tion at last wasted away, and a feeble remnant sought shelter among the mountains, leaving that fertile plain to desolation. Such are the evils of a government which cannot withstand aggression from abroad. Hardly less injurious in its effects is the government which is too feeble or indolent to protect the people against themselves; which cannot enforce the laws, or guard the community against the machinations and violence of the turbulent, the discontented, and the ambitious, so that society is a constant prey to rapine, confusion, and civil broils. Hence the present condition of Mexico and most of the South American republics, where, though the soil and climate are among the finest on earth, and mineral wealth abounds, yet agriculture is impeded, trade languishes, and manufactures cannot be established, the bonds of society being virtually dissolved, and the country wasted by anarchy and misrule. -- Arbitrary exactions, uncertain in amount, and uncertain as to the time when they will be made, do vastly more injury than larger amounts taken by fixed and regular taxation. Industry will accommodate itself to heavy burdens, and even flourish under them, if the pressure be equable and constant, so that all calculations respecting the future may be made with as much certainty as if there were no weight to support. The regular tax comes to be esteemed as one of the charges, or a part of the cost, of production, having the same effect as a more rigorous climate, or a less fertile soil, would have, in increasing the amount of labor required. The people of the United States, for instance, are at this moment taxed more heavily, — they pay a larger sum to their rulers, than was ever levied from a population of equal size by the most cruel and despotic government of ancient times. If it were possible to distribute the enormous weight of this taxation with perfect equality and fairness, making it bear on all interests alike, and on every individual in just proportion to his means, I should be far from considering it as any material obstacle to the prosperity of the country. But the changes which from time to time become necessary, or are thought to be necessary, in that distribution, are more serious evils. The change when completed in all its effects, the new law once thoroughly incorporated by time with the old ones, may be an improvement; but the transition is always injurious. Better a bad system, so that it be fixed, than a fluctuating and uncertain one. An alteration of the law, a shifting of the burden, always produces some change in the direction of labor and capital, whereby a portion of the skill already acquired by practice. is wasted, a portion of the machinery already built becomes useless, and time and capital must be consumed in learning new employments and constructing new machines. This is one evil. caused by change; and another is, that, most of the operations of industry in modern times being complex, and covering much time and space, people are tempted to engage in them only by the nice calculations that are made of their probable ultimate results: any uncertainty as to the manner in which these results may be affected by taxation, any probability that the law may be changed while the process is yet incomplete, may prevent the enterprise from being undertaken at all. It is not too much to say, that, in this country, for the last fifty years, there has not been a time when commercial and manufacturing enterprise was not materially retarded by the apprehension that the Congress then in session, or the ensuing one, might make some important modifications in the tariff of customs-duties, the banking system, and the state of the currency. "The only insecurity," says Mr. Mill, "which is altogether paralyzing to the active energies of producers, is that arising from the government or from persons invested with its authority. Against all other depredators there is a hope of defending one's self. Greece and the Greek colonies in the ancient world, Flanders and Italy in the Middle Ages, by no means enjoyed what any one with modern ideas would call security; the state of society was most unsettled and turbulent; person and property were exposed to a thousand dangers. But they were free countries; they were neither arbitrarily oppressed, nor systematically plundered, by their governments. Against other enemies, the individual energy which their institutions called forth enabled them to make successful resistance. Their labor, therefore, was eminently productive, and their riches, while they remained free, were constantly on the increase." "Much of the security of person and property in modern nations is the effect of manners and opinion, rather than of law. There are countries in Europe where the monarch is nominally absolute; but where, from the restraints imposed by established usage, no subject feels practically in the smallest danger of having his possessions arbitrarily seized, or a contribution levied on them by the government." These countries Russia, for instance are rar better off in respect of security than France, where, not long ago, the institutions of government were nominally similar to our own, but where there is great probability of a revolution once a fortnight. No government is ever wicked enough to aim directly and avowedly at the encouragement of vice, the distress of innocence, and the punishment of goodness. Even an Asiatic despotism professes, and probably intends, to punish theft, perjury, fraud, and unprovoked injury, in all cases where its own interest is not immediately concerned; that is, of course, in the great majority of cases that arise among its subjects. It may omit many of the forms and precautions that civilized nations have come to observe as the safeguards of innocence and preservatives against unintentional wrong; it may administer wild justice, but justice is its aim; it wields the sword against unprovoked aggressions upon persons or property, and often with terrible effect. CHAPTER