THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 LOS ANGELES
 
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 LITERARY REMAINS 
 
 CONSISTING OF 
 
 LECTUEES AND TRACTS 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 OF THE LATE 
 
 REV. RICHARD JONES, 
 
 FOHMBRI.Y PUOFKSSOR OF POLITICAL ErONOMY AT THE EAST INDIA COLLEOT?, HAILEYBURY 
 AND MF.MBER OF THE TITHE AND CHARITY^ COMMISSIONS, 
 
 EDITED, 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 TtEV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., 
 
 MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMIiRIDOE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1859.
 
 STEPHEN AUSTIN, 
 
 m^ 
 
 PniNTEB, nEniFOED.
 
 i<v 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE ix 
 
 LECTURES ON LABOR AND CAPITAL— 
 
 Introductory Remarks 1 
 
 Lecture I. — Classes of Laborers 4 - 
 
 Division of Laborers into Unhired Laborers, Paid De- 
 pendants, Hired Laborers 13 / 
 
 Lecture II. — On the Efficiency of Labor 20, 
 
 Lecture III. — On the Nature and Sources of Capital 34 
 
 Lecture IV. — On Profits as a Soiu'ce of Accumulation 48^ 
 
 Lecture Y. — On the two kinds of Capital 63^ 
 
 Lecture YI. — On the Distribution of Wealth 74 v 
 
 Hereditary Occupiers 83 -- 
 
 Wage-paying Revenue 88 ^ 
 
 LECTURES ON POPULATION— 
 
 Lecture I. — Law of the Increase of Population 93 
 
 Lecture II. — Labor Fund 114 
 
 Lecture III. — Revenues Spent in Wages 134 
 
 TRACT on the Incidence of Taxes on Commodities that arc 
 
 Consumed by the Laborer 141 
 
 On the Effect of Fluctuations in the Real Wages of Labor 
 
 on the movement of the Population 167 
 
 A SHORT TRACT ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, including 
 
 some Account of the Anglo-Indian Revenue Systems... 185 
 
 Tenants 197 
 
 1. Serfs 198 
 
 2. Metayers 202 
 
 3. Cottiers 208 
 
 Hereditary Occupiers 21) 
 
 Proprietors 217 
 
 ^-^ '^o<c:-5
 
 ^n TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PA.G1 
 
 Hired Dependants and Hired Laborers 21^ 
 
 On the Growth of Capital 22^ 
 
 Population 238j^ 
 
 Circumstances that govern the effect of Wages on Population 246 \ 
 
 Taxation 269 
 
 The Anglo-Indian Eeveniie Systems 281 
 
 PRIMITIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY in England (from the 
 
 Edinlurgh Revieiv iov k^xil, 1847) 291 
 
 TEXT BOOK OF LECTUEES on the Political Economy of 
 Nations, delivered at the East India College, Haileybury. 
 
 .Lecture I. — Of Labor 339 
 
 Division of the subject of Lectures — 
 
 Part I .—Of the Production of Wealth 341 
 
 ,1. Definition of Wealth 342 
 
 2. The Sources of Wealth 343 
 
 . 3. The Efficiency of Labor in Producing 
 
 Wealth 344 
 
 On the Causes which Determine the Efficiency of 
 
 Labor 347 
 
 V 1. Continuity of Labor 348 
 
 2. Knowledge ih. 
 
 ^3. Mechanical Power 349 
 
 tt. By adding extra-human Forces 350 
 
 -./8. By increased Mechanical Advantage... ih. 
 
 Lecture II.— Of Capital 358 
 
 1. Definition of Capital 359 
 
 2. The Sources of Caj)ital 362 
 
 a. Wages as a Source of Accumulation 363 
 
 y8. Rent as a Source of Acciimulation 365 
 
 y. Profits as a Source of Accumulation 367 
 
 5. Derivative Incomes as a Source of Accu- 
 mulation 3 72 
 
 On the Causes which Determine the Inclination to 
 
 Accumulate 374 
 
 1. Differences of Disposition to Accumulate 375 
 
 2. Differences in Distribution of Wealth as affect- 
 
 ing Accumulation 376 
 
 3. Different Degrees of Security as affecting Accu- 
 
 mulation 378 
 
 i
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4. Difterent Facilities of Investment as affecting 
 
 Accumulation 381 
 
 ^ 5. Different Facilities of Social Advancement as 
 
 affecting Accumulation 382 
 
 Lectuke III. — Of the Successive Functions of Capital in 
 
 the Production of Wealth 391 
 
 i. Capital employed as Wages 392 
 
 Makes Continuous Labor Possible 395 
 
 And Probable 396 
 
 Leads to Skill in Workmen 397 
 
 And to Knowledge in Masters ib. 
 
 v2. Auxiliaiy Capital Defined 398 
 
 Increases the Power of Laborers ib. 
 
 If there be any means of making such Capital 
 
 Profitable 399 
 
 Lectuke IV. — Of the most Perfect Form of Society as to 
 
 Production 401 
 
 Conditions of this Form 402 
 
 Condition of England 403 
 
 Political and Moral Conditions to be considered 405 
 
 But the Economical Conditions first 406 
 
 Neither Primitive nor Advanced Stages of Society to 
 
 be condemned 409 
 
 England not a Favorable Example 411 
 
 The General Prospect hopeful 412 
 
 Lectuee V. — Of the Labor Fund of the World 414 
 
 ^ Division of the Labor Fund 415 
 
 1 . Self-produced AVages th. 
 
 2. Revenue spent in Wages 416 
 
 3. Capital paying Wages tb. 
 
 Slave Labor 417 
 
 Lecttoe VI.— Of the Distribution of Wealth 419 
 
 The two circumstances which determine Wages — 
 
 -^ Amount of Fund, Number of Laborers 420 
 
 General Immobility of Agricultural Capital and Labor 425 
 1 . Occupiers of Land ; three Classes — 
 
 a. Hereditary Occupiers 430 
 
 0. Occupying Tenants 434 
 
 Serfs 435 
 
 Laborers paying Prodxice Rents 437 
 
 y. Cultivating Proprietors 438
 
 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. Wages derived from Ecvcnue 440 
 
 3. Wages derived from Capital 454 
 
 Lectuke VII. — Of the Principles of Population 463 
 
 The Circumstances which Determine the effect of a 
 
 ^/s6 in Wages 474 
 
 1. The Form of Wages 4V5 
 
 2. Time Occupied by the Change 477 
 
 3. Cheapness of Commodities 479 
 
 4. Numbers of Intermediate Classes 493 
 
 5. Civil Liberty and Power of Advancing 499 
 
 6. Possession of Property and ) .^g 
 
 7. Power of Parents ) 
 
 8. Facilities of Investment 511 
 
 9 . Education of the Laboring Classes 514 
 
 The Circumstances which Determine the effect of a 
 
 i^aW in Wages 517 
 
 Laboring Proprietors 522 
 
 Indefinite Access to Land 525 
 
 Effects on Morals and Happiness 531 
 
 AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE on Political Economy, de- 
 livered at King's College, London, February 27, 1833 539 
 
 DETACHED NOTES AND REMARKS— 
 
 On Profits 583 
 
 Effects of Increased Productiveness on Wages and Profits... 584 
 
 Malthus and Ricardo on Rent 589 
 
 Remarks on Malthus' Principles of Political Economy 590 
 
 What determines the Condition of the Labouring Classes ... 592 
 
 ]\Ialthus on Popiilation ih. 
 
 The Economists 593 
 
 Remarks on Adam Smith /5. 
 
 On Malthus' Criticism of Jones on Rent 594 
 
 Distinction between Capital and ReveiTue 597 
 
 On Definitions 598 
 
 Labouring Proprietors in Greece 600 
 
 Fragment on Currency 609 
 
 INDEX , 615
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 The following literary remains of Richard Jones have 
 been collected and published, in the belief that he 
 was not only a man of eminent practical ability in 
 the important public offices which he filled, but that 
 also his speculations in political economy were of a 
 valuable and original character ; and were so to such 
 an extent, that many students of that subject may be 
 glad to see them followed out further than was done 
 in the works published in his lifetime. As this con- 
 viction is the main ground of the pains which have 
 been bestowed in bringing forth this volume, perhaps 
 we may be allowed to endeavor to explain briefly the 
 peculiar character of Mr. Jones's politico-economical 
 philosophy. 
 
 Eor this purpose we must recal to the reader's mind 
 the aspect which Political Economy had assumed in 
 England at the time when Mr. Jones took up the sub- 
 ject. By the labors of various writers, culminating in 
 the treatise of Mr. Ricardo, Political Economy had 
 
 b
 
 X PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 become in a great measure a deductive science : that 
 is, certain definitions were adopted, as of universal 
 api^lication to all countries upon the face of the globe 
 and all classes of society; and from these definitions, 
 and a few corresponding axioms, was deduced a whole 
 system of propositions, which were regarded as of de- 
 monstrated validity. Thus, for instance, it was held 
 that rent was the result of the excess of the produce 
 of good over that of bad soil ; ' and hence, it was taught, 
 the landlord's interest is opposed to the interest of the 
 other classes of society. And this deductive system was 
 undoubtedly woven together witli great ingenuity ; and, 
 being maintained by men of great practical reputation, 
 had obtained a great hold upon men's minds, and was 
 accepted as a body of valuable truths by a large circle 
 of admiring readers. 
 
 In broad distinction to this deductive system, Mr. 
 Jones followed an inductive course in his reasonings on 
 Political Economy. He took a survey of the tenure of 
 land, and of the conditions on which it is, and has been, 
 cultivated, carrying out his examination by bringing 
 together the accounts of all countries and all ages. 
 And the result of this survey was, that the rent of 
 land — the payment which the cultivator makes for its 
 use — cannot bo described by any one single Definition 
 from which its amount can be deduced, and can be 
 
 1 I am aware that this doctrine Avas modified by speaking of successive doses of 
 capital, etc. ; bnt this modification is not essential in the view given here.
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xi 
 
 understood only by dividing such payments into cer- 
 tain large classes ; the effect of such a separation of 
 rents into classes being, that we can then point out 
 the bearing — very different in the different classes — 
 which these payments have upon the comfort, pros- 
 perity, and progress of each society. And this mode 
 of treating the subject, he was wont to call the Poli- 
 tical Economy of Nations. 
 
 He was thus led to divide rents, according as they 
 exist in different nations, into /S'er/Eents, Metayer Eents, 
 Ryot Eents, Cottier Eents, and Farmers^ Eents. This 
 classification is, we believe, quite original, and was 
 made by Mr. Jones the basis of many curious and 
 striking remarks on the differences in the economical 
 and social career of different nations. 
 
 Many of the conclusions to which he was thus led 
 were, as it may well be supposed, entirely at variance 
 with the doctrines of the a priori school. 
 
 It would be an interesting and amusing episode in 
 the history of Political Economy to relate the ways 
 in which the adherents of Mr. Eicardo replied to that 
 denial of his results which Mr. Jones could not avoid, 
 in his mode of treating the subject. But this was 
 merely a casual and ephemeral incident in the course 
 of his speculations. It will easily be understood that 
 such a classification of nations, and such an analysis 
 of the causes of progress and regress in each, thus 
 leading to wide truths, by observation of particular
 
 xii PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 circumstances, and to wider truths by conjunction of 
 less wide, was a philosophy of great value in itself; 
 and the more likely to lead to valuable truth, because 
 it was in conformity with that general process of in- 
 duction, by which all the most substantial truths which 
 man possesses (except only mathematical truth) have 
 been obtained. 
 
 But yet, as opinions are brought out most distinctly 
 by their opposition, I may notice some of the remarks 
 made at the time, by Mr. Eicardo's admirers, upon 
 Mr. Jones's conclusions, and upon his reasonings. '^ Mr. 
 Eicardo (they replied) does not pretend to give an 
 exposition of the laws by which the rise and progress 
 of rent, in the ordmayij and vulgar sense of the word^ 
 is regulated. He was as well aware as Mr. Jones, 
 or any one else, that the rent, the origin and progress 
 of which he had undertaken to investigate, was not 
 that which is commonly called i^ent. He did not pro- 
 fess to examine the circumstances which practically 
 determine the actual amount of rent in any country." 
 
 To this it was a sufficient reply to say, that the 
 object of Mr. Jones was to give an account of the 
 laws by which rent, "in the ordinary and vulgar sense 
 of the word," is regulated. He tried to ascertain the 
 progress and consequences of " what is commonly called 
 rent." And the reader might be left to decide for 
 himself which subject of inquiry may be the better 
 worth his notice, — the rents that are actually paid in
 
 I'REFATUKY NUTICE. xiii 
 
 cocrij country, or the Eicurdiaii rents, which are not 
 those actually paid in any country. 
 
 But the reader might further ask, Did Mr. Eicardo 
 realhj confine his assertions concerning rent, in the 
 manner thus stated by his admirers ? It is certain that 
 he did not. He was charged, even by his admirers, 
 with error, for his doctrine that the interest of the 
 landholders is opposed to that of the rest of the com- 
 munity. Were not these landholders intended by Mr. 
 Eicardo, and understood by all his readers, to be iden- 
 tified with the receivers of actual rents ? or were they 
 different from landholders ''in the ordinary and vulgar 
 sense of the word ?" And when these disciples of his 
 took credit to themselves, as they did, for avoiding his 
 errors, and enforcing the identity of interest of the 
 landlord with that of the public, Avho was their land- 
 lord, and what his interest ? Was he the receiver of 
 " what is commonly called rent," or was he an imaginary 
 personage whose interest depends on the increase of 
 rents "which are not paid in any country?" Was he, 
 in short, the squire of the parish, or the creature of 
 a definition? 
 
 Such was one of the many points of conflict between 
 the inductive and the deductive system of Political 
 Economy — between the view of the actual world, which 
 contemplates the cultivators and proprietors of land 
 in the forms in which they really appear in different 
 climes and times, with their variously modified interests
 
 xiv PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 and possessions ; and the view of tlic hypothetical 
 world, according to which, by a supposed universal 
 and necessary law, the proprietor everywhere and 
 always has a rent measured by the excess of the 
 value of his soil over the worst cultivated soil. Yet, 
 though the theory of rent, which is one of the bases 
 of Mr. Eicardo's system (a theory originally pub- 
 lished by others), be thus hypothetical and partial ; 
 there can be no doubt that in England, and in 
 countries circumstanced like England, it is a very 
 happy and striking generalization of the conditions of 
 the problem of rent. And those who have clearly 
 apprehended the theory in this application, generally 
 entertain an admiration for it, which makes them un- 
 willing to believe, what Mr. Jones has repeatedly said, 
 that the rents which are included in such a definition 
 (namely, farmers' rents) are the smallest of the classes 
 of rents; are practically limited to England, Holland, 
 and a portion of the United States of America; and 
 are to be regarded rather as exceptional than normal, 
 as to the general theory of the subject. 
 
 Perhaps it may not be uninstructive to attend to 
 what is said on the two sides in reference to this 
 opinion. Those who thus cling to the Eicardian for- 
 mula respecting rent, while they allow the wide ex- 
 tent of the exceptions to its applicability pointed out 
 by Mr. Jones, say sometimes that there is everywhere, 
 in the distribution of wealtli from Avhich rent results, a
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. XV 
 
 tendency to conform to the formulas, though this tendency 
 may be overmastered by the peculiar circumstances 
 of the various countries which Mr. Jones considers. 
 Now to this the reply is, that it is not the obstacles 
 to the tendency which are the exceptional case, but 
 the tendency itself. The tendency of rents to the 
 formula (" the excess of good soils over bad") results 
 entirely from the hypothesis of the accessibility of land 
 to the farmer, and the mohilitfj of the farmer's capital 
 from one piece of land to another. But this hypo- 
 thesis, looking at the state of the world in general, 
 is very rarely verified ; and the conditions which deter- 
 mine the interests and position of the various ranks 
 in most countries, depend upon the strong ties which 
 prevent the land from passing from one hand to another, 
 and the capital which is employed in its cultivation 
 being removed to any other employment. Instead of 
 having rents determined by the condition, that if another 
 tenant will pay a higher rent he may have the land, and 
 that if the tenant does not find the cultivation pay, he 
 will move his capital to some other employment, the 
 general case is, that there are strong and almost insur- 
 mountable obstacles to the transfer of land to new 
 tenants, and of agricultural capital to new employments. 
 So little does the general condition of the world exhibit 
 a tendency to a state of things in which these transfers 
 are the rule ; and so little does the general distribution 
 of wealth tend to the results of such a hypothesis.
 
 xvi PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 This doctrine of a universal tendency in the social 
 world to reduce rents to the form of the Ricardian 
 definition, we may perhaps be allowed to illustrate 
 by saying that it is, as if a mathematical speculator 
 concerning the physical world should teach, as an im- 
 portant proposition, that all things tend to assume a 
 form determined by the force of gravity : that thus, 
 the hills tend to become plains, the waterfalls to eat 
 away their beds and disappear, the rivers to form lakes 
 in the vallies, the glaciers to pour down in cataracts. 
 To which the reply would be, that these tendencies 
 are counteracted by opposite tendencies of the same 
 order, and thus have only a small share in shaping 
 the earth's surface. The cohesion of rocks, the tenacity 
 of ice, the original structure of mountains, are facts 
 as real as the action of gravity ; and the doctrine 
 that the earth's surface tends to a level, is of small 
 value and limited use in physical geography. And 
 just so the original structure of nations, their early 
 history, customs, and habits determine the tenure of 
 land, and the relation of the cultivator to the classes 
 above him, in a degree indefinitely greater than the 
 mobility of capital and the consequent changes of tenure. 
 Over a large portion of the earth's surface, and during 
 a large portion of the history of every nation, the 
 former causes do almost everything, the latter, almost 
 nothing. 
 
 Such was a leading doctrine of Mr. Jones's work
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xvii 
 
 on Eent," publislicd in 1831. As gcncmlly is the fate 
 of works which oppose a popnlar and ingenious sys- 
 tem, it was not very favorably received by the reign- 
 ing school. But that, notwithstanding this, it con- 
 tained a view of the subject which was both new and 
 true, we cannot doubt, when we look at the works 
 of eminent English writers on the subject which ap- 
 peared afterwards. Mr. John Stuart Mill, for instance, 
 in his Frinciples of Political Economy^ has adopted 
 the classification of Peasant Proprietors, Metayers, and 
 Cottiers, in addition to common or Farmers' rents. He 
 has indeed deviated from Mr. Jones's scheme in in- 
 cluding the Eyots of India in his chapter on Cottiers ; 
 but the differences between the two classes which Mr. 
 Jones has pointed out, not only in their condition, 
 but in their social prospects, are so strong and broad, 
 that this division may well be regarded as co-ordinate 
 with the others.^ 
 
 Such, then, was Mr. Jones's work on Eent, and such 
 its relation to the speculations of contemporary writers. 
 But this volume required to have other volumes added 
 to it, to complete the great design of giving a view 
 of the Political Economy of N^ations. And to have 
 
 ' The Syndics of the Press belonging to the University of Cambridge toolc upon 
 themselves the expense of printing this book, as tliey not uufrequoutly do with 
 regard to works of merit, especially when written by members of the University. 
 
 2 It may be noted as a curious specimen of the mode in which inductive works 
 are received by the opposite school, that Mr. Jones's work was disparagingly praised 
 as "a valuable collection of facts ;" and this, by a writer who adopted the classifica- 
 tion as well as the facts.
 
 xviii PREFATORY NOTICE. ' 
 
 added other volumes was Mr. Jones's intention' frojil 
 the first. The title under which his work appeared 
 was this : An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth 
 and on the Sources of Taxation. — Part I. Rent. The 
 next portion of the subject on which he intended to 
 publish was, Wages ; for it appeared, from his cos- 
 mographical survey of the economical condition of the 
 earth, that the classes of laborers, the forms which 
 wages assume in different countries, and the effects 
 which they produce upon society, are as various as 
 those of rent. As he had divided rents into certain 
 classes, so he distributed laborers into three great 
 classes according to their condition in different coun- 
 tries. These classes arc ^ : — 
 
 1. XJnhired Laborers, who till the ground which 
 they occupy as peasant cultivators, and live on self- 
 produced wages. 
 
 2. Paid Dependants, who are paid out of the revenue 
 or income of their employers ; such as the greater 
 part of the non-agricultural population of Asia at pre- 
 sent, and the military retainers and domestic artizans 
 of the French and English aristocracy in the middle 
 ages.^ 
 
 3. Hired Laborers, who receive their wages out of 
 capital. 
 
 The third class, previously considered almost exclu- 
 sively by English political economists, is probably the 
 
 > Sec pp. 13, 80, and 11.5 of this volume. 2 g^c pp_ ^34 ^^^^ 440.
 
 rREFATORY NOTICE. xix 
 
 least numerous of the three, as farmers' rents are the 
 least' extensive kind of rents : and thus the science 
 had been made to refer, almost entirely, to a type 
 of society, which, speaking cosmographically, is ex- 
 ceptional. 
 
 Mr. Jones had committed to paper a great mass of 
 materials and speculations on this subject, and some- 
 times fancied himself almost prepared to publish his 
 volume upon it ; but other occupations and, soon, public 
 duties, as Professor of Political Economy at Hailey- 
 bury, and as a Member of various Commissions, inter- 
 vened, and this intention remained unexecuted. His 
 office of Professor led him afterwards to put his views 
 in the form of lectures ; and these, with other writings 
 which he left behind him — most of them on cognate 
 subjects — are here published. His speculations which 
 refer to "Wages, as may appear fi'om the above account 
 of them, are of the same inductive character as his 
 treatment of rent. 
 
 Having noticed the inductive nature of Mr. Jones's 
 social and political philosophy as its special and dis- 
 tinctive character, perhaps I may be allowed to say 
 that the disposition to take such a course in his specu- 
 lations belonged to him from an early period. It 
 existed at the time of his Cambridge undergraduate- 
 ship, and was nourished by the sympathy of some of 
 the companions of his college days. The Novum Org anon 
 was one of their favorite subjects of discussion. John
 
 XX I'UEFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 Hcrschcl was one of tlio companions to whom I have 
 referred ; and his incomparable Discourse on the Studtj 
 of Natural Philosophfj shows how admii'ably such pre- 
 vious trains of thought had fitted him to be the com- 
 mentator of Francis Bacon. And, if I may speak of 
 myself, I may mention that, when I dedicated to him my 
 History of the Inductive Sciences^ I said, in the dedi- 
 cation, that my volumes "were the result of trains of 
 thought which had often been the subject of our con- 
 versation, and of which the origin went back to the 
 period of our early companionship at the University," 
 recollecting with pleasure and gratitude that I had, 
 even then, discoursed with them on such subjects. 
 Eichard Jones himself was always prompt and strenuous 
 in maintaining that all the best part of his intellectual 
 habits had been acquired at College. 
 
 He began his residence as a student at Caius College 
 in October, 1812. He was then a little older than 
 the usual age of Cambridge Students, for he was born 
 in 1790. Ilis father was an eminent solicitor at Tun- 
 bridge Wells ; and Eichard Jones was himself destined 
 for the profession of the law, a sphere in which his 
 mental acuteness and vigor, and his natural eloquence, 
 promised for him a successful career. But it was then 
 judged that his health required another course of life; 
 and with that view he was sent to Cambridge. Carry- 
 ing thither a few years' more knowledge of the world 
 than lie found in his companions in general, a con-
 
 rREFATOllY NOTICE. xxi 
 
 siderable acquaintance with literature, and an extra- 
 ordinary share of wit, fluency, good spirits, and good 
 humor, he naturally became a favorite with many circles 
 in the University : but he most preferred the most 
 intellectual ; and, though he did not himself aim at 
 high University honors, he associated commonly with 
 those of his time who obtained the highest distinc- 
 tions ; for instance, besides "Herschel, the late Edward 
 Jacob, the late Alexander Darblay, and the late Dr. 
 Peacock, to these names of his friends, I may add, Mr. 
 Babbage, Sir Edward Eyan, Mr. John Musgrave (brother 
 of Sir Eichard Musgrave, of Myrtle Grove, Co. Cork), 
 Mr. T. Greenwood, the author of Cathedra Patri^ and 
 the like ; and these University companionships, for the 
 most part, ripened into close and permanent friendships. 
 When he quitted the University in 1816, he took holy 
 orders, and was curate successively at various places in 
 Sussex, a part of England for which he had a truly filial 
 fondness.^ During a portion of this period also he resided 
 with his father at Brighton; and in 1823 he married 
 Charlotte Attree, of that place, the sister of Mr. Thomas 
 Attree, of the Queen's Park. He was then, from 1822, 
 for a course of years, curate at Brasted, near "Wester- 
 ham ; and there he brought into shape the work which 
 he published ; and there, in the vigor of his intellect, 
 and with his mind not yet drawn aside from the 
 
 1 Mr. Jones was, however, of Welsh extraction, and was accustomed to assert his 
 Celtic nationality in various ways.
 
 xxii PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 pleasures of speculation to the excitement of a more 
 public life, he planned many a large and lofty literary 
 project, though he was mainly known to his country 
 neighbors as a most sagacious agriculturist and a most 
 agreeable companion. 
 
 By degrees, however, practical action began to pre- 
 dominate in Jones's life over speculative and literary 
 occupations. Those who knew the great quantity of 
 facts which he had accumulated as materials for his 
 Political Economij of Nations^ and the many original 
 and striking trains of thought with which these facts 
 were in his mind connected, could not see without 
 regret the hope that his work on the Distribution of 
 Wealth would be completed, gradually fading away. 
 But his practical labors were closely connected with 
 his theoretical knowledge, and indeed had grown out of 
 that ; and probably no other person could have dis- 
 charged so well some of the offices in which he was 
 employed. 
 
 Soon after the publication of his Treatise on Rent^ 
 he was appointed Professor of Political Economy at 
 the then newly established King's College, London. 
 He delivered on the 27th of February, 1833, his In- 
 troductory Lecture at this institution, which was soon 
 afterwards published; and this lecture contains per- 
 haps the best general sketch of his political econo- 
 mical principles which is to be found in his writings. 
 lie here takes the view which I have already noticed.
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxiii 
 
 of the different classes among which the wealth of 
 different countries is distributed, and points to the 
 manner in which their political is govei-ned by their 
 economical constitution. He sketches, too, the progress 
 of opinion in England on the effects of commerce ; — the 
 successive systems of the halance of hargain and balance 
 of trade ^ which he afterwards described in the Edinhurgh 
 Revietu (p. 291 of this volume). He touches on the sub- 
 ject of taxation, and especially the doctrine of its inci- 
 dence on particular classes, as held by the French econo- 
 mists and others. He points out how decidedly the 
 economical condition of England is not a normal and 
 typical condition, but a peculiar and exceptional one. 
 He says (p. 558 of this volume), " There are persons 
 among us, and of no mean rank in the intellectual world, 
 who think that English political economists may allow- 
 ably consider the state of things about them, if not as a 
 picture of the condition of the world, yet as a pattern, 
 towards which the institutions and economical habits 
 of other nations are approaching with a quicker or 
 slower motion; who believe that, while we study our 
 own economical elements and conformation, and those 
 only, — if we do not get a knowledge of the pheno- 
 mena which the rest of the people of the earth pre- 
 sent to the philosopher as his materials, we shall at 
 least get a knowledge of a state of things which will 
 one day be theirs, and is destined to be universal. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I cannot join in these views. Our
 
 xxiv I'KEFATOKY .XOTIOE. 
 
 iuquiries and reasonings about tlio future progress and 
 condition of communities of men, must, if they arc to 
 have any practical character, be confined to the ad- 
 vance and fortunes of nations, during periods some- 
 what like those which the history of the past and 
 our knowledge of men's natures teach us are likely 
 to bound the duration of empires, and people, and states 
 of civilization. During such periods, I see no great 
 chance of the world collectively being anything dif- 
 ferent from what it has been and is." 
 • I may quote a few sentences more to illustrate the 
 inductive character which I have ascribed to Jones's 
 philosophy (p. 562). 
 
 "If we Avish to make ourselves acquainted with 
 the economy and arrangements by which the differ- 
 ent nations of the earth produce and distribute their 
 revenues, I really know but of one way to attain 
 our object, and that is, to look and see. We must 
 get comprehensive views of facts, that we may arrive 
 at principles which are truly comprehensive. If we 
 take a different method, if we snatch at general ^^rin- 
 ciples, and content ourselves with confined observations, 
 two things will happen to us. First, what we call 
 general principles will often be found to have no 
 generality ; we shall set out with declaring proposi- 
 tions to be universally true, which, at every step of 
 our further progress, we shall be obliged to confess 
 arc frequently false: and, secondly, we shall miss a
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. XXV 
 
 great mass of useful knowledge, which those who ad- 
 vance to principles by a comprehensive examination of 
 facts, necessarily meet with on their road." 
 
 It is pleasant to find in this lecture a cordial recog- 
 nition of the merits of a great philosopher in the same 
 department of knowledge, whom he had often occasion to 
 criticise, and whom he succeeded as Professor in the East 
 India College at Haileybury. He speaks of population 
 as one of the divisions of his subject, and says (p. 564): — 
 
 ^' ^^'hen I turn to population, it is my first duty, and 
 it is a pleasing one, to remind you that we have still 
 living among us, in the full vigor of his faculties, the 
 distinguished philsopher to whom we owe all our really 
 scientific knowledge on this subject. You will perceive, 
 of course, that I allude to Mr. Malthus ; and I am the 
 more forward to perform this duty, because it may be my 
 lot sometimes to offer what I think corrections of the 
 views of that really eminent man ; to express occasion- 
 ally differences, or shades of difference, in our conclu- 
 sions; perhaps now and then to combat a few of his 
 positions altogether. I shall do this with the freedom 
 due to truth, and with the deference I feel to be due to 
 him ; but, knowing that such a task may occasionally 
 await me, I seize this early opportunity of declaring 
 my sense of grateful obligation for the knowledge I have 
 reaped from his writings." 
 
 Mr. Jones had already visited the East India College, 
 and made acquaintance with Mr. Malthus. In March,
 
 xxvi PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 1835, Mr. Malthiis having died, he was appointed to 
 succeed him in the professorship of Political Economy 
 and History. The appointment was formally in the 
 Court of Directors ; bnt really, it was understood, in the 
 chairman of the Court, Mr. St. George Tucker. 
 
 Professor Jones was appointed at a time when the 
 abolition of the Court was under consideration, and his 
 first appointment was only for one year ; and soon after- 
 wards, his appointment as Tithe Commissioner led to his 
 tendering his resignation of the professorship ; but the 
 Directors requested him to retain the office, which he 
 did till near his death. 
 
 The College at Haileybury, during the whole period of 
 its existence, included a rare collection of eminent literary 
 men. Sir James Macintosh had been succeeded by 
 William Empson (afterwards editor of the Edinhiirgh 
 Review)^ before Malthus was succeeded by Eichard Jones. 
 At that time, Dr. Batten was the Principal of the 
 College, and Mr. Le Bas (afterwards the Principal) was 
 the Dean and Mathematical Professor. Mr. Jeremie 
 (now Eegius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge) was 
 Classical Lecturer, and afterwards Dean ; and the other 
 offices of teachers were filled by accomplished scholars, 
 of whom I may especially mention Meerza Ibrahim, the 
 teacher of Persian. Jones's conspicuous ability and re- 
 markable conversational powers added to the attractive- 
 ness of the place. Many of the most eminent men of 
 the time visited the College ; and it was not unusual to
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxvii 
 
 meet in the College-hall such guests as Smyth, Herschel, 
 Babbage, Lords Brougham, Campbell, Cranworth, Mont- 
 eagle, Ashburton, Murray, Fullerton, Barons Parke and 
 Alderson, Mr. Bellenden Ker, and others of like note. I 
 may especially mention Lord Jeffrey, who, as the father- 
 in-law of Professor Empson, paid annually long visits 
 to the College, and delighted in discussing questions of 
 politics and philosophy with Jones. 
 
 We come now to the most important of Jones's prac- 
 tical tasks, and one which occupied a long portion of his 
 life ; I mean his share in the commutation of tithes. 
 
 In his capacity of Professor at King's College, Jones 
 was brought into communication with the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury (Howley) and the Bishop of London (Blom- 
 field), and other dignitaries of the Church, and had the 
 means of knowing their opinions on this question. His 
 attention had already been drawn to the subject, both 
 as a clergyman and as a political economist ; and he 
 had, in his work on Pent, spoken of the commutation 
 of tithes, as a step desirable on several accounts. Such 
 a measure had already been discussed in the Legisla- 
 ture ; and Jones in his book (p. 314) said : " What has 
 passed in Parliament may be taken as a proof that the 
 leaders of the Church are willing to co-operate in the 
 adoption of any rational plan of this kind. Should the 
 legislature set about the task with a serious conviction 
 of its usefulness and importance, and entrust the execu- 
 tion of it to persons acting on sound views and in a
 
 PREFATUKY NOTICE. 
 
 frank and honest spirit of conciliation, its very few diffi- 
 culties would quickly disappear. On the immense im- 
 portance of such a change, in a political and religious 
 as well as in an economical point of view, it cannot be 
 necessary to enlarge." It is evident from this, that he 
 had, even then (before 1831), carefully considered the 
 subject. The matter was soon brought before Parlia- 
 ment; and in 1833 an attempt was made by the Govern- 
 ment to promote a commutation. About this time Jones 
 published a pamphlet on the subject, with a sketch of 
 a Bill. He says there: "The sketch of a Bill which 
 follows has been drawn up for some time. As far as 
 it has been privately circulated, it has secured (almost 
 without exception) the suffrages of persons holding the 
 most opposite opinions as to the Church and tithe. Still, 
 had its provisions been inconsistent with, those of the 
 ministerial plan, it would not probably have been now 
 iH'inted." He goes on to say, that the plan of the Govern- 
 ment, excepting some of its details, is certainly fiir. 
 
