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BOOK IV.

INFLUENCE OF THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY ON PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION.

BOOK IV.

INFLUENCE OF THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY ON PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A PROGRESSIVE STATE
OF WEALTH.

§ 1. THE three preceding Parts include as detailed a view as our limits permit, of what, by a happy generalization of a mathematical phrase, has been called the Statics of the subject. We have surveyed the field of economical facts, and have examined how they stand related to one another as causes and effects; what circumstances determine the amount of production, of employment for labour, of capital and population; what laws regulate rent, profits, and wages; under what conditions and in what proportions commodities are interchanged between individuals and between countries. We have thus obtained a collective view of the economical phenomena of society, considered as ex isting simultaneously. We have ascertained, to a certain extent, the principles of their interdependence; and when the state of some of the elements is known, we should now be able to infer, in a general way, the contemporaneous state of most of the others. All this, however, has only

put us in possession of the economical laws of a stationary and unchanging society. We have still to consider the economical condition of mankind as liable to change, and indeed (in the more advanced portions of the race, and in all regions to which their influence reaches) as at all times undergoing progressive changes. We have to consider what these changes are, what are their laws, and what their ultimate tendencies; thereby adding a theory of motion to our theory of equilibrium--the Dynamics of political economy to the Statics.

In this inquiry, it is natural to commence by tracing the operation of known and acknowledged agencies. Whatever may be the other changes which the economy of society is destined to undergo, there is one actually in progress, concerning which there can be no dispute. In the leading countries of the world, and in all others as they come within the influence of those leading countries, there is at least one progressive movement which continues with little interruption from year to year and from generation to generation; a progress in wealth; an advancement in what is called material prosperity. All the nations which we are accustomed to call civilized, increase gradually in pro-, duction and in population: and there is no reason to doubt, that not only these nations will for some time continue so to increase, but that most of the other nations of the world, including some not yet founded, will successively enter upon the same career. It will, therefore, be our first object to examine the nature and consequences of this progressive change; the elements which constitute it, and the effects it produces on the various economical facts of which we have been tracing the laws, and especially on wages, profits rents, values, and prices.

§ 2. Of the features which characterize this progressive economical movement of civilized nations, that which first excites attention, through its intimate connexion with the phenomena of Production, is the perpetual, and so far as

human foresight can extend, the unlimited, growth of man's

Веб-а

power over nature. Our knowledge of the properties and din

laws of physical objects shows no sign of approaching its
ultimate boundaries: it is advancing more rapidly, and in
a greater number of directions at once, than in any pre-
vious age or generation, and affording such frequent
glimpses of unexplored fields beyond, as to justify the
belief that our acquaintance with nature is still almost in
its infancy. This increasing physical knowledge is now,
too, more rapidly than at any former period, converted, by
practical ingenuity, into physical power. The most mar-
vellous of modern inventions, one which realizes the imagi-
nary feats of the magician, not metaphorically but literally
-the electro-magnetic telegraph-sprang into existence but
a few years after the establishment of the scientific theory
which it realizes and exemplifies. Lastly, the manual part
of these great scientific operations is now never wanting to
the intellectual: there is no difficulty in finding or forming,
in a sufficient number of the working hands of the commu-
nity, the skill requisite for executing the most delicate pro-
cesses of the application of science to practical uses.
this union of conditions, it is impossible not to look forward
to a vast multiplication and long succession of contrivances
for economizing labour and increasing its produce; and to
an ever wider diffusion of the use and benefit of those con-
trivances.

From

Another change, which has always hitherto characterized, and will assuredly continue to characterize, the progress of civilized society, is a continual increase of the security of person and property. The people of every country in Europe, the most backward as well as the most advanced, are, in each generation, better protected against the violence and rapacity of one another, both by a more efficient judicature and police for the suppression of private crime, and by the decay and destruction of those mischievous privileges which enabled certain classes of the community to prey with impunity upon the rest. They are

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