V. THE INCREASE OF CAPITAL AS AFFECTED BY THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MANUFACTURES, AND BY THE CONCENTRATION OF THE PEOPLE IN CITIES AND TOWNS. THE second of the moral causes indicated as affecting the increase of capital is, that such increase is most rapid in any country when, from the variety of employments that exist there, most of its inhabitants may be engaged in those occupations for which they are peculiarly fitted by nature, which require most skill and intelligence, and in which, consequently, their labor is most productive. If the labor of one practised and skilful artisan is equal to that of at least three raw hands or rude laborers, then it is very much for the economical interests of a country, that as many as possible of its inhabitants should be skilled artisans, and as few as possible should be raw laborers. We say as many as possible"; because some rude labor is always needed. There must be, in every country, some hewers of wood and drawers of water, some work that tasks a man's thews and sinews very severely, while it affords but little employment to his brains, such work as is often performed by machines and domesticated animals, but which the circumstances of time and place sometimes absolutely require to be performed by men, usually by men who are capable of nothing else. There is a large proportion of such work required in agriculture, where one skilful and careful farmer can profitably direct the exertions of a dozen or more hands, in such operations as ditching, fencing, making hay, and the like. Many, though not so many, laborers of this lowest class are also required in manufactures, where numerous skilled and expert hands require to be waited on by mere porters and hewers, in order that the valuable time of the former may not be wasted on the coarser operations that are necessary. Thus the bricklayer must have his hod-carrier; the driver of the steam-engine must have his fireman; the printing-office must have its errand-boys, technically called "devils." Commerce demands a higher average of skill and intelligence from those who are engaged in it than any other of the great branches of industry; yet even here, in the various operations subsidiary to the transportation and exchange of goods, there is a considerable demand for this lowest kind of exertion. We say a "demand" for it, because the fact, that laborers of this class expect only the lowest rate of wages, causes them to be sought for in preference to all others, when the work is such that they can perform it. From various causes, there is an abundance of this kind of labor in the market in almost every country. The stinted bounty of nature; casualties that lessen the average capacity; vice, ignorance, and extreme poverty; are among the causes which here keep the supply up to the demand, and, in nearly all cases, make it go greatly beyond the demand. The only evil to be dreaded is a superfluity of this class of laborers, a superfluity which sometimes, as at present in Great Britain and Ireland, exists to a frightful extent. Popular education, as that phrase is commonly understood, meaning the general cultivation of the intellect, though unquestionably a very powerful agent for lessening this evil, is not the only preservative against it. A man wholly uneducated in the common meaning of the word, that is, unable either to write or read, may yet become a very expert workman in the finest and most difficult kinds of manufacture. On the other hand, men may be quite well taught, and still be unable to get any but the rudest sort of work to do, or to obtain employment more than half the time even at that. The Scotch, for instance, are a very well educated people; the standard of instruction among them, for all classes, is probably quite as high as it is in New England. Yet there is as large a surplus of rude labor in Scotland, in proportion to its population, as in England, - probably larger. The loss which a country suffers by having a large portion of its people condemned to this rude labor, when most of them are capable, or might be made capable, of much finer work or more effective industry, is very great; so great, indeed, that I doubt whether any other single cause of national poverty can equal it. Men are differently constituted by nature, or by those circumstances which, in early youth, determine the bent of their inclinations and the applicability of their powers to one task rather than another. The labor of a people is effectually used only when the field of employment in the country offers scope for every variety of taste and talent, and when no formidable or insuperable obstacles prevent any individual from finding out and performing just that task which God and nature appointed him to do. If agriculture alone is pursued, all the mechanical skill of the people is wasted, — all their fitness for commerce, all their enterprise in trade, is wasted. If four millions are obliged to be rude laborers, when three millions of them might be skilled artisans, the labor of one of the latter being supposed to be equal in value to that of at least three of the former, then the value actually created is to the value which might be created as four is to ten; in other words, the yearly product of the national industry might be two and a half times greater than it is; and the yearly unproductive consumption need not be at all increased, since, in either case, there would be four millions of people to be supplied with food, clothing, and shelter. Of course, and here comes the application of the principle to present circumstances, the country could afford to pay a higher price for their manufactures, for the sake of having the articles manufactured at home. They could afford to spend more, for they would have more to spend. For illustration, we will take the two extreme cases of Ireland and Massachusetts. According to the Irish census of 1841, the whole number of families in Ireland was one million and a half, of whom |