 The course recommended in this draft of a Bill is 
 not exactly that which was afterwards adopted. Jones 
 here proposes that tithes should be exchanged for 
 various equivalents, — money, land, mortgages, or corn- 
 rents : and that, where the latter equivalent is adopted, 
 the corn-rents should be subsequently redeemed or pur- 
 chased by the landed body. The attempt at legislation 
 on this subject in 1833, and another made in 1834, 
 failed. In 1835, Sir Eobert Peel, who had then become
 
 I'llEFATORY NOTICE. xxix 
 
 Prime Minister, brought in ii Bill which more nearly- 
 approached the subsequent Act, especially in establishing 
 a supreme Eoard of three Commissioners in London, two 
 of whom were to be appointed by the Government, and 
 the third by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I do not 
 know that Professor Jones was in any very intimate com- 
 munication with the Government during the discussion 
 of this Bill. Mr. Goulburn, then Home Secretary and 
 member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, 
 had, I think, adopted several of Jones's views, and Sir 
 Robert Peel made some inquiries of him. Sir Piobert 
 Peel was driven from the premiership ; and in 1 836 a 
 Tithe Commutation Bill was again introduced by Lord 
 John Russell ; and in the preparation of this, and its 
 passage through Parliament, Mr. Jones had a large 
 share. He was associated with Mr. Drinkwater Bethune 
 in drawing the Bill, and was understood to act on the 
 part of the Church and the Conservative party in the ne- 
 gociations which took place during its progress. But his 
 advice was also valuable as that of a person well acquainted 
 with practical agriculture. He had, some time before, 
 studied the subject of the tithe of bops, the characteristic 
 produce of his native county, and one of the most diffi- 
 cult articles in the question of tithe. In conjunction 
 with Mr. Thomas Law Hodges, Member of Parliament 
 for the western division of that county, and an eminent 
 landowner, a Bill had been prepared respecting a com- 
 mutation of the tithe of hops, which Mr. Hodges was to
 
 XXX PREFATORY ]S'OTICE. 
 
 introduce into Parliament. Mr. Jones also had the merit 
 of doing much to reconcile the clerical body to the mea- 
 sure. This was no easy task; for the Bill commuting 
 existing tithes on certain principles of valuation, deprived 
 the clergy of all prospective increase in the value of their 
 tithes arising from an increase in the produce of the land. 
 Ultimately difficulties were surmounted, and repugnances 
 in a great measure soothed, and the Bill was passed in 
 both Houses of Parliament. "While it was pending, 
 Mr. Jones published a pamphlet upon it, defending its 
 general principles.^ 
 
 Professor Jones had well merited, by his advice and 
 exertions in the construction and progress of the Bill, 
 that he should be appointed, on the part of the Arch- 
 bishop, his tithe commissioner ; the other two, appointed 
 by the Government, being Mr. William Blamire, whose 
 assistance in the modification of the Bill during its career 
 had also been very valuable, and Captain Wentworth 
 Buller. 
 
 The Act entrusted those Commissioners with the 
 administration of a commutation, voluntary for a time 
 (two years), and afterwards compulsory. They pro- 
 ceeded immediately to their task; and the success of 
 the measure in practice must be regarded as a notable 
 proof of the wisdom with which it was conceived, and 
 the care and equity with which it was carried into effect. 
 Probably no measure affecting so large a mass of pro- 
 
 ' Jicmarks on the Government Bill for the Commutation of Tithes, 1836.
 
 PKEFATORY NOTICE. xxxi 
 
 perty, and dealing with so many cases of conflicting 
 interests, was ever executed with so little complaint of 
 injustice or hardship. 
 
 The great bulk of the commutation was effected in a 
 very short time, compared with the magnitude of tlie 
 task ; and it was ascribed by eminent persons in a great 
 degree to Jones's energy, promptness, and clearness of 
 view, that as much was done in three years as might 
 in common hands have occupied ten. A return was 
 annually delivered by the Commissioners to the Home 
 Secretary of the progress achieved in their task ; and 
 Jones, who wrote these returns at first, made a point of 
 confining them within the limits of a single page. 
 
 It will show the magnitude of the interests dealt with 
 by this commission, to give some extracts from the re- 
 port of their proceedings to the close of the year 1857. 
 From this it aj)pears that, in 12,209 districts, the tithes 
 had then been commuted by confirmed agreements or 
 confirmed awards. The commutation in each district 
 being settled, the payments were apportioned to the 
 several parts of the district, and of these apportionments, 
 11,703 had then been confirmed. So near its close does 
 the task of commutation draw, that, during the year 
 1857, only two notices for making awards were issued, 
 and only six drafts of compulsory awards were received. 
 The total amount of rent charges thus established was, 
 in 1856, about four millions of pounds sterling. 
 
 In carrying into effect an Act dealing with such
 
 xxxii PKEFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 extensive and varying interests, many details were to 
 be supplied, and many cases naturally arose which 
 required for their decision, besides a steady spirit of 
 equity, a legal habit of mind and a power of steering 
 between opposite difficulties in practical questions. In 
 these tasks. Professor Jones's ability was very con- 
 spicuous. The papers of Forms and the Instructions 
 for assistant commissioners and other subordinate officers 
 were mainly drawn up by him. And in the decision 
 of practical and legal questions, his merit was acknow- 
 ledged by high authorities. His decision on the Apple- 
 dore modus rent charge apportionment was one case of 
 this kind ; ^ and this was afterwards adopted verhatim by 
 the Judges of the Queen's Bench. His paper on varying 
 rent charges was another, of which he was proud, as 
 an answer to a difficulty raised by Lord Wynford 
 (Best, C. J.). He was also mainly concerned in obtain- 
 ing, as a part of the machinery of the commutation, 
 maps of every parish, showing the parcels of land on 
 which tithe was apportioned ; and these maps, sanctioned 
 by the seal of the commissioners, became legal authority 
 for parochial and other assessments. 
 
 Being thus led to mix in the business of legislation, 
 he gave his attention to other Bills affecting the in- 
 terests of the clergy. In 1838 a Bill was introduced 
 into the House of Commons, " To declare the equal 
 liability of Tithe Commutation Eent Charges and other 
 
 1 Given in Queen's Bench ReporU, a.d. 1845, vol. viii., p. HP.
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxxiii 
 
 Hereditaments to be rated at the Net Annual Yalue" 
 in parochial assessments. This proposal, that the rent 
 charges of the clergy should be assessed in the same 
 way as rent, appeared to Mr. Jones very unjust, because 
 such rent charges are of the nature of payments for 
 services, which payments are not assessed in other pro- 
 fessions. He also thought it contrary to the funda- 
 mental principles of the Poor Law, and the whole 
 current of legal decisions thereon. The spirit and 
 earnestness with which he attempted to resist this 
 injustice may be judged of by the opening of the 
 pamphlet which he wrote on this subject.' It begins as 
 follows : — 
 
 " The clergy of the Church of England are supposed 
 to constitute a body of nearly 20,000 men ; of these, 
 about half have benefices ; of these benefices, 4,861 are 
 under £200, and 6,725 under £300 per annum. The 
 poverty of so large a body of ministers of religion is a 
 subject of public sorrow. The hand of legislation has 
 been, and is, busy in attempting to alleviate it, — feebly, 
 partially, at some distant day, at the expense of great 
 changes and of great sacrifices. The educated persons 
 who perform the duties of these benefices have, during 
 the mutations of the law of rating, become subject to 
 a tax on the wages of their personal labor, from which 
 that same law exempts the members of all other callings 
 
 1 " Eeniarks on the manner in Avhich Tithes should be assessed to the Poor's Rate 
 under the Existing Law ; with a Protest against the Change which will be produced in 
 that Law bv a Bill introduced into the House ol' Commons bv Mr. Shaw Lel'cvre."
 
 rilEFATOllY NOTICE. 
 
 and professions, however rich ; and from which I firmly 
 believe that the law, consistently interpreted as to the 
 wages of labor from the beginning, would have ex- 
 empted them. The progress of the law has, however, 
 left them certain partial immunities, which alleviate, 
 though to a very moderate extent, their peculiar bur- 
 then. These immunities rest upon the statutes of the 
 realm. They are guaranteed by the solemn adjudica- 
 tions of its highest courts ; yet these immunities it is 
 now sought to destroy by a direct act of legislative 
 violence, for the benefit of the perpetrators of that act. 
 Against this deed I enter a firm (I will endeavor that 
 it shall not be an angry) protest. The task before me 
 will expose me, I know, to some mistaken obloquy. I 
 have had a foretaste of it. At any rate it is a disin- 
 terested one. I have a small portion of lay- tithe — that 
 I do not care to protect. I have not, I never had, 
 ecclesiastical tithe to the amount of one shilling. As 
 the task is disinterested, so is it in one respect painful. 
 The measure is introduced by a gentleman for whose cha- 
 racter I have the most unfeigned esteem. I have lately 
 been indebted to him, in an afi'air of public moment, for 
 aid and kindness which I felt to be at once a benefit and 
 an honor. I shall deeply regret any one expression 
 which can personally give him the smallest uneasiness ; 
 but I cannot honestly speak of the deed he is engaged 
 in, otherwise than as one of cruelty and wrong ; and it 
 is because I think it is so, that I am firmly persuaded
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxxv 
 
 he has embarked in it under mistaken impressions, 
 which I will not abandon all hope of removing." 
 
 The arguments thus forcible and thus forcibly put, 
 were answered by Mr. Blake, But Mr. Shaw Lefevre's 
 Bill was ultimately withdrawn. And the principle con- 
 tended for by Mr. Jones has been accepted, though with 
 some fluctuations, by the Courts of LaAV and the Poor 
 Law Commissioners. 
 
 The commutation of tithes, though carried on with 
 great activity and diligence, occupied several years, and 
 required repeated consideration of the Legislature. Acts 
 supplementary to the original Act of 1836 were passed 
 in 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, 1842, 1845 ; and finally, in 
 1847, an Act which, among other things, continued the 
 commissioners in office till October 1, 1850, and to the 
 end of the then next Session of Parliament. 
 
 In 1851 the Tithe Commission ceased to exist sepa- 
 rately. It had already, from 1842, had committed to it 
 the powers of a voluntary enfranchisement of copyholds ; 
 but the Commission was now merged in a Copyhold 
 Commission, of which Mr. Jones was not a member. In 
 quitting his office, he drew up a memorandum respecting 
 the work connected with the Tithe Commission and still 
 remaining to be done, which he left for the instruction 
 of his successors. 
 
 Professor Jones's administrative ability was so com- 
 pletely established by his conduct in this office, that his 
 opinion and advice were, from the time of his holding it,
 
 xxxvi rKEFATOUY NOTICE. 
 
 commonly asked for by public men dealing with ques- 
 tions extensively affecting landlords and clergymen. His 
 demeanor was always decided and confident in treating 
 subjects which he had well studied, his mode of dealing 
 with objections prompt and keen, and his acquaintance 
 with practical details very exact. Moreover, his per- 
 sonal appearance, in youth bright and vigorous, after- 
 wards retained its vigor in a more massive form. Hence 
 it was not surprising that he was sometimes mistaken by 
 strangers for a mere shrewd practical man of business ; 
 or that, when he was examined before committees of the 
 House of Commons, especially by an adverse questioner, 
 the readiness and pointedness of his replies were admired 
 as a remarkable example of intellectual gladiatorsliip. 
 Such qualities also led to his companionship being 
 sought by some of the most able men of our time. 
 
 In giving his thought and time to the work of the 
 tithe commission, Jones looked to the ecclesiastical 
 authorities for the means of ultimately retiring from 
 his labors. His services to the Church of England, in 
 devising and effecting an equitable arrangement of her 
 secular interests, by which she was freed from the 
 odium which had fallen upon tithes and secured in the 
 possession of a less obnoxious kind of property, Avere 
 generally acknowledged. He was told by the Govern- 
 ment that he was to look for his final provision to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, who had appointed him to 
 the office. And, imdoubtedly, it would have been
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxxvii 
 
 highly grateful to Mr. Jones if, as his life advanced, 
 his usefulness to the Church had been recognized by 
 the gift of some preferment — one of those pieces of 
 ecclesiastical property, implying a moderate amount of 
 labor in their possessor, which have often been the 
 recompense of much smaller merits. But it was, I 
 presume, never found possible so to reward the Arch- 
 bishop's Tithe Commissioner; at any rate, it was never 
 done. And Professor Jones had to think himself for- 
 tunate that, when he ceased to be a member of the 
 Tithe Commission as it was remodelled in 1851, an 
 income was provided him by his being placed in other 
 commissions for which his ability and knowledge fitted 
 him. He was made, first, Secretary to the Capitular 
 Commission, and, afterwards, one of the Charity Com- 
 missioners for England and Wales.' 
 
 ' A memorial, urging- Mr. Jones's claims to a substantial recompense for his public 
 services, was drawn up in 1852, addressed to the Earl of Derby, who was then Prime 
 Minister. This document was signed by several eminent statesmen of the most dif- 
 ferent parties and opinions on other subjects ; and tlius shows the general estimation 
 of Mr. Jones's merits. These signatures are contained in the following letter, which 
 
 I insert by permission. 
 
 "Mount Trexchard, Foynes (Ireland), 
 "My dear Jones, "October 16, 1852. 
 
 " I have this day closed my duties by transmitting the memorial respecting 
 your case to Lord Derby. I copy the list of names who have signed it. 
 
 Bishop of Lichfield 
 Bishop of Gloucester 
 Bishop of Chester 
 C. .J. Lefevee (Speaker) 
 J. R. Graham 
 Henry Goulburn 
 Sydney Herbert 
 
 T. U. ACLAND 
 
 Richmond Portman 
 
 Lansdowne Monteagle 
 
 FouTESCUE Archbishop of York 
 
 Stradbroke Bishop of London 
 
 FiTzwiLLiAM Bishop of Lincoln 
 
 ILvRROWBY Bishop of St. Davids 
 
 St. Germ.vns Bishop of Bipon 
 
 Brougham Bishop of Norwich 
 
 Hatherton 
 
 "I wish I could send you all my correspondence to show you how earnestly 
 and frankly many of these eminent men recognise your services, and how warmly 
 they express the interest they feel on your behalf. 
 
 " Sincerely hoping that this effort may be successful, believe me, my dear 
 Jones, always faithfully yours, " " MONTEAGEE."
 
 xxxviii PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 In the meantime his lectures at the East India College 
 went on. On the occasion of his being appointed Tithe 
 Commissioner, he had received permission from the 
 directors to hold his professorship, though non-resident ; 
 but of this permission of non-residence he rarely availed 
 himself. He went on throwing his speculations into his 
 lectui-es, and for that purpose often writing them over 
 in altered forms, as lecturers in such circumstances com- 
 monly do. From this habit, the papers which he left, 
 and of which a selection is here published, contain much 
 repetition, though much is still kept back. The prin- 
 cipal new feature which appeared in his lectures, so far 
 as the general subject was concerned, was an attempt to 
 determine the effect, upon the progress of population, 
 produced by a rise or a fall of wages. For he held that 
 in either case, the effect might be an increase or a de- 
 crease of the number of the population according to the 
 different circumstances belonging to each case. This 
 speculation is contained in Lecture YII., p. 463 of this 
 volume. He there enumerates, for instance, nine causes 
 which influence the effect of a rise of wages : namely, 
 1, the form of wages ; 2, the time occupied by the 
 change ; 3, the cheapness of commodities ; 4, the num- 
 bers of intermediate classes ; 5, civil liberty and the 
 power of rising in society ; 6, the property of laborers ; 
 7, the power of parents ; 8, facilities of investment ; 
 9, the education of the laboring classes. This classifica- 
 tion afforded the means of adducing a large and varied
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xxxix 
 
 quantity of examples, all serving to show how rash and 
 baseless must be any universal proposition respecting 
 the effect of a rise or fall of wages upon population ; 
 and thus still manifesting the inductive character of 
 Jones's political philosophy. 
 
 He was also led by his position in the East India College 
 to turn his attention especially upon the economical con- 
 dition and history of India, as may be seen in Lecture VI., 
 p. 446 of the same series. And, as a part of this sub- 
 ject, he studied the Anglo-Indian revenue systems, upon 
 which there is an article at page 281 of this volume. 
 
 To the last he cherished the hope of giving something 
 of a complete and systematic character to his speculative 
 views of Political Economy ; but the execution of all such 
 projects was prevented by his practical engagements, and 
 by his habits of social intercourse. Another obstacle to 
 his constructing or completing a system of doctrine, was 
 his impatience of the labor which was requisite in order 
 to give literary symmetry to his writings. The results 
 of this peculiarity may be seen in the frequent repetitions 
 of statements and arguments which will be found in the 
 following pages ; and in the confused arrangement which 
 we fear will be detected, after all that we have done to 
 give a systematic aspect to the work, by Titles and 
 Tables of Contents. That, notwithstanding these de- 
 fects, these papers are a valuable addition to the litera- 
 ture of Political Economy, is the conviction under which 
 we have prepared and published them.
 
 xl PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 Mr. Jones died in the College at Haileybiiry, the 20tli 
 of January, 1855, and was buried in the neighboring 
 churchyard of Am well. 
 
 In preparing these papers for the press, the main 
 labor of comparison, transcription, and directing the 
 printing has been performed by John Cazenove, Esq., 
 one of Mr. Jones's most faithful friends and admirers ; 
 and indeed he, rather than myself, has a claim to any 
 credit which the editor of this volume may deserve. 
 The notes marked Ed. are mostly by Mr. Cazenove ; 
 but I have been unwilling that these papers should 
 come before tlie world without some Prefatory iNTotice, 
 and shall rejoice if Mr. Jones's friends derive any 
 satisfaction from what I have said. 
 
 W. W. 
 
 Tkinity College, Xov. 18, 1S,J8.
 
 \^'^ 
 
 LECTURES, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 IXTRODUCTOEY REMARKS. 
 
 The general principles of Political Economy have hitherto 
 been laid down by English writers with an especial 
 and exclusive view to the peculiar form and structure 
 of society existing in Great Britain. And English 
 writers have, in this respect, been followed, rather 
 blindly, by continental philosophers, who need only 
 have opened their eyes to what was passing around 
 them to see how imperfect and limited were many of 
 the axioms they were adopting as universal and com- 
 plete ; more especially those wliich related to modes of 
 employing and remunerating Labor, and to the Distri- 
 bution of Wealth generally. 
 
 I shall endeavour to avoid this error, and this 
 endeavour will lead me to present the abstract princi- 
 ples of the subject in somewhat of a new form and 
 order. In doing this, as I shall have some new prin- 
 ciples of the subject to introduce, so I shall have 
 many more to qualify and correct. 
 
 This will be the case in all parts of the subject, 
 but more especially, perhaps, while treating of Popu- 
 lation.
 
 2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 Without tliorougblj^ understanding tlic causes which 
 determine the movements of j)opulation — that is, the 
 rapid or slow advance — the rapid or slow decrease — of 
 the numbers of a nation — we cannot even begin to 
 grapple with many of the most important subjects with 
 which we shall have to deal ; including the whole sub- 
 ject of the "Wages of Lalbor, and the Effect of Taxation, 
 direct or indu*ect, on such articles as the laborers con- 
 sume, whether as necessaries or comforts : to say 
 nothing here of many higher problems which we shall 
 find connecting this branch of the economy of nations 
 with the causes of their political fortimes and of their 
 moral growth and complexion. 
 
 The subject of Population has as yet been left much 
 where Malthus left it, and tliis is unfortunate. We 
 shall do, I hope, full justice to him, the great father 
 of a branch of inquiry which, while it deals with some 
 of the highest questions with which the intellect of 
 man can grapple, explains, at the same time, a host of 
 practical problems, without a clear knowledge of which 
 the statesman cannot proceed in his daily path without 
 stumbling. 
 
 But there is something to be effected beyond this 
 grateful task of doing justice to the mighty dead. We 
 may follow up their track, and, by the aid of what they 
 have done, penetrate somewhat further than they did. 
 
 I propose, then, to discuss the subject of Population 
 with some fulness. I expect to be able to show joii 
 important results from lines of inquiry which appear to 
 me to be new ; and to point to others which we can 
 see a road to, without any great hope of exploring them
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 
 
 completely ourselves, because the phenomena they point 
 to have somewhat of a secular character, and a perfect 
 knowledge of them is probably reserved for philosophers 
 who have before them the records of the accumulated 
 observations of many generations. 
 
 What there may be new in this portion of oiu' subject 
 will probably be found useful in all those branches of 
 it which touch either on the distribution of wealth, or 
 on taxation. But I look forward with more hope than 
 ever to this result; — to the new light which, I trust, 
 will be thrown on the moral bearings of the subject ; — 
 to the extending to other minds a conviction which 
 long years of thought and investigation have firmly 
 established in my own; namely, that the laws which 
 determine the movements of population have a benevo- 
 lent tendency, effect useful and glorious purposes diu'ing 
 the progress of nations, produce in society moral good 
 and moral beauty, out of all proportion to the stains 
 of evil which sometimes accompany theii* action, and 
 are perfectly consistent with the harmonious govern- 
 ment, by a benevolent Being, of a world in which man 
 is on his trial, and in which all the moral causes which 
 create what is great and good may be seen turned, 
 by the fi-ailty of his imperfect nature, into sources of 
 partial evil.
 
 WEALTH, THE SUBJECT MATTER OF POLITICAL [lect. i. 
 
 LECTUKE L 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Wealth the subject matter of Political Economy — is here restricted to material 
 objects. — The reasons of this explained. — Inquiry into it separated into the heads 
 of production, distribution, consumption, exchange; and the effects of taxation. — 
 The Earth and Elements the original sources of "Wealth. — Error of Adam Smith in 
 representing Labor as its source — did not greatly affect his reasonings, the efficiency 
 of Labor being what chiefly determines the comparative wealth or poverty of 
 nations. — This instanced by the comparison of South America with Great Britain, 
 — Efficiency of Labor dependent on three causes : 1 . its continuity ; 2. the skill 
 employed ; 3. the power by which it is aided — instanced by the comparison of Asia 
 with England. — The great differences observable between them a subject for future 
 inquiry. 
 
 Division of laborers into three classes : 1. Unhired laborers ; 2. Paid dependants; 
 3. Hired laborers.— The first of these classes the most numerous, taking the world 
 throughout. — The third class the least numerous, except in our own country, where 
 they predominate. — This predominance a cause of error among modern writers, who 
 have treated of them exclusively. — Specimens of all three classes still exist in England. 
 — The threefold division of laborers founded on the nature and formation of the 
 funds supplying their wages — is essential in reference both to production and distri- 
 bution — but is purely economical, no way referring to their condition in other 
 respects. 
 
 The subject matter of the science of Political Economy 
 rSted to ^^ ^^^^ "Wealth of N'ations," but I must begin 
 
 material r • j.i j. • 'j_i 
 
 objects. by warning you that, m common with my 
 illustrious predecessor, Malthus, I shall use the word 
 "wealth'' in somewhat of a technical and restricted 
 sense. While speaking of wealth, I confine myself to 
 such material objects as are " voluntarily appropriated 
 by man."
 
 LECT. I.] ECONOMY, RESTRICTED TO MATERIAL OBJECTS. 5 
 
 "Writers of eminence have used the term " Wealth" 
 in a mucli more comprehensive sense, and have Reasons 
 
 •^ ^ , of this 
 
 included under it all the intellectual attain- explained. 
 ments, the accomplishments, or the skill, of which the 
 indi^ddual members of any community are possessed ; 
 and there is a sense no doubt, and a noble sense, in 
 which these may be said to be the most precious portions 
 of a nation's wealth. But when we apply ourselves to 
 the task of examining the laws which govern either 
 the production or the distribution of wealth, we see 
 almost at a glance that there is still a wide difference 
 between the laws which determine the production of 
 the external and material wealth, with which alone I 
 propose to deal, and those moral, intellectual, and 
 internal qualities which are sometimes included imder 
 the same term. I do not mean to assert that these 
 last qualities have not laws and a philosophy of their 
 own, but only that they are produced under different 
 laws, and must be explained by a distinct system 
 of philosophy, from those applicable to Wealth as I 
 define it. 
 
 Bolder and happier investigators may be able to 
 thi'ow light upon the system of laws which regulate 
 the production of this mass of moral riches. I do not, 
 I confess, see my otvh way to the entrance, much less 
 to the completion of such a task. But of one thing 
 I am clear, that before the very fii'st steps are made 
 in it, a system of terms must be adopted and adhered 
 to which will separate those peculiar objects of inquiry, 
 distinctly and systeraaticallj^, from the material and 
 external wealth with which alone, I repeat, I mean^
 
 6 EARTH AND ELEMENTS THE SOURCE OF WEALTH, [lbct. i. 
 
 to deal, and which alone I shall inchide under the 
 term Wealth when it is used by itself in the following 
 lectures. 
 
 Our investigations as to national wealth, then, will 
 Inquiry into bc dividcd luto inquiries into the laws which 
 
 it separated 
 
 into heads, regulatc, 1st, Its production ; 2nd, Its distribu- 
 tion ; 3rd, Its consumption ; 4th, Its exchange ; 5th, 
 The phenomena consequent on different systems of 
 taxation. 
 ^ In examining into the laws which determine the 
 JndeTements ^ii^io^^iit of wcaltli prodiiccd, WO tum, first, to 
 weaiTh!"^ ° observe its original sources. These, no doubt, 
 I are the earth and elements. From them all the material 
 wealth which man can appropriate or fashion is originally 
 produced. Labor was inadvertently described by Adam 
 Smith as the source of all wealth. The mistake, for 
 reasons we shall presently give, very slightly aff'ected 
 Error of ^lie correctness of his reasonings; but still it 
 slightly was a mistake. Labor is the universal instru- 
 
 affected his 
 
 reasonings, nicut, wlthout whlch uonc of the productions 
 of nature could be appropriated by man, or made useful 
 to him ; but his labor is no more the original source 
 of his wealth than the mouth is the original source of 
 his food, which it masticates and prepares for the nutri- 
 ment of the frame. I have stated, and shall presently 
 prove, that this mistake very slightly affected the cor- 
 rectness of Smith's reasonings ; but, having in view the 
 historical and practical researches which our coirrse will 
 lead us to, it is important for us not wholly to put 
 out of sight the natural inequality between the original 
 '' sources of wealtli in different countries.
 
 LECT. I.] EFFICIENCY OF LABOR DETERMINES WEALTH. 7 
 
 When we are liereafter observing the economical ^ 
 circumstances which contributed to establish the first 
 elements of human civilization, we shall find this differ- 
 ence between natiu-al sources of wealth, independent of 
 human labor, of moment. _^ 
 
 The use of the cereal grains generally, and of the 
 precious metals as instruments of exchange, arose among 
 people whose political history has perished, but whose 
 economical history has survived. The Labor of those 
 nations we know to have been made fruitful by the 
 exuberant fertility of their soil, which enabled them 
 to maintain a large agricultiu'al population, the inhabi- 
 tants of the earliest cities of the earth. From the 
 bosom of these cities arose most of the arts we have 
 mentioned, which are still the most important of those 
 by which the invention of man has speeded and adorned 
 the progress of civilization. And when from the an- 
 cient days of the earth we turn to om^ own, assm-edly 
 we camiot understand the progress of the 'New Yforld 
 or the unexampled rapidity with which the knowledge 
 and civilization of Eiu'opean nations is covering the 
 globe, unless we make due allowance for the peculiar 
 fertility of sources of wealth not identical with the 
 labor of man; .that is, for the powers of vii'gin soils 
 and for their teeming fertility imder favorable climates. 
 
 But again, having a view to his own objectsT^ 
 Adam Smith was right lq assuming that, in traciug 
 the progress of national wealth, we may safely apply 
 ourselves principally to the examination of those causes 
 which affect the efficiency of laboi-. If we confine 
 our view to any one nation, then, the fertility of it.s
 
 8 EFFICIENCY OF LABOR DEPENDENT ON [lect. i. 
 
 natui-al som-ces of wealth being a given quantity— a 
 something we are assumed to know — its poverty, or its 
 comparative wealth, will depend wholly on the efficiency 
 of its labor. And even when we extend our view to 
 a comparison of different nations, we shall find among 
 those who have made a few strides in civilization, that 
 Efficiency of the cfficioncy of their labor determines their 
 determn|ant comparativo wcalth much more than any dif- 
 / ference in their natural resources. The soil and climate 
 "of great part of South America, between the Andes 
 and the Atlantic, is probably the most favorable in the 
 Comparison world, — thc uiost capablo of sustaining a 
 
 of the ' m T 1 ' ^ 
 
 L^oi-Tn'south wiiglity population, and affording the richest 
 GmaBriTahi Qud luost abmidaut materials for the exercise 
 of every branch of human industry. Yet these countries 
 are notoriously the poorest and most wi-etched on the 
 face of the globe. And, not to compare civilized and 
 barbarous races, let us turn to Europe. The climate and 
 soil of Great Britain are by no means the most favorable 
 for production ; yet the produce of her soil is far 
 greater, compared with the numbers of those who cul- 
 tivate it, than that of any nation of modern times ; and 
 this enables her to maintain an enormous non-agricul- 
 tural population, the greater powers of whose industry 
 complete the perfection of her fabric as a producing 
 machine, more powerful and more perfect than any the 
 world has seen. 
 
 If we compare the continental nations with each 
 other, we shall find them teaching a like lesson. Those 
 natui'ally the most fertile are far from being also the 
 richest : of those which arc the poorest, it is easy to
 
 LECT. I.] CONTINUITY, SKILL, AND AIDING POWER. 9 
 
 see that their poverty is due, not to the parsimony of 
 nature, but to the inefficiency of theii' oayu industry. 
 There are even cases in which the marvellous produc- 
 tiveness of the soil, by causing habits of indolence and 
 paralysing labor, is the direct cause of the poverty 
 of the inhabitants. 
 
 "We may conclude, then, that though the earth and ' 
 elements are sources of wealth, the efficient cause and 
 instrument by which their natural powers are deve- 
 loped and made fi'uitful is the labor of man ; and 
 that the efficiency of that cause or instrument con- 
 tributes more, on the whole, to determine the positive 
 and comparative wealth of nations than any difference 
 in the original soiu'ces of their wealth. These con- 
 clusions are a sufficient justification of the course taken 
 by Smith when he made an inquiiy into the causes 
 of the varying efficiency of human labor the foundation 
 of his essay on the Wealth of Nations, and in this 
 respect we shall follow in the footsteps of the great 
 master. 
 
 There are three causes which determine the effici- 
 ency of labor : — 
 
 1st. The continuity with which it is applied. Efficiency 
 
 of labor 
 
 2nd. The skill by which it is directed. dependent on 
 
 3rd. The power by which it is aided. 
 1 . Any time lost in the application of labor, whether 
 by unsteadiness in its application to the same 
 
 *' -'■■'• 1. its con- 
 
 task, or by shifting from task to task, is obvi- *''""*y~ 
 ously so much lost of its productiveness ; and every 
 circumstance which confines it to one object, and that 
 steadily and continuously, is obviously, by the mere
 
 10 DIFFERENCE OF THE EFFICIENCY OF [i.ect. i. 
 
 gaining of time, so much gained for its j)roductive 
 power. ^ 
 
 2. By dexterity men make the most of the powers 
 
 of the human frame, and by skill they apply 
 
 2. the skill j ^ 
 
 employed- knowledgc aud intellect to act upon, with the 
 greatest e£fect, the qualities of the material world. The 
 potter who moulds with his hands, from the lump of clay 
 before him, the various beautiful forms of earthen vases 
 which we are accustomed to admire, does, in a few 
 minutes, what it would take a less dexterous workman 
 weeks to accomplish, if ever he accomplished it at all. 
 The common blacksmith who heats a bar of ii'on red 
 hot, and then moulds it into a shoe, does, rapidly, by his 
 skill, what any one ignorant of the properties of iron 
 could only effect by the expenditure of much more time 
 and much more labor. 
 
 3. The powers by which the labor of man is aided 
 .•i. the power arc tools aud machinery worked by hand, or by 
 
 by which it . 
 
 is aided. the elements, air, water, and steam ; and I do 
 not know if we are yet to add gunpowder and elec- 
 tricity. These are direct aids. There are more indirect 
 ones, but still of great importance. The road which 
 facilitates the labor of transport, the canal, the railroad, 
 and an infinity of other contrivances which enable men to 
 do, with ease and rapidity, what they must else do more 
 laboriously and in a greater time, are indirect aids which 
 bring additional power to the efforts of human labor. . 
 We need not dwell on this, living, as we do, in a 
 country where the enormous development of all these 
 aids to liuman power have created a new era in the 
 history oi' liuman inthistry.
 
 LECT. I.] LABOR IN ASIA AND ENGLAND. 11 
 
 ^To understand tlie enormous difference in the com- 
 parative wealth of nations of equal extent of territory 
 Avhich is created by the different degrees of continuity, 
 sldll, and power with which their labor, in producing 
 wealth, is exerted ; we have only to cast one compre- 
 hensive glance at the world around us. 
 . In Asia and in some parts of continental Eui'ope we 
 shall observe much the greater portion of the Difference of 
 
 I ' i • 1 J • 1 • , 1 ^ the efficiency 
 
 people existing as cultivating peasants, labor- of labo.- in 
 ing under no other guidance than theu' own ; ^^"«i=^"'^- 
 and laboring, therefore, how they please and when they 
 please; — hard at some seasons of the year, scarcely at 
 all at others; — each individual performing all the varied 
 tasks of agricultural labor, turning occasionally from 
 these to the task of producing coarse home manufac- 
 tures ; and laboring, therefore, as discontinuously, and — 
 inasmuch as the laborer himself is the sole assistant of 
 labor — with as little aid from either knowledge or power 
 as we may expect from the necessities of his condition. 
 
 With this great mass of agricultural laborers, we 
 shall observe mixed a small non-agricultural poj^ulation, 
 principally of artizans and handicraftsmen, who again 
 are their own masters, who ply for jobs, are dependent 
 on the expenditure of the revenue of the richer classes 
 (almost exclusively landowners) for employment, who 
 complete all the various parts of the labor necessary 
 for their calling, each with his own individual hand, 
 and' who again are, lilie the peasants, wholly dependent 
 (laborers though they be) on their own knowledge and 
 their own resources for the skill by which their manual 
 labor is aided and made efficient.
 
