He lays down the principle, on which he is followed by Professor Fawcett, that things for which nothing can be obtained in exchange, however useful or necessary they may be, are not wealth in the sense used in Political Economy. What warrant of fact or reasoning can be alleged for fastening on Political Economy so marvellous and so arbitrary an assertion? Useful things not wealth! what is wealth but a collection of useful things? What better description can be given of it? Yet these useful things, however much they may minister to existence, to comfort, to enjoyment, if it is found out that no one is desirous of giving something in exchange for them, are instantly dismissed out of the category of wealth. They must be placed, I presume, in a new class, specially constructed for them. They are only useful and delightful things: every one has enough of them without buying them of others; they are not wealth. But the moment they are deficient and something is offered to procure them, as by the touch of a conjuror they are converted into wealth. A great African chief, whose tribe are his slaves, and who lives in complete isolation from the rest of mankind, has no wealth, upon this definition: he has no Political Economy. His slaves get their necessaries, like his horses; he has magnificent possessions, luxuries of every kind, but no wealth. There is not a single market in his dominions. Climate-sun, air, and water-are not wealth; no one buys them. A country is none the richer for a good climate, though that climate may work wonders for it in producing saleable wealth. The bright rays of the sun raise splendid wines in France, magnificent crops of cotton in India and America-but these

wealth-making rays cannot be sold, for they can be had for nothing; they are not wealth. All other matters except climate being the same, Siberia is as rich by nature as India. The tide which carries up the barges on the Thames without cost, which saves the vast expense of railways and horses, which has created London and its gigantic riches, is not wealth at all: there is no market for its waters, they have no market price. Water, which it has cost so much to spread over your land, is precious wealth, so abundant is the crop it raises: that same water, if it would but come down as rain, instantly loses its character of wealth. One has but to ask the wine growers of the Rhine or of France, or the cultivators of rice in India, and they will tell him whether a warm sun or abundant water is or is not riches for a country. Common sense has no doubt in the matter. Political Economists prefer adding a subtle distinction; but thereby they turn away the world for whose benefit alone they exist.

But there is a side of this definition of the Economists which works out something far more mischievous yet than absurdity. When it is affirmed that what will command wealth, for which wealth will be given, is itself wealth, the foundation is laid for most grievous harm in particular departments of Political Economy. This fallacy, next to another to be mentioned later, is the most mischievous one to be found in Mr Mill's Economical writings. He speaks of "an important distinction in the meaning of the word wealth, as applied to the possessions of an individual or to those of a nation or of mankind. In the wealth of mankind nothing is included which does not answer some purpose of utility

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