or pleasure. To an individual anything is wealth which, though useless in itself, enables him to claim from others a portion of the stock of things useful or pleasant." On this doctrine, to have a right to a thing and to have it in actual possession is the same thing. Thus a mortgage, though only a piece of parchment, is pronounced to be wealth to its owner, to the supposed extent of a thousand pounds. It is wealth and not wealth at the same moment: for the nation, that is, in itself, it is a parchment only; for its owner it is wealth amounting to a thousand pounds. To grant a mortgage is to give a thousand sovereigns to your borrower, and also to retain as much wealth for yourself. Hence it irresistibly follows that to lend is to double wealth: once in the actual gold lent, and then secondly in the mortgage. It can be counted twice over. In taking stock of the fortunes of the borrower and lender, it figures once, as so many sovereigns or what has been bought with them; in the lender's case, the mortgage is reckoned as a thousand pounds. Under the passion for refining, Mr Mill was misled by the fact that a man may derive from a mortgage the same income as a landowner derives from his land: he remained blind to the difference that in addition to the income the landowner had in hand the property which gave the income, whilst the mortgagee has the income indeed, but only a piece of parchment besides. But in laying down definitions and first principles, such oversight may have calamitous results; they propagate errors wherever the principles are applied.

From this unhappy source, that a claim to wealth is itself wealth, Political Economy has been flooded with

confusion and error. The palpable absurdity of the assertion is no match, strange to say, against the fascination which it exercises on many minds. In currency and banking it produces the greatest disorder. Bank notes, cheques, bills, and similar documents are pieces of paper with writing on them. These writings record debts due, and debts are claims to wealth, and by the magical action of the principle that a claim to wealth is itself wealth, these pieces of paper are converted into real, literal wealth. Why does not every man in every nation take to borrowing of his neighbour upon acknowledgments in writing? The wealth of mankind would be instantly doubled. This doctrine, so indigestible to common sense, is even proclaimed as the unravelling of a mighty secret, as the brilliant illuminator of the benighted region of currency. Mr Macleod has generalised Mr Mill's formula,-not wealth for the nation, but wealth for an individual-into an ultimate principle which explains all paper currency and all banking. "Incorporeal property is wealth!" The man who has taken in that truth knows what bank notes and deposits recorded in banking ledgers are; they are wealth. Mr Macleod borrows the phrase "incorporeal property" from legal writers, and he justifies its use by appeal to the authority of great jurists of the past and the present. The expression is awkward and artificial, but it is not nonsense. It means property without the corpus or substance; it expresses a right to a thing without the actual possession of the corpus or thing itself. Such a right clearly is a property, a valuable possession, capable of being recognised in a Court of Law, and saleable for money. There is no difficulty in

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

a resource of great power is brought up to complete the conversion. A metaphor is fetched up from common life. Incorporeal property is wealth, for it represents wealth. Under the cover of this figure of speech the underlying absurdity is concealed. Does not a tradesman in taking account of stock, set down his shop debts as 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 as embodied in a substance, as a part of a working machine, the man that labours. But credit is not a

bstance 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