 12 THIS DIFFERENCE A SUBJECT FOR FUTURE ENQUIRY, [lect. i. 
 
 Turn again to England. Observe there the agricul- 
 tural population all but universally laboring under the 
 guidance of an employer, whose interest it is to see 
 that their labor is continuous, — that it is so distributed 
 that each man keeps steadily to what he does best, 
 and loses as little time as possible in passing from one 
 task to another. Observe the skill, knowledge, and 
 thoughtfulness by which the whole complex business 
 of cultivation is conducted; a skill, knowledge, and 
 thoughtfulness which it would be hopeless to expect 
 from the mere manual laborer himself. And then 
 see this well-devised and continuous industry, aided 
 by animal power, by manures, by implements, and 
 machines, supplying to the task of tillage a power 
 far beyond what the mere manual laborer can com- 
 mand. You need not be surprised to find that the 
 products of the agricultural labor of a nation, so guided 
 and so aided, maintains, besides the laborers, a very 
 large non-agricultural poj)ulation (more than double the 
 agricultural, in point of fact). And, when you follow 
 this great non-agricultui'al population to its various 
 occupations, you will see the same scene repeated, with 
 even more striking visible effects ; the scattered artizans 
 of other realms collected, here, into workshops and 
 manufactories, the eye of a superior enforcing every- 
 where steady and continuous labor ; knowledge and 
 science imparting to human industry a sovereign power 
 over the material world, and commanding, as its agents, 
 the obedient elements and the mighty mysterious powers 
 which, till they are called forth by man, lie hidden in 
 the chemical constitution of the calm world around us.
 
 LECT. I.] DIVISION OF LABORERS INTO THREE CLASSES. 13 
 
 When you have surveyed this spectacle of a whole 
 nation applying itself to the task of production with a 
 continuity, skill, and power, which the world has not 
 before witnessed, you will be prepared for the result ; — a 
 strength which has enabled it, speck as it is on the face 
 of the globe, to defy the European world as enemies, 
 while it was ruling in Asia an empii^e of nearly a 
 hundred millions of subjects. 
 
 Why this has been found possible here and not else- 
 where, — what the causes are which have de- T'i'^ 
 
 ' amerence a 
 
 tained other nations in different stages, the turfinSi 
 majority, indeed, in the earliest development of their 
 productive powers ; — which of these causes are to be 
 sought for in their peculiar institutions, or in imperfect 
 and perverted knowledge ; — which, in other cii'cum- 
 stances ; — these are the questions we shall have to deal 
 with hereafter. They are necessarily mixed up with 
 others which will explain the political elements and 
 moral phenomena, the opportunities and chances of hap- 
 piness and virtue, which characterise each stage of 
 economical growth with every change in the relation 
 and position of the productive classes. 
 
 DIVISION OF LABORERS. 
 
 The laborers of the world may be divided into 
 three erreat, thou^'h unequal, classes. Division of 
 
 ^ ' <=> -<- ' laborers into 
 
 1st. TJnhired Laborers, who till the ground '^■■ee classes. 
 
 they occupy as peasant cultivators, and live on self- 
 produced wages.
 
 14 DIVISION OF LABORERS INTO THREE CLASSES. [lect. i. 
 
 2nd. Paid Dependants, who are paid out of the 
 revenue or income of their employers. 
 
 3rd. Hired Laborers, who are paid out of the 
 capital of their employers. 
 
 The first of these divisions, the Unhired Laborers, 
 who are peasant cultivators, is the largest ; 
 
 1st. Unhired ■•• . 
 
 laborers. ^^^j comprlscs probably two-thirds of the 
 laboring population of the globe. 
 
 The second class, that of Paid Dependants, com- 
 nrisins: all who live on the income or revenue 
 
 2nd. Paid de- i c5 
 
 pendants. ^Jnch Is dii'cctly expended on their subsist- 
 ence, constitutes an important body in the progress of 
 all nations. It has been so in our own, and continues 
 to be, as we shall see hereafter, over an extensive 
 portion of the surface of the earth. 
 
 The third class, the Hired Laborers, who receivfe 
 their wages out of capital, is, on the whole, 
 probably the least numerous of the three. 
 Certainly, it is very small compared with the first class 
 of unhired laborers. But then, in our country and in 
 that alone, it has gradually become the most important 
 of the three, - has almost entirely supplanted the fu'st 
 class of unhired laborers tilling the soil and producing 
 their own. wages, and has greatly out-numbered the 
 second class, or that which subsists on the revenue 
 and not on the capital of its employers. 
 
 This thii'd class, indeed, of hired laborers, paid from 
 capital, has so exclusively met the eyes and occupied 
 the thoughts of English \viiters on wages, that it has 
 led them into some serious and very unfortunate mis- 
 takes as to the nature, extent, and formation of the 
 
 3rd. Hired 
 laborers.
 
 LKCT. I.] SPECIMENS OF EACH EXIST IX ENGLAND. 15 
 
 funds out of which the laboring population of the globe 
 is fed ; and, as usual, they have misled foreign writers. 
 Those mistakes we shall have occasion to notice more 
 fully hereafter : at present, it will perhaps help to 
 familiarize these divisions of the laboring population 
 to oui' minds, if we observe them in some English 
 village and its neighbourhood, where they all still 
 exist, though in very different proportions from those in 
 which they are found throughout the rest of the world. 
 
 In parts of England and Wales, though the race is 
 fast vanishing, there may be seen specimens ^uThese"' °* 
 of our first division of laborers unhired by L'^En^iand? 
 any one, occupiers of the soil, tilling it with their own 
 hands and producing their own wages. These represent 
 the great body of agricultural laborers of the world. 
 The English village, especially the remote, retains also 
 specimens of all the various branches of the second 
 great division of laborers — fii'st, the artizan, not in the 
 pay of a master, but plying for jobs among his cus- 
 tomers — the tailor who goes from house to house, and 
 makes up the materials which his customers supply. 
 These represent the whole body of artizans of the 
 Eastern world in om- days — of all the world in other 
 times. Then come the household servants, the military, 
 the excisemen. These all receive their wages out of 
 revenue, be it private or collected from individuals or 
 the public. And all these classes form, in this countrj^, 
 that large division of laborers, whom I have called 
 Paid Dependants; who are supported, not from a fund 
 which has been accumulated and saved with a view 
 to profit, but by expenditure of income. Including
 
 16 THE NATURE OF THE FUNDS SUPPLYING WAGES, [lect. i. 
 
 the whole army and navy in this division, the united 
 numbers of this class about equal those of the heads 
 of agricultural families. 
 
 On the importance of this great class, as it exists 
 in certain stages of society, we shall have to dilate 
 when we come to speak of the distribution of wealth, 
 of the sources of wages, and above all, of those transi- 
 tions in the relation of laborers to their employers 
 which take place diu'ing the advance of nations in pro- 
 ductive power. 
 
 The hired laborers, the farming servants, the jour- 
 ney men mechanics, — the manufacturing operatives, as 
 they desire to be called, — form the bulk of the 
 working classes, in the village as in the town; — the 
 great distinctive phenomenon of our actual economical 
 condition. 
 
 The threefold division of laborers which I have 
 Founded on prescntcd to you is founded, you will ob- 
 
 the nature of i: -^ i %i 
 
 in^waglTsf ^" serve, entirely on the difference in the nature 
 and formation of the funds which supply their wages. 
 This division is new, and it may be thought, perhaps, 
 at first sight, that the novelty is, at best, uncalled for ; 
 that a difference in the sources of their wages hardly 
 justifies our viewing laborers as forming distinct classes 
 for the purposes of economical reasoning. The artizan, 
 who is paid from his employer's income, produces in 
 many cases exactly the same articles as the journeyman 
 who works for a master tradesman. The peasant 
 laborer, who tills the earth as an occuj)ier, produces 
 the same sort of wealth as the hired laborer of the 
 English farmer. It is very true that there are points
 
 LKCT. I.] THE THREEFOLD DIVISION ESSENTIAL. 17 
 
 of resemblance, and indeed of identity, between the 
 employments of the different classes I have ^ ,. , . 
 
 ■■■ 'Z Essential in 
 
 pointed out ; but the peculiar office of science produ"tLn° 
 
 , , -, 1111-1 11 1 ^"'^ Distri- 
 
 is not to be deluded with resemblances, but ^'^'^o"- 
 to trace differences; and we shall find very great dif- 
 ferences in the productive power of nations occasioned 
 by the prevalence of one or of the other of the classes 
 I have described. 
 
 Is this doubted ? Then, imagine the farming capi- 
 talist, as distinct from the laborer, to vanish fi'om 
 England, and let the land be parcelled out amongst the 
 agricultural laborers as peasant occupiers. Empty her 
 manufactories and workshops, and let her non-agricul- 
 tural population ply in her streets, as in the East, with 
 such implements and resources as a mere workman 
 could command, soliciting employment from the chance 
 customers they may find ; would not the nation be at 
 once transformed ? would not its productive power have 
 undergone a mighty change ? and would not all the 
 elements which now bind together her social system be 
 changed too ? 
 
 ]N^ow, it is the causes and effects of such changes 
 and differences that we are about to trace, when we are 
 detecting, in the relations of the laboring population 
 to their employers, or in the sources of their subsist- 
 ence, the circumstances which, during the growth of 
 nations, mainly contribute to determine the varied 
 degrees of continuity, skill, and power with wliich 
 different people have conducted, or do conduct, their 
 common task of producing wealth. 
 
 The division will be found not less important or less
 
 1 8 THE THREEFOLD DIVISION OF LABOR [lfct. i. 
 
 convenient vrhen we quit the subject of the iwoduction 
 of wealth for that of its distribution ; and have to discuss 
 the causes of fluctuations in the fertility of the sources 
 of wages, or the effect of such fluctuations, taking 
 place under different circumstances, on the movements 
 of population. 
 
 It may be remarked that the classification I have 
 proposed is a purely economical one. The members 
 of the same, or of different divisions, may be in a 
 very different position as to their civil rights. They 
 may be freemen or slaves, or in a position which is 
 neither that of perfect freedom nor perfect servitude. 
 This will not alter their economical position — the place 
 they occupy as producers of wealth. If they are slaves, 
 they will be found either to belong to our first class 
 of laborers, that is, to be predial slaves, occupying land 
 and producing their own subsistence — their wages : this 
 is the condition of the Eussian serf, as it was once 
 that of great part of the cultivating class throughout 
 Europe : or to our second class, that is, to be domestic 
 slaves maintained out of the revenue of their master — 
 much the most common form of slavery in Asia, where 
 the household of every rich man is usually composed 
 of slaves : or to our third class, that is, to be slaves 
 maintained by the capital of their emjDloyer, for the 
 purpose of producing something which he means to 
 exchange and make a profit by. A large proj)ortion 
 of the artizans in Ancient Greece were slaves of this 
 description. Such slaves are to be found now in some 
 of the West Indian islands, Avhere, however, their 
 position is a mixed one, and ihoy are usually, to a
 
 LECT. I.] PURELY ECONOMICAL. 19 
 
 certain extent, predial, that is, though supplied with 
 some necessaries from the capital of their master, they 
 often, though not always, produce a portion of their 
 own food. 
 
 It would be interesting, no doubt, to examine how 
 far the production and distribution of wealth haye been 
 affected by the legal degradation of the laborers in 
 countries in which slavery has existed on a large scale, 
 but to perform this task efficiently, much learned re- 
 search into antiquity, and a wide investigation of the 
 more modern nations would be necessary. 
 
 Such researches would consume time, which we 
 cannot now bestow upon them. I shall not attempt 
 them, although I may be obliged to give a passing 
 glance at some of the economical effects of the exist- 
 ence of large slave populations.
 
 20 CONTINUITY, ETC., OF LABOR [ktct. ii. 
 
 LECTUEE II, 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 The continuity, skill, and power with which labor is applied dependent partly 
 on human agency and partly on the physical powers it can put in motion — com- 
 parison in this respect of the distaff and the modern cotton manufacture — the 
 uiflference between them refen-ed to the use of capital, which fulfils the conditions 
 that render continuity possible.— Skill also dependent on capital and likewise power. 
 — Two elements of power — force and the mode of applying it — exemplified by a 
 different ai>plication of the s{ime force in agriculture, and of locomotive engines 
 on a railroad and a common road — the neglect of this distinction the cause of 
 erroneous estimates regarding productive power. — Few laborers employed in using 
 the greater moving powers of wind, water, and steam ; the majority use their 
 muscles only. — In the poorer nations wind and water-mills the only addition to the 
 force of men and animals. — In the progress of civilization, increasing masses of capital 
 increase the eiScicucy of labor — Division of labor only one of the important results 
 of capital — manifested in two ways : 1st., by separation of employments ; 2nd, by 
 division of ta.sks in the same employment : the former gives rise to barter, which 
 shews itself at an early stage of society, and naturally suggests itself — supposes 
 some capital to exist. — The separation of tasks in the same employment and its 
 consequences well explained by Adam Smith — they require the superintendence of 
 capitalists. — The productive powers of nations limited by the causes that limit the 
 use of capital. 
 
 It was observed in the former lecture that the efficiency 
 The con- of labor depended upon three circumstances : 
 
 tiiiuity, etc., of ■'■•'■ 
 
 de^iTon'human 1- its continuitj ; 2. the skill employed; 3. 
 physical power, tlic powcr by wlilch it was aided. This con- 
 tinuity, skill, and power obviously depend, themselves, 
 partly on human agency, and j)artly on the physical 
 powers which that human agency can put in motion.
 
 LEcr. n.] DEPENDENT ON HUMAN AGENCY. 21 
 
 If we consider the spinner of former days with her 
 distaff, and follow up her thread till it composes J„^^f n?odern ^"""^ 
 
 J.11 1* r>jTi 111 cotton-spinning' 
 
 the homespun linen ot the household, we may compMed. 
 compare the progress of her task witli that of the cotton 
 manufacturer. In the one case we have the poor Avork- 
 woman, with such traditionary skill as she has acquired 
 from the instructions of her family, with no superin- 
 tendent of her labor to make it more continuous than 
 she likes or wills, and possessing in her distaff an 
 implement which enables her to exercise her bodily 
 strength with a very slight mechanical advantage ; less, 
 indeed, than that of the humble spinning-wheel, which, 
 in the cottages of the poor, has displaced the distaff. 
 
 In the cotton mill we shall find human agency direct- 
 ing everywhere the labor of the 'operatives, enabling 
 them to effect their work by such methods as know- 
 ledge and science have discovered, securing continuity 
 of exertion by contracts with workmen, superintended 
 by vigilant taskmasters ; while the steam-engine or the 
 water-wheel, by augmenting the force they can use, 
 enable them to produce to an extent which, compared 
 with the feeble aid of the distaff, seems like the 
 exertions of a different order of beings, — and the results 
 correspond. This simple comparison may be extended 
 to an estimate of the power of human labor in all the 
 varied occupations of mankind, and one essential and 
 oveiTuling cause determines that difference throughout 
 them all. That cause we shall presently advert to. 
 * In the meantime, the better to understand the mode 
 of its operation, let us refer to a few more facts. In 
 order that human labour should be continuous in most
 
 22 CONTINUITY, ETC., OF LABOR DEPENDENT [lect. h. 
 
 of the occupations of life, a preliminary condition must 
 be fiilfiUed. The producer must be able to retain the 
 commodities produced till some one is able to give him 
 what will suit his needs in exchange for them: — 
 and there must be a body of consumers in a 
 position to advance such an equivalent. But the 
 ability to keep back the products of industry till a 
 pui'chaser appears, supposes a power of maintaining 
 both laborers and masters till the products are disposed 
 of ; and these reserved products, and the advances made 
 to the workmen by their employers previous to the 
 disposal of them, constitute Capital. 
 
 It is Capital, then, or the accumulation of the past re- 
 b^tweSfenf sults of humau labor, which secures the necessary 
 
 referred to the .. , oil i^imji t 
 
 use of Capital, supcnntendence oi labor, and lumls the condi- 
 tions on which alone its continuity is possible. 
 
 But if the continuity of labor is practically the 
 
 Continuity, rcsult of tlic emplovment of Capital in pro- 
 skin, and power i. ^ J. J. 
 
 dependentonit (juctiou, tho sldll wlth wHch It Is excrtcd is 
 likewise so. The mind and thought employed in direct- 
 ing human industry, beyond that of the mere manual 
 laborer, is either the mind of the capitalist or that of 
 a skilled laborer paid by him for the pm-pose. As 
 continuity and skill in the exertion of labor are depen- 
 dent on the progress of the accumulation of the past 
 results of labor, the third clement of efficiency — the 
 power with which it is exerted — is yet more obviously so 
 than the other two. 
 
 To make our observations on this point rather 
 Power di\ided dearcr : human power in the production of 
 
 into force, and ■«■ J- 
 
 appiyhjit commodities is composed of two elements —
 
 LECT. 11.] ON THE USE OF CAPITAL. 23 
 
 force, and the mode of applying it ; — the last of which 
 may increase the efficiency of human industry to an 
 indefinite extent, quite independently of any increase 
 in the amount of the force itself. Tliis last element of 
 power — the mode of applying force — may be properly 
 termed mechanical advantage. An instance \7ill, perhaps, 
 best explain the difference. The force which the knife- 
 grinder uses i in his craft consists of that residing in the 
 muscles of his right hand. The mechanical advantage 
 with which he uses that force is given him by the 
 wheel which he turns by a treadle. If he exercised his 
 force without that advantage his power as a workman 
 would be indefinitely lessened. 
 
 And so any degree of force used in production, 
 whether that of the human muscles, of animals, or of 
 water, Avind, or steam, will give a power in production 
 which will be greater or less in proportion to the dif- 
 ferent degrees of mechanical advantage with which it is 
 applied, the amount of force remaining the same. 
 
 To begin with the force that resides in the human 
 frame : every tool and implement Avhicli enables a man 
 to apply that simple force with different degrees of 
 advantage, adds obviously to his power in producing 
 wealth. The spade, the hoe, the rake, the weapon with 
 which the hunter secures his prey, — all add to the 
 power of our race, while the force employed is still 
 confined to that of the human frame ; and when wind, 
 water, or steam — put at the disposal of man — move forces 
 greater than his, still, those forces being given, the 
 mechanical advantage with which they may be applied, 
 the power of production they will give, may vary
 
 2-i 
 
 POWER DIVIDED INTO FORCE, [lect. ii. 
 
 indefinitely, according to the ingenuity and skill with 
 which they are used. 
 
 Take animals, for instance. Let a farmer have four 
 Exemplified by liorscs of a glvcu strcugth ; once supplied with 
 pifcauonofthe tMs amouut of moving force, the power which 
 
 same force in . ^ 
 
 apiculture- ^j^gy ^m exorciso in cultivation will depend 
 on the degree of mechanical advantage with which such 
 force will be used. Let one take a common waggon 
 and attach all the four horses to it ; and, applied to the 
 same task, let two others employ what are termed Scotch 
 carts with two horses ; and it is found that the four horses 
 thus divided can perform much more work. A thii'd far- 
 mer may employ one-horse carts of good constmction, and 
 then it has been proved that more than double the work 
 may be performed to that which could be accomplished 
 by harnessing all the four horses to one waggon. With the 
 same moving force, therefore, the power used in produc- 
 tion is just double in one case to what it is in the other. 
 
 The same results are obtained by using ploughs of 
 different construction. Two horses will do as much 
 work with one of the best sort, as foui- will with one 
 of inferior construction. Even of English ploughs, if 
 we compare the worst of these with some of the feeble 
 ploughs of ruder nations, we shall see how very dif- 
 ferent is the mechanical advantage with which the salne 
 animal force is applied in production in different countries. 
 
 One striking instance of the distinction between 
 and of locomo- moving forccs and the mechanical advantage 
 a'Taiboacrand at wliicli thcy arc cmploj^ed in production, is 
 
 a common 
 
 road. exhibited by the steam-engine, and the iron 
 
 rail which is laid down in railways.
 
 LECT II.] AND THE MODE OF APPLYIXG IT. 25 
 
 A steam engine of any given power may be em- 
 ployed in producing locomotion on either a railroad or 
 a common road ; — but the same engine, which would 
 easily di-aw a load at the rate of fifty miles an hour 
 on a railroad, would not move the same weight at the 
 rate of four miles an hour on a common road. 
 
 Whatever the moving force, therefore, may be, 
 whether steam, water, wind, animals, or human muscles, 
 we can have no measiu-e of the power with which it 
 is employed in production, imless we are familiar with 
 the greater or less degree of perfection of the machinery 
 and implements, by the aid of which these powers are 
 put into action. I press this the more, because ul^dScuJJf 
 
 /» ,T i_ • A_ 11 tlie cause of 
 
 some ot the most emment persons who have en.)neou3 esti- 
 
 inutes reg^ard- 
 
 employed themselves in estimating the effici- poie™''""'''^ 
 ency of the industry of nations, have contented them- 
 selves with comparing the moving force which each 
 exerts, and have altogether left out of their calculation 
 the very different degrees of perfection which the 
 implements and machinery of every description used 
 by the people of different regions and countries, have 
 attained. 
 
 Thus M. Dupin, in comparing the efiiciency of the in- 
 dustry of England and France, calculates the motive forces 
 used by each with all the exactness he can — the horses, 
 the water wheels, the windmills, the breadth of canvass 
 used to impel vessels, and finally the steam engines — ■ 
 but he makes no allowance for the very different degrees 
 of mechanical advantage, with which the same amount 
 of moving force may be used in the two countries ; for 
 the better machinery of the mills worked by steam,
 
 26 FEW LABORERS EMPLOYED [lect. ii. 
 
 water, or wind ; or the better macliines, implements, and 
 tools of all kinds, wliich animal or human force may 
 set in motion in England. 
 
 Our purj^ose being to compare the different efficiency 
 of the industry of different populations in the produc- 
 tion of wealth, and the causes of that difference, we 
 must carefully avoid overlooking any causes which affect 
 the whole bulk of the population. 
 
 Moving forces of the higher order, — steam, water, 
 wind — natm^ally force themselves prominently on the 
 attention of those who are estimating the relative pro- 
 ductive powers of nations. Even these forces may be 
 applied, as we have seen, with very different degrees 
 of mechanical advantage, and so, in reality, constitute 
 different amounts of power. But it is in the mechanical 
 advantage by which the simple moving forces of men 
 and animals are aided, that the greatest difference pre- 
 vails, when we come to measure the relative efficiency 
 of the industry of the entii^e laboring population of 
 different countries. 
 
 empio)''ed"in It is ordiuarlly, though not necessarily in 
 
 grc'ufermoving all cascs, but It is ordiuarilv only a small 
 
 powers of ^ */ 
 
 Ind'stJam-' portiou of tho people who are employed in 
 using the greater moving forces of wind, water, and 
 the majority stoam. Thc vast majority of the population 
 
 use their mus- o %j x x 
 
 ciesoniy. ^^^ j^^ othcr movlug force than that of their 
 own muscles. 
 
 We may, if we please, suppose a thousand men, 
 using no power but that of thc human muscles, working 
 either at agriculture or handicrafts, — all supplied with 
 the best tools and implements which human ingenuity
 
 LECT. II.] IN USING THE GREATER MOVING POWERS. 27 
 
 has invented ; and another thousand men, attempting to 
 work at the same employments, with no other imple- 
 ments than theu' ten fingers, — and we shall have the two 
 extreme cases. The consideration of them may throw 
 some light on oiu' subject, though neither of them 
 can be exactly observed in practice — certainly not the 
 last ; but less than extreme cases will answer oui* pur- 
 pose of actual comparison better : we will take one, 
 which the different efficiency of the French and English 
 workmen employed on raih'oads offers to us, excluding 
 all reference to any other moving force than that of the 
 human muscles. 
 
 The known superiority of the English workmen is 
 often put entirely upon the greater mechanical advantage 
 with which they exert the force of their bodies, irrespec- 
 tive of any difference of muscular power, which depends 
 in a great measure upon diet, and is not considerable. 
 In order to calculate the effect of such superiority upon 
 the industry of the two nations, we must remember, 
 that it is not simply in such public works that the 
 superior mechanical advantages of the English are to be 
 seen. There is no art, or craft, or calling, from agricul- 
 ture and the mere handicrafts upwards, in which (inde- 
 pendently of any higher orders of moving force) the 
 exertion of the English laborer is not, in like manner, 
 made more powerful by the possession of better tools 
 and implements ; and the extent to which the efficiency 
 of the national industry is augmented by this fact can 
 only be rightly estimated by steadily recollecting that 
 its influence extends to the whole sixteen millions of the 
 laboring population.
 
 28 WIND AND WATER MILLS [Lmr. ir. 
 
 But England and France by no means present the best 
 examples of the mfluence on the productiveness of human 
 industry, of the peculiar difference we are dwelling on. 
 
 In these two great countries recourse has been had to 
 the higher orders of moving force to such an extent, that 
 the mere difference of mechanical advantage, with which 
 the human frame exerts itself in production, ceases to be 
 the most prominent, and, perhaps likewise, the most 
 important, element in comparing the efficiency of their 
 industry. 
 
 In the comparatively poor nations, which now exist 
 mtio^s,'Xr in modern Europe, a few wind and water mills 
 
 and water mills . nn o I'l" T* 
 
 the only addi- comprisc all the force which is used in pro- 
 
 tion to the 
 
 Inuanimars" ductlou, of auy hlghcr order than that of men 
 and animals. If we go back to other days, it was even 
 more universally the case throughout the ancient world. 
 The great Oriental empires of antiquity were those in 
 which almost all the domestic arts had birth, which were 
 the great foundation of the wealth and civilization of 
 mankind : and in them hardly any other moving force was 
 employed in production, than that of men and animals. 
 
 But England and France are at the head of the race 
 in productive power. In nations less advanced, the 
 proportion of their moving force, which resides in the 
 arms of the population is very much greater, because 
 their resort to the higher order of moving forces has 
 been very much less : and the means, — mechanical 
 advantage, tools, and implements — by which that force 
 gives power in production, are relatively of more 
 importance in determining the efficiency of national 
 industry.
 
 i-KCT. II.] AS ADDITIONAL FORCES. 29 
 
 "We have seen, then, that the efficiency of human 
 industry depends on the continuity, skill, and capitaiin- 
 
 '/ ' ' creases with 
 
 po^Yer with which human labor is exerted ; — civilization. 
 that the one great cause which augments each, as man 
 rises from a savage to a civilized condition, is the applica- 
 tion of the results of past labor to augment the effects of 
 actual exertion, — the use of increasing masses of capital. 
 
 It is this which promotes continuity, by fulfilling 
 the conditions on which alone continuous exertion 
 in any employment, except that of producing neces- 
 saries, is possible. 
 
 It is capital which creates the human agency and 
 superintendence, by which the continuity of labor is 
 perfected, after it has become possible. 
 
 It is capital which provides the mind, perfects 
 skill ; and which, by providing for the maintenance of men 
 freed from the necessity of mere manual labor, leaves 
 them at liberty to employ their intellect, to facilitate 
 the application of labor to its task. 
 
 It is capital which provides the implements and 
 machinery, from the simplest to the most complex, by 
 which all moving forces can be made to produce their 
 greater effect ; which can supply forces greater than 
 those of man, and appropriate others, such as Avind and 
 water, which nature herself has provided. 
 
 I have not here dwelt on the division of labor as A 
 the one great sufficient and independent cause of the 
 increasing efficiency of human industry. For, S o"iy one 
 though an important result, it is only one of capital. 
 the many equally important results, of the great pre- 
 dominant cause of the progressive powers of human
 
 30 DIVISION OF LABOR ONLY [i.ect. ii. 
 
 industry, namely, the increasing masses of capital 
 employed in production. 
 
 The division of labor is eifected : 1. by the separa- 
 tilo"ways^'^ '" tion of emj)loyments ; 2. by the division of 
 tasks in the same employment. 
 
 The separation of employments takes place in the 
 empioj^ment"?^ vcry carHest stages of human society. Eeason 
 and reflexion suggest the exchange of commodities to 
 the rudest savages, when of two among them, each 
 possesses something comparatively useless to himself, 
 and sees in the hands of another something which 
 he wants. 
 
 When the time of the community is wholly occupied 
 in procuring food, barter and exchange are rare among 
 individuals of the same community; but, even then, 
 if such communities are not wholly isolated, some kind 
 of trade usually springs up with strangers. 
 
 Thus the wild people of Central Africa have, as 
 we can see, for some thousands of years before our 
 era, exchanged their- gold dust, ivory, and, alas ! slaves 
 on the eastern coast, with traders from Nubia, Ai-abia, 
 India, and Phoenicia : and, thus, the wild tribes of 
 North America exchange the peltry and all the pro- 
 ducts of the chace they do not consume, with American 
 or English traders. But barter and exchange cannot 
 begin without a previous accumulation and use of some 
 capital. The trader must be maintained wliile he com- 
 pletes his venture; even the hunter or shepherd must 
 have some small stock in weapons and food, before he 
 can acquire wherewithal to trade; and the dawn of 
 barter (the first characteristic of the^ human race when
 
 LECT. 11.] ONE RESULT OF CAPITAL. 31 
 
 it rises above the brute) follows, and in producing 
 and exchanging wealth, is dependent on the results 
 of past labor, that is, on capital. 
 
 But it is not until the division of labor has effected 
 the separation of tasks in the same employ- of tas'irs'^'in"tiie 
 ment, or in producing the same commodity, ment.""'^ ''^' 
 that it begins to work those marvels which have so 
 forcibly arrested the attention of political economists, 
 and have been so well described by Adam Smith. 
 
 N'ow these processes, we know, are, in practice, 
 always performed for and under the superintendence of 
 capitalists. They maintain the workmen, they sujDply 
 the materials, they retain the commodity when pro- 
 duced till a pui'chaser is found ; and if the actual race 
 of capitalists, distinct from the workmen, were des- 
 stroyed to-morrow, capital sufficient for these purposes 
 must be obtained by the workmen themselves, or the 
 operation would be impossible. 
 
 Adam Smith has pointed out, that as the processes 
 gone through in producing any one commodity J^fences weii 
 are separated, the simplicity and distinctness of smuh"'''^ ^^ 
 the several tasks suggest and facilitate the substitution of 
 machinery for human labor. But, if the division of labor 
 itself, made possible by the accumulation of capital, 
 suggests the employment of additional machinery, it 
 obviously the province of capital to supply that, — wb ' 
 it be machinery which enlists a higher order o^ 
 forces in aid of human industry, or only sv 
 additional mechanical advantages in tb' 
 forces already existing ; — whether it 
 engine, or, as in the instances Adam
 
 32 CONSEQUENCES OF THE SEPARATION OF TASKS. [lect. n. 
 
 improves tlie construction of machines which the hands 
 of man are to put in motion. 
 
 Wliat I want to make clear is, that the division 
 of labor is only one, and a subordinate, though im- 
 portant, effect of the accumulation of capital in pro- 
 duction ; and that capital, having produced this result, 
 uses it as an auxiliary to make further progress in 
 its own appointed task, perfect the division of labor, 
 and array it with increasing powers. There can be no 
 objection to considering the division of labor as one 
 of the most important causes of its increasing power ; 
 but there are objections to considering it as the exclu- 
 sive cause, because then we must shut our eyes to 
 others, which, in all stages of the progress of nations, 
 combine most powerfully to affect the productive power 
 of their industry, quite independently of the division 
 of tasks among theii' laborers. 
 
 You will observe that I have no intention of dis- 
 paraging the effects of the division of labor in the 
 production of wealth. In its simplest form, — in the 
 mere division of employment, — it is the foundation of 
 traffic. It connects different nations, and is a potent 
 cause of the mutual dependence of different classes in 
 the same nations. It lies at the very root of the 
 " ^^'lization and progress of our race. 
 
 ^ do not think Smith has at all exaggerated, perhaps 
 
 t fully done justice to, the wondrous power 
 
 more complete division of labor developes. 
 
 ""enying its importance, we may regret 
 
 '^ been treated as the exclusive cause 
 
 human power of production. The
 
 T.ECT. 11.] POWER OF PRODUCTION LIMITED BY CAPITAL. 33 
 
 formation of the human agency, by which the continuity 
 of labor is secured ; the maintenance of the intellect 
 which enlightens its application ; the employment of 
 the power which resides either in a higher order of 
 moving forces or in mechanical contrivance, — from the 
 hoe wliich tills the ground to the machinery of the 
 cotton mill, — all these are contributions of capital to 
 the progress of man's production : and it is the same 
 capital which makes the divisions of human labor 
 possible, by maintaining the workmen in the progress 
 of their task till markets are found for tlieii' com- 
 modities ; and provides the means of carrying the divi- 
 sion itself to the last degree of perfection. 
 
 I feel justified in asserting, that the one original 
 comprehensive and predominant cause of the productive 
 power of man in production is the use of the byc^ipitai. 
 products of past industry, in increasing the efiiciency 
 of his natural exertion — in short, the use of capital. 
 
 If we wish to trace the causes which limit the 
 productive powers of different nations, we must find out 
 what facilitates or impedes the use of great or small 
 masses of capital among their producing classes, and 
 to make this task more easy, we will proceed to examine 
 what are the sources out of which capital must be 
 formed; the circumstances which are favorable or un- 
 favorable to the employing these sources for its forma- 
 tion ; and then the conditions which must be fulfilled, 
 before it becomes possible to employ increasing masses 
 of capital continuously in production.
 
 34 NATURE OF CAPITAL. [lkct. iti. 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 ON THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF CAPITAL. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Capital consists of all commodities that are employed in producing wealth, or 
 that arc advanced in maintaining those who do produce it — depends not on what 
 the commodities themselves are, but on the purposes to which they are applied 
 — exemplified in the case of oats given to feed a cart-horse and a hunter: being 
 capital in the former case and revenue in the latter. — Capital depends again partly in 
 the manner of its application— exemplified in the case of the peasant who maintains 
 himself — such maintenance goes through no process of accumulation. Propriety 
 of restricting capital to what has been accumulated and applied to purposes of pro- 
 duction. — Production not fully completed until the thing produced is in the hands of 
 the consumer. — The sources of capital are all revenues from which it is possible to 
 make any saving — revenues primarily divided into Eent, "Wages, and Profits — 
 derivative incomes also contribute to capital— the capacity to save limited by these 
 revenues. — The power being the same, actual saving depends upon the will. — 
 Difi'erent kinds of revenue contribute unequally to the capital of nations at different 
 periods of their economical state — wages contribute most in the early stages of 
 their career, and at all times contribute largely, as evidenced by the Savings' 
 Banks. — Classes above laborers paid by salaries probably contribute more to capital 
 in proportion to their number. — Long interval between the rude state and that 
 which England now presents — during such interval accumulation very small, and 
 chiefly from Rent and "Wages. — Mode in which Rent contributes by repairs and 
 improvements of the land — such mode of contribution in England estimated lo have 
 doubled the value of its land, and is always going on — in other countries nearly 
 all savings are from these two sources — Russia an instance of this — and her case a 
 general one — these facts inconsistent with the theory that represents Profits as 
 the sole source of accumulation — they account for the slow progress of wealth in 
 those countries. — "Where the amount of capital is small, Profits must be small too. 
 — Distinction to be observed between Profits and the additional produce obtained by 
 the use of capital. 
 
