Chaptal, Fourcroy, and Berthollet, took the command of great natural forces thus enabling their countrymen greatly to improve their processes of conversion, and thus contributing largely towards the vast increase in the landed capital of France that the reader has elsewhere seen recorded. Is this a result of the " saving" propensity? Morse-seizing the power to direct electricityacquired fortune; but what in this proceeding savors of "parsimony"? Fulton taught mankind to apply steam in a manner fitted to relieve themselves from the oppressive tax of transportation thus adding countless millions to the value of land; but where, in this, was the evidence of a parsimonious spirit? Scott and Goethe possessed the power both to instruct and amuse their countrymen — finding therein a capital by means of which they acquired wealth. Wealth consisting in the power to direct the forces of nature, the more rapid its growth, the more does "parsimony" — the feeling of the slave-tend to disappear from among the qualities of the being made in the image of his Creator, and designated by the word MAN.

Some men seek to obtain the power above described for selfish purposes alone. Others there are, who, like the Marquis of Worcester, Franklin, Washington, Humboldt, Davy, and Berzelius, seek it from an anxious desire to render service to their fellowThe first are "parsimonious" of their instructions to the world the latter, open and free as is the air we breathe. difference between the two is well described in the following passage from an old Latin treatise of St. Bernard, worthy of the reader's careful consideration:

men.

The

"There are those who wish to know, for the mere sake of knowing; this is a low curiosity. There are those who wish to know, that they may be known; and this is a low vanity. There are also those who wish to know, that they may sell their knowledge, so to speak, for money, for honors; and this is low venality. But there are those, also, who wish to know, that they may upbuild; and this is charity and likewise those who wish to know, that they may be upbuilt; and this is wisdom. Of those, the last two only do not pervert the real end of knowledge, which is to be good and to do good."*

:

This is as fully applicable to those who seek for material wealth, * Translated for, and quoted in, the New York Courier and Enquirer.

as it is to those engaged in the acquisition of that which is intellectual. The class first described grows rapidly, under the system which looks to the extension of the dominion of trade. Desiring to increase the last, we must seek for the means of so doing, in the enlargement of the domain of commerce.

§ 9. The doctrine that it is to savings we are to look for all increase of capital, leads sometimes to results so strange as to render it remarkable, that conviction of the error should not be forced upon its teachers. Mr. Mill assures his readers, that "the greater part in value of the wealth now existing in England has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion indeed," as he continues, "was in existence. ten years ago of the present productive capital of the country, scarcely any part, except farm-houses and factories, and a few ships and machines; and even they would not, in most cases, have survived so long, if fresh labor had not been employed within that period in putting them in repair." *

The first thing to be remarked in relation to this passage is the use of the words above italicized-wealth and capital-as being synonymous; and yet, while no one, the author of this, himself, not excepted, would fail to regard a man of large landed property as being wealthy, it would seem quite clear that Mr. Mill did not regard land, or the improvements upon it-resulting from thousands of years of occupation-as constituting any portion of a nation's wealth.

Leaving the land, its ditches, drains, and roads, however, altogether out of view, the amount that still remains is quite sufficient for our purpose. Houses, as we see, do come under the head of wealth their value, apart from the machinery they contained, having been estimated in 1842 at £625,000,000, or $3,000,000,000. The property now under insurance against fire, is £870,000,000; and insurance being rarely effected upon more than half the value-we have a right almost to double this great sum to obtain the real one. The total annual product of the efforts of the British people cannot be placed at more than £25 per head, giving, for the twenty-one millions, £525,000,000 as the total fund out of which savings are to be made; yet are we here assured, that "the * J. S. MILL: Principles of Political Economy, book 1, chap. v. ¿ 6.

greater part of the wealth now existing in England has been produced in the last twelve months"! Is it not clear that there is here some great mistake? Out of these £525,000,000 the whole people of Great Britain have had to be fed and clothed; and yet the capital represented by the "savings" of a single year, is counted by almost thousands of millions!

