selling a reversion to an estate, or a chattel of which the possession can be obtained only at a deferred date. Such sales occur every day. A twelve months' bill is a piece of incorporeal property, a right to obtain coin, which cannot be got into the owner's hands before the lapse of a year. The words written on the bill are good at law, and will at the proper time, if necessary, be enforced by decree of Court. Such written words are very saleable, because complete reliance is placed on their fulfilment at the specified time. The bill is a title-deed, as is a bank note or a cheque; it is incorporeal property in the sense of the lawyers. But here the lawyers stop; Mr Mill and Mr Macleod go forward. That incorporeal property they call wealth; this the lawyers do not say. The two Economists invent the principle that a claim to wealth is wealth; and the bill fulfils the condition. The piece of paper has a claim for £1000 written upon it; it is actually a thousand pounds. Equally are they bound to preach that spoken words are wealth also, for words can give a claim to a thousand pounds, equally good at law as a written deed. These words, on the principle claimed, must be wealth, must be a thousand pounds. "Beware," remarks Mr Donisthorpe, " of confounding these rights and wealth. A promissory note is merely a promise to pay, and the paper on which such promise is recorded is no more entitled to be called wealth than the sound of an honest man's voice making the same promise. .. So disappear from the scene, it is hoped for ever, Mr Macleod's second and third species of wealth."

The plain minds of ordinary men are naturally slow to take in the truth of such a wonderful conclusion; so

of great power is brought up to complete the A metaphor is fetched up from common incorporeal property is wealth, for it represents Under the cover of this figure of speech the ying absurdity is concealed. Does not a tradesi, taking account of stock, set down his shop debts well as his goods, as representing so much money? If the debts are good, are they not the same as money? So in bankruptcy assets are constantly described as representing so much cash. The incorporeal property theorists quote these facts triumphantly, and waive all further discussion. Every science must have terms of its own, and "represent" is the scientific economical term. What more is needed to prove the doctrine? The puzzled hearer may be inclined to think that he is mystified with a second phrase wonderfully like the dictum that "incorporeal property is wealth." A representative is the thing represented; a counter or ticket which stands for a sovereign is the sovereign itself. The member who represents a county is the county itself. Can we feel surprised that writings on Political Economy are increasing in discredit, that they wield diminished authority over that practical world for whose good alone Political Economy exists?

There is another widely-spread fallacy which has come forth from the same nest. Credit is wealth exclaims a multitude of speakers and writers. Nothing can be more untrue. Wealth is a substance. Even skill, which is justly regarded as wealth, is conceived embodied in a substance, as a part of a working

he, the man that labours. But credit is not a ce at all. It is an abstract term, denoting a

mode of acting. It is a particular way of acquiring property, nothing more. No one has ever called buying or lending wealth; they are simply different ways of procuring the things termed wealth. Credit is a species of which buying is the genus. Buying is the complete, credit the incomplete transaction. Buying effects the exchange wholly, by giving money for goods. Credit leaves one half undone, takes away the property and gives the equivalent for it, the payment, at a later time. This mode of buying is said to be performed on credit, because it is founded on trust or belief.

But though credit is not wealth, as an abstraction cannot be a substance, the method of purchasing designated by credit is highly instrumental in the production of wealth. Banking is a mode of employing the process of credit, and few inventions, if indeed any, do so much for the increase of wealth as banking. But banking no one calls wealth, though everyone knows that it is a great creator of riches. It places a large part of the capital of the nation in the hands of those who can work it with the greatest efficiency. The result is a mighty augmentation of the wealth made. Banking is a mode of doing business, and no one astonishes his neighbours by calling banking actual wealth. But in respect of credit, the phrase 'credit is wealth' finds favour with many writers precisely on account of the scientific, or rather, the vague sound of the expression. They forget to how many ears it has the sound of jargon, and how sadly it repels men from Political Economy as dealing in language unintelligible to the every-day world.

An interesting question has been raised in respect of

vind it is desirable alled labourer a part of 1. s uvilling to permit

accounted a portion of

"It

g er de sake of which its lows s to be wealth. be the when attached to a man soulpit or a factory." The disThe sell of the workman helps to e se je is strews as the sinews 1 his relaten, are zet distinguishable. ditas &s wedth but so also does the hose before he is put into training. owledged to be wealth, it cannot be Ce workman in whom it is embodied, yowledge how to use his hands.

further still. I hold, against Mr that the qualities of a people, their ccrual, and physical natures, are parts of What men are is a force of enormous acmining the amount of the wealth they emancipated negroes of Jamaica and of ed States would not labour for more than mere They do not care to be wealthy and are The Chinese are a great wealth-producing people ence of their character. Their neighbours the Tatars, are not. The difference lies per of every people. Europe lately lid example of the power of character wealth. France astonished the world m a devastating war, and a crushing nillions of pounds sterling at its close.

Her revival astonished and alarmed her conquerors. And to what was this splendid restoration due? To the temper and character of the French peasant, to his inveterate love of thrift, to his resolute determination to meet losses by curtailed expenditure and by saving. Is not such a quality of soul as truly an economical force, as real a wealth-making machine as a factory or a fertile soil?

But then, it will be said, we must give up all hope of a scientific definition of wealth. We must; and, as shown above, this is no loss to Political Economy. As Mr Mill confesses, the popular notion of wealth suffices.