 Before we look to the sources of Capital, let us say
 
 LECT. III.] APPLICATION OF CAPITAL. 35 
 
 a few words as to what it is composed of. Capital, 
 then, consists of all such commodities as are capital con- 
 
 _ , ^ , .. sists of allcom- 
 
 employed m producmor wealth, or are ad- mocutiesused 
 
 ■■■ •' *- '-' ' -with a vie^v to 
 
 vanced towards the maintenance of those who p'^°'^"='i°"- 
 prodnce w^ealth. 
 
 Whether a mass of wealth constitutes capital or 
 revenue does not depend at all upon the depends partly 
 
 1 1 on the purposes 
 
 nature of the commodities of which that arJappiLd-^ 
 wealth consists, but wholly on the purpose to which 
 and the manner in which they are applied. I possess, 
 for instance, a hundred quarters of oats, and I apply 
 half of them to maintain cart-horses to cultivate my 
 land. This half is capital : I shall receive it back 
 again after a time, or the value of it, and some profit. 
 With the other half I feed hunters. This I expend as 
 revenue : I shall get back neither the value of it in 
 other commodities, nor a profit on it. 
 
 But further, in making a distinction between capital 
 and revenue, we must attend not merely to themanner°of 
 the purpose to which commodities are applied, tion. 
 but also to the manner in which they are so ap- 
 plied. An Irish or Continental peasant subsists on food 
 which he has himself produced. It has gone through 
 no operation of saving. It supposes no exertion of 
 abstinence and self-denial, — no director of labor, dis- 
 tinct from the laborer himself. It is very true that 
 the Irishman, while he consumes his stock of food, 
 is employed in reproduction ; and, so far, his stock, 
 and the capital which is advanced by capitalists, answer 
 analogous purposes : — but they are analogous only, 
 not the same. He is employed in production, but
 
 36 RESTRICTION OF CAPITAL. [lect. hi. 
 
 employed under very different circumstances. In the 
 latter case, lie lias an employer. His wages have been 
 saved from revenue. The fund for the maintenance 
 of his class can be increased only as such savings 
 take place. 
 
 I believe that, in order to preserve a distinction 
 Kcstriction of bctweeii these two cases, the most convenient 
 
 capital to ' 
 
 muiated!an"d modc wlll bc to spcali of wages when in the 
 ductk.n. ° '''°' hands of the laborers themselves, as a fund for 
 immediate consumption, and as constituting a part of 
 the revenues of the country ; for wages in that stage 
 are as surely revenue as they are capital before they are 
 advanced. If this phraseology is objected to, and if 
 it is contended that the cottier's potatoe-heap is part of 
 the capital of the country, because it maintains pro- 
 ductive labor as well as the money advanced by 
 capitalists for that purpose ; then, in order to keep 
 steadily before us the differences I have been pointing 
 out, we may divide capital into two parts, — that which 
 consists of wealth which has been saved and is used 
 with a view to profit ; and that which has not been 
 saved, and is not used with a view to profit, but 
 only to reproduction. 
 
 I prefer confining the term Capital to the wealth 
 which has gone through the process of saving. We 
 must, at any rate, keej) the distinction between the 
 two steadily before us. The understanding the econo- 
 mical stiiicture of society among different communities 
 of men, and a knowledge of the causes of tlieii" com- 
 parative Avealth or poverty, depend essentially uj)on 
 this. The phraseology we use to keep the distinction
 
 LECT. III.] SOURCES OF CAPITAL. 37 
 
 clear, provided we use it consistently, is a matter of 
 comparatively small moment. 
 
 Capital, then, is something saved from revenue, 
 and employed for the pui'pose of producing wealth, 
 or with a view to profit. 
 
 For our purposes, it will be convenient to adopt a 
 somewhat extended siornification of the word rroduction in- 
 
 o complete till 
 
 Production, and to treat no wealth as fully pro- sumer'. 
 duced till it has been put into the hands of the person who 
 is to consume it. As far as that person, the consumer, 
 is concerned, the brewer's horses that bring the barrels 
 to his house, are as useful and essential a part of 
 the brewer's capital as any other. Comprising, then, 
 in the word production, all the operations necessary 
 to put a commodity into the hands of the consumer ; 
 capital is wealth employed to effect or assist any one 
 of these operations, and includes the wealth of inter- 
 mediate dealers and carriers by sea or by land, as well 
 as the wealth which puts agriculture or handicraft labor 
 in motion. 
 
 Capital, then, being something saved from revenue 
 for the pui'pose of assisting production, the xhe sources of 
 sources of capital consist of all the revenues whic'h'u il™" 
 of the population of every country, from save- 
 which it is possible that any portion can be saved. 
 Those revenues are primarily divided into Eents, 
 Profits, and Wages (we shall presently show how), 
 and in certain states of society each of these con- 
 tributes most abundantly to the formation of capital. 
 But we must recollect that it is not only in their 
 primary form of rent, profits, and wages, that the
 
 38 UNEQUAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF REVENUE. [lect. in. 
 
 revenues of a j)opulation contribute to the formation 
 of capital. There are derivative incomes, such as the 
 interest of the National Debt for instance, which con- 
 tribute to it also ; and without going into any exami- 
 nation of the nature and sources of these, it is 
 sufficient to remark that there is no kind of revenue, 
 from the beggar's alms to the Sovereign's Civil List, 
 which may not contribute something to the accumu- 
 lating capital of the country. 
 
 The capacity to save is, therefore, evidently limited 
 the capacity to by tho oxtcut of tho surplus revenues of every 
 the amount of brauch of tlio populatiou. If those revenues 
 
 these reve- ■■- •*■ 
 
 ""^'~ are on the whole abundant, the national 
 
 capacity to accumulate capital is great ; if, on the 
 other hand, they are scanty, the power of the nation 
 to accumulate capital is proportionably small. 
 / But the power being given, the will may be very 
 and depends diffcreut amoug different people, and this de- 
 wiu. ^ pends partly on the mode in which the 
 revenues of different countries are distributed, and partly 
 on other circumstances to which we will hereafter 
 advert. 
 
 But first, as regards the great primary divi- 
 S'revenue'"*^' slou iuto wagcs, rcuts, and profits ; these 
 u°ieli"aiiy- WO sliall fiud coutributiug in very un- 
 equal proportions to the accumulations of nations at 
 different stages of their economical progress. A 
 singular illusion pervades many popular works on 
 this subject, in which profits are treated as the sole 
 source of accumulation, or the only soui'ce of sufficient 
 consequence to be adverted to, in calculating the pro-
 
 LECT. III.] WAGES THE EAELIEST CONTRIBUTION TO CAPITAL. 39 
 
 gress of national capital. In tiTith, however, profits 
 are never the sole source of accumulation ; and what 
 is more, they are the main source of such accu- 
 mulation only in a few rare instances. To begin 
 with wages. The earliest contributions to wages most in 
 
 the early stages 
 
 capital must be fi-om wages. Man ori- "aree"-""' 
 ginally possesses nothing but his labor ; whatever 
 revenue he procures must be the reward of his per- 
 sonal exertions. The reward of personal exertion 
 is wages, and wages are, therefore, necessarily, the 
 earliest source of accumulation. They are a consider- 
 able source of accumulation, in stages of society the 
 very farthest removed fi*om the rudest. The first 
 savings deposited in the Savings' Banks of the depositVin 
 England, are a proof of this. It is true Banks- 
 that the whole amount originally received by them 
 was not, probably, saved from mere wages, but a 
 considerable portion of it undoubtedly was ; and the 
 Savings' Banks are far, indeed, from containing all 
 the accumulations of the laboring classes. It would 
 be well if they did, but there is an insuperable aversion 
 to the publicity of their investments, especially among 
 servants, and a perilous disposition, among all classes 
 of laborers, to catch at the prospect of a high rate 
 of interest, which operates as inducements to them 
 to lend a large proportion of theii* savings to some 
 parts of their family, or to some friend supposed to 
 be thriving and safe. 
 
 There is also a numerous class, or rather there are 
 numerous classes in England, subsisting on revenues, 
 which are assuredly composed neither of rents nor
 
 40 THE PRESENT AND PAST CONDITIOX OF ENGLAND. [lect. in. 
 
 profits, and are strictly the wages of labor, but not 
 the "wages of mere manual labor. These classes, in 
 salaried classes proportiou to tlicir numbors, contribute much 
 
 contribute J- -l- ' 
 
 portiJn.'''"' more largely than manual laborers to the 
 annual accumulation. They comprise lawyers, medical 
 men, a part of the Chiu-ch, the officers of the army and 
 navy, artists, clerks in the higher class of offices public 
 and private, shopmen, skilled laborers, and every class of 
 professional men whose income is derived from a salary. 
 If we add the savings of all these to the amount 
 indicated by the deposits in the Savings' Banks, we 
 may be quite sure that, independently of all accumu- 
 lations from rents and j)rofits, the annual accumulations 
 from wages and salaries in England not only equal but 
 considerably exceed the whole amount of accumulation 
 of some other nations, — Eussians or Poles, for instance. 
 
 But, between the first rude periods, — during which 
 Lon- interval tho accumulatious of uncivilized communities 
 
 between the 
 
 theyefent'""^ supply thom, froui generation to generation, 
 England- wlth Httlc morc than weapons with which 
 to pursue their prey, — and the state of things now 
 presented by England, — in which the accumulation 
 of the laboring class alone constitute large annual 
 additions to the existing mass of capital, and in 
 which accumulations from profits come also into play, 
 — there exists a long and dreary interval, which very 
 few, indeed, of the nations of the globe have overpassed, 
 and duiing which very scanty accumulations from 
 iSiraJ'cu- wages are eked out by accumulations from 
 s"naua""d' rcut I aud out of the two too;ether is formed 
 
 chiefly from '-' 
 
 wages.'"' almost the entire mass of capital by which
 
 LECT. HI.] CONTRIBUTIONS OF RENT TO CAPITAL. 41 
 
 the industry of nations is aided in its task of pro- 
 duction. 
 
 To understand this state of things, we must first 
 take a general view of the peculiar manner Rpntco.itri. 
 
 ■i.-I,-, 1 l> 1 1 T •! butes to capi- 
 
 m wnicn the rent oi land ordinarily con- t a by improve- 
 
 ^ nipiits in 
 
 tributes its essential and indeed vital por- ''""^~ 
 tion of the accumulated capital of nations. In a 
 country like our own, this contribution almost escapes 
 a superficial glance. A large sum of money is here 
 annually reserved fi'om rents, to make what are 
 called landlords' improvements. The receiver of rents, 
 on all considerable estates, has a special column for 
 moneys reserved for repairs and improvements, and 
 the sum actually received by the proprietor is usually 
 less than what he has contracted to receive. 
 
 It is in this manner that the income of the pro- 
 prietor, — sometimes intercepted before it reaches him, 
 sometimes deliberately advanced, — has eff'ccted the 
 greater part of those improvements, (such as buildings, 
 drains, and fences), which make the cultivated land 
 of England so valuable. It is generally supposed that 
 haK the value of its land is derived from this 'ontribnuon"^ 
 
 T'i l'i>j_l'l ^•,,■l estimated to 
 
 expenditure, and ii this be so, a sum little have doubled 
 
 the value of 
 
 short of tliree hundi'ed millions must have 1^"^- '"'"=" 
 been accumulated principally fi'om the owners' rent, 
 and invested in this manner. The landed proprietors 
 of England are adding to this sum, perhaps, more 
 rapidly now than at any former period of our history. 
 But I have already observed that it is not in 
 the very advanced and wealthy state of society to 
 which England has attained, that the importance of the
 
 42 THE CASE OF EUSSIA STATED. [lect. hi. 
 
 accumulations, either from wages or from rent, rela- 
 eisewhere au tivelv to all otlior Saving's, can be estimated. 
 
 savings are •z O ^ 
 
 sources!'^ Ovor hj fsLY tlio krgor portion of the globe 
 they are, however, almost the only savings by which 
 the national industry is assisted in its task. 
 
 Let us take Eussia for one instance. The Eussian 
 fnlllncl? population may be separated into four divi- 
 sions. About one-twentieth is employed in other occu- 
 pations than that of agriculture. Of the other nineteen- 
 twentieths, nearly one-half are serfs on the Crown 
 estates; the other half are serfs on the estates of 
 individuals. The serfs on the Crown estates were, till 
 lately, a very poor peasantry, earning their living by 
 manual labor on the land. Eegulations have been 
 made favorable to the protection of their industry, and 
 they are gradually acquiring wealth. But the great 
 majority of them are still manual laborers ; their main 
 revenue consists of the wages of their labor, and it is 
 from that revenue that those additions to their capital 
 are now being made, which form one of the most 
 important features in the progress of Eussian industry. 
 The time seems approaching when they will have accu- 
 mulated stock, from the profits of wliich some fresh addi- 
 tions may be made to the national capital. At present, 
 I repeat that it is the wages of their manual labor 
 which form the main fund from which they can 
 accumulate. 
 
 Another half, perhaps rather more than half, of 
 its agricultural population are serfs on the estates 
 of the nobles. These men work for three days in the 
 week on the estates of their owners. Their wages
 
 LECT. m.] THE CROWN SERFS. 43 
 
 consist of the produce they earn from about half the 
 estate of their lord, which is divided among them 
 in lots of about eight acres to a family. They are 
 subject to very heavy taxation from the Crown, and 
 are in a state of political, social, and economical 
 depression, which, at first sight, would make it appear 
 highly improbable that their savings could contribute 
 anything to the national capital ; and yet, facts show 
 that this is not exactly the case. The condition of the 
 serfs of the Crown is in many respects superior to the 
 condition of those on private estates, especially as they 
 do not work for the Crown, which holds no part of its 
 demesnes in its own hands. The Crown serfs labor 
 on certain conditions wholly for themselves. Now so 
 strong is the desire of the serfs on private estates 
 to assume the character of Crown serfs, that they 
 occasionally offer to the Crown money sufficient to 
 purchase the estate on which they and their families 
 exist, in order to get rid of their lords, and obtain 
 the terms which the Crown makes with its peasants. 
 
 The large portion of Eussian laborers, therefore, 
 (miserable as their condition is) must have the means 
 of making some accumulations, which, slender as is 
 the amount, and slow as is the advance of capital in 
 that great empire, must assuredly not be neglected 
 when we are enumerating the sources out of which 
 the national capital is formed. 
 
 But of the cultivated portion, the one-half is tilled 
 by serfs on account of their lords, who are its real 
 owners ; and on this half what would elsewhere be 
 called the tenant's capital is advanced by the landowner.
 
 44 THE CASE OF RUSSIA A GENERAL ONE. [lect. hi. 
 
 It is, indeed, not only advanced, bnt likewise main- 
 tained, and increased, whenever an increase takes place, 
 wholly ont of their revenue. 
 
 As far, then, as the labor of nineteen-twentieths 
 of the Eussian population is concerned, the capital 
 which aids its exertions (the implements, the seed, 
 the animals employed), is accumulated principally, and 
 almost exclusively, from the revenues of the land- 
 owners and from the wages of the serfs, who, either 
 on the Crown estates or on those of individuals, cul- 
 tivate the soil with their hands. 
 
 Now the case of Eussia is, in this respect, that of by 
 The case of f^f tliQ gTcatcr part of the world. In India, 
 gene'raVonc. in Asla, aud throughout the continent of 
 Europe, with some slight exceptions, the largest por- 
 tion of the population — not nineteen-twentieths as in 
 Eussia, but still a very large proportion — are employed 
 in agriculture. The laborers produce their revenue 
 from the soil by the labor of their own hands, and 
 the earth yields also a further revenue, which consti- 
 tutes the income of the landowner, in the shape of rent. 
 It is out of these two classes, in diiferent proportions 
 in different countries, as we shall hereafter see, that 
 those slender accumulations of stock and capital are 
 made which aid the industry of the agriculturists. These 
 agriculturists, for reasons which we shall explain, are 
 necessarily, under such circumstances, the great bulk 
 of the people ; and the formation of the national capital 
 rests with these two classes, who must resort almost 
 exclusively to the wages of their labor or to their rent 
 in order to its accumulation.
 
 LECT. 111.] PROFITS SMALL WHEN CAPITAL IS SMALL. 45 
 
 This fact is altogether inconsistent with those 
 
 Profits never 
 the sole source 
 of accuinula- 
 
 theories which assume the profits of stock to 
 be the sole source of capital ; and it is not tion-' 
 merely a theoretical error, but an important practical 
 mistake, we arc pointing out, when observing this. 
 
 If we seek the causes of the slow accumulation of { 
 capital in some nations, — the sameness of their pro- 
 ductive processes — the feebleness of their agriculture — 
 the smallness of their non-agricultural classes — and the 
 stagnation as to their wealth and numbers throughout 
 a long succession of generations — we shall find at the 
 bottom of these phenomena the fact we have been 
 commenting on, — namely, that the national capital is 
 kept up, and slowly and sparingly fed, not out of the 
 profits of stock and out of the revenues of a distinct 
 class of men derived exclusively from stock, but out 
 of the wages and the rents of those who contribute 
 laboriously and reluctantly those portions of wealth 
 without which the rude industry of the country could 
 not be carried on, and the use of which is therefore 
 essential to the reproduction of those simple and 
 primeval revenues, on which the bulk of the popu- 
 lation must subsist before they can accumulate. 
 
 The accumulated stock, which men use to aid their 
 labor, is always small in amount in the ruder s,n"ir,"|fen°" 
 stages of society, and the amomit of the snlaii! '^ 
 revenue of the community which can be treated as 
 the profit of that stock, is consequently small too. ^ i 
 
 We must, both here and elsewhere, carefully dis- 
 tinguish two things, which beginners on this bJtweenpofits 
 
 ... , . o ^ 1 •^n'' additional 
 
 subject arc very apt to coniound, namely, produce.
 
 46 
 
 PROFITS SMALL WHEN CAPITAL IS SMALL. [lf.ct. hi, 
 
 the profits on capital, and tlie additional produce 
 obtained by the use of capital: for the last, the ad- 
 ditional produce, may be exceedingly great when the 
 profits, even though large in proportion to the amount 
 of capital employed, are small, because the amount of 
 capital is small too. 
 
 Suppose a man, who had only his ten fingers to 
 rely on, to be put into possession of a spade : the 
 amount of produce he would be able to procure 
 would be greatly increased by it ; but if he had 
 to pay all the profits made on the spade to a third 
 person, he would ask. What would it cost me to 
 make it myself? or, perhaps. What would it cost 
 another neighbor to make it who is ready to supply 
 me ? and he would limit the profit he allowed, to the 
 owner of the spade, to something not worth more 
 than the time he himself or a neighbor must expend 
 in making it. The profits of stock are limited by 
 the cost of producing the capital ; within that limit 
 they may vary, but they cannot go beyond it. When 
 the capital, therefore, used in a country is very small 
 in amount, and of a very rude description, costing 
 very little to produce it, the amount of wealth annually 
 set apart as a remuneration for the use of that capital 
 is always small too. Now this is invariably the case 
 in countries principally agricultural, where the task 
 of cultivation is committed to a laboring peasantry; 
 and yet, though the amount of profits in such 
 countries may be small, there may be an amount 
 of other revenues, in the shape of wages and 
 rent, which present much more abundant means of
 
 LKCT. III.] PROFITS SMALL WHEN CAPITAL IS SMALL. 47 
 
 accumulation, if favorable circumstances should lead 
 to it. 
 
 Now in this earlier state of society it is, that by ! 
 very far the largest portion of the agricultural nations 
 are found, comprising the whole of Asia and the 
 greater part of continental Europe. A few spots there 
 are, and Great Britain is the largest and most pro- 
 minent, in which the quantity of capital is so great 
 and valuable, that the profits on it — the revenues of 
 its owners — far exceed those of all other classes of 
 the community united. The conditions which must • 
 be fulfilled in order to make a change from the former i 
 of these states of society to the latter possible, and its 
 effects on national production and wealth, we shall 
 notice hereafter. At present let us revert to the earlier 
 state of society, that which, in past ages as in the 
 present, has been the condition of the most extensive 
 regions of the earth, — of its greatest empii^es, and of 
 the majority of the human race. . — * 
 
 Eussia affords us an example — it is almost at one 
 extreme of the scale — through which we shall hereafter 
 trace other nations.
 
 4JJ [LT5CT. IV. 
 
 LECTUEE IV. 
 
 ON PROFITS AS A SOURCE OF ACCUMULATION. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Where Capital is scanty, the national revenues are dependent chiefly on manual 
 lahor— the case otherwise where Capital is large and profits contribute to accumu- 
 lation — in this respect England stands in contrast with Russia. — Capital employed 
 in production increases mercantile capital. — Error of supposing that profits contribute 
 to capital in proportion to their rate — this contrary to fact, as they contribute in 
 proportion to their mass. — Indefinite power of accumulation arising from increased 
 profits. — The accumulation of capital always limited by the extent of the sources 
 whence it is derived — recapitulation of these sources. — Causes which encourage 
 or discourage accumulation divided into : 1 . differences of disposition of nations ; 
 2. greater or less security of property, including disadvantages arising from violence, 
 bad political institutions, and vicious fiscal systems; 3. prospect of enjoying the 
 future results of labor. — Under ftivorable circumstances the smallest revenues may 
 contribute to capital, even those of the Russian serf and Negro slave ; 4. the power 
 of changing condition an incentive to saving — and is itself facilitated by such 
 saving — England a proof of this — its capital widely spread — accumulation some- 
 times too rapid — conditions essential to its progress — more labor requires more 
 capital — the same labor may likewise absorb more capital, as in agriculture. — 
 The replacement of outgoings with some profit essential to increase of capital. 
 
 We have been surveying nations of which the wealth 
 
 is produced by the use of very small portions of capital. 
 
 Their primitive revenues depend mainly on the 
 
 Where c.-ipitai mauual labor of the population, and on the 
 
 is scanty the 
 
 venucf depend productivc powcrs of the soil, and are accord- 
 kbor!""'' ingly divided between the laborers and the 
 owners of the land, in calculating whose respective
 
 LECT. IV.] SOURCES OF NATIONV. REVENUE. 49 
 
 incomes, we must make some allowance for tlie profits 
 of the small pittance of capital employed in agriculture. 
 In estimating, however, tlie powers of the profits 
 of stock as a revenue from which additions the case dif. 
 can be made to the capital of nations, we p^ro'flu contri- 
 
 ' bute to accu- 
 
 must look to a very diiferent state of things, '""^^^i""- 
 
 The progress of society on some few and small 
 points of the globe, has shewn that it is possible to 
 accumulate the results of past labor, and to employ 
 them profitably in production, to an extent indefinitely 
 greater than could have been calculated on, if we 
 were familiar only with those forms of society which 
 prevail among the majority of manliind. 
 
 In England, the profits of stock approach, if they 
 do not equal or exceed, the revenues derived Entjinnd a., 
 from wages and rent together; and there can this;'""'"' 
 be little doubt that, in proportion to their amount, 
 they are a more fertile source of accumulation. By 
 returns gathered from various sources and calcula- 
 tions based upon them, it would appear that the 
 amount of stock in England at the present period is 
 not less than from twelve to fifteen hundred millions. 
 Profit on this at ten per cent, would be one hundred 
 and twenty or one hundred and fifty millions. But 
 the rents and wages of England are supposed not to 
 exceed one hundred and ninety-six millions. 
 
 In England, likewise, two-thirds of the laboring 
 population are non-agriculturists. They are, with the 
 exception of a very minute fraction, in the pay of 
 capitalists, and their labor is aided by that vast mass of 
 machinery and implements of all descriptions, which 
 distinguish the manufactiu'es and workshops of England. 
 
 4
 
 50 PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL INCREASES [i.ect. iv. 
 
 In Russia, on the other htmcl, the agricultural capital 
 is small in amount, as well as rude in form. The cause 
 of this is, that it is accumulated either by peasant 
 laborers or landowners, two classes extremely unlikely 
 to swell its amount beyond what is necessary to carry 
 on cultivation in its present imperfect state. 
 
 But the agricultural laborers in England — and 
 thi'oughout England alone of all the great European 
 countries — are employed by capitalists, who aid their 
 labor by an amount of accumulated wealth equal, 
 probably at least, to one-third the value of the land, 
 and yielding a revenue equal to more than half the 
 
 V rents of the country.^ 
 But these great masses of capital employed in 
 Productive productiou lead invariably to the creation 
 increases of a vcrv lnYs^e mass of tradino; and mercan- 
 
 mercantile ./ o o 
 
 capital. ^'jg capital. The products of the labor of 
 
 the population increase, as we shall presently see, not 
 merely in the same proportion as the increasing masses 
 of capital employed to aid labor, but in a very much 
 greater proportion ; and the quantity of capital em- 
 ployed in exchanging, circulating, and carrying this 
 huge mass of commodities to their final consumers, 
 is necessarily large, in proportion to the enlargement 
 of the productive powers of the national industry. 
 Looking, then, at the very different amounts of 
 capital employed in the simpler and in the wealthier 
 forms of society, there is no reason to be sui-prised 
 
 1 The farmers reckon that they ought to make a rent for themselves, as well as 
 one for the landlord. Under the old Property Tax Act, tlie income of the farmer 
 was calculated at two-tliirds tlie rent of tlie landlord. Under tlie present Act, 
 the income of the farmers is calculated at lialf the rent of the landlords. None of 
 the5c calculations are, perhaps, precisely correct. Conil)ined, they are fully sutilcient 
 to warrant the assertion in the text.
 
 LECT. IV.] MRHCAXTri.E CAl'ITAL. 51 
 
 that the accumulations from profits should be Acry 
 small in the one case and very large in the other. 
 
 But there is one very common error on the subject 
 of profits as a source of capital, which we -^prolit^'TsVi 
 must get rid of before we can estimate their IZ^l^- 
 probable contributions. Those who have confined them- 
 selves to profits alone as a source of accumulation, and 
 have neglected all others, have imagined and ^es in sup- 
 taught that the national power of accumu- accumuiauon 
 
 depemls on 
 
 lating from profits is dependent on the rate ^''^'"" '"'''e- 
 of profit, — that it is great when the rate of profit is 
 high, and becomes less when the rate of profit declines. 
 This is not only untrue, but it is the direct reverse 
 of the truth. Countries in which the rate tins s„pposi- 
 
 o (-»i_ ■ 1 I 1 • ; • tion contnry 
 
 01 profit IS low have always, m practice, a totuct- 
 greater mass of profits to save from, than those in 
 which it is high. A glance at the nations of Europe 
 would suffice to prove this truth. If a high rate of 
 profit indicated a great relative power to accumulate, 
 Poland and Eussia ought to be accumulating — or to 
 have a power of accumulating — from profits, faster 
 than Holland or England. 
 
 The relative power of two countries to accumulate 
 from profits depends, however, on the mass ^^'.';.,ZZZum 
 of profits realized in each, and not on the <iq)ends"on 
 
 their mass, and 
 
 rate of profit in each, or the relation which ",ae!'°"'"'" 
 the profits bear to the capital actually employed. 
 For instance, if one people emploj^s one million 
 of capital at twelve per cent., its profits will amount 
 to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. If its 
 neighbour employs six millions at ten per cent., its 
 profits will be six hundred thousand pounds. It is
 
 52 INDEFINITE POWER OF [Lrcr. iv. 
 
 clear that — the two populations beiDg of equal size — 
 the accumulations in the nation which has a revenue 
 of six hundred thousand pounds from profits at the 
 lower rate of ten per cent., may be very much greater 
 than the accumulations from profits can possibly be 
 in the other nation, which has only an income of one 
 hundred and twenty thousand pounds from profits at 
 the higher rate of twelve per cent. 
 
 The fact is, that in all rich nations where larger 
 and larger masses of capital are gradually introduced 
 to aid the task of production, the rate of profit — the 
 proportion which the revenue of the owners of stock 
 bears to the amount of capital they employ — diminishes 
 from causes which we shall hereafter explain ; but 
 the mass of profits — the proportion which the revenue 
 derived from the capital employed bears to the popu- 
 lation and to the revenues of every other description — 
 keeps at the same time increasing. 
 
 The power of accumulating from profits necessarily 
 increases too, and that, not in proportion to the increased 
 revenue fi'om profits, but in an indefinitely greater pro- 
 portion. For instance, let us suppose that the nation 
 iiKiefinite which has an income of one hundred and 
 
 power of in- 
 
 ""'''cd'profit"" twenty thousand pounds from profits can put 
 
 reascd 
 
 by twenty thousand pounds as capital : a population of 
 like size, which has an increase of six hundi'cd thou- 
 sand pounds from profits, can obviously accumulate 
 not merely five times the capital, or one hundred 
 thousand poimds, but has the abstract power of accu- 
 mulating annually five hundred thousand pounds, or 
 fifty times the amount of the savings of the poorer 
 nation with the higher rate of profit.
 
 LECT. IV.] INCREASE FROM PROFITS. 53 
 
 I do not advance this fact with a view of intimating 
 that their annual accumulations will necessarily differ 
 to such an extent, but only to show the absurdity 
 of assuming that a decreasing rate of profit is neces- 
 sarily accompanied by a diminishing power of accu- 
 mulating capital from profits. All the importance of 
 this error may not now be seen, but it will meet us 
 again when we are treating of the division of wealth 
 and of the progress of population ; and then the 
 unfortunate influence of the mistake on large and 
 ingenious trains of modern speculation will display 
 themselves to us, without much effort. 
 
 Of the three points connected with the progress 
 of capital in aiding human industry, which I Accumulation 
 
 - -. ., , limited bv the 
 
 proposed to discuss, we have srone through extent of "the 
 
 J- ■*■ ' o t_> sources oi 
 
 only one, namely, the sources of capital, the '^'i'^'^^- 
 extent of which limits, of course, the power to accumu- 
 late. We have seen that at early stages of the progress 
 of nations, the wages of labor and the rent recapitulation 
 of land are necessarily the main soiu'ces of soured 
 accumulation ; because the quantity of stock employed 
 at such stages in aiding human industry is small, 
 and the revenues of society consist almost wholly of 
 the wages of labor and of the rent of land. We have 
 further seen, that as more capital is employed to 
 aid human labor, the revenues of a distinct class of 
 men — the owners of capital — become a more and 
 more important source of accumulation, till, at last, 
 they may equal or surpass the revenues of all the 
 other classes of society, and become, not only a distinct 
 soiu'ce, but the most abundant source of the accu- 
 mulation of capital ; and this in spite of the rate of
 
 54 CAUSES WHICH EXCOUllAGE Oil [lixi. iv. 
 
 profit dimiuisliiug progressively up to any reasonable 
 limit. 
 
 We have now to examine the causes which, the 
 c.iuses which revenues of a population, or their sources 
 
 e'lcouragi! or 
 
 aicumuutlon- of accumulatiou, being given, either stimulate 
 and make easy, or discourage and make difficult, the 
 progress of accumulation. 
 
 The first circumstance which would occur to many 
 llisitions fn'" is a difference of temperament and disposi- 
 nauons- tiou. A milliou of Dutchmen, with equal 
 means and under the same circumstances, would, it 
 may be said, save more than the same number of Irish- 
 men. I will not venture to say that there is nothing 
 in this, though I believe there is very little. Still, 
 if it be argued that, to save, there must be a denial 
 of some present enjoyment, and that some men are 
 less capable of thir> restraining efi'ort than others ; to 
 a limited extent this may be true : but great bodies 
 of men are very much the creatures of • circumstances, 
 and of the education which those circumstances give. 
 I believe that any one of the causes which I am 
 about to enumerate, w^ould more seriously affect the 
 relative rate of accumulation between any two countries, 
 than any original differences of race or disposition. 
 
 The most important of these is security of pro- 
 securityoi pcrty. A waut of security would stop the 
 progress of accumulation under any circum- 
 stances. By ' security ' is, of course, meant, protec- 
 tion" from the violence of individuals, and from the 
 rapacity of governments, direct or indirect. The neces- 
 sity of security is a truism ; but, when we come to 
 examine the ))oli(i('al (H'onomy of nations, we shall find
 
 LECT. IV.] DISCOURAGE ACCUMULATIOX. 55 
 
 the absence of it is now, and always has been, a 
 more prevailing cause of stagnation in the state of 
 their capital and industry, than, at lii'st sight, would 
 seem probable. 
 
 The security of persons and property is the common 
 end of all civil government ; and, although a despotic 
 , power is often deliberately given to the government 
 itself, it is always with a distinct understanding, that 
 the subject is to receive justice in return, and protection 
 from all demands other than those of the govern- 
 ment itself. All other states of society than this 
 must be considered as anomalous and transitory. Yet 
 governments, however nominally strong, are not always 
 able to perform this part of their fimctions. It is 
 impossible to read the history of the feudal times 
 in Europe, without seeing how completely the lawless 
 violence of the Feudal Barons must have made the 
 security of the cultivators, who constituted the great 
 majority of the producing classes of the country, pre- 
 carious : and those who are acquainted with the system 
 which then prevailed, are aware that it was an expe- 
 dient adopted to replace the prevalence of yet greater 
 violence, occasioned by tlie growing feebleness of the 
 forms of Teutonic government, which the invaders of 
 the Eoman Empire had brought from their forests. 
 
 Sometimes tliis injustice between subjects becomes 
 sanctioned and interwoven with the laws of rude 
 countries. It was necessary, not very long since, to 
 pass a law in Scotland, to provide that the property 
 of tenants should not be seized by the creditors of 
 noblemen to a greater amount than rent was due. 
 Before this law was passed, the whole property of
 
 56 CAUSES WHICH ENOCURAGE OR [lect. iv. 
 
 the cultivator was liable to be seized for liis landlord's 
 debts. 
 
 In Turkey generally, and in Asia Minor in parti- 
 dis^dvantages cular, tlio feeblouess of tlie Government makes 
 
 arising from ,, . i • i j. i 
 
 vioienoc- all proporty precarious wliicli cannot be 
 defended by the arm of the owner. But unjust and 
 unequal laws, encouraging direct spoliation of property, 
 are rare and anomalous cases, which society always 
 makes efforts to get rid of, and which could not last long. 
 The insecurity of property, which results from poli- 
 and from bad tlcal institutious and makes the government 
 institutions- itsclf tho wroug-docr, is a more lasting and 
 extensive source of mischief. In purely despotic govern- 
 ments, * masses of property which meet the eye are 
 never safe, and, therefore, rarely exist ; and over what 
 constituted more than half the civilized world, and 
 still constitutes a very large proportion of it, — that is, 
 throughout Asia, — this source of insecurity has never 
 ceased to be in action. 
 