The various parts of the system that leads to such extraordinary results are, throughout, inconsistent with themselves. Land is not to be regarded as wealth, even although the labor applied upon it through a long period of years may have redeemed it from being a sterile waste- bringing it to rank first among the productive soils of the kingdom. When, however, a part of that land becomes turnips, they are wealth; if fed to hogs or oxen, they continue to be wealth. Another part being converted into houses, or steam-engines, that also is wealth. The turnips, however, being converted into men, they cease to be wealth economists, therefore, one and all, uniting in urging upon their countrymen to increase their wealth by converting it into oxen, rather than impoverish themselves by converting it into additional men, women, and children. The man who causes a bushel of potatoes to grow, adds to the wealth of the country; but he who teaches his fellow-men to double the productiveness of their labor by an increase of the power of the steam-engine, does not his labors not taking the material form required for enabling it to come under the head of "abstinence from present consumption for the sake of future good." The child who converts cotton into thread, is a producer of wealth; but the inventor of the railway could no more be placed under that head, than could Fulton, who taught the world how to apply steam to the purposes of navigation; or Morse, who first enabled electricity to do the work of tens of thousands of horses and men. To the services of such men it is chiefly due, that the land of Britain has largely increased in price within the last century—thus rendering its owners generally more wealthy than they before had been; and yet, neither that increase, nor the labors of the men to whom it has been due, come under the category of wealth.

In what, however, does wealth consist? "Everything," says Mr. Mill, is wealth" that is not "gratuitously " supplied by nature — air, though "the most absolute of necessàries," not

being wealth, because obtained without effort.* Wealth should therefore, increase with every recession from the point of perfect gratuity, at which air has always stood. It should, too, diminish with every approach towards it-men becoming less wealthy as they are more enabled to economize the labor required for commanding the services of steam, electricity, and gravitation. Were this so, power and wealth would be always moving towards opposite points of the compass. That it is not so, is proved by the fact, that men and nations do increase in wealth, as they grow in power to command the services of heat and steam, on terms similar to those on which they have the use of air; that is to say, "gratuitously." Men's natural instincts leading them in the right direction, they have arrived at the belief, so generally expressed, that "Wealth is Power." The reverse of this, however, must be true, if the Ricardo-Malthusian teachings have any foundation on which to stand wealth there being found growing in company with a constantly increasing necessity for resorting to lands of less and less productive power.

§ 10. The chief difficulty with which social science has had to contend, has been the want of clear and distinct definitions of the terms in use. Mr. Mill, as is here shown, uses wealth and capital as convertible-while totally excluding the most important item of a nation's wealth; yet, he elsewhere says, that "there can be no doubt if capital were forthcoming to execute all known and recognized improvements in the land of the United Kingdom," much benefit would thence result. The question would, however, at once arise, whether, from the moment it had been so applied, it would not, in his view, cease to be either wealth or capital. The exclusion, from under these categories, of all the labor expended on land in the last thousand years, would seem equally to warrant the further exclusion of every expenditure for similar purposes, in all time to come.

The definitions thus far furnished in the present work, being, as it is believed, universally true, should cover the whole ground - removing the difficulties that heretofore have proved an almost insuperable obstacle to a clear understanding of what really was

* Principles of Political Economy, Preliminary Remarks.

meant, by any writer who used the various terms. The whole may now thus be stated:

Utility is the measure of man's power over nature.

Value is that of nature's power over man - of the resistance she offers to the gratification of his desires.

Wealth consists in the power of man to command the always gratuitous services of nature.

Production consists in directing those forces to the service of

man.

Capital is the instrument by help of which the work is done. whether existing in the form of land and its improvements, ships, wagons, roads, houses, churches, steam-engines, ploughs, mental development, books, or corn.

Trade consists in the performance of exchanges for other persons being the instrument used by

Commerce, which consists in the exchange of services, products, or ideas, by men, and with their fellow-men.

As the power of association grows, utility increases, and value as steadily declines.

As the value of commodities declines, there is increase in the value of man, with constant development of individuality, and constant increase in the security for the enjoyment of rights of person and of property.

As person and property become more secure, men and capital tend to become more fixed, with constant diminution in the proportion of either remaining in the floating state.

As men and capital tend to become fixed, and as the latent powers of nature tend more and more to be developed, there is an increase in the tendency towards the creation of local centres, and towards the establishment of the same beautiful system which keeps in order the universe of which this earth constitutes a part.

As local centres increase in number and in attraction, the power of association tends steadily to increase-every step in that direction being accompanied by diminution in the necessity for the services of the trader, increase in the power of production, in the growth of capital, and in the rapidity of its circulation-with corresponding increase of commerce.