring forth in countless multitudes from the hundred-gated Thebes, we may affirm that the ground in the city must have had very great value. So with Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon and innumerable others. Where is their value now? Yet the ground remains exactly as it was. When the future Belzoni or Layard comes from New Zealand to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge, will ground near the site of what was once the Royal Exchange sell for £70 the square yard? When a fair is held in a country town, persons pay a good rent for leave to erect booths and tents upon the common. At other times they would not pay anything; therefore the space of ground has Value at one time, and not at another. How is the Value of that space due to Labour? 2. The doctrine that no natural product has Value unless labour has been bestowed upon it is contrary to all experience. The proprietor of a coal mine, or a stone quarry, demands and receives a price for the coal, or the marble, or the building stone, as it exists in the mine, or the quarry, before a human being has touched it. Does any one suppose that the proprietor |