 But in governments of a more moderate character, 
 and from noarlv tlio same effects have been uncon- 
 
 VICIOUS fiscal '' 
 
 systems- sclously produccd by vicious fiscal systems. 
 In France, before the Eevolution, out of a population 
 of twenty-four millions, twenty millions were connected 
 with the soil, a very large proportion of whom were 
 subjected to a heavy tax, levied in proportion to their 
 apparent property, and which those who were solvent 
 were obliged to pay, if the government officers could not 
 levy it from all. In the greater part of continental 
 Europe similar taxes prevailed. The bulk of the 
 population had not that security for their increasing 
 wealth which is the first and simplest condition of its
 
 LECT. IV.] DISCOURAGE ACCUMULATION. 57 
 
 accumulation. When such systems prevail, it is not 
 always easy to get rid of them, even when their mis- 
 chievous effects become loiown and recognized. 
 
 But, to better their condition by accumulating, 
 those who accumulate must not merely have prospect of 
 security that what they save shall *not be meut. 
 unjustly taken from them, but the prospect of being 
 able to use it so as to increase their means of enjoy- 
 ment ; and the nearer that prospect is, the greater 
 stimulant, of course, it proA^es. . 
 
 Security being given and the means of profitable | 
 employment being at hand, there is no re- abied/cum-" i 
 venue so humble that it may not be seen smWuest ^ 1 
 
 revenues may 
 
 contributing, more or less, to the mass of the capital'-''*'' 
 national capital. The Savings' Banks established 
 throughout Europe prove this sufficiently ; but there 
 are other striking proofs at hand. The serfs on the 
 estates of a Eussian noble, since they have the Russian 
 been enticed by the prospect of making them- '" "''" ''''^^~ 
 selves serfs of the Crown and becoming freed fi-om 
 forced labor, have been known to save enough to 
 purchase for themselves and their families, not only 
 the estate on which they are located, but, likewise, 
 the most valuable part of the stock on it. Even 
 the black Slaves, in those islands of the West Indies 
 in which they were allowed to purchase ^^^ the negro 
 their liberty by savings from their peculmm, '^'■''^'^'°- 
 showed that the humblest of all revenues might, imder 
 the influence of such prospects, contribute at no des- 
 picable rate to the progress of the capital of the 
 country. 
 
 The next influential circumstance which affects the \
 
 58 CAUSES WHICH ENCOURAGE OR [lect. iv. 
 
 progress of accumulation is the facility of changing 
 Power of condition. We are so accustomed to see per- 
 ditloiTatf""' sons rising from the lower to some of the 
 
 incentive to 
 
 suving- intermediate, and even to the highest, positions 
 in society ; and to observe our whole swarming popu- 
 lation in motion* for this purpose, that, perhaps, it 
 seldom occurs to us, taking the world throughout, how 
 rare a phenomenon this is. 
 
 ^ The economical machinery and positive institutions 
 of the majority of the nations of the world are equally 
 opposed to this. Of a population, of which four-fifths 
 are peasants, differing, perhaps, in race, certainly in 
 supposed ties of blood, from the remaining fifth, — 
 how small a proportion can move from the position 
 in which their fortune first places them. Yet this was 
 the condition of Europe during the whole of the Middle 
 Ages. The Church was the only channel of advance 
 for plebeians, a state of things clearly shewing that 
 there was scarcely any personal wealth or capital 
 in those days. 
 
 But, putting positive institutions and prejudices of 
 the increase blood or castc out of tho question, we shall 
 creases the find tliat tlic accumulatiou of capital itself 
 
 facility of ■*• 
 
 changing- '^ ^j^g grcat mcaus of forming those steps in 
 society, by which a considerable portion of the people 
 may hope to change their condition for the better. 
 Survey England, for instance. We have stated that a 
 En-ianda uiass of Capital has been accumulated to aid 
 her industry, the revenues derived from which 
 do not fall far short of those of all the other classes 
 of society united. We shall see, hereafter, that one 
 consequence of this has been to augment considerably
 
 LFXT. IV.] DISCOURAGE ACCUMULATION. 59 
 
 the revenues of every other class. At present, let us 
 confine our view to the revenues and position of the 
 owners of capital alone. 
 
 So great a mass of capital is always, of course, 
 in the hands of a numerous body. They con- it, ^.,,,it;,i 
 stitute a large portion of the social machine, sprcaj- 
 and are found at every possible degree of elevation in 
 the distance which separates the very highest from the 
 lowest classes. Every man who can save a fcAV 
 pounds has in view some occupation, in which they 
 will enable him to better his condition and augment 
 his income ; and when those few pounds become thou- 
 sands the case is not altered, — some better station his 
 augmented means enable him to approach ; till the 
 princely merchant or manufacturer stands all but 
 on a level with the foremost of the aristocracy. A 
 mass of owners of capital, possessed of revenues 
 like those of England, offer in their body places for 
 a large proportion of the population, if among the 
 changes which are taking place in every direction, 
 the aspirant can save as much wealth as will en- 
 able him to fill one of the niches, which capitalists 
 are occupying in the great structure of national 
 exertion. 
 
 Facilities of investment, then, and the means of 
 advancing in life, are equally promoted by the pro- 
 gressive swell of the march of national accumulation ; | 
 and accumulation, itself the effect of favorable circum- 
 stances, becomes, in its turn, a cause, and accumulation 
 creates fresh stimulants and multiplied faci- rlpll. 
 lities, which accelerate and almost ensui^e the continuous 
 progress of the capital of favored nations ; and that
 
 60 CONDITIOXS ESSENTIAL TO ACCUMULATIOX. [lect. iv. 
 
 too, as we shall see, sometimes at a rate inconveniently 
 rapid. 
 
 I hardly need point out, that with such a pro- 
 ofweaufr'' gross, the continuance of political and social 
 dvinibcrty. obstacles to the energetic attempts of the 
 people to improve and advance is all but an impossi- 
 bility. The owners of such a mass of wealth, the 
 employers of such a mass of the population, cannot 
 be a degraded or oppressed class. We can hardly 
 conceive their upward progress to begin, without the 
 establishment of civil liberty and equality in the eyes 
 of the law. ^Ve may be sure that it would not long 
 continue to exist without establishing them. 
 
 There are, however, certain conditions which must 
 Conditions Tbe fulfilled, when fresh masses of capital 
 
 essential to ^ _ , i / • 
 
 accumulation, aro cmploycd m production. 
 
 While explaining this part of the subject, I must 
 premise that I shall suppose the population to be 
 Morei.bor statlouary. When population is increasing, 
 capital-""'" a certain quantity of additional capital may 
 be, of course, employed in aiding the labor of the 
 additional numbers. If, for instance, England has now 
 three times the amount of laboring population which 
 existed at a former period of her history; then, sup- 
 posing the labor of each individual to be assisted 
 only by the same amount of capital, the capital that 
 must have been accumulated during the interval 
 must be twice as great in amount as that which then 
 existed. 
 
 There is another mode, too, in which increasing 
 masses of capital may be employed, which I shall 
 name only to dismiss it. Where it has been found
 
 LECT. IV.] CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO ACCUMULATION. 61 
 
 profitable to employ additional capital in any occupa- 
 tion, the whole of the population engaged in the same 
 
 . (jHantity of 
 
 that occupation are often assisted by such labor, auo, may 
 
 ■•• '' absorl) more 
 
 additional capital by very slow degrees, '"'^p''^^" 
 This is remarkably the case in agriculture. At the 
 present moment, ten pounds an acre is em- as occurs 
 
 -. -. . , • , ^ • [^ • J sometimes in 
 
 ployed as tenant's capital m farming a part agriculture, 
 of the lands of England. A centmy at least, will 
 probably elapse, before all the lands of England, of the 
 same description, are farmed with the same amount 
 of tenant's capital. So also in many non-agricultural 
 occupations. The w^orkshops in country districts are 
 much less assisted by capital than in the large towns. 
 A long period will probably elapse, before the whole 
 quantity of capital, which we know from experience 
 can be profitably employed in such occupations, is 
 extended to all engaged in them. 
 
 But the accumulation of capital I am about to 
 treat of, is an accumulation for entirely different pur- 
 poses than those, either of employing additional numbers, 
 or of supplying all those employed with the greatest 
 quantity which it is known can be profitably used 
 in their particular branch of industry. 
 
 With the prosperous growth of wealth, means are 
 perpetually discovered of aiding the labors of the popu- 
 lation by larger masses of capital than it was before 
 known they could profitably employ ; but the intro- 
 duction and continuous employment of such dmnSs'iKh 
 additional masses can only take place on the capital-" 
 fulfilment of certain conditions, — which I am about 
 to explain, — and is ordinarily attended by certain con- 
 sequences, which I will endeavour to point out to you.
 
 62 CONDITTOXS ESSENTIAL TO AOCUMUTATIOX. [lect. iv. 
 
 Whenever capital is employed, the capitalist must 
 the repiaco- h^vc a rcasonable hope that it will be returned 
 goings"anda" to him wltli au addltiou, — fii'st, to cover any 
 
 protitable 
 
 return. damago or loss it may have sustained from 
 
 wear and tear ; and secondly, to yield some profit. 
 If capital is continuously employed in any one occu- 
 pation, we may be quite sure that these conditions are 
 usually fulfilled. If the wear and tear of capital were 
 not replaced, the capitalist would be ruined by em- 
 ploying it ; and if it yielded him no profit he would 
 have no motive to employ it in production.
 
 LECT. v.] THE TWO KINDS OF CAPITAL. 63 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 ON THE TWO KINDS OF CAPITAL. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Distiuction of Capital into two kinds — the one maintaining;, the otlicr aiding, 
 productive labor — the use of the latter, or auxiliary capital, natural to man, — but 
 not the use of the former, or that employed to maintain labor, and which has 
 been saved for that express purpose — the laborers supported by such accumulated 
 fund compai'atively few in number — difference regarding the reproduction of tlic 
 two funds occasioned by the difference of their durability — auxiliary capital may 
 increase when other capital cannot — the capital employed to maintain labor is the 
 last resorted to in the progress of wealth — its indirect greater than its direct 
 effects — the latter arise from capitalists being a distinct body — and are attributable 
 to their superintendance — comparison of labor -with, and without such superin- 
 tendance — the indirect effects are greater skill, better combination, and more 
 powerful aids. — Independent capitalists must be preliminary to large accumulations. 
 — The larger mass of laborers not employed by others. — Auxiliary capital not limited, 
 like that advanced in wages — conditions of its increase : 1. must return its own 
 wear and tear Avith a profit ; 2. must appear in a new form, as instanced by the 
 substitution of steam for water power ; or, 3. must make a better application of 
 known forces, as instanced in the case of our modern railways — such improvements 
 offer the greatest scope to accumulation — they are imperfectly carried out every- 
 where — even in our own country. 
 
 At this stage of our inquiry, it will be convenient 
 to divide the capital employed in production Distinction of 
 
 ■•■ J. »/ i capital into 
 
 into two distinct masses, — namely, that which onemalntiin'!^ 
 
 , . . ., • 1 1 '"»' '-'^^ other 
 
 IS used m supporting and paying laborers, "icun-, lai.or. 
 and that which is employed in adding to the efficiency 
 of their labor. We will call the first supporting or 
 sustaining capital, and to the second we will give 
 the name of auxiliary capital. No human society has
 
 64 THE USE OF AUXILIARY CAPITAL [lect. v- 
 
 ever been found in so low a condition as not to 
 have saved and emj^loyed some portion of auxiliary 
 capital. 
 
 To accumulate and use the results of past labor 
 JiKdii^/^ in order to augment the power of actual 
 
 capital natural j • • j j • i 
 
 to man- excrtiou, IS at once a prerogative and a 
 characteristic of the human race, and we have as com- 
 plete an exemplification of it in the bow and lance 
 of the savage as in the steam-engine. But the accu- 
 nmintenance of mulatlous uiadc wltli a vlcw to profit and to 
 laborers- support laborcrs while at work for their pay- 
 master, are by no means a necessary characteristic of 
 human society ; and will be found, on analysis, to 
 prevail only in particular countries, and in the great 
 majority of those countries only in particular occu- 
 pations. 
 
 It is true that the laborers must be supported, whether 
 by the advance of funds from other parties or other- 
 wise ; and if we choose to call the portion of wealth, on 
 which they subsist, capital^ to whomsoever it may origin- 
 ally belong, or through vv'hatever channel it reaches 
 the laborer's hands, I have alreadj^ explained that 
 and which has sucli a uso of thc word must drive us to find 
 t'ha"pur7os.-^ another name for that which is appropriated to 
 production, and which has gone through a process of 
 saving or is used with a view to profit. This latter 
 is the only portion of the labor-fund, on winch I wish 
 at present to fix your attention. Thc importance of 
 keeping it in our minds and reasoning, distinct from all 
 other funds for the maintenance of labor, will be sufi[i- 
 ciently apparent as we proceed. 
 
 I repeat then, that, used in the sense I have
 
 LECT. v.] NATURAL TO MAN. 65 
 
 explained, capital is not a fund used for the main- 
 tenance of any large proportion of the laborers support7d by 
 
 this accumu- 
 
 of the world. Ninety-nine m a hundred oi latedfund 
 
 J comparatively 
 
 the agricultural laborers of our race are jfuLuirs- 
 maintained fi-om funds entirely different in their origin, 
 and varying — increasing or decreasing — according to 
 entirely different laws, which it will soon be our task 
 to trace. 
 
 The capital which is advanced for the sustenance 
 of labor differs in one very important par- ditForenceas 
 
 , . , . T '-,• to the repro- 
 
 ticular from that whicn is used as auxiliary ductionof 
 
 " these two 
 
 capital. It must all be reproduced in the *""'^'"~ 
 same, or nearly in the same time, in which it is 
 consumed by the laborer. If an additional laborer is 
 employed on a farm, his wages must all be reproduced 
 in the year with a profit. If he is employed for a 
 year in any handicraft or manufacture, the value of 
 what he produces, while he is consuming his wages, 
 must be equal to the value of those wages and to 
 some profit on their amount. 
 
 The case is wholly different with auxiliary capital. 
 Some of that may last fifty years ; and if any profit 
 is made on it, it is enough if the laborer who is 
 aided by it, reproduces it, or the value of it, in fifty 
 years. 
 
 The ease or difiiculty with which capital is repro- 
 duced is very much affected by the time of its dura- 
 tion. If I employ a ploucrhman at wa^es of . ^^ 
 
 i- J i. O <-J occasioned by 
 
 thirty pounds for a year, he must produce me of thtifdura- 
 thirty pounds in the year with a profit on it, — 
 suppose 10 per cent., which will be thirty-three pounds. 
 If I employ thirty pounds in purchasing implements
 
 66 AUXILIARY CAPITAL : [i.f.ct. v. 
 
 wliich will last twenty years, it is enough if they 
 produce mc one-twentieh part of the thirty pounds 
 every year and the profit on it, which, at 10 per cent,, 
 would be together four pounds, ten shillings. Auxiliary 
 Auxiliary capi- Capital may, therefore, go on increasing and 
 
 t;il may in- i , • p t i j_ • 
 
 crease when accumulatino; Irom century to century m occu- 
 
 other capital ^ -' ^ ^ 
 
 cannot. patlous lu which it would be impossible to 
 
 employ more human labor with any chance of repro- 
 ducing, annually, the whole capital employed to sus- 
 tain it with a profit. It is the accumulation of auxiliary 
 capital, relatively to population, that we have mainly 
 to observe when tracing the progressive wealth of 
 nations. 
 
 In the meanwhile, it would be wrong to pass over 
 the accumulation of that capital which is employed 
 by its owner in the sustentation of labor, as an un- 
 important step in the industry of nations. It is one 
 The capital of tho most Importaut ; and, paradoxical as it 
 
 which main- n • t ^ • j • 
 
 tains labor, mav appcar to superiicial observers, it is one 
 
 the last re- "^ ■'■ •'• ^ ' 
 
 thfprogress of tho last aiid most rare steps that the owners 
 take. Its direct effects are considerable ; its 
 
 its indirect • t , rv> j i in 
 
 greater than mdircct ciiects arc, beyond all measure, more 
 
 its direct ef- 7 j 7 
 
 fects- considerable : a glance at human society, as 
 
 constituted in different countries, will show these facts. 
 The establishment of capitalists, as paymasters 
 
 the direct 
 effects arise 
 
 from capital- of labor, is tlic condition on which alone, after 
 
 ists being a ' 
 
 distinct body- ^]^g separation of employments, the labor in 
 any occupation can be continuous. If the workman 
 is to proceed with his work continuously and undis- 
 turbed, ho must not be obliged to wait till a customer 
 appears for the produce of his labor. It is the capital 
 of his master and employer which supplies the means
 
 LECT. v.] ITS DIRECT EFFECTS. 67 
 
 of storing up the products of labor till they are wanted, 
 or, in other words, of waiting for a market. But the 
 same step in the national industry which makes the 
 continuous labor of the workman profitable, augments 
 the steadiness of exertion by the agency of the new 
 class of superintendents which it at once and neces- 
 sarily creates. The capitalist who is to make his profit 
 by receiving and exchanging, has a distinct interest 
 in watching and using the steady and continuous exer- 
 tion of the laborers he feeds. 
 
 In order to calculate the extent of the advantages 
 derived from the human agency thus provided, for the 
 purpose of making that continuous exertion more perfect 
 and certain, we may compare the habits and efficiency 
 of two bodies of laborers placed under different cir- 
 cumstances. Thus, two English are more efficient than 
 six Ptussian, or than foiu* Irish laborers. I know of 
 no cause but the difference of their habits to 
 
 and are attn- 
 
 which this can be attributed, and no cause for ^heh-^lujenn- 
 
 t6Ild&IlC6* 
 
 the difference of habits but the presence of a 
 class of employers constantly superintending the labor 
 of the men in the one case, and the absence of such 
 a class in the other. If we estimate the labor of men 
 employed by capitalists to be twice as efficient comparison of 
 
 . _ -, in labor with 
 
 as that 01 men not so superintended, we shall and without 
 
 ■•• ' superintend- 
 
 ence. 
 
 fall greatly within the mark. The labor of '"' 
 fifty millions of Eussian peasants cultivates not more 
 than sixteen acres to each family. The labor of each 
 English agricultural family cultivates more than fifty 
 acres to each family. There can be no doubt but that 
 the desultory habits of the one, and the superintended 
 and continuous labor of the other, are sufficient to
 
 68 EFFECTS OF LABOR WITH [i-ect. v. 
 
 accoimt for the greater part of tlie difference, after 
 making every fair allowance for the better implements 
 and more powerful animals used by the Englishmen. 
 
 15ut the indirect effects of the establishment of a 
 body of men, distinct from laborers, or from landlords 
 advancing them their wages, and profiting by the 
 possession or exchange of the products of their labor, 
 are much greater than the direct effects. The labor 
 Th.-inairoct employod becomes at once not merely more 
 greater'Ikiii coutinuous, but moro skilful. Those combi- 
 
 and better com- 
 
 bi nations- natlous of human reason which show how, m 
 any branch of industry, a desired effect may, with 
 given means, be the most advantageously produced, 
 are beyond the powers and the degree of leisure and 
 thought of those who belong to the class of manual 
 laborers. The science of production, when left in such 
 hands, as it is throughout the greater part of the 
 earth, lingers in a loose stage compared with that 
 which we see it attain when there is a distinct class 
 at the head of the task, whose interest, whose position, 
 and whose means enable them to be the efficient guides 
 and instructors of those whom they maintain and 
 employ. 
 
 But the existence of such a distinct class 
 of capitalists is even yet more essential to the 
 progress of industry by the progressive power they are 
 able to apply in aid of human efforts ; when manual 
 laborers are themselves the only directors of their own 
 industry, their resources beyond their wages can be 
 but small. ]\rasscs of capital cannot be employed to 
 assist an industry which remains entirely in the hands 
 of the laboring class. The possession of such property, 
 
 and more 
 powerful aids
 
 LECT. v.] AND WITHOUT SUPERINTENDENCE. 69 
 
 and the position of day-laborers, are two inconsistent 
 thino^s. As a preliminary, tlien, to the aocu- independent 
 
 c* J- J ■} ■) capitalists 
 
 mulation of increasing masses of capital, a mln^ry'^to"^" 
 
 , p . • 1 -I 1 l:irge accumu- 
 
 wages-paymg class oi men invariably makes liitions. 
 its appearance ; and until that essential preliminary 
 step has been taken, any great increase in the mass of 
 auxiliary capital could never take place at all. Let 
 me repeat, that not one-fiftieth part of the 
 
 -"- ' ■*■ The larg-e mass 
 
 laboring portion of the human race is in the efniUoyedVy"*" 
 employ of capitalists. The causes of this fact 
 will display themselves when we come to analyze the 
 circumstances which determine the economical position 
 of different groups of nations. In the meanwhile it 
 serves to explain the comparatively small number of the 
 human race, among whom the greatest yet known power 
 of man is developed. 
 
 At present we may turn to the task of examining 
 under what circumstances auxiliary capital may increase 
 relatively to the number and subsistence of the popu- 
 lation, and, so increasing, may be continuously and 
 profitably employed. 
 
 There is this great differe&ce between auxiliary 
 capital, and that which is advanced as wages : Auxiu.ryoapi- 
 
 - , . -. tal not limited 
 
 that which is advanced as wacres dei3ends upon ukp that ad- 
 
 o i- i- vanced as 
 
 the number of the population, and the rate of ''^""- 
 wages; and these two being ascertained, we know 
 that it cannot be used beyond the limit they oppose 
 to its greater growth. The portion of capital we have 
 now before us has its growth stunted by no such limits. 
 The rate of wages and the number of the population 
 being the same, the mass of auxiliary capital may go 
 on increasing indefinitely, if the conditions we are about
 
 fg CONDITIONS OF THE INCREASE [lect. v. 
 
 to explain are fulfilled during its progress. As the 
 masSj then, increases, the productive powers of labor 
 necessarily increase simultaneously; and in most in- 
 stances, not merely in proportion to the additional 
 auxiliary capital employed, but in a vastly greater 
 proportion. 
 
 ustncreaLl Tlic couditious wlilch must be fulfilled 
 
 its wear Inr" whllc thc uiass Is iucrcasing are, first, that 
 profit- * the auxiliary capital employed must return its 
 own wear and tear ; and secondly, that it must yield 
 the usual rate of profit. It is obvious that if it did 
 not augment the power of the labor it assists, so as to 
 supply annually its own wear and tear, and yield a 
 profit to its owner, the national capital would be in 
 the course of dissolution, and not of increase. Let 
 us for the moment suppose, then, that the whole popu- 
 lation is supplied with as much auxiliary capital as 
 in the present state it can apply to aid its labor, 
 with a certainty of all its wear and tear being replaced. 
 2 Must a ear ^^'^sh auxiUary capital, if applied at all, 
 in a new orm- j^^gj- ^^ appHcd iu somo ucw form ; but 
 this new form must be supplied by the progress of 
 invention ; and the growing mass of auxiliary capital, 
 in any occupation, must be simultaneous and coinci- 
 dent with a progress in knowledge and invention. 
 instanced by To go back to thc Mstory of our own 
 
 the substitu- j • i • i i • o 
 
 tion of steam natioual mdustrv I steam is a lorce compara- 
 
 for water '' 
 
 power- tively new. Let us observe a woollen mill 
 at the eve of the invention of the steam-engine ; the 
 moving force is water — cheap but uncertain. The steam- 
 engine is costly but powerful, and its action is certain 
 and continuous. The laborers in the woollen trade find
 
 LECT. v.] OF AUXILIARY CAPITAL. 71 
 
 their efforts more productive, because they are aided 
 by a greater moving force. If the results of their 
 labor are by this means so far increased, that the 
 additional produce will exchange for as much as will 
 keep the machine in repair and yield a profit on its 
 original cost, it will be worth while for the woollen 
 trade to resort to steam-engines, and the quantity 
 of auxiliary capital employed in that trade will be 
 increased. To that increase, however, the science and 
 invention which discovered — the one the power of steam, 
 the other the mode of employing it in production — were 
 essential. Without this, the nation might have gone 
 on accumulating fresh capital, but it could not thus 
 have employed it profitably as auxiliary to its labor. 
 
 In this case we have a considerable addition to the 
 moving forces which the human race can employ in 
 production ; but without any such addition, auxiliary 
 capital may go on increasing almost indefinitely if the 
 mode of applying the moving force it is already pos- 
 sessed of can be improved. 
 
 In any occupation already fully supplied with such 
 capital, in order to make it possible to employ more, 
 one of two discoveries must be made. We must find 
 out some means of adding to the moving forces at 
 the command of the producing classes, or we must 
 discover some mode of usinsj, more advan- 
 
 *-" or, 3 — Must 
 
 tageously, those moving forces which they apSfcatio^of 
 
 11 -r-1 1 T y • ji known forces— 
 
 already possess. l!ivery addition to the mass 
 of auxiliary capital used by a population of any given 
 number, implies either one or other of these efforts 
 of human invention. But the new moving force once 
 in the possession of a nation, inventions of new modes
 
 72 COXDITIOXS OF THE INCREASE [lect. v. 
 
 of applying it may lead to the indefinite growth of 
 the quantity of auxiliary capital used. For instance, 
 \n the case of steam, the new power was in the pos- 
 session of the producing classes long before it was 
 discovered that it could be made subservient to loco- 
 motion on land, and to the transport, over the surface 
 of the country, of men and goods from one place to 
 another. 
 
 In order to carry out this application of steam, 
 two inventions, or rather two systems of invention, 
 were necessary : first, the construction of engines, by 
 which it was possible, with the aid of steam, to pro- 
 duce locomotion on land; and secondly, the formation 
 of levels and the laying down of iron rails, by which 
 the motion produced should be the most advantageously 
 applied, and be the least opposed by friction or difficult 
 ascents. These conditions were fulfilled when Mr. 
 instanced in Stepheusou iuvonted his locomotive engine, 
 
 the case of o / 
 
 raih™ys."° ^ud Irou trams were laid down and lines of 
 road constructed, on which the diff'erences of level were 
 reduced within a certain limit. 
 
 The invention of railroads was founded on no addi- 
 tion to the moving forces already at the command of 
 nations. Steam-engines, of greater force than any 
 employed on these roads, had long since been in use. 
 The enormously increased power, with which those 
 roads have gifted the present generation, is due wholly 
 to the invention of better means of applying the moving 
 force already in our possession. But this discovery has 
 aff'orded the means of adding largely to the mass of 
 auxiliary capital, used in assisting the producing classes 
 in England. Millions have already been expended on
 
 LECT. v.] OF AUXILIARY CAPITAL. 73 
 
 them, and we have, as yet, seen only the beginning 
 of their establishment throughout the country. 
 
 It is clearly in the last manner — in the applying 
 advantageously forces already at the command g^eh improve- 
 
 n J.1 i ii • 1 J' o merits offer the 
 
 01 man — that the proojressive accumulation ol greatest scope 
 
 ■"- ^^ to accumu- 
 
 auxiliary capital mainly goes on in the world. ^''''°°- 
 The discoveries of new moving forces are made rarely 
 and at considerable intervals ; the discovery of new 
 modes of applying forces already known, by improved 
 machinery and tools, is of daily occuiTence, and facili- 
 tates the api^lication of increasing masses of capital on 
 a much more extensive scale, though in a less striking 
 manner, than when such inventions as wind and water 
 mills, or even steam, were in the first instance applied. 
 
 But when discoveries of either kind have been made, 
 the accumulation and employment of the auxi- They are im- 
 
 ■*• ^ perfectly 
 
 liary capital, by the use of which such dis- ever'/where- 
 coveries add to the efficiency of the national own country. 
 industry, have been everywhere slow and imperfect; 
 and in many, and those unluckily the most extensive, 
 countries, it is hardly perceptible. This, indeed, is 
 even true of our own country, an exceptional pheno- 
 menon in the history of the world ; — how much more 
 true of the rest of it.
 
 74 THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH DETERMINES [lect. vi. 
 
 LECTUEE VI. 
 
 ox THE DISTEIBUTIOX OF WEALTH. 
 
 SYLLABCrS. 
 
 The distribution of Wealth determines the social and political relations of 
 society. — Peculiarity in regard to the division of the raw produce of the earth — the 
 land j-ields a surplus — this surplus limits the numbers not employed in agriculture, 
 and determines their occupation — the possessors of it dctennine of what kind shall 
 be all other productions and occupations. — -Food the first object of man's industry. — 
 Non-agriculturists not necessarily employed in producing wealth — they may be 
 employed in the defence and maintenance of the State. — Some part of the surplus 
 produce is applied to the support of laborers producing other commodities. — The 
 efficiency of agriculture in reference to this surplus is always to be kept in yiew. — 
 Primary division of Revenue into AVages, Profits, and Rent— early connection of 
 Avages with rent — their subsequent separation — when associated together must' be 
 treated of jointly. — Wages the rewai'd of personal exertion — those of manual laborers 
 determined by the extent of the fund destined to their maintenance compared with 
 their numbers. — The labor fund made up of different parts— the great mass of 
 laborers produce their own wages — of other laborers, some are maintained by the revenue 
 of their employer ; while others are maintained by the capital of those who employ 
 them — the social and economical position of these three sets of laborers are different. 
 — Self-produced wages are by agriculturists — their tenures various — and are deter- 
 mined by the manner in which the land is appropriated. — The first cultivators of the 
 soil not its proprietors — the soil appropriated by communities, not by individuals — 
 the owners therefore distinct from the cultivators — the latter mostly hcrechtary 
 occupiers. — "NVTicre they exist indirect taxation not possible. — The people have, not- 
 withstanding, been powerful, luxurious, and warlike — and possessed of large revenues 
 — arising out of the surplus produce yielded by a wide extent of territory. — Mutual 
 dependence of the chiefs or owners and cultivators the origin of hereditary right. — 
 No separate capitalists then in existence. — The State interested in keeping the 
 cultivators attached to the soil. — This condition of things leaitls to hereditary 
 succession — and it involves the connection of wages with rent. — No such connection 
 between them in our o-wn country. — The condition of the early cultivators totally 
 different from that which prevails with us. — The laborers who subsist on the revenues 
 of others an important class. — The non-agriculturists in Asia dependent on that 
 portion of the labor fund. — Gradual conversion of unproductive to productive 
 laborers in England — no such change in Asia. 
 
 \ In entering on the subject of the Distribution of 
 Wealth, we have opening before us some of the widest
 
 LECT. VI.] SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RELATIONS. 75 
 
 departments of political economy. It is the distribu- 
 tion of its wealth which determines' always xhedistribu- 
 
 '' tion of wealth 
 
 the social, and most often the political, rela- soriirandpou- 
 
 n -, • . T ,", 1 tical relations 
 
 tions 01 human society ; and until we have of society. 
 analyzed it, we cannot understand their internal me- 
 chanism. This is obvious enough, if we regard nations J 
 only at one point of time, and seek to understand 
 their actual condition. But the vital and lasting impor- 
 tance of our knowledge of the causes which determine 
 that condition, becomes fully apparent only w^hen we 
 contemplate human societies as capable of progress, and 
 scrutinize the laws which govern their advance, stag- , 
 nation, or decay. ^ '^ 
 
 "We have already pointed out the circumstances 
 which determine the comparative power of nations to 
 produce wealth. We know that the utmost power has 
 never been attained at all; and that nations lag short 
 of it at different intervals and stages. The growth of 
 favorable or unfavorable circumstances in some nations, 1 
 the causes of stagnation or extreme slowness of progress 
 in others, will most conveniently unfold themselves as 
 we are analysing their modes of distribution. 
 
 Before making a formal division of the subject, let 
 me premise a few remarks by the way, on the Peculiarity as 
 
 ,. . i> li T ^. ,, to the division 
 
 peculiar importance oi attendin"; carelullv to of the raw 
 
 ^ ^ o ./ produce of the 
 
 the division of the raw produce of the earth. """"• 
 A certain portion of this produce must, of course, be 
 left in the hands of those who labor on the soil, — for 
 their maintenance, for seed, for the sustenance of ani- 
 mals, and for the continuance of cultivation ; but the 
 arrangements of Providence are such, that the earth, all 
 but invariably, produces other wealth than this. The
 
 76 . DIVISION OF THE RAW [lect. vi. 
 
 agricultural labor of a family produces, in almost every 
 case, more than sufficient for its own maintenance and 
 ,,, , , . „ the continuance of cultivation. That quantity 
 
 The land yields ^ '' 
 
 a surplus- ^^ wealth we may call the surplus produce o^ 
 the soil.^ This phrase is, I think, quite intelligible, 
 though, used as it is used here, it is perhaps new. 
 There are one or two broad propositions respecting it, 
 which should never be lost sight of in tracing the 
 this surplus economy of nations. First, its amount limits 
 number not tlic numbcr of tho non-agricultural population 
 
 employed in 
 
 af/ddl\T-'' of the earth ; secondly, its distribution deter- 
 occupation— miuos the occupation of that portion of the 
 population, and the nature of the commodities which 
 they produce. It is obvious enough, taking all the 
 nations of the earth, that the non-cultivators must 
 subsist on the surplus produce of the cultivators. There 
 can evidently be no more of them than that surplus 
 produce can support. Every addition to the efficiency 
 of agriculture adds to the number of non-agricultural 
 laborers, and something therefore to the mass of wealth 
 other than raw produce, which the population of the 
 \ world can produce. A weak and deficient agriculture 
 ' is a decided and insurmountable bar to the increasing 
 abundance of the luxuries, comforts, and ornaments of 
 human society. But further, it is the habits and tastes 
 the possessors of thc pcrsous bv whom this surplus is appro- 
 
 of it deter- . . 
 
 produ^'ctiolfs^'^ priated, which determine what shall be the 
 trons".'"'"'''" commodities produced by the non-agricultural 
 laboring population. They must do something to get a 
 
 ' We must be careful not to confound this surplus produce with surplus profits, a 
 phrase which involves very different ideas, and with whicli we shall become familiar 
 enougii hereafter.
 
 LECT. VI.] PRODUCE OF THE EARTH. 77 
 
 part of the surplus produce of the land, for they must 
 live on it ; but what that something shall be, must 
 depend on the demand of those who have the power 
 of advancing that surplus. We read the truth and the 
 importance of this fact in the monuments and produc- 
 tions of almost all the nations of the world, both in 
 past and present times. Babylon, Egypt, Persia, India, 
 as well as Europe during its progress from barbarism to 
 its actual condition, and the gigantic infancy of America, 
 all bear testimony to it. 
 
