CHAPTER X. Means of abolishing Cottier Tenancy.

PAGE

§ 1. Irish cottiers should be converted into peasant proprietors, . 409
2. Inapplicability of this advice to present circumstances,

CHAPTER XI. Of Wages.

1. Wages depend on the demand and supply of labour-in other

words, on population and capital,

2. Examination of some popular opinions respecting wages,

3. Certain rare circumstances excepted, high wages imply re-

straints on population,

4. which are in some cases legal,

-

6. Due restriction of population the only safeguard of a labour-

ing class, .

417

420

421

428

432

434

437

237

CHAPTER XII. Of Popular Remedies for Low Wages.

1. A legal or customary minimum of wages, with a guarantee of

employment,

2. - would require as a condition, legal measures for repres-

CHAPTER XIII. The Remedies for Low Wages further

considered.

§ 1. Pernicious direction of public opinion on the subject of pop-

ulation,

2. Grounds for expecting improvement,

3. Twofold means of elevating the habits of the labouring peo-

457

460

-'and by large measures of immediate relief, through for-

§ 1. Differences of wages arising from different degrees of attrac-

tiveness in different employments,

2. Differences arising from natural monopolies,

PAGE

3. Effect on wages of a class of subsidized competitors,

482

4.

of the competition of persons with independent means of

support,

485

489

491

492

5. Wages of women, why lower than those of men,

6. Differences of wages arising from restrictive laws, and from

combinations,

7. Cases in which wages are fixed by custom,

CHAPTER XV. Of Profits.

1. Profits resolvable into three parts; interest, insurance, and

wages of superintendence,

2. The minimum of profits; and the variations to which it is

liable,

3. Differences of profits arising from the nature of the particu-

lar employment,

4. General tendency of profits to an equality, .

495

5. Profits do not depend on prices, nor on purchase and sale,

6. The advances of the capitalist consist ultimately in wages of

labour,

7. The rate of profit depends on the Cost of Labour,

CHAPTER XVI. Of Rent.

§ 1. Rent the effect of a natural monopoly, .

2. No land can pay rent except land of such quality or situa-
tion, as exists in less quantity than the demand,

3. The rent of land consists of the excess of its return above
the return to the worst land in cultivation,

or to the capital employed in the least advantageous cir-
cumstances,

5. Is payment for capital sunk in the soil, rent, or profit?

6. Rent does not enter into the cost of production of agricul-

tural produce, .

2. Definitions of Value in Use, Exchange Value, and Price,

3. What is meant by general purchasing power,

4. Value a relative term. A general rise or fall of Values a

PAGE

541

5. The laws of Value, how modified in their application to
retail transactions,

CHAPTER II. Of Demand and Supply, in their

relation to Value.

§ 1. Two conditions of Value: Utility, and Difficulty of Attain-

3. Commodities which are absolutely limited in quantity,

4. Law of their value, the Equation of Demand and Supply,

5. Miscellaneous cases falling under this law,

CHAPTER III. Of Cost of Production, in its relation

to Value.

§ 1. Commodities which are susceptible of indefinite multiplica-

tion without increase of cost. Law of their Value, Cost

of Production, .

555

operating through potential, but not actual, alterations of

supply,

557

CHAPTER IV. Ultimate Analysis of Cost of Production.

§ 1. Principal element in Cost of Production-Quantity of La-

bour,

2. Wages not an element in Cost of Production,

except in so far as they vary from employment to employ-

ment,

566

4. Profits an element in Cost of Production, in so far as they

vary from employment to employment,

or are spread over unequal lengths of time,

6. Occasional elements in Cost of Production: taxes, and

scarcity value of materials,

CHAPTER V. Of Rent, in its Relation to Value.

§ 1. Commodities which are susceptible of indefinite multiplica-

tion, but not without increase of cost. Law of their

PAGE

577

580

583

585

Value, Cost of Production in the most unfavourable exist-

ing circumstances,

2. Such commodities, when produced in circumstances more fa-

vourable, yield a rent equal to the difference of cost,

3. Rent of mines and fisheries, and ground-rent of buildings,

4. Cases of extra profit analogous to rent,

CHAPTER VI. Summary of the Theory of Value.

1. The theory of Value recapitulated in a series of proposi-

tions, .

2. How modified by the case of labourers cultivating for sub-

Substance of three articles in the Morning Chronicle of 11th,

13th, and 16th January, 1847, in reply to MM. Mounier

and Rubichon and to the Quarterly Review, on the Sub-

division of Landed Property in France,

588

597

CALIFORNIA

PRINCIPLES

OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

In every department of human affairs, Practice long precedes Science: systematic enquiry into the modes of action of the powers of nature, is the tardy product of a long course of efforts to use those powers for practical ends. The conception, accordingly, of Political Economy as a branch of science, is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind, and, in some, a most unduly engrossing one.

That subject is Wealth. Writers on Political Economy profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of Wealth, and the laws of its production and distribution: including, directly or remotely, the operation of all the causes by which the condition of mankind, or of any society of human beings, in respect to this universal object of human desire, is made prosperous or the reverse. Not that any treatise on Political Economy can discuss or even enumerate all these causes; but it undertakes to set forth as much as is known of the laws and principles according to which they operate.

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