Mr Mill qualifies the expression by adding to it the word natural; but the sting which is inseparable from the word monopoly remains all the same. The arbitrariness with which it is applied in the case of land will be seen, if we think of how many natural advantages there are of the same general character with that belonging to land, to which no one ever thinks of attaching the word monopoly. The skill and eloquence of a great barrister, the art of an eminent brewer, the talent of a distinguished writer, and endless other personal gifts, are natural monopolies in precisely the same sense as land; but who ever thinks of fixing such an invidious name upon them? Yet, they resemble the possession of land in the distinctive quality that they enable their possessors to raise considerable sums of money out of the community. Oh! but they are subject to competition; anyone may rival or surpass them, if he pleases. I should rather say, if he can; and he cannot, because we are supposing these monopolists, to apply Mr Mill's words, to possess the highest existing advantages.

But equally subject to competition are the owners of rent. The repeal of the corn laws might have reduced their incomes; and if ever Australia and America contrive to send cheaper meat that will be accounted the equal of English meat, assuredly the effect on rents. will be real. And further, let it be well observed, the possession of agricultural land is distinctly free from the vices of a genuine monopoly; it neither raises price, nor deteriorates the goods produced. If private property in land were abolished, the price of the loaf would not be a fraction lower, nor would the wheat grown and the

cattle reared be better or cheaper than those we now obtain. The only difference would be one of ownership; the State, and not private persons, would own and receive the rents.

It is perfectly open to Mr Mill and those who share his feelings, to propose that the present landowners should be paid off, and that the State should be the one sole landowner in the nation. Whether that would be a wise or mischievous policy is fairly open to argument. So is communism. Communists. may rationally discuss whether it would not be expedient that Mr Mill should devote his great talents to the service of the commonwealth, and accept equal remuneration with the citizen who carries bricks for building. But in neither discussion could the idea of monopoly enter. It may be determined that the nation would reap large benefit from great abilities being allowed to exert themselves for the benefit of their possessors, and that private property in land would be more advantageous than public. If such be the decision, the private owner, who, either through his predecessor or through his own efforts, has developed the wealth-producing powers of the machine paid for or inherited, is no more to be branded with monopoly than the great author who has so cultivated the gifts with which nature endowed his mind as to realise large pecuniary results from the sale of his writings.

CHAPTER XI.

MONEY-METALLIC.

MONEY is a matter which deeply affects the welfare of mankind. It is an instrument which has been found indispensable by every nation which has passed beyond the savage state. It is a tool of man's own invention, devised to accomplish very important public purposes. Unsound money, ill-constructed for performing its work, may, and does at this hour, inflict enormous losses on great countries, often with severe injury to every one of their inhabitants. It seriously concerns therefore all men to understand correctly the nature of this tool, the ends which it is required to serve, and the principles on which it must be made. Yet, in spite of the immense interests involved in the employment of good money, it is a machine on which the most deplorable confusion of ideas prevails. It may almost be said that every man contradicts every other man about money, about what money is and what it is not, what it can and what it cannot do. In no other subject which occupies the thoughts of men does anything approaching the same disorder exist.

The cause of this wonderful phenomenon is the fatal facility with which men think themselves authorised to pronounce about money, without any feeling of responsibility for previously discovering by examination and analysis what are its nature and functions.

Every ordinary maker, before giving orders for the construction of a machine, places distinctly before his mind the precise work which it is intended to perform, and the particular contrivances by which the machine will effect it. The makers of money, the legislators who bestow a particular kind of money on their people, and the men who supply them with doctrines and views, act on the vaguest and most irresponsible ideas as to the exact work which the money shall perform and give themselves no strict account of the precise contrivances by which the money shall fulfil its ends. Thus money becomes a subject on which men permit themselves the most unbridled licence of thought and doctrine, and thus also in the case of an instrument of universal use, the question, What is money? is found to be one of the hardest which one human being can put to another. A plain, intelligible, consistent answer seems to lie beyond the reach of hope.

We must endeavour to pursue a different course. We must employ the method which is the one source of true knowledge, and if we apply it with strictness, if we are faithful to it with unbroken loyalty, we may confidently hope to arrive at certainty and clearness. We must take up the facts of money and analyse them. Analysis will 'remove the confusion and reveal the truth which it smothers.

Let us then take a coin,-a sovereign. All the world is agreed to call it money. It is a positive concrete substance. Its very derivation discloses its origin, how it came to be born into the world. This sovereign is a piece of metal which has been weighed, shaped and stamped, as coins were of old in the Roman mint, the

temple of Juno Moneta. For what purpose was this coin, this sovereign, thus made? For one only: to buy with it. It has no other raison d'étre, no other object or utility, but this one single motive-to be employed in buying. But what is buying? how does it buy? By being given away to an owner of some other article, who is willing to take it in exchange for the article he sells. It will be said, and quite truly, that this money is used also in paying debts, or it is kept in reserve, but this fact makes no change in the truth that the sole reason for making the sovereign was to buy with it. The sovereign which discharges a debt pays for an article which was previously bought and not paid for at the time of purchase, and a sovereign stored up in reserve lies waiting in idleness for the moment when it will be summoned to buy or to cancel a debt.

Further, it is plain that the man who sells goods for money, for the sovereign, intends to use that sovereign precisely in the same way as the man who bought of him did, when he gave him the sovereign for his commodities. He means to buy with it in turn. The money is useless to him so long as he retains it. He took it solely with the intention of buying again in turn something else for himself. Thus money constantly passes on from hand to hand. In economical language, it circulates, and the more it is in movement, the more hands it passes through, the greater is the work it performs. Hence the expression currency, from curro, I run. Money runs, moves up and down the town. Its duty is to circulate, not to be buried in hoards, by whatever name that may be called.

These statements are so simple and obvious that they