 Food is the first object of man's industry, and a 
 large portion of the human race produce little 
 
 c> i- ■>- Food the first 
 
 more than is necessary to sustain the laborers °Etry If" 
 who produce it. When a quantity appears 
 sufficient to maintain other ranks, the destination of 
 that quantity determines what the employment of those 
 ranks shall be. They are not necessarily employed in 
 producing wealth at all. They may, as a Non-a-ricui- 
 body, consist of the rude dependants of the necessarily 
 
 *' ' ■*■ productive of 
 
 rude aristocracy of a rude people ; and give '^^^^''^- 
 their masters what is, under such circumstances, their 
 most essential want, viz., protection from violence. At 
 this stage, the surplus produce is really applied they may be 
 to the military defence of the State. It theddenreand 
 
 " maintenance of 
 
 directly, too, supports the judicial system of ^^'^st'''«- 
 some nations — for example, that of Europe under the 
 prevalence of the Feudal system. A part of some portion 
 it, and ultimately by far the greater part, produce' is'^ap- 
 is employed in maintaining laborers who pro- uZms pro- 
 duce non-agricultural commodities. It be- commodities, 
 comes then a dii-ect source of the wealth of nations, 
 and the nature of these commodities is determined
 
 78 DIYISTON OF REVENUE [lect. vi. 
 
 by the habits and tastes of those who have the disposal 
 of such surplus. 
 
 These remarks are meant to supply some guidance 
 The efficiency durluG' our morc formal investigation of the 
 
 of agriculture 
 
 thi7lu7p"ius/° I'dws which govern the distribution of wealth. 
 kepun view. Tlicir purposo will have been answered if you 
 keep steadily in mind, during our progress, the impor- 
 tance of attending specially to the causes which deter- 
 mine the efficiency of agriculture, and which therefore 
 limit the numbers of the non-agricultural population, 
 as well as the constant influence which the mode of 
 distributing the surplus has on the productions of non- 
 agricultural industry, and on the position of the non- 
 agricultural producers of all the nations of the earth 
 who have resorted to cultivation. 
 
 It has been usual with Political Economists to 
 Primnrydivi- dcscribo all tho wealth of nations as primarily 
 
 sion of rcvpnuG • 
 
 into Wages, divldcd luto thc Waq-es of Labor, the Profits 
 
 Profits, and " 7 
 
 ^^"'' of Stock, and the Pent of Land. Objections 
 
 might easily and plausibly be made to this division. 
 Still it will be found convenient, and will assist us in 
 our task, without obliging us to reject or modify a 
 useful mass of previous investigation. 
 
 But in adopting this division, I shall not treat its 
 Enriyconncc p^rts qultc iu thc Ordinary succession. We 
 wi'th'kent-'' shall begin with the Wages of Labor. But 
 there is a stage of society in which the wages of labor 
 are mainly determined by the rent of land ; as, on the 
 other hand, the rent of land is mainly determined by 
 the wages of labor. And wages and rents, over the 
 cultivated surface of the globe, are, for the most part, 
 determined by this mutual influence. In another and
 
 i,ECT. VI.] INTO WAGES, PROFITS, AND RENT. 79 
 
 a later period of social advance, the causes wliich 
 determine the wages of labor and the rent of their subse- 
 land are entirely dissevered and distinct, and tion-' 
 the rent of land becomes wholly dependent on the profits 
 of the stock employed on it. We shall treat the subject 
 in the order pointed out by these facts. That is, 
 when the wages of labor and the rent of land 
 
 when asso- 
 ciated to be 
 
 determine each other, we shall treat of them treated of' 
 jointly under the head of wages. The subject 
 of the rent of land, when wholly dependent on the 
 profits of the stock employed on it, must be postponed 
 and treated separately, after we have treated of the 
 profits of stock generally. 
 
 The wages of labor consist of the reward of mere 
 personal exertion, at whatever time and in wn^e^ the re. 
 
 ^ ' ward of 
 
 whatever form that reward reaches the hand p^j^s^"^' «"- 
 of the laborer. The wages of manual labor will prin- 
 cipally occupy our attention. When we mean 
 
 those of ma. 
 
 to include the wages of higher descriptions of Hettrmi'nerb 
 labor due notice will be given. The wasjes the fund"de''s. 
 
 ^ tilled to their 
 
 of individual labor are determined by tAvo TompaTeT^ith 
 
 11/1 j_p -1 It ^ IT their numbers. 
 
 . by the amount oi wealth devoted 
 
 to the purpose of maintaining laborers; 2. by the 
 number of laborers among whom that amount of wealth 
 is divided. The amount of wealth devoted to the 
 maintenance of labor constitutes the labor fund of the 
 world ; and the amount so devoted in any country con- 
 stitutes the labor fund of that country. The labor fund 
 of the world consists of portions of wealth The labor fund 
 which reach the laborer from different hands, different pLts. 
 which portions increase, diminish, or remain the same 
 from different causes and under different circumstances.
 
 80 LABORERS IN RELATION TO WAGES: [lect. vi 
 
 To understand these causes of variation and their results, 
 we must begin by a division of the labor fund. 
 It separates itself easily and obviously into three 
 parts. 
 
 By far the largest portion of the laborers of the 
 The great wliolo huinau raco are peasant cultivators ; 
 Sborers pro- tliat is, tliev cultlvato with their hands a 
 
 duce their own " 
 
 wages- parcel of land, and the wages of their labor 
 on it consists of the whole or a portion of the produce. 
 The wages so obtained we will call self-produced wages. 
 Those who receive them may be described either as 
 peasant cultivators or unhired laborers. A second group 
 of other of laborers subsist on the revenues of other 
 
 laborers, some 
 
 b^'he rlVemie cksscs expcuded in their maintenance. They 
 pioyer-"'" may be called hired dependants. Such are 
 obviously all menial servants, and all artizans employed 
 by persons advancing their wages from their own in- 
 comes, and consuming unproductively the commodities 
 they j)roduce. These constitute a much larger pro- 
 portion of the mass of human laborers than is apparent 
 without some observation. Whole nations maintain the 
 bulk of their artizans on the direct expenditure of the 
 revenues of customers who mean to consume their com- 
 modities, and not on advances from capitalists who mean 
 to exchange theii* commodities ; and the nations who do 
 not, at present, so maintain their artizans, have done 
 so at some earlier period of their career. The third 
 and some, divlsiou of tho labor fund consists of what is 
 
 again, are 
 
 thecap"ta'/of^ propcrly called capital, that is, of the stored- 
 
 their em- - „ i n i i • n 
 
 pioyers. up rcsults 01 past labor used with a view to 
 
 profit. Such stored-up results, we know, are used for 
 many purposes, and, among others, to advance the
 
 LECT. VI.] THEIR ECONOMICAL POSITION. 81 
 
 wages of a certain number — not a proportionably large 
 number — of the human race. 
 
 These three divisions of the labor fund of nations 
 are all used to effect the same purpose, that xhe social and 
 
 •'•■'■ ' economical 
 
 is, to support laborers ; but fi'om differences in ['hese^hrle 
 the sources of the three, and in the hands are different. 
 from which they are received, they give to the laboring 
 classes they support very different productive power, 
 and place them in very different economical, social, 
 and indeed political, positions. To trace these differ- 
 ences, we must of course keep the different divisions of 
 this great fund distinct in our investigations and 
 reasonings. ' — j 
 
 The self-produced wages of unhired laborers are ' 
 derived from the land, and the extent and seif.produced 
 
 ' wag'es are by 
 
 characteristics of their sub-divisions are deter- tudst"- 
 mined by the manner in which private property in 
 land is held. The peasant cultivator may 
 
 ■"■ *' their tenures 
 
 be — 1. a proprietor; 2. a tenant of an indi- ^^™^^- 
 vidual landholder ; 3. a tenant of the Sovereign or State ; 
 4. he may have an hereditary interest in his land con- 
 jointly with the State, that is, he may be an hereditary 
 occupier. Into one or another of these classes the 
 wants and necessities of our nature drive the largest 
 portion of the human race. In which class they ^nd are deter. 
 
 •*■ *' mined by the 
 
 shall exist is determined by the manner in 'vhlch th" lana 
 which the soil is appropriated; and the ap- priated. 
 propriation of it by some or other class of proprietors 
 is determined by human instincts, hardly less universal 
 than the wants of the race. ^ ^ 
 
 It is obvious that when a nation is driven to agri- 
 culture for subsistence, some means of maintaining the 
 
 6
 
 63 THE FIRST CIJLTIVATOES NOT PROPPJETOES. [lect. vi. 
 
 cultivators must be resorted to. In the infancy of 
 society, capital and capitalists do not exist. The culti- 
 vator then must maintain himself out of what he pro- 
 duces. There are no revenues of other classes applicable 
 to his maintenance. He must exist therefore as a 
 laboring proprietor or a laboring tenant, or under some 
 modification of either of these characters. N'ow 
 
 The first culti- 
 
 Joirnotlts^' the occupying cultivators of the soil, it might 
 proprietors. ^^ ^^^^^ sight appcar; would naturally, in the 
 
 infancy of society, be proprietors, — 
 
 "The landis all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Provideuce their guide." 
 
 There are not wanting plausible grounds for arguing 
 that the soil is the common property of every popu- 
 lation, and that injustice is done when any part of it 
 is appropriated by some individuals to the exclusion 
 of others. Without either questioning or admitting 
 the justice of these views, it is enough, for our purpose, 
 to say that the history of the world shows they are 
 utterly unfit to throw light upon its actual economical 
 progress. An instinct, apparently not much less impera- 
 The soil appro- tlvc thau tlic dcslrc of food, has incited com- 
 communi'ties, munitics to assumc to themselves a ri^ht of 
 
 not by indi 
 viduals — 
 
 O' 
 
 property in the soil they occupy. This once 
 done, the manner and form in which the soil is held 
 by individuals depends on their respective governments. 
 This is equally true in the democratic states of America 
 and in the despotism of the East. In the case of 
 nations who cgmmcnce their career in a state of infant 
 civilization, as well as in that of large populations who
 
 LFXT. VI.] HEREDITARY OCCUPIERS. 83 
 
 have never advanced beyond that state, this appropri- 
 ation of the soil has placed its surplus pro- , 
 
 ■•• -'■■'- the owners 
 
 duce in the hands of parties distinct from the Sfct Lm 
 cultivators, and the distribution of that fund 
 has initiated and supported all the other classes, and 
 has given rise to the wealth which supplies the 
 means of maintaining governments, literature, and all 
 the non -agricultural members of society. A time may 
 arrive in the progress of mankind (in our days it may 
 be said to have partially arrived), when the surplus 
 remains in the hands of the peasants themselves. At 
 present we will pass in review the actual progress 
 of society, as we can trace it in the past history of 
 the human race. 
 
 OF HEllEDITAllY OCCUPIERS. 
 
 These laborers have always constituted the largest 
 portion of the aofricultural population of Asia. 
 
 •^ '^ ■'■■'■ The laborers 
 
 Of our Indian subjects they form a large herodLry 
 majority. They are, in fact, the inevitable 
 offspring of the mutual necessities of governments and 
 people situated as those of Asia have been. The form 
 of their government led to the claims and exactions 
 of the Sovereign, while his obvious interests led to 
 the practical rights of the occupiers to an hereditary 
 interest. 
 
 It is a common and indeed obvious remark, that 
 amona: bodies of cultivators of simple habits 
 
 *^ vhere they 
 
 and inhabiting a warm climate, the indii-ect tolt/o"n''not* 
 
 taxes which are so productive in our own 
 
 country cannot be levied to any great extent. Spirituous
 
 83: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF TWO CLASSES [lect. vi. 
 
 liquors, malt, sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, and wines 
 produce in England many millions to the State. It 
 would be vain to expect even a reduced shadow of such 
 a revenue from a body of Asiatics consuming little or 
 nothing but what they themselves produce from the 
 land they occupy. Yet, during the long series of ages 
 The people throuQ'h wliicli we can trace them, powerful 
 
 hiive notwith- *-" 
 
 powerful, ''''''° governments and, indeed, large empires have 
 warfike-' ^" existed on the soil of Asia. They have like- 
 wise been luxurious and warlike, eminent, too, in the 
 fine and domestic arts, and expensive as to their armies. 
 For these things, in large States, large revenues are 
 and possessed requirod, and there existed one only, but 
 
 of large i rr» • n i 
 
 revenues- apparently a sufficient, source of such revenues. 
 The land divided among cultivating peasants produces 
 more than they consume in cultivation and in the 
 arisin-outof maintcnancc of their families, and leaves, in 
 
 the surplus 
 
 'Teided'^bya ^^ct, a surplus wliich may be appropriated by 
 tlnkory!'" ° tho Statc. Ilcnce there arises a government 
 revenue which, when extracted from a wide extent of 
 country, may be large without being burthensome, and 
 may support the magnificent expenditure of an oriental 
 monarchy, without supposing the people to be indivi- 
 dually rich. The influence of the distribution of that 
 revenue on other classes we shall observe by and by. 
 At present we are concerned only with the cultivators — 
 with those who pay a revenue to the Crown, — not those 
 who receive revenues from it. Looking to them and to 
 Mutual <io)«>n- tlic Sovcrciffn, we have clearly before us two 
 
 dence of ^ ^ •' 
 
 eult^valor3^lH■ classcs, to tlic cxistonce of one of which the 
 
 origin of here- , £• i i • 1 j il 
 
 Hilar) right, posscssiou 01 laud IS necessary, and to tiie
 
 LECT. VI.] THE ORIGIN OF HEREDITARY RIGHT. 85 
 
 support of the other a share in the produce of that 
 land. In this state of things a habit of hereditary 
 occupation soon springs up and becomes a modified 
 right. We need not puzzle oui'selves about the religious 
 or other sanctions to such rights which may sometimes 
 be traced. It is enough that the habit is deeply rooted 
 in the necessities of one party and the wants, almost 
 amounting to necessities, of the other. 
 
 Whenever the occupiers of the land in such coun- 
 tries are laborers producin2: their own sub- 
 
 ■*■ >-' No separate 
 
 sistence, there exists no class of capitalists then^in'exis- 
 able and willing to advance wages to them. 
 In their case, if, on the death of the father, the family 
 ceased to have any claim to the occupation of the soil 
 they must perish. No large population deprived of 
 every other resource would submit to this without a 
 struggle. But so far from wishing to deprive them 
 of the riffht of succession, the State has an The state 
 
 '-' ' interested in 
 
 obvious interest in retaining them on the land, cumlafor'r 
 
 , . n ' ji* li* r> ' J attached to the 
 
 and even m eniorcmg then* retention oi it, sou. 
 if force were at all necessary for that purpose. Such 
 was the origin of serfdom, and of the numerous bodies 
 of men who, during the later days of the Eoman 
 empire, existed in its provinces, under an indefinite 
 variety of names — not slaves, nor freemen, but culti- 
 vating the land as a condition of existence, and occupy- 
 ing it hereditarily ; partly, too, for the profit of other 
 classes, who, unless they shared in the wealth produced 
 by this labouring population, would have no revenues 
 at all. 
 
 A body of occupiers under the State, when it is
 
 86 ■ CONDITIONS WniCII DETERMINE [lkct. vi, 
 
 tolerably well ordered, are ordinarily in a better con- 
 dition than those who labor for subordinate landholders. 
 It is true the State has an apparent interest in reducing 
 the wages of their labor (that is, what they are allowed 
 to retain of the produce), to the lowest possible point, 
 and too often the pressure becomes painful and mis- 
 chievous. But experience soon proves that the laws 
 of nature oppose an impassable barrier to the progress 
 of the exactions that can be made under such circum- 
 stances. The cultivator must be allowed enough to 
 continue his industry and maintain himself while he 
 labors, or cultivation must fail altogether, and with it 
 the revenue it produces for the State. But something 
 more than this is necessary, if the revenue of 
 
 This state of "^ ' 
 
 to hfredTtai'y tho Statc Is to bc continuous. When the cul- 
 
 successiun- 
 
 tivator dies, he must leave a successor, and 
 these successors must be the children of the class. He 
 must therefore, while he lives, be able to rear up a 
 family which will supply such successors. Now the 
 death of half the children born before they arrive at 
 years of maturity, may be assumed as a low average 
 proportion. To keep up a nation of cultivators, they must 
 have incomes which will enable them to support at 
 least a family of four children, where two of them are to 
 die before years of maturity. If less income were left 
 them, an increase in the rate of mortality would ensue, 
 and a gradual decrease in the number of cultivators 
 must be the inevitable result. But such ultimate results 
 are seldom brought about insensibly and quietly. As 
 the peasants become sensible of the pressure, and feel 
 the existence of tliemsclves and their families at stake.
 
 No such con- 
 nection be- 
 tween them in 
 
 LECT. VI.] THE INCOME OF THE EARLY CULTIVATOES. 87 
 
 desertion and resistance are their usual resource — and 
 struggles between tyranny and desperation begin, which 
 disfigure the story of such States, and ensure their 
 poverty and' weakness. 
 
 Such a condition of things involves that mutual 
 dependence of Eent and Waares on each other ana it involves 
 
 ^-^ the connection 
 
 which has been before alluded to. In a cer- 
 tain stage of society, our own for instance, 
 the amount of Eent depends on the quantity ourTountry 
 of Profits made on a given spot of land, which is 
 in excess of what the same capital would realize 
 in other employments. The capitalist undertakes all 
 the expenses of cultivation, the maintenance of the 
 laborers among the rest. He must have a rational 
 prospect of making as much Profit as he could make 
 in any other occupation, or he would not hire the land ; 
 and he will not long continue to make more, for the 
 competition of other capitalists would prevent him from 
 so doing : and in this way the Pents of a country so 
 circumstanced come to be adjusted. But this is not an 
 early, nor is it a wide-spread, state of thincrs. _ 
 
 ^ ' ^ > *-' Ihe condition 
 
 At the birth-time of agriculture, no capitalists uv-Itorrtot^<aiy 
 
 ... , . „,.. ajI different from 
 
 exist to take possession oi cultivation. At the that ^vhich 
 
 ■*■ prevails with 
 
 outset, it is the earth and theii* own labor "'■ 
 which are the sole resources of the cultivators. Some 
 small capital must no doubt be employed in the shape 
 of seed and implements ; but, if we observe the wide 
 surface of the earth occupied by such cultivators, wo 
 shall see that the capital they use is distinguished by an 
 important characteristic from that belonging to the capi- 
 talists in our own country. It cannot be moved from
 
 88 WAGES AS DETERMINED BY THE [lect. vi. 
 
 the task of cultivation to any other occupation, for no 
 such other occupation is open to the laborer. He must 
 find land to produce food, or he must starve. In this 
 state of things, it is obvious enough that the returns to 
 his slender capital are so mixed up with the wages of 
 his labor that, in practice, we cannot separate them. We 
 are conscious of the presence of two elements, but we 
 cannot argue upon the supposition of what would happen 
 if the capital were moved to some different employment. 
 It is impossible it should be moved, for if it were, its 
 owner must starve; and so far as the agricultural 
 laborer is concerned, there must be an end at once both 
 to the Wafires of Labor and the Eent of Land. 
 
 ON WAGES AS DETERMINED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF 
 INCOME OR REVENUE APPLIED TO THE MAIN- 
 TENANCE OE LABOR.* 
 
 We have gone through the classes of laborers whose 
 earnings depend on the produce of land they themselves 
 The laborers occupv aud cultivatc. The next class, we will 
 
 who subsist •*■ -^ ' 
 
 nuJ'i.ToThers obscrve, is that which subsists on the in- 
 
 an important o l^ ^ i i 
 
 class. come or revenue ol other classes expended on 
 
 Wages. This body of laborers is almost lost to sight 
 among ourselves, but it is of very considerable impor- 
 tance, in any picture of either the past or present 
 political or social economy of the nations of the eai:th. 
 The non-agricultural classes of almost every nation, 
 whether European or Oriental, have at one period of their 
 career depended on this exponditiu'c for their Wages.
 
 LECT. VI.] EXPENDITURE OF REVENUE ON LABOR. 89 
 
 The greater portion of the non-agricultural ^on-agricui- 
 laborers of Asia, once the most important, dependnnt on "" 
 
 ' that portion of 
 
 and the most populous, quarter of the globe, the kbor fund. 
 are dependant upon it still. It is obvious that wherever 
 any division of employment has taken place, some part 
 of the revenues of all classes is expended on the pro- 
 ducts of non-agricultural labor ; and, where no capitalist 
 intervenes between the artizan and the consumer of his 
 wares, the former is paid out of the income of the 
 latter. If circumstances are in the least degree favor- 
 able, this state of things does not last long. An inter- 
 mediate class appears. The consumer of the products 
 of handicrafts and of all non-agricultural industry no 
 longer buys of them but of the capitalist, and his 
 revenue ceases to be the direct and immediate source 
 of the Wages of the artizan laborer. This change has 
 taken place more or less perfectly in most of the 
 European countries, most perfectly in our own. It has 
 not taken place to any great extent in the East. 
 
 The early demand of those who had revenues to 
 expend in the maintenance of others was for their 
 personal services. We may observe this state of things 
 and its results in our domestic history, and as late as 
 the Wars of the Eoses. The celebrated Earl of Warwick, 
 the king-maker, is said to have fed every day in his 
 castles and houses forty thousand men ; and the habits 
 of the king-maker were those of all the landed pro- 
 prietors of his times. The main body of dependants 
 were, in those days, probably military retainers ; but 
 there is, also, little doubt that a portion of them were 
 artizans, like the workmen of the earlier French aris-
 
 90 WAGES AS DETERMINED BY THE [lect. vr 
 
 Gradual con- tocracv. Wlicn the habits of Enj^'land be- 
 
 version of un- *' ^-^ 
 
 prnduclive ^° camc moFc peaceful that proportion doubt- 
 Engiand. Icss becamo greater, and a part of the body 
 of these ^yorkmen began to range themselves under 
 capitalists who were rich enough to advance them theii- 
 wages, and set them continuously to work without 
 reference to the presence or demand of the actual 
 consumer. As the example of Europe shows us that 
 No such this body of men comes into existence in 
 
 change in 
 
 Asia. every society, the example of Asia, on the 
 
 other hand, shows us that there are causes which may 
 prevent their supercession and prolong their existence 
 for an indefinite period in the career of nations. In 
 the great monuments of Asia and Egypt we may observe 
 some of the results of their endurance, and, among the 
 consequences of their supercession, an increase of pro- 
 ductive power and wealth, and the appearance of a new 
 class in the State, to whom all influence over the non- 
 agricultural labourers is transferred. 
 
 Such has been, and still is, the extent of this large 
 body of laborers, who receive their wages from cus- 
 tomers and not from capitalist masters. Among our- 
 selves the class had shrunk to small dimensions as early 
 as the reign of Elizabeth. In the various handicrafts, 
 the master and his staff of journeymen and appren- 
 tices appear to have been the instruments of pro- 
 duction in the place of the insulated workman. In 
 our nascent manufactures, as soon as they began to 
 deserve the name, in the cloth and iron trade, the 
 capitalist was necessarily the laborers' employer. His 
 progress as the paymaster of all non-agricultural
 
 XECT. VI.] EXPENDITURE OF REVENUE ON LABOR. 91 
 
 labor became thenceforward rapid, and bis position as 
 such has been generally established, though it can 
 hardly be said to be fully completed. In almost 
 every neighbourhood a few independent workmen are 
 still to be found in the character of jobbing tailors, 
 shoemakers, carpenters, and other artizans. They are 
 more numerous in the northern than in the southern 
 counties, and in situations remote from the towns than 
 in those that are near to them. If we turn, however, 
 for a moment from the laborers who produce wealth 
 in the shape of commodities, to those who live on the 
 wages of personal services, such as the army and 
 navy, menial servants, and others, we shall find that, 
 even in England and at the present time, there exists 
 a body of individual laborers dependent on revenue for 
 their wages, not far short of the number of the agri- 
 cultural families of the country.
 
 93 
 
 ON POPULATION. 
 
 LECTUKE I. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 The subject stated. — Population increases more rapidly in some cases than in 
 others. — The caxises of retardation are all checks that diminish the births or increase 
 the deaths. — Malthus' division of these checks into vice, misery, and moral restraint, 
 defective. — Some habits that increase mortality not vicious, nor referable to misery. — 
 Moral restraint, in his narrow sense of the term, compelled him to refer to his other 
 two chocks all cases that would not fall witliin its limited sphere. — Various neutral 
 causes operate as checks to population. — Voluntary restraint the most influential 
 cause in retarding the increase of the human race. — The statement that food increases 
 at an arithmetical, and population at a geometrical, rate incorrect. — As population 
 increases its rate of progress diminishes. — Food may increase at a geometrical rate. — 
 In many countries it is a continual subject of exportation. — Population occasionally 
 falls short of its supplies of food. — The cause of this state of things an interesting 
 subject of inquiry. — Error respecting it avoided, by assuming that the power of 
 increase is limited by the subsistence each class requires to satisfy all its wants. — 
 Difl^erent classes expend different proportions of their income in food. — Checks to 
 population may be di\dded into vice, misery, voluntary restraint, and neutral causes 
 not comprehended under either of these divisions. — Their eifect with reference to 
 population generally. — Voluntary restraint arises from foresight and the desire after 
 secondary wants. — Foresight the prerogative of man — extends to the lowest orders 
 of society — its influence increases with civilization. — Division of wants into primary 
 and secondary. — The primary wants limited. — Secondary wants unlimited. — They 
 increase as men rise in the scale of society.— This shown by reference to difi"erent 
 ranks. — Additional and peculiar motives for restraint among the higher classes. — 
 Their feelings in this respect not imaginary. — Such restraint elevates and purifies the 
 character. — The imagination, in swaying the understanding and inclinations, is refined 
 and stimulated by it. — The passion for the sex softens the manners. — The desire for 
 family settlement an incentive to virtue among the middle classes also. — The eff'ects 
 of voluntary restraint not confined to the upper and middle ranks of society, but 
 descends likewise to the lowest classes. — Reference to vice, misery, and neutral 
 causes. — Caution to be observed in speaking of misery. — Some privations affect 
 longevity without occasioning misery. — Bad diet and unfavorable habits affect 
 longevity indirectly. — The most wholesome food seldom obtained in any case. — Vice 
 cannot properly include checks wliere there is no moral taint. — Its dominion suffi- 
 ciently large without unnecessarily extending it.
 
 94 CAUSES WHICH INFLUEXCE POrULATION. lkct. i.] 
 
 Ix the following lectures I propose to discuss: 1st — 
 The causes which affect the progress of popu- 
 
 The subject , 
 
 suted. latiou generally; 2ndly — The causes which 
 
 affect the progress of the laboring population in par- 
 ticular, and among these the influence on population 
 of fluctuations in the rate of wages ; ordly — The causes 
 which, under different circumstances, determine who 
 shall ultimately pay the taxes laid on commodities 
 consumed by the laboring classes — or, in other words, 
 the causes which determine the ultimate incidence of 
 taxes laid on such commodities. 
 
 The general subject of population I shall treat of 
 here only as subordinate to these two last heads of 
 inquiry. I shall treat of it therefore as shortly as is 
 consistent with clearness. The whole subject itself is 
 comprehensive and diflicult, yet its object may be stated 
 Population in- ^'©ry shortly. Bodies of men or nations mul- 
 rapuiwinsorae tiplv thcir numbcrs, independently of immi- 
 
 casesthanin ^ "^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 others. gration, much more rapidly in some cases than 
 
 in others. Now, what are the causes which prevent 
 those which multiply the slowest from increasing 
 their numbers as rapidly as those which multiply the 
 fastest ? 
 
 Those causes collectively form the checks to popu- 
 lation. Those checks, it is obvious, must com- 
 
 The causes of _ ' ' 
 
 lu 'JhcckTthrt pi"ise every circumstance which makes the 
 
 diminish the -, (•i*jif> ji t o 
 
 births or in- numbcr 01 births lower, or the number oi 
 
 crease the 
 
 deaths. deaths greater, than they would otherwise be. 
 
 We are in no condition to divide those circumstances 
 into a few distinct divisions. 
 
 Mr. Malthus attempted this, when he stated that they
 
 [lect. 1. DEFECTIVENESS OF MALTIIUS' THREE CHECKS. 95 
 
 might all be classed under tlie heads of Vice, sim!"orthtie'' 
 Misery, and Moral Kestramt : moral restraint vice, misery. 
 
 •/ ' and moral re- 
 
 being defined by him as abstinence from ^traim, detec 
 marriage, accompanied by a state of impeccable 
 chastity. If a single instance of frailty occurred, then 
 the restraint became vicious, and was no longer to be 
 referred to a moral cause. This enumeration of the 
 checks was both defective and unhappy. Vice, misery, 
 and moral restraint do not comprise all the checks to 
 population, unless we extend in an unjustifiable manner 
 the meaning of these terms. 
 
 If, indeed, we include under the head of vice every 
 voluntary habit, however free from moral taint, 
 
 ^ } ' Some habits 
 
 which increases mortality, and if, under the [norti,ii7/nrt 
 head of misery, we include all causes of in- 
 
 "^ ' nor referable 
 
 creased mortality which arise from the absence ^^ '"''"^' 
 of more sufiicient means, though free from conscious 
 sufiering, we may certainly extend our notions of the 
 efi'ects of sin and misery to an indefinite extent. The 
 lawyer, the student, who talk or read themselves to 
 death, are the victims of their vices. The man who 
 dies because he cannot afford the expense of a voyage to 
 Italy or Madeii'a, is the victim of misery. We may thus 
 introduce into action sin and miseiy, on a new scale, and 
 convey the most unfounded alarms as to the influence 
 of these evil things in controlling the progress of the 
 numbers of mankind. It is true, we may prevent 
 scientific errors by defining those terms so as to extend 
 their meaning, and make our propositions logically cor- 
 rect, though practically, and to the ordinary sense of 
 mankind, erroneous. I will not stop to examine the
 
 .Moral re- 
 straint in his 
 narrow sense 
 of the term, 
 
 96 NEUTR^y. CAUSES OPERATE AS CHECKS. lect. i.] 
 
 expediency of so dealing with the language of the 
 
 vulgar on such a subject and for such purposes. 
 
 In the third check, as limited by Mr. Malthus, we 
 
 meet not simply with a misuse of terms, but with a con- 
 fusion and misstatement of facts, which really 
 imparts an erroneous and sophistical character 
 
 comp<:iied h\m ^q qH tho couclusions based upon it. In defin- 
 
 to reier to his ■<■ 
 
 checks'au lug moral restraint, Mr. Malthus was unlucky 
 
 cases that , 
 
 Mould not fall enough to assert that, m all cases of absti- 
 
 «-ithin its hni- O 7 
 
 iteii sphere, j^gjjcc from marnago, when the chastity of the 
 parties is not absolutely impeccable, the sole cause at 
 work to stay the progress of population is vice. Thus, 
 if a dozen men defer marriage till thirty-five, with a 
 view to honorable progress to a station which they wish 
 their families to occupy, they may be energetic, learned, 
 honorable, useful, and yet, if a single instance of frailty 
 can be traced to each of them, vice becomes the sole 
 check which, in their case, has prevented their having 
 added largely to the population.^ 
 
 I have made these preliminary observations to 
 account for my not attempting to comprise all the 
 circumstances which retard the quickest possible pro- 
 gress of population under the heads of vice, misery, 
 and strictly moral restraint. Yice and misery we shall 
 find largely in action, no doubt, without extending their 
 dominion by artificial . additions to it ; but we shall find 
 Various ^00, a nuiiibor of other circumstances not j)ro- 
 
 operate fts pcrly conipriscd under either of them, blotted 
 population. i^y j-^Q moral taint and occasioning no con- 
 
 ^ Malthus was led to this cklusivc caloulatiou by the peculiar circumstauccs under 
 which his tlieory was developed. Vice and misery were the sole chocks in his first 
 edition; moral restraint only appears in the second. It was an after-thought.
 
 LECT. I.] ERRORS IN REASONING ABOUT INCREASE. 97 
 
 scious suffering. TliesQ neutral causes arise and mul- 
 tiply themselves in the growth and changes of societies 
 of civilized men. They have as yet been imperfectly ob- 
 served, and when observation shall have been carried 
 much further, it will be time enough to decide on their 
 effects on the happiness and moral complexion of 
 society. 
 
 As to that voluntary restraint which we shall find 
 acting a giant's part in moderating the num- voluntary 
 bers of the human race, I shall be careful not most inAu- 
 
 ' ential cause 
 
 to treat it as wholly identified with vice, when iL'incSof 
 
 -I- T/ r* • I l^ 1 • J ' 1T11 *'^^ human 
 
 I cannot predicate oi it that it is sullied by race. 
 no one act of frailty, but shall endeavour to observe and 
 balance impartially its mixed effects on the morals and 
 the manners, and the wholesome energies of mankind. 
 
 Mr. Malthus announced it as a principle that food 
 increased in an arithmetical, and population The statement 
 
 ' ^ ^ that food in- 
 
 in a geometrical ratio. Neither of the facts ^'f','^f,tf,!;,,^° 
 
 ,1 -I I o ' 1 • i" • 3nd population 
 
 thus assumed, to lorm in combination a prin- at a geome- 
 trical rate — in- 
 
 ciple, is quite correct. If a population has •^°""'''^'^- 
 doubled in a very short time, twenty years for instance, 
 it will almost always be found that, at the end of the 
 time, the proportion of nubile females will be less than 
 what it was at the beginning. The population, k.creaTJs!''us°" 
 
 rate of pro- 
 
 as a whole, therefore, will not contain the same f^^H '^""'°- 
 elements for doubling in a second twenty years that it 
 contained at starting. The error is not at all important, 
 but it is one of many instances of the fallaciousness of 
 reasoning upon anything like a mass of human beings, 
 as if it were an arithmetical unit. But food, it is said, 
 has only a tendency to increase in an arithmetical ratio ;
 
 98 . POPULATION DOES XOT OUTSTRIP [lect. i. 
 
 and this is a more serious mistake, and powerfully con- 
 tributed to the false alarm which the Malthusian doc- 
 trines certainly created at their first promulgation. Is 
 this meant of the food to be produced by the whole 
 earth ? It is worth while to look at a little sketch of 
 the cultivated and uncultivated portions of the earth, 
 Food may in- r^ud It wlll bo clcar enouojh that food might 
 
 crease in a O C 
 
 geometrical incrcase in a geometrical ratio, or faster, for un- 
 told ages. But it will be said that the proposition is not 
 meant to apply to the food to be produced by the whole 
 earth, but to the food which can be produced on smaller 
 divisions of it. Put a population into a limited territory, 
 and it may be that you will quickly arrive at a state of 
 things, in which its rapid tendency to increase will out- 
 strip the possible increase of the nation's food, and the 
 people will be on the verge of positive want. 
 
 Now is this fact ? If so, it is clear that we shall find 
 all nations eating all the food they produce, and ready to 
 eat more. But this is not the case. With the excep- 
 inmanycoun- tlou of Euglaud aud Hollaud, every nation 
 continual sub- in EuroDo exports raw produce when a 
 
 ject of export- ■'■■'• ■*• 
 
 '"'°°- market can be found for it ; and some of them, 
 
 Eussia for instance, bury it, and leave it to rot, if it 
 cannot find a market. The populations are not outstrip- 
 ping by their numbers the supplies of food, yet this 
 state of things has lasted for ages. No steps, indeed, 
 are observable towards any other. 
 
 There are causes, tlicn, which occasionally prevent 
 popniatien oc- natlous {lOTR incrcasiug their numbers as fast 
 short of" its as their food increases. The fact is unques- 
 
 siipplies of ■*■ 
 
 ^"'"'' tionable. Such nations are numerous. They
 
 LECT. i] THE SUPPLIES OF FOOD. 99 
 
 occupy the land from the Eastern extremity of Europe 
 to the Atlantic. The knowledge we want is obviously a 
 knowledge of the causes which may, for ages, keep the 
 numbers of the people in the rear of their means of 
 existence, — of the nation's command of food, xhe causes of 
 We shall find the pursuit of that knowledsre an things* an" in- 
 
 ^ teresting- sub. 
 
 interesting, perhaps not a very easy task; but J«'='''^i"i"''-y- 
 the facts I have shown we must start with, are utterly 
 inconsistent with the dogma that population is always 
 increasing, or trying to increase, beyond the supplies 
 of food. 
 
 This error will be eliminated from our views, if 
 instead of assuming; that mankind are always Enor respect- 
 
 ^ "^ ing it avuided 
 
 pressing on to the limits of the food that can tiLt^'the puw'er 
 
 , -, -, ... of increase is 
 
 be produced, we assume, what is quite true, limited by the 
 
 ■*■ ' ' -"■ ' subsistence 
 
 that the power of increase is always exerted qulreslo'sltul 
 
 Iv all its 
 
 till it brings all ranks of men up to the limits ^vams. 
 of the subsistence each class requires in order to satisfy 
 its cravings, not merely for food, but likewise for the 
 commodities necessary to supply all the wants and grati- 
 fications which are essential to maintain them in comfort 
 and contentment. For instance, the worst paid class in 
 Eno-land, the a^rricultural laborers, expend Different 
 
 "-^ > o J i. classes expend 
 
 about two-thirds of their revenues in food, Jort[o"s 0^/°' 
 and one-third in other objects ; but all other info'odr""'^ 
 persons, whether laborers, or belonging to the interme- 
 diate classes, spend a much smaller proportion of their 
 means in mere food and necessaries, and a much larger 
 proportion on other objects ; and, it is clear enough, that 
 all these classes may be reduced to give up successively 
 their comforts and indulgences, and pass through a down-
 
 r 
 
 XOO . SURVEY OF VARIOUS CHECKS. [lf.ct. i. 
 
 ward career of many steps before the actual want of 
 food becomes the limiting cause of the increase of their 
 numbers. 
 
 If we imagine to ourselves what would be the result 
 of all classes increasing as rapidly as their means of j)ro- 
 curing mere food for young families of children, we shall 
 have before us an almost ludicrous picture, which will 
 give perhaps the shortest confutation of the dogma that 
 the physical powers of increase of mankind are really 
 constantly causing the increase of numbers up to the 
 point at which food must fail. In the meantime, whether 
 the physical power of increase does in practice increase 
 the number of mankind till they are pressed for food, or 
 only till they are pressed for subsistence, including many 
 other things besides food, — it is clear that the power of 
 increase is not sufficient to do either or both of these 
 things. 
 
 Wliat it is that prevents this power of increase from 
 pushing all nations to these extremes, what causes are 
 at work to check the full exercise of the mere physical 
 power of the human race to multiply indefinitely, is 
 the chief object of our inquiry. 
 
 These causes, once again, must comprehend all the 
 circumstances which make the number of deaths greater, 
 or the number of births fewer, than they would other- 
 checksto wise be. In the present state of our know- 
 
 populatioii ••■ 
 
 intovice!"'^"^ ledge, we may class them under the heads of 
 
 misery, volun- . . t 7 # 
 
 tary restrnint, vicc, miSGry, and vo limtarj/ Yestrnint ', together 
 comprehended wlth varlous uoutral causes which, though 
 
 under ritlier of . ivi i o t ' ^ n a 
 
 these divisions, they makc the number of births fcAver, or oi 
 deaths greater, admit at present of no definite classifica-
 
 LECT. 1.] FORESIGHT RETAEDS THE AGE OF MARRIAGE. loi 
 
 tion, and must be contemplated separately, and all their 
 results well weighed and balanced, before we pronounce 
 on the influence they exert on the morals or happiness of 
 nations. 
 
 Before we come to the limited and special case of the 
 laborers, who are by far the laro-er portion of 'I'I'f •" ^f^ct 
 
 ' "J o J. with reierence 
 
 the human race, a few words will not be ill i^nSj!'"" 
 bestowed on these checks as applicable to all classes. 
 And first as to voluntary restraint ? The do- voluntary re- 
 
 " straint arises 
 
 minion of this check rests upon two points in InTth^Se 
 
 • I . , , , i-i_ !_• n after secondary 
 
 the rational and moral constitution oi man. wants. 
 First, on his foresight; and, secondly, on the habit of 
 indulging secondary wants. Both of these are Foresi-ht the 
 
 I . J.-- 1 J i? j.1. • 1 prerogative of 
 
 peculiar to man as tne head ot the animal crea- -nan. 
 tion, and both are essential to the perfection and duration 
 of his supremacy. Other animals have no foresight of 
 the sufferings or privations that may result from the 
 increase of their numbers. Men have ; and this pre- 
 rogative of reason is the foundation of the moral and 
 social phenomena which begin to shew them- Extends to the 
 
 lowest g-rades 
 
 selves even in the lowest grades of human rnAuen^^in-'' 
 society, and which multiply and strengthen civilization. 
 their influence as civilization advances. There is, pro- 
 bably, no nation in which the ordinary ages of marriage 
 and of puberty exactly coincide. In order to examine 
 the exact mode of increase of the influence of foresight 
 in retarding the age of marriage, it will be convenient to 
 divide the wants and requirements of mankind into two ^ 
 classes. 1st, the want of those commodities division of 
 
 ; wants into 
 
 which are necessary to procure a healthful TecSry! 
 existence, and which we may call primary wants ; and,
 
 102 . COMPAKATIVE INFLUENCE OF [lect. i. 
 
 2ndly, the wish to become possessed of those commodi- 
 ties that are subsidiary to the satisfaction of other de- 
 sires, and which we may, for our purpose, call secondary 
 wants. The foresight which warns men of the danger of 
 limiiedf "''"'' their not being able to satisfy theii' primary 
 wants, has a limited influence, because the wants them- 
 selves are limited ; and the influence of prudence ceases 
 when the means are found of satisfying them. It is, 
 fortunately, far different with secondary wants. They 
 Secondary arc indefinite. At least we can see no limit 
 
 wants un- 
 
 limitea. ^Q ^|-,g comforts and luxuries which human 
 
 beings may consider essential to their well being and 
 happiness, and which they will avoid sacrificing by im- 
 prudent marriages. Now primary wants are limited. 
 The line which circumscribes them is not very well 
 defined ; but still there is such a line. The food, shelter, 
 and clothing, absolutely necessary to health, cannot be 
 extended beyond a certain point. If the fear of priva- 
 tions arising out of imj^rudent marriages stopped when 
 the means of gratifying these wants were seciu-ed, the 
 influence of foresight and prudence would stop much 
 sooner than it actually does. But the multiplication of 
 secondary w^ants has no limits that we can discern ; and 
 their influence in creating habits of prudence, increases 
 almost step by step with the increase of their numbers. 
 
 To test this proposition, we have only to observe the 
 [Secondary liabits of thc diA'crcut classes of any one popu- 
 
 wants increase , . _---_ - 
 
 , as men rise la latiou. W c uiav talvo our owu, where, as a 
 
 the scale ol' *' ■' ' 
 
 society. whole, we get more contrasts to observe. The 
 
 Irish agricultural laborer is the lowest on the list. He 
 marries the earliest. The blue books, emanating from
 
 LECT. r.] PRIMARY AND SECONDARY WANTS. 103 
 
 the Committees of the House of Commons, contain abun- 
 dant evidence that in the parts of Ireland where the 
 population was the worst off, the people married earlier 
 than where they were slightly better off. "We may accept 
 this fact as an illustration of a principle which '^^'^ '''°'^" ^y 
 
 •<- J- retert'iice to 
 
 will accompany us through our investigations ranks!"' 
 into the habits of all ranks of society. The sexual 
 attraction we may accept as a given quantity. The 
 motives to control vary in number and weight, and 
 become stronger and more efficient as men feel they 
 have more to lose by imprudence. The weight in one 
 scale is invariable ; that in the other scale increases as 
 the wants and enjoyments of different classes of society 
 increase. We have begun with the lowest ; let us ascend 
 in the scale. The small shopkeeper and the tradesman 
 do not marry as early as the agricultural laborers. Their 
 class is accustomed to comforts and indulgences which 
 demand a more protracted exertion, before they can be 
 secured for their families. The decent parlor, the com- 
 fortable bedding, the better clothing of the family, are 
 things not to be forfeited without pain, and a sense of 
 degradation, which the young tradesman would feel. 
 He shapes his path in life accordingly, and the class 
 marry discreetly. So far from their numbers increasing 
 with undesirable rapidity, the annals of all the corporate 
 towns in Europe shew that the families of the citizens 
 admitted to their freedom, offices, and honors, are con- 
 stantly fading away and disappearing. We may remark 
 it, as a merciful dispensation, that it is the wealthier 
 who disappear, and the poorer who rise to their places. 
 A cheerful ascent is the movement which characterizes
 
 104 MOTIVES FOR RESTRAINT INCREASE [lect. i. 
 
 the progress of civilized society. The dolorous descent 
 is the exceptional movement. We are any thing but 
 overstocked with the fallen scions of the wealthier 
 classes, while the multiplication of the newly risen, or 
 rising, is a phenomenon which meets us on every side. 
 
 If from dealers and tradesmen we take a step up- 
 wards, and survey the professional classes, we see, 
 perhaps, the most striking instance of the influence of 
 the creation of secondary wants in restraining early 
 marriages. New elements of ambition and desire pre- 
 sent themselves. A certain easy style and mode of 
 living are essential to the admission to educated society. 
 The desii'e, amounting almost to a necessity, of such 
 intercourse becomes interwoven with men's notions of 
 happiness. The deprivation of it is a terrible blight, 
 which makes life burthensome and odious ; while no 
 effort would be too great to ensure its attainment and 
 continuance. These feelings would lose much of their 
 force, if all ranks of society became equally edu- 
 cated. I will not affront the philantliropical optimists 
 by assuming that this will never be; but, until then, 
 such efforts will continue to be among the main moving 
 powers of society.^ As in these classes it requires a 
 longer effort to secure their accustomed means of sub- 
 sistence, with their almost vital though indirect result, 
 station and admission to the social intercourse of refined 
 and educated men ; so it is in these professional classes, 
 that the effect of high aims and multiplied enjoyments 
 
 1 There is nothing fanciful in these feelings. Such aspirations have a real and 
 reasonable object. Moreover, they elevate the gregarious and social instincts which 
 we observe in some animals, till they become wortliy to contribute to the happiness and 
 elevation of thr rational being.
 
 LECT. I.] AS MEN RISE IN SOCIETY. 105 
 
 leads, perhaps, most distinctly to prudence and absti- 
 nence from early marriage. 
 
 If we carry our survey yet higher in society, the 
 same principles are seen in action, with the like results. 
 It has often been remarked that there are more old maids 
 and old bachelors among the higher ranks than among 
 the intermediate or the lower. Into their motives for 
 self restraint, an additional and peculiar ele- Additional and 
 
 ' peculiar rao- 
 
 ment enters. They have some dignity to pre- straintTmong 
 serve, and appearances, which indicate that classes! '"^ 
 their descent and station have somewhat of pre-emi- 
 nence ; and, with means that would be ample in other 
 hands, they prefer celibacy to compromising their claims. 
 According to their varied estimate of the elements which 
 enter into our social machinery, some will applaud, some 
 deride these feelings ; while others will discriminate be- 
 tween their worth and moral character at different stages 
 of the social progress. Still of the reality of Their feelings 
 the influence of such feelings there is no doubt, not imagmary. 
 and they enter largely into the causes which promote the 
 voluntary restraint we are treating of. That some sexual 
 vice will be the result of the prevalence of such restraint 
 we cannot doubt. That, wherever a spot of such vice ap- 
 pears, the whole influence of the restraint on population 
 is to be treated as purely vicious, we have already denied. 
 Let us turn for a moment to what there is of eleva- 
 tino;, purifyinsr the character of nations, and '^^"'^ restraint 
 
 <-''•'••''-' / elevates and 
 
 imparting energy to the best exertions of their cTaracter!*^ 
 varied ranks, which must be estimated before we strike 
 the balance of the good and bad effects resulting from 
 the tendency of such restraint, which Providence has
 
 lOG RESTRAINT PURIFIES THE CHARACTER [lect. i. 
 
 made a condition of advancing civilization, and of its 
 multiplied comforts and enjoyments. Some difficulty 
 interposed to the indulgence of the passion for the seX) 
 is the foundation of man's value for it, and constitutes 
 the fii'st step to the exaltation and refinement of his feel- 
 ings. We cannot steadily observe the progress of society, 
 without tracing to this source an enormous influence 
 over its sentiments, and manners, and whole moral com- 
 plexion. We think, perhaps, too little of the practical 
 The ima^na- influcnce of tho imagination in elevating and 
 
 tionin swaving 'n* jii • i tj • • j^ ^ 
 
 the uiKier." puriiymsr the human mmd. It is an internal 
 
 standing and ^ t/ <J 
 
 i-efined'ind' '' powcr to wliicli tho function is assigned of 
 it. making the heart and intellect produce lessons 
 
 which sway the understanding and inclinations with a 
 force which neitlier the brutish intellect nor depraved 
 will of the savage can resist. The early poetry of almost 
 every nation shows that this stimulating and purifying 
 element of our nature is most certainly set in motion by 
 the existence of passion that is both refined and stimu- 
 lated by difficulties. The imagination, indeed, does not 
 stop here. It goes on extending its dominion, till at last 
 the universe, the external world, and that which exists 
 mysteriously within all material things, all passions and 
 emotions of which we are conscious, form but one mighty 
 instrument which produces tones that stimulate and con- 
 trol men in the moods in which they rise into a higher 
 state of existence than that of their mere animal nature. 
 A long, and not unpleasant detail, might be gone into, 
 founded on the history and traditions of almost every 
 nation upon earth, to prove that when this internal light 
 first begins to warm and to illuminate the souls of men
 
 LECT. I.] AND SOFTENS THE MANNERS. 107 
 
 and nations, it is ordinarily elicited by the struggle which 
 the conditions of social life happily make inevitable, for 
 means and opportunities of indulging in an innocent and 
 holy union between the sexes. 
 
 ISTor should we lightly pass over the influence of 
 passion on the manners of our race. The desire for an 
 object, longed for in hope and restraint, which we con- 
 sider to be of priceless value, but sensitive and fearful, 
 demanding continual forbearance and attention, and com- 
 manding our devotion ; how much does the constant 
 presence of such feelings contribute to soften forufJ'sex" 
 the deportment and bearing of men in their mann"ers/ 
 intercourse with each other, and to give bii'th to their 
 codes of manners and behaviour, which have been cha- 
 racterized with truth as the supplemental morals of 
 nations, scarcely less essential to their happiness than 
 the fulfilment of their more serious duties. The history 
 of chivalry, and of the customs and manners to which it 
 gave rise, would afford the best illustrations and com- 
 ment on this part of our subject. 
 
 But it may be said that we are looking only at the 
 culminating points of society, and are observing only 
 the hues that irradiate its summits, and not descend- 
 ing deep enough towards the roots of the ordinary habits 
 of mankind. Let us then observe the crowded ranks of 
 busy men as they advance into the paths of every-day 
 life, and seek to detect the aim and stimulus which is 
 urging and guiding them forward. To gain a character 
 for honor, integrity, truth, energy, such as may ^.miiy^'eui/""' 
 attract reliance on its acquirements, its abilitv, t'^^^ to vinue"' 
 
 -^ ' '' ' amnng- the 
 
 and efficiency, — what is the motive to cherish Ij'Jso!"^ ""^^"^^
 
 108 THE DESIRE FOR FAMILY SETTLEMENT [lect. i. 
 
 these, but the longing after a respectable establishment 
 in life. When the mere primary wants are gratified, 
 when somewhat larger means are necessary to satisfy 
 men's ambition, be it lowly and humble, or exalted and 
 craving, it is by the constant energetic display of such 
 vii'tues that the object is attained. To begin with do- 
 mestic servants. No class, perhaps, relies more fre- 
 quently, or more patiently, for ultimate settlement in 
 life on slow accumulations founded on faithful services, 
 seconded by a high character. No small proportion of 
 the comforts of their employers, and of their own re- 
 spectability, zeal, and worth, may be distinctly traced 
 to their cherished prospects of marriage and decent 
 settlement in homes of their own. The young trades- 
 man has always his little establishment and chosen 
 partner in view, and he defers marriage, and aims at 
 earning a character and the esteem of his neighbours 
 till he has suitable means for maintaining his house- 
 hold in what he esteems respectability. The physician, 
 the divine, the lawyer, the soldier, the sailor, struggle to 
 place themselves in a position to be fathers of families, 
 and masters of homes. The energies of the best years 
 of their lives are devoted to the attainment of these 
 objects, and the esteem and confidence of those above 
 and about them are essential to their success. The 
 very knowledge of this fact fortifies their efforts and 
 strengthens those habits of honor and of exertion by 
 which a large part of the population is characterized, and 
 by which, too, the whole nation profits and is adorned. 
 
 It is not merely then by the lights of imagination, 
 or by the softening of manners, that the necessity for
 
 LECT. I.] AN INCENTIVE TO VIRTUE. 109 
 
 restraint, and the consequent value for the sex and 
 yearnings after legitimate unions, benefits and exalts 
 our race. In all employments, from the highest rank 
 to the lowest, — energy, self-respect, honor, high-minded- 
 ness, continuous exertion, and the exhibition of the most 
 sterling qualities in active life, may be most distinctly 
 traced to the same cause. It is not, therefore, to poetry, 
 romance, or sentiment, that we must refer, when we are 
 estimating the value and results of those conditions of 
 society which postpone the age of marriage beyond the 
 age of puberty, but to a common place and almost arith- 
 metical estimate of the motives which impart energy, 
 respectability, and efficiency, to the daily efforts of the 
 great mass of society. 
 
 It will be observed, no doubt, that the voluntary 
 restraint of which we have been tracing some The effects of 
 of the moral and social results, is a restraint straint not 
 
 confined to the 
 
 rarely reaching to the lower orders, or the mass m1Udie''"a'!iks 
 of the people ; and affectinc^, therefore, but descend ^ike- 
 
 i- i- ' c" ' ivise to the 
 
 slightly, the progress of a nation's numbers. ^"'"^'^ '''^''^*- 
 This proposition, however, is only partially true. We 
 shall find instances where it is not true at all ; and 
 these instances in the case of a favorable and not impro- 
 bable progress of a nation's industry, may be multiplied 
 indefinitely. But we are not arrived at the point of our 
 investigations at which we shall be ripe for examining 
 this question. Before we can do this, we must take a 
 wide survey of the laboring populations of the globe; 
 must ascertain the sources of their subsistence, the rela- 
 tions between them and other classes which those sources 
 establish, and the result on the habits of the mass
 
 no rRIVATIOXS sometimes act as checks [lect. I. 
 
 during the progress of their social and industrial career. 
 We may then, perhaps, appreciate the extent to which 
 habits of restraint, caused by comforts and plenty, not 
 by scarcity of food, do actually influence the progress 
 and numbers of nations, or have influenced them in 
 times past, or may be expected to influence them here- 
 after. The principal value of this survey will obviously 
 be to enable us to take a discriminating view of the 
 position and prospects of our own laborers. But we are 
 far from this point of our inquiry, and must, at present, 
 attend to other preliminary matter. 
 
 Besides voluntary restraint, we enumerated three 
 Eeferenceto dlA'crcut classcs of causcs which make the 
 
 vice, mifery, 
 
 causes."'""^ uumbcr of births fewer, or the number of 
 deaths greater, than they would otherwise be, and so 
 act as checks to population. These were misery^ vice, 
 and neutral causes producing the same result. We will 
 speak now of misery. That we may avoid many serious 
 mistakes, and, above all, mistakes as to the providential 
 Caution to be p;overnment of the universe, we must be both 
 
 observed in O ' 
 
 muery"""^ cautlous aud distinct in oiu' use of this word. 
 In common talk we are very apt to speak of persons as 
 miserable, because we should ourselves be miserable if 
 we were in their condition. Alexander was miserable 
 because he had no more worlds to conquer. Many a 
 scion of high life is miserable because he must give up 
 an opera box, a carriage, a house at the proper part 
 of the West End, or a villa in the country and a stable 
 of hunters. Such persons may, if they please, be really 
 miserable at these privations ; but when they begin to 
 speak of all those who share their wants as being miser-
 
 LEfT. I.] WTTHOUT CAUSING MISEEY. Ill 
 
 able too, we laugh or shut our ears. Now privations 
 shared in by whole nations, and very large masses of 
 mankind, can be spoken of as making them miserable 
 with just as little reason. They create no conscious 
 suffering. They do not, in the least, interfere with the 
 happiness of the million; but they are unfavorable to 
 longevity, and seriously affect the rate of progress of the 
 numbers of population. 
 
 We may then divide privations into two classes ; 
 first, those which inflict no sufferinoj, but affect some priva- 
 
 ' tions which 
 
 the duration of life ; and, secondly, those o^„'siin"no"'^ 
 
 ,., , ' n- J fY> • 1 1-1 suffering, while 
 
 which do miiict sunermg, and which may some do. 
 properly be called — miser?/. If we look at the history 
 of the human race, we shall rarely, perhaps never, find 
 the mass subsisting upon food the most favorable to 
 health. They may have enough. It may be agreeable 
 to them : but it seldom attains that maximum of whole- 
 someness and nutrition which is essential to longevity. 
 Experience pretty decisively shews that labor, not exces- 
 sive, in the open air, with wheaten bread, meat, and 
 wholesome beer, taken in moderation, insure the greatest 
 amount of bodily vigor and constitutional strength ; and 
 whether this list of the most wholesome necessaries be, 
 or be not, quite correct, it will hardly be denied that the 
 food of the people is rarely indeed such as a committee 
 of physicians and philosophers would certify as being 
 the most conducive to health and constitutional vigor. 
 Now, whenever it falls short of this, it produces influ- 
 ences that are opposed to the progress of population. It 
 is, we must remember, indirectly — that is, not p,,^^ jj^t ^^^ 
 
 ,,.,,. Ti 1 / P unfavorable 
 
 by being the immediate and apparent cause oi habits, affect
 
 112 INFLUEXCE OF DIET AND DISEASE. [lect. i. 
 
 rTctiy!'^-' ''"^" death, — that bad diet, and the habits arising 
 out of it, increase mortality. There are, also, a certain 
 number of diseases to which human nature is liable, 
 such as fevers, colds, epidemics, measles, whooping 
 cough, and a long list of analogous disorders. Now the 
 extent to which these mow down the poj)ulation, and 
 make the number of deaths greater than they would 
 otherwise be, is considerable. This is more especially 
 the case among children. Even in England, where the 
 primary wants of the population are, perhaps, more fully 
 satisfied than any where else, not one half the popu- 
 lation live to marry. In Lancashire more than half the 
 children born, die under five years of age. 
 
 In estimating the causes which regulate the numbers 
 The most 0^ tlic humau race, we must bear in mind this 
 food seZra fact, that ,the food of nations and the necessa- 
 
 obtained in 
 
 any case. j,-gg q£ ]^^g ^j.g rarcly such as are most condu- 
 cive to longevity ; and that the antagonist forces, — the 
 diseases and ill health, which accompany our mortal 
 being, become more and more destructive as the strength 
 of nations diminishes ; although the havoc they occasion 
 can only be ascertained by examining large mmibers and 
 taking average results, as they rarely exhibit their eff'ects 
 nakedly and directly in individual cases. 
 
 I have given reasons for not extending the meaning 
 of the word misery^ when used to designate a class of 
 checks to population, to cases where there is no conscious 
 Vice cannot suffcriug. Tlic samc, and like reasons, supply 
 
 properly in. X- i- J 
 
 'n"which 'ttere pcrhaps a still stronger objection to using the 
 taint" '"""^ word vice as including checks where there is 
 no moral taint. But, even when we have taken this
 
 LECT. I.] VICE AS A CHECK. 113 
 
 precaution, the dominion of vice will still be luffiSy°" 
 
 , . „ large without 
 
 lamentably extensive. The direct victims oi ™^"j;;=Ji'„'"7|y 
 vice, as of privation, are few. The indirect 
 victims are numerous. All sinful habits which debilitate 
 the body, when prevalent among large masses of people, 
 produce an increase of the average mortality, and prepare 
 the way for the augmented fatality of all the ordinary 
 diseases which mow down mankind. Drinking and 
 sexual excess are those which most readily occur, when 
 we are speaking of vice as a check to population.
 
 134 WEALTH DEVOTED TO WAGES [lecf. 
 
 L E C T U E E II. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 The wealth devoted to wages constitutes the labor fund— this fund resolves itself 
 into three portions — the first consists of self-produced wages — the second of 
 revenue belonging to others — the third of capital — necessity of distinguishing 
 between them. — The mass of laborers are unhired cultivators — they have 
 existed for ages — and are either proprietors, tenants, or cultivators, with a 
 right of succession. — The appropriation of the soil by communities instinctive 
 
 — individual rights arise out of it. — General prevalence of unhired cultivators. 
 
 — Asia the chief seat of absolute monarchies — they derive a large revenue from 
 the soil. — Establishment of priesthoods which have protected the people from the 
 oppression of their rulers — decline of their influence in this respect. — Solomon an 
 instance of the monarch's power. — Exclusive dependence of cultivation on the laborers. 
 — Disastrous effects of excessive exactions by their rulers. — Under a moderate govern- 
 ment the condition of the laborer a happy one — conditions which in such case deter- 
 mine the laborer's wages — they have no reference to a general rate of wages and 
 profits, such as exist elsewhere — such a general rate impossible without a choice of 
 occupation — the bidk of laborers have no such choice — they have not the means of 
 procuring other employment. — Important distinction between their case and that 
 where labor and capital have mobility. — This state of things interesting to us with 
 reference to our Indian empire. — The independence of landowners in Europe has 
 there rendered the system of unhired laborers unpopular — the taille in France 
 contributed to this unpopularity — the revolution abolished the taille. — Re-appearance 
 of metayers in France. — Decline of other ancient forms of tenure. — Abolition of serfdom. 
 — Change of metayers into small proprietors — this latter class gradually l)ecomes the 
 most numerous. — Circumstances on wliieh the wages of peasant proprietors depend. — 
 Summary of preceding view. 
 
 After this slight and general view of the laws which 
 regulate population as they apply to all mankind, let 
 us descend to our particular subject, and see how they
 
 The wealth de- 
 voted to wages 
 is the labor 
 
 LECT. II.] CONSTITUTES THE LABOR FUND. 115 
 
 especially apply to the laboring classes, to those who 
 depend upon the wages of their industry. 
 
 These wages constitute the revenues of the mass of 
 the human race, and the amount of such wages deter- 
 mines the extent of their consumption. The particular 
 form in which they are received, determines in a great 
 measure the character of that consumption. We begin 
 then by tracing the causes which determine the amount 
 of the revenues of the laboring classes. All the mass of 
 wealth which is annually devoted to form the revenues 
 of those classes, constitutes the labor fund of the world. 
 The wealth that is so yearly devoted, in any 
 particular country, constitutes the labor fund fuml 
 of that country. The labor fund of the world univer- 
 sally, and that of each nation almost univer- "oj'.es""ifse"' 
 sally, consists of three different portions. The poruon?- 
 first portion is a quantity of wealth produced ^I'^^^^f^df' 
 b}'' the laborers themselves ; it may be called waffis-'* 
 collectively, self produced wages. The second portion 
 comprises a quantity of wealth not prodaced the second, of 
 
 A. -L J X revenue he- 
 
 by the laborers, but distributed to them by iTt'iurs-'' 
 other parties, to whom it originally belongs as revenue. 
 Such are the wages paid to menial servants, or to arti- 
 zans who are maintained, not by capitalists, but by the 
 customers who consume the articles they produce. 
 Almost all the non-agricultural population of the East 
 are maintained by this portion of the labor fund. The 
 third portion consists of a quantity of wealth capital'-'' "^ 
 which has been saved by its owners from consumption, 
 and is employed by them with a view to profit. It is 
 the creation of abstinence and accumulation. It is^
 
 116 THE THREE PORTIONS OF THE LABOR FUND: [i.ect. h. 
 
 measured by and identified with these, and can only 
 increase as they increase. 
 
 These several portions of the labor fund all effect 
 exactly the same purpose. They all support the laborer 
 who produces wealth. They all too form part of the 
 stock of wealth of the nations in which they exist ; and 
 it may be asked why we distinguish between them. The 
 necessity of auswcr to thls qucstion is, that they maintain 
 
 distinguishing- i i i , -, . 
 
 between theui. tho laborcrs who are dependent on them, m 
 very different positions ; and form a part of the stock of 
 wealth of nations, which increases under different cir- 
 cumstances, and is subject to different limits from its 
 other parts. These differences involve others in the 
 relations of the laboring class to the other classes or to 
 the State, both in regard to the development of their 
 productive powers, and to the circumstances which 
 determine the direction of the fluctuations of their 
 number. 
 
 For these reasons, it is essential to keep these three 
 portions of the labor fund very distinct during our inves- 
 tigations. The first, I shall call self-produced tvages ; 
 the second, revenue expended in tvages; and the third, 
 capital. Let me repeat that capital, in this phraseology, 
 is thus limited to portions of wealth saved from con- 
 sumption by the owner and devoted to the production of 
 wealth.^ 
 
 I shall first describe the position of the laborers who 
 
 ' If it be thought advisable not to separate wealth so saved from the other stock 
 of a nation from which hibor may be maintained, a somewhat different phraseology 
 must be adopted in distinguishing the different portions of the labor fund of the 
 world ; and some different term must be selected to distinguish that part which is 
 the result of, and is confined to accumulations, from tlie other two portions. I offer 
 no sucli new term, for I am convinced the old terminology is the most convenient, 
 and I (■mi)loy vapiUil in tlie sense that Mr. Malthus deiiuedit.
 
 LECT. ii.J THE FIRST— SELF-PRODUCED WAGES. 117 
 
 depend on each portion of the labor fund, and afterwards 
 explain the causes which determine, under different 
 circumstances, the fluctuations in the amount of their 
 wages. By proceeding in this course, we shall more 
 readily learn to appreciate the effect of such fluctuations, 
 either among different nations, or, when the case de- 
 mands it, among different classes of laborers in the same 
 nation. 
 
 The laborers who live on self-j^roduced wages — the 
 unhired laborers — come first. These consist 
 
 Unhired culti- 
 
 almost wholly of laboring holders and culti- the^nLs'or 
 vators of lands. They occupy by far the 
 greater part of the earth's surface, and form the larger 
 part of the population of the kingdoms and empires of 
 the world, with not more than one or two exceptions. 
 Their wages go through no process of accumulation or 
 saving, but exist only as a stock for immediate consump- 
 tion. They suppose no direction of labor, and no other 
 stock except the laborer's own. The circumstances 
 which bring these laborers into existence are not obscure 
 or remote. The causes which determine their ^,^^y j^^^.^ ^^_ 
 long endurance over so large a part of the globe, ''^^ °r'-'&es- 
 and the obstacles to change which their position presents, 
 we shall find somewhat more difficult to analyze. Man 
 is born dependent on the products of the earth for exist- 
 ence : in the first stage of society he depends on its spon- 
 taneous products, on game, fruit, and roots, which still 
 maintain the natives of Australia. When these are 
 insufficient, it becomes necessary to cultivate the soil. 
 In some cases the occupiers of land produce their own 
 subsistence or their wages from it, as on the continent
 
 118 THE EXISTENCE OF OCCUPYING CULTIVATORS [lect. it. 
 
 all but universally, or tlieir wages are advanced them 
 by others, as in England and Belgium. Those who 
 produce their own wages show themselves in three dif- 
 n.Ki are either forcut charactcrs. They occupy the land either 
 
 proprietors, 
 
 cuuTvaVors, ^s proprictors, or as tenants of a body of land- 
 s'lt'ccession.' ° holdcrs, or, as in the case of nearly the whole 
 of Asia, as cultivators with some rights of hereditary 
 succession under the State. Now the existence of a 
 body of cultivating occupiers arises out of the necessi- 
 ties of the human being. The modification of position 
 which divides these occupiers into different classes, arises 
 out of certain human instincts hardly less potent and 
 constant in their operation than man's necessities. The 
 wants of man make the existence of a body of occupying 
 cultivators a necessity at an early stage of society ; and 
 over the greater part of the earth other causes come in 
 and insure their endurance even to our own days. Were 
 it not for the other human instincts I have spoken of, 
 these occupiers would belong to one class which is not, 
 ho\^ever, practically the most numerous, viz., that of 
 proprietors. When driven to cultivation by want of 
 food, it is not difficult to imagine a set of persons spread- 
 ing themselves over the national domain, and cultivating, 
 each with his own hands, what land is necessary for the 
 maintenance of his family. We should then have a body 
 of small proprietors living on land which would fetch no 
 rent, except it enjoyed peculiar advantages. An Ameri- 
 can writer has followed out this idea into a series of 
 calculations as to the causes and limits of the revenues 
 wliich the land might yield to other classes than the 
 occupiers. It is not our present business to dissect these
 
 LECT. II.] ONE OF THE EARLIEST NECESSITIES. 119 
 
 calculations, or examine this system. Such a class of 
 proprietors is not common, even under great modifica- 
 tions. Strictly, it exists nowhere. 
 
 The instincts which modify the position of the labor- 
 ing occupier have come cfiiciently into play ^he appropri. 
 
 „ ation of the 
 
 over the greater part oi the earth s sui'iace ; soil i,y com- 
 
 <-' i. -' munities in- 
 
 and throughout the wide regions where they ^^""'^''^^- 
 prevail, now determine, as they have done for a long 
 series of ages, the position of the laboring cultivators 
 and the amount and nature of their revenues, or wages. 
 The instincts we speak of lead to the appropriation of 
 the soil, first by the commmiity, subsequently by indi- 
 viduals, or to the institution of State governments of 
 various kinds. The good and bad consequences of this 
 appropriation, and of the early institution of govern- 
 ments, will meet us hereafter ; at present I invite atten- 
 tion only to the facts. I say it is an instinct which 
 causes the appropriation, by communities of men, of the 
 soil of the regions they inhabit, however loosely and 
 imperfectly they occupy them.^ When a civilized man 
 comes into contact mth the rudest communities, he must 
 traffic with them in order to keep up an intercourse. The 
 merest savage asserts the claim of his tribe to the soil, 
 and yields it only upon terms of barter. It would be 
 impossible, perhaps, to arrange such terms if some form 
 of government was not recognized and obeyed. Those 
 who compose that government, be they elders, chief- 
 tains, monarchs, or even general assemblies, have the 
 
 1 In the lower auimals we trace the same instinct. The town of Constantinople 
 is divided between different canine communities, who worry to death all intruders on 
 their domains, but live in a sort of dog-like amity with each other ; and all who ob- 
 serve poultry and domesticated aminals may trace the same feelings and the like 
 habits in them.
 
 120 CONDITIONS WHICH DETERMINE [lixt. ii. 
 
 disposal of this right of the community to the soil, and 
 deal with it, foolishly and rashly perhaps, but with an un- 
 questioned title. Where the soil is not parted with, but 
 indhidu;.! retained, a few steps in the paths of industry 
 out'oftt. *" and civilization lead to the carving of differ- 
 ent individual rights out of the general right of the 
 community. This has hitherto been the point at which 
 the position of the various classes of cultivating oc- 
 cupiers is first determined, a position which that class 
 ever changes with difficulty, and which, over the greater 
 part of the earth's surface, they have not changed at all. 
 When land is owned, either by the State, or a body of 
 landowners, the mere labouring occupier must submit to 
 some conditions involving always the securing of a part 
 of the produce to the owner, or he will not be allowed 
 to occupy it at all. And these conditions may not only 
 determine the amount of produce he shall retain, that is, 
 his wages, but may determine also his social condition. 
 
 By very far the largest division of such occupiers in 
 vdrnce^oTun- foi'mcr agcs of the world, and probably still 
 tors. the largest m our own age, consists oi culti- 
 
 vators who occupy land under the State with claims 
 legal or prescriptive to treat their right of possession and 
 occupation as hereditary, while they fulfil the conditions 
 imposed on them. This is the case with the greater part 
 of the peasants of Asia. Their condition would demand 
 investigation were it only from their numbers. To us, as 
 Englishmen, such investigation cannot but be more in- 
 teresting from the fact that these laborers constitute the 
 majority of the population of our Indian Empire and of 
 our other Oriental dependencies.
 
 LECT. II.] THE rOSITIOX OF LABORING OCCUPIERS. 121 
 
 From causes, of which the analysis is not necessary 
 for our present purpose, Asia has always been ^sia the chief 
 
 , JO -111 !• a 1 seat of absolute 
 
 the seat oi considerable monarchies. ouch mouaichies- 
 raonarchies imply armies and courts, and the expenses of 
 these must be supplied by a considerable public revenue. 
 Now among a people of simple and economical habits, no 
 such revenue can be raised by taxation in the shape of 
 excise and customs. In practice, therefore, they derive a 
 
 l3r°'c rcv6nu6 
 
 they are driven to a source of revenue which from the soil. 
 always exists, which is readily discerned, and easily come 
 at, and which has been found sufficient for the reason- 
 able wants of even the luxurious, and has partly been 
 based upon, and partly given rise to, or confirmed, the 
 claims of the State to be lords and owners, after a 
 fashion, of the soil. 
 
 With exceptional cases, rarely extending to any con- 
 siderable portion of its surface, the earth, by the kind 
 provision of the Creator, yields to the labor of a family 
 more than is sufficient to support that family, and to 
 carry on its own cultivation. This excess we may call 
 the surplus produce} The whole of this produce the 
 monarch or the State may appropriate without stopping 
 cultivation, and by the native rulers of Asia it has been 
 appropriated. In very remote periods, histori- Kstabiishmem 
 cal research dimly points out the existence of °''p"''''''°°''' 
 powerful priesthoods, whose useful office it was to pro- 
 tect the agriculturist from the violence of rude 
 warrior tribes and from oppression by the p>ote.tcd 
 
 J- ••- ^ people iro 
 
 monarch. To effect this last purpose they laid "heirruiers- 
 
 which have 
 the 
 m the 
 
 1 We must be careful not to confound this phrase witli surplus profits nf stock , 
 which are quite another thing.
 
 122 DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF [lect. ii. 
 
 down some limits as to the monarch's share, ^ which was 
 not to be overpassed without provoking the wrath of 
 Heaven. But in process of time the secular authority 
 of these priests either vanished altogether, or became too 
 feeble to withstand the requirements of the sovereign, 
 pleading his necessities and relying on his power. Per- 
 deciineof ^^ps tho most strlklug picture of the rapid, 
 
 their influence n'nii i • • i i i D J^^ 
 
 in this respect, aud, mdced, almost inevitable, progress oi the 
 royal demands is to be found in our own Scriptures. The 
 Jews, we know, discontented with the form of govern- 
 ment instituted for them by the Almighty, demanded to 
 have a king to lead them to battle as their neighbours 
 The case of bad. Thclr request was granted, not without 
 
 Solomon ;\n in- , , , . f-p,-. . j i • n i • 
 
 sunceofthe reprehensiou aiid wariiinjT. iheir tnird king, 
 
 monarcli's 
 
 power. Solomon, was a magnificent and powerful mon- 
 
 arch. His court was on a scale of luxurious grandeur, 
 his armies were numerous, and his buildings, in addition 
 to the glorious temple, superb and expensive. The peo- 
 ple, not prepared for such a state of things by their train- 
 ing previous to the monarchy, found themselves obliged 
 to furnish his household and armies with the produce of 
 their lands. Very like this is the ordinary progress of 
 the exactions derived from a body of subject cultivators. 
 There is a limit, however, to the revenue which can be 
 continuously wrung from them ; and the governments of 
 the East, through carelessness and greed, are perpetually 
 pressing on that limit, and both inflicting on others, and 
 
 ' In India the laws of Menu, a compilation of tlie Braliniinical rricsthood, re- 
 stricted the Sovereign's share to one-fifth of the produce ; and Straho speaks of the 
 Indian cultivator as paying one-sixth. But I strongly suspect the Greek authorities, 
 whose notions of India were very superficial, had heard of the law, and knew nothing 
 of the practice. At all events, no other traces of .^ueh a share, past or present, meet us 
 in India.
 
 LECT. II.] EXCESSIVE EXACTIONS BY RULEES. 123 
 
 suffering themselves, all the disastrous consequences of 
 that pressure. 
 
 Where neither capitalists, nor a body of laborers paid 
 by capitalists, are in existence, the cultivation 
 
 *'■'-' ' Exclusive de- 
 
 depends entirely on the laborers themselves, ^uluvaHonon 
 
 , .„ , . , . .,, „ thfc laborers. 
 
 and II they vanish it will necessarily cease. 
 But clearly they must vanish, more or less rapidly, if 
 the exactions from them arc so great as not to leave 
 them sufficient to maintain themselves, and a family to 
 replace them, after their death, at the task of cultivation. 
 But, without supposing the numbers of the cultivators 
 to be reduced, it must bo remembered that the pro- 
 duce depends chiefly on the efficiency of their cultivation. 
 Some degree of skill and some simple appliances in the 
 shape of implements, seeds, and perhaps, cattle, are 
 necessary to enable them to continue the rude cultiva- 
 tion of their forefathers. If the exactions of the State 
 are so great as to damage these instruments of produc- 
 tion, the population may not vanish, but they will pro- 
 duce less and less, and the revenue, which it is possible 
 to exact from them, without destroying them, will, at 
 the same time, become less. 
 
 The history of the Eastern powers, as we can read 
 or see, shows an almost constant eft'ort on Disastrous 
 the part of the native rulers to force these phy 
 sical barriers against the excess of their exac 
 tions ; to get more, in fact, than the very laws of nature 
 permit them to obtain continuously ; and depopulation, 
 poverty, and barrenness are the necessary consequences. 
 Before them come, however, disaffection, hatred, and 
 reckless resistance, which is in most cases ineffectual. 
 
 effects of ex- 
 cessive exac- 
 tions by their 
 rulers.
 
 124 CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE [lect. ii. 
 
 Where it is effectual, the destruction of the central gov- 
 ernment, and a state of lawless anarchy ensue, together 
 with fierce habits of individual independence, violence, 
 and wrong. Such are the consequences of the abuse of 
 the conditions on which subject cultivators hold their 
 land. The temperate management and enforcement of 
 them by the central power leads to a very different spec- 
 underamod- taclc. lu tolcrablv favorable circumstances 
 
 erate govero- 
 
 didoVof t'h°' there are few conditions of the laboring classes 
 happy'^o^ie- morc happy than that of these hereditary oc- 
 cupiers of the East, of whom we rule so many millions. 
 The climate makes their food light, their shelter cheap 
 and easily procured, and their other wants few and soon 
 satisfied. The certainty of succession to the land, which 
 is the source of their whole substance, gives them a 
 sense of security and social independence, which they 
 not unnaturally value as a pledge for the happiness and 
 comfort of their flimilies. Whatever government secures 
 it to them, may depend on tlieii' willing and unreasoning 
 submission, and what was a source of revolt and danger, 
 under an unwise government, becomes a sure foundation 
 for the easy administration of a good one. 
 
 In estimating the causes which determine the amount 
 conditions of thc pcasaut laborer's wages, we must make 
 terminethe allowancc for the size, the fertility of his hold- 
 
 lab irer's ' *' 
 
 w;,ses- jj^g^ jjQ(j £yp ^jjQ efficiency of his labor. These 
 must be such as will ensure the continuation of his race 
 and of his cultivation, and they form the minimum of 
 his permanent wages. Below this point, tlie laws of 
 nature will prevent his lasting depression. The law 
 which makes the earth's produce something beyond this,
 
 LECT. II.] THE WAGES OF THE LABORING OCCUPIER. 125 
 
 is obviously the foundation of the existence of the other 
 classes of society. When the laboring occupier holds 
 the land under those other classes, be it the State or 
 individual landholders, the conditions on which he culti- 
 vates under them, determine what share of the whole 
 produce he shall retain ; or, in other words, what shall 
 be the real wages of his labor. It is thus that the direct 
 contract with the State determines the condition of the 
 Indian Eyot, and the direct contract with the landowner 
 determines the condition of the Metayer ; while, in serf 
 countries, a prescriptive contract between serfs and land- 
 owners, determines with equal force the wages of the 
 laboring population among them. This is sufficiently 
 obvious. But what is not so obvious is, that ,, , 
 
 ' these have no 
 
 ii T J.' ^ i? J. reference to a 
 
 these conditions have no reierence to any general rate of 
 
 wa^cs and 
 
 general rate of wages and profits elsewhere, ^'i^i^t %i"g.*' ^' 
 The laborer is not protected by any such "'"'''^~ 
 general rate. What shall be the wages of his labor, 
 and what the profits of his little stock, if he has any, 
 is determined by his contract with the landowner alone, 
 quite independently of any check from an external rate 
 of wages or profits. To understand this, it is only 
 necessary to recollect in what manner a general rate of 
 profits limits the demands of a landowner in those coun- 
 tries in which it is a most efficient check. It is by 
 enabling laborers and capitalists to quit agriculture, and 
 move to some other occupation, if they find themselves 
 underpaid, when compared with those engaged in other 
 employments. There must then be a choice of 
 
 •*■ '' such a g-eneral 
 
 occupations, — a refuge for the laborer who sMe'withoi.ta 
 
 ., ..,_ ., -. - 'It choice of occu- 
 
 quits the soil, in such a case, labor and capital potions.
 
 12G WHERE LABOR AND CAl'ITAL ARE IMMOBILE [lect. ii. 
 
 must have mobility, meaning by that word so applied, a 
 power of moving, not from one place to another, but 
 from one occupation to another. But if there exist no 
 such choice of occupations — no sucli refuge for the 
 laborer quitting the soil, then there can be for him no 
 such protection as he would derive from a power of 
 change. The labor and capital employed in agriculture 
 is, in that case, immobile. The wages of the laborer 
 must be determined by causes which exclude the opera- 
 tion of such a power of choice. It is not too much to 
 the bulk of la- say that nine-tenths of the agricultural laborers 
 
 borers have no . , . . . . . 
 
 such choice- of the earth are m this position ; and it is a 
 mere mockery to speak of their protecting themselves 
 and securing some better rate of wages and profits, by 
 resorting to other occupations. Take for instance the 
 great body of our Indian dependants, or Eyots. We 
 will suppose a Eyot community to raise one hundred 
 loads of wheat. The State demands fifty, and the 
 remaining fifty constitute the wages and profits of the 
 cultivators. Suppose now this to be a harsh attemj^t at 
 collecting more than they have been hitherto accustomed 
 to contribute. They may remonstrate and remind the 
 government agent that such a revenue cannot be paid 
 permanently, and that the laboring population must 
 perish under it, and their products dwindle. But should 
 these remonstrances prove unavailing, can they better 
 their case by appealing to a common rate of profit which 
 they can realize by quitting the land and resorting to* 
 other employments. Such a threat, it is evident, would 
 they have no bc nugatoiw aud almost ridiculous. There are 
 
 means of pro- 
 
 em'Jhfyraen" ^0 othcr cmploymeuts capable of receiving any
 
 I.ECT. II.] WAGES AND PROFITS AEE DETERMINED BY RENT. 127 
 
 large number of the people. The mass of cultivators 
 must produce their own food from the soil, or starve 
 in the absence of such a resource. In the present 
 case, let us suppose that the dispute ends in a com- 
 promise — that the government consents to take forty 
 instead of fifty out of the hundred. Then sixty will 
 represent the wages and profits of the village cultiva- 
 tors ; and, very clearly, those wages and profits will 
 have been determined by the contract with the State 
 and without any reference to a common and ordinary 
 rate of wages and profits accessible elsewhere. The 
 capital and labor employed on the land are immobile. 
 The cultivators cannot protect themselves by moving 
 what cannot be moved without exposing themselves and 
 their families to starvation. 
 
 Delusions as to the real circumstances which deter- 
 mine the rate of wa^res anions this, the lar^^est . , , ^. 
 
 O O 7 o Important dis- 
 
 division of the human race, may be traced, it tween^tht^r" 
 
 case and that 
 
 can hardly be said, to errors, but to an unreflect- '"here capuai 
 
 J I I and labor have 
 
 ing use of language on the nature of rent. "'°''''''^- 
 The rent of land, it is said, is always composed of the 
 surplus profits. Whatever therefore is paid by the Eyot 
 and all peasant cultivators, must have a reference to, and 
 be ultimately limited by, an acknowledged general rate 
 of ordinary profit. But where the labor and stock are 
 immobile, the rent taken determines, as we have seen, 
 what the cultivator's wages and profits shall be, without 
 reference to a rate of profit prevalent in other occupa- 
 pations, subject only to those physical limits we have 
 explained when speaking of the necessity of continuing 
 the race of cultivators and their means of cultivation.
 
 128 THIS STATE OF THINGS EXISTS IN INDIA. [lect. ii. 
 
 But when labor and capital have mobility, a common rate 
 of wages and profits, which is formed independently of 
 the contract with the landowners, limits the amount of 
 rent he can obtain. 'No laborer or capitalist will give 
 for land more than the excess he can obtain by culti- 
 vating it, over what the same labor and capital would 
 yield him in other occupations. Where there is a choice 
 — where labor and capital have mobility, there is a moral 
 and economical, not a mere physical, limit to the exac- 
 tions of the landowner, which protects the cultivator 
 like a shield, and serves as a refuge to the mass of the 
 people against any but strictly limited demand. It is 
 impossible to overlook the importance of this distinction, 
 if we cast a glance at the broad surface of the globe and 
 view it either as it has been or as it is. The thronging 
 husbandmen of ancient times ; the subjects of teeming 
 Asia, who have left behind the mighty monuments which 
 tell of the riches and power of their States ; the culti- 
 vators of feudal Europe, who sustained its rising civiliza- 
 tion ; — all depended for their sustenance and support on 
 the conditions they made with the owners of the soil ; 
 and their successors, still the majority of the laboring 
 population of the globe, depend upon these conditions, 
 and these alone, to this day. 
 
 This fact has a deep interest for all who are enquir- 
 ing theoretically into the causes which have, or do, de- 
 termine the amount of the revenues which support so 
 vast a body of our fellow-men. It has a 
 thiis'^'Seci- much deeper and more stirring interest for all 
 toVs'wuh '"" who have the power and duty of modify ins; 
 
 reference to ... . -z O 
 
 Empire."" ''^^^ admiuistcring the conditions under which
 
 LKCT. K.] A DIFFEREXT STATE EXISTS IX EUROPE. 129 
 
 that body exists. This is our own task in India, and 
 such is the task too of the various governments of 
 Europe who have to deal with regions occupied by 
 masses of cultivating peasants. 
 
 In all these forms of society in which the govern- 
 ment decides directly by its contracts and administration 
 on the wages of the mass, on the revenues of the body 
 of the people, their direct responsibilities, both as States 
 and landowners, are fearful. But in Europe, 
 
 ' Tlie independ. 
 
 where the landowners are independent of the ownerfiu^*"'^' 
 State, the responsibility beinsr shared between there rendered 
 
 ^ •'■ JO fijg system of 
 
 them, is less apparent, because usage and pre- i"bom-1 un. 
 scription in all cases except that of cottiers, 
 have long since effectually defined the conditions under 
 which the laboring class occupy the land. We cannot 
 but perceive that throughout Europe a very general dis- 
 like has arisen to the existence of these unhired laboring 
 cultivators occupying the land. In France, the metayer 
 system, the least objectionable form of such tenure, 
 was very common under the old regime. But the tenure 
 became unpopular both with the renters and the peasants 
 themselves, though for entirely different reasons. The 
 economists eschewed the metayers because their industry 
 was less productive than that of a tenantry consisting 
 of capitalists employing, directing, and assisting, hired 
 labor. Their system constituted la petite cidture, — that 
 of the capitalists, la grand culture \ and it was wished 
 to supplant the little by the great. Their condition had 
 likewise become intolerable to the metayers themselves. 
 They, of course, did not complain of their own ineffi- 
 ciency as cultivators, and were probably quite uncon- 
 
 9
 
 130 STATE OF THINGS IN FRANCE AND AMERICA, [lect. ii. 
 
 scious of it; while the tenure in itself could never be 
 otherwise than acceptable to a body of laborers, for 
 their rent to the landlord, his share of the produce, was 
 quite consistent with their well-being. But it was, un- 
 fortunately for them, not their only burthen. They were 
 
 greatly oppressed by the French system of tax- 
 butedtouiis'' ation, that is by the taille, which was large in 
 aupopu arity- g^^^^^j^^^ ^j-j^j collccted uudcr regulations mani- 
 festly both unjust and cruel to the individual culti- 
 vators. To throw off their joint burthens, the rent 
 and taxes together, seizing the land and resisting the 
 
 taille, were obvious means. The revolution 
 
 the revolution 
 abolished it. 
 
 came and enabled a large proportion of them 
 to do both. Still the metayer system is re- 
 
 Re.api>earance 
 
 rrance^'and '" appcarlug iu Francc. It is even showing 
 itself in America. It is the natural resource 
 of proprietors who are above the condition of manual 
 laborers, but who can find no race of tenant capitalists 
 ready to undertake the direction of the laborers employed 
 in cultivation. In many provinces of France no other 
 tenantry indeed can be observed than that of laboring 
 metayers. In America the cultivator who has capital of 
 his o^vn can easily become a proprietor. He j)refers it. 
 A proprietor in the old States not unfrequcntly lets a 
 respectable laborer take possession of his land and flock, 
 on condition of paying him a proportion of the produce. 
 This is a metayer tenantry, and who can say how long 
 it will exist in America, or how far it will spread while 
 the Anglo-Saxons are fulfilling their mission of culti- 
 vating and peopling that continent. In the meantime, 
 though this form of tenure may be a resource to the
 
 LECT. II.] DECLINE OF OLD FORMS OF TENURE. 131 
 
 landlords, it is not a favorite one with them. They 
 advance the stock, but they must receive and deal in 
 the produce. The moment they can find a tenant who 
 will undertake all the charges and risks of cultivation 
 and pay them a money rent, that new class displaces 
 the metayers. 
 
 The causes of hostility to the other ancient forms 
 of peasant tenure are different, but are still 
 
 •*- ' Decline of 
 
 more potent. Serfdom was generally mixed forms of "^"^ 
 up with slavery in its origin, always with 
 modified slavery in its progress. The governments and 
 aristocracy have long discovered that it degraded the 
 population as laborers, and made them inefficient as pro- 
 ducers of wealth. The governments (and most distinctly 
 that of Prussia) saw that in serf countries the physical 
 strength of the kingdom lay in hands not to be depended 
 upon by them. By a series of measui^es, rather violent, 
 but not wholly inequitable, the serfs have been ^j^^^j^^ ^^ 
 placed in the position of small landholders. '""""'• 
 Eussia is preparing a like change, which probably it will 
 take some generations thoroughly to effect. During 
 these last revolutionary years, Austria and other German 
 States have proceeded more rapidly in the same paths. 
 In France we have seen a body of metayers 
 
 '' '' Change of 
 
 turned into proprietors; while Eussia, Ger- ^I'aupropae" 
 many, and the intermediate countries, have 
 completed the same process with their serfs. A great 
 part, probably the greater part, of the agricultural popu- 
 lation of Europe will consist of such proprie- ti.is latter 
 tors. The new world is rapidly multiplying becomln-lhe^ 
 the same class. They promise to become one ""■"«''°"^-
 
 r 
 
 132 WAGES OF PEASANT PROPRIETOKS. [lect. ir. 
 
 of tlie most numerous, if uot altogether the most numer- 
 ous, of the divisions of mankind ; and the probabilities 
 of theii" prosperous or unprosperous future progress must 
 command a proportionate degree of interest. 
 
 Peasant proprietors till the ground they occupy, and 
 produce from it their own wages, subject as occupiers to 
 Circumstances ^0 couditions.' Tlicir revenue depends solely 
 wages o'f pea^. Qu tlio sizo aud fertility of their estates, and 
 
 sant proprie- ^ 
 
 tors depend. , ^^iQ efficieucy of their cultivation. But the 
 size of their estates depends almost entirely on the 
 progress of population. What determines that size, 
 therefore, are the causes which determine the num- 
 bers of the people. These causes we shall not be 
 prepared to discuss till we have examined the effect of 
 stationary wages, and yet more of changes in the rate of 
 wages, on the progress or decline of the numbers of the 
 people in the position of these cultivating proprietors. 
 We leave them then for the present to return to them 
 when we have mastered the laws which rule the fluctua- 
 tions of their numbers, and so the size of their allotments 
 and ultimately the wages of their labor. 
 
 We have seen, then, the constitution of the soil and 
 Summary of thc iustiucts of uiau covcriug the earth with 
 view. manual laborers, producing their own sub- 
 
 sistence or wages. Of these, some possess the land in 
 full proprietorship, and their wages are determined by 
 the size and fertility of their lots, and the efficiency of 
 their industry. Others, and in past times by far the 
 larger part, hold their land on certain conditions, like 
 
 ' We do not here refer to such things as land tax,— or, indeed, to taxation in 
 general.
 
 LECT. II.] GENERAL VIEW OF THEIR CONDITION. 133 
 
 the ryots of Asia, and those conditions are the most 
 potent causes in determining the wages of the agricul- 
 tural laborers, always the most numerous part of such 
 populations. But whether proprietor, hereditary oc- 
 cupier, or laborer, they are always the guides and 
 directors of their own labor. The wages on which they 
 subsist form always a fund for immediate consumption. 
 They are not dependent on abstinence or accumula- 
 tion for the funds on which they exist. In the simple 
 and primeval form of society, of which they constitute 
 the substratum, no other capital or saved wealth is abso- 
 lutely necessary beyond that which enables them to till 
 their plots of ground. That these agricultural laborers 
 have no employers, and that their wages always, and 
 necessarily, come into their hands in the shape of food 
 and raw produce, are facts which it will be necessary 
 most distinctly to bear in mind while we pursue our 
 present limited object of investigating the causes which 
 determine fluctuations in the numbers of nations. 1
 
 134 DEPENDENCE OF NON-AGRICULTURAL LABORERS [lect. m. 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 ON REVENUES OTHER THAN THOSE OF THE ACTUAL 
 LABORER, BUT WHICH CONSTITUTE A PORTION OF 
 THE LABOR FUND. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Dependence of uon-agricultural laborers on the surjjlus produce of tlie land —such 
 laborers may be maintained directly by the original owners, or indirectly through a 
 capitalist — the direct mode of maintenance less apparent in our own country. — The 
 sources of revenue are here midtitudinons. — Elsewhere, and in former ages, the non- 
 agricultural population were maintained by revenue, and not by capital — the change 
 from the former to the latter mode of maintenance the distinguishing feature of our 
 own European system. — The surplus produce limits the non-agricultural population 
 and determines their occupation. — Effects of revenue expended by the State in the 
 support of non-agricultural labor. — Expenditure by landholders. — Transfer of this 
 expenditure to capitalists. 
 
 While the unhired laborers we have been describing 
 Dependence of nTQ tilling tlic cartli for tliclr own subsistence, 
 
 non-a<^ricul- ' 
 
 o.rthc'exmf they are producing, as we have seen, more 
 L'nd-'' ° "^ of food and raw produce than they themselves 
 consume. This extra produce must be either consumed 
 at home, or exported, or destroyed. We shall assume it 
 not to be habitually destroyed. If it be consumed at 
 home it must suj)port a non-agricultural population. It
 
 LECT. III.] ON SURrLUS TRODUCE OF THE LAND. 135 
 
 may support that population directly or indirectly. The 
 non-agricultural laborer may receive his sub- such laborers 
 sistence directly from the State or the owners tiiined directly 
 
 " by the origia;il 
 
 of the soil, or, by a process we shall describe, "ndirecti^ 
 
 1 -i o 1 1 l^ • through a capi- 
 
 ne may be led by the same revenue commg taust- 
 to him through the medium of a capitalist. He is 
 then no longer supported on revenue but on capital, 
 and we shall meet him in another place ; but his indirect 
 dependence on the revenues of those who possess the 
 surplus produce, we shall find, must not be lost sight of. 
 At present our business is with the revenues which sup- 
 port labor directly. At home an Englishman t,ie direct 
 sees little at present around him to draw his tenance less 
 
 •'• apparent in our 
 
 attention to this particular portion of the gen- °"° country. 
 eral fund which supports the laborers of the earth. All 
 such laborers appear in England to be emjDloyed by capi- 
 talists ; yet even here, if we take the soldiers and sailors, 
 and menial servants and artizans — the latter compara- 
 tively, indeed, a small class — we shall find a body not un- 
 important who are supported by the expenditure of re- 
 venue, and not by the advances of capital.^ Secondly, 
 the revenues of which a part is so expended are not ex- 
 clusively, or even in a preponderant proportion, those of 
 the landowners. All classes of society, except the la- 
 borers themselves, and, in rare cases, even some of them, 
 spend a part of their means in supporting servants, and 
 occasionally maintain an independent artizan. The 
 sources from which the whole of the revenue The sources of 
 so applied, is derived, are, indeed, in our own 
 
 revenue are 
 here multitu- 
 dinous. 
 
 > On a rude estimate I believe them to c(iual in number the heads of agrieul- 
 tural families.
 
 136 ORIGINALLY MAINTAINED BY EEVENUE. [lect. hi. 
 
 country multitudinous. The case is far different in both 
 these respects when we look to other countries, or, in- 
 Eisewhere,and dcod, to othcr agcs thaii our own. There we 
 
 in former ages, 
 
 cuiturrrp'opu- see, up to our days, almost the whole non-agri- 
 inahitaineT by cultural populatiou, supportcd directly from 
 
 revenue and 
 
 uotbycapitai- ^|^jg f^j^^ without thc iutervcntion of capitalists. 
 It is important to get a clear view of this state of things. 
 \ In its gradual modification, in the moving of the non- 
 agricultural population into the hands of capitalists, as 
 their employers, great changes take place. These 
 changes are what distinguishes our own non- 
 
 the change 
 
 to°thfiatt™'"' agricultural industry from that of China and 
 "nan °e the'"* ludla, aud thcv lead to the development of 
 
 distinguishing- 
 
 own Europ°ean ^ho grcatcst powcr of humaii industry, with all 
 i,js em. .^^ mixed train of consequences.^ 
 
 There are one or two propositions which it is well to 
 bear in mind, while tracing the functions of this par- 
 \ ticular part of the labor fund. The surplus produce of 
 agriculture consists of all the produce not consumed 
 or used by the cultivators during the task of culti- 
 The surplus vatlou. It Hmlts always the non-agricultural 
 the'nmf-agX ^ populatiou of the whole earth, and what is 
 
 cultui-ul popu- 
 
 lution- necessarily true of the whole earth, is ordi- 
 narily true in practice of individual nations during the 
 early periods of their progress. It also ordinarily de- 
 and determines tcrmines, by the mode -of its distribution, the 
 
 their occupa- . n i • i • 
 
 tion. occupations of the non-agriculturists, and the 
 
 nature of the commodities produced by such of them as 
 
 • These changes haA'e been nowhere completed except in England, Holland, and 
 a few spots of Europe. Among- their consequences are the disruption of the con- 
 nection between the laborers and the landholders, and their effect on the social 
 and political condition of the people, into which I have not entered. 
 
 L
 
 LECT. III.] ARE LIMITED BY THE EXTRA PRODUCE OF LAND. 137 
 
 produce wealth. Now it is obvious that this surplus 
 may come into the hands of, and be expended by, very 
 diiferent men, or classes of men, and these differences 
 must affect powerfully both the occupations of the non- 
 agriculturists and the nature of the commodities they 
 produce. Let us inquire, then, into the modes of dis- 
 tributino* this surplus produce which have pre- itmaybedis. 
 
 c> i- ^ ^ tributed iu 
 
 various wars — 
 
 vailed the most extensively in other days, or ^= 
 prevail the most extensively in our own. We sha ll J 
 find this inquiry leads us at once into the subject of 
 revenue, as a direct source of the support of labor, 
 independently of the advances of capitalists. This sur- , 
 plus produce then may be distributed, 1st, by the State ; 1 
 2ndly, by a body of landholders distinct from the culti- '■ 
 vators ; 3rdly, by the cultivators themselves ; or 4thly, j 
 by all three in different proportions. We will take a j 
 view of the result of the distribution by each. 
 
 When, as throughout Asia, the State deals with the 
 cultivators directly, and all or nearly all the ^^^^^^^f^ lY 
 
 ^ -, n It ^ ^ ' j. ' i. levcnue by the 
 
 surplus produce oi the land comes into its state in the 
 
 support of non- 
 hands, it is upon the expenditure of the State K"""'''^ 
 
 or of its officers, that the non- agricultural classes must rely 
 
 for obtaining subsistence ; and in practice we find that, in 
 
 the great Eastern countries, the handicraftsmen receive 
 
 it directly from those who consume the commodities 
 
 they are employed about, and not through the medium 
 
 ' of an intei-posed capitalist. This, in truth, has now 
 
 long been the great characteristic difference between the 
 
 non-agricultural industry of Asia and that of Europe. 
 
 Wc liave seen that the greater part of the agricultural 
 
 laborers of the globe live on a fund which is quite inde-
 
 138 EEVEXUE EXrENDED BY THE STATE [lect. in. 
 
 pendent of the advances of capitalists and of their accu- 
 mulations. They are, then, necessarily dependent upon 
 the OAvners of the soil where it has been appropriated by 
 other classes. A great change takes place in the social 
 relations of the community when this dependence ceases, 
 and the agricultural laborers are handed over to capi- 
 talists as their employers, and receive their subsistence 
 from them. An analogous change takes place in the 
 progress of wealth and civilization in the condition of 
 the non-agricultural laborers ; but it takes place earlier, 
 and has already been accomplished over the greater part 
 of Europe, where its social and political consequences 
 have been not less important than its economical ones, 
 and they react upon each other. 
 
 Obviously, the capitalist is not a necessary medium 
 between the customer, who is to consume, and the 
 artizan, who is to produce a commodity. The amount 
 of income or revenue, which the former is disposed to 
 lay out, may go to the direct maintenance of the latter 
 without forming any part of the accumulated capital of 
 the country. It is by their expenditure and not by 
 their saving that the owners of this division of the labor 
 fund maintain a portion of the laboring population. In 
 the towns of India, China, and Persia, the more numer- 
 ous body of artizans are dependent entirely on the ex- 
 penditure of those who consume their commodities. 
 Their means of subsistence depend on the presence of 
 their customers, and some results follow, of which, in 
 our more advanced state of civilization, we have no ex- 
 perience. We have seen that the surjDlus soil in India 
 comes into the hands of the State, and through it, of its
 
 LECT. III.] IX SUPrORT OF XOX-AGRICULTURISTS. 139 
 
 dependants. The spots where these are seated become 
 the centres of a distribution of revenue, by the expendi- 
 ture of which the artificers so employed are fed. The 
 capital cities offer, of coui'se, the most striking illustra- 
 tion of this state of things. When Aurangzeb moved 
 from Delhi on his summer excursions to Cashmere, the 
 town was partially depopulated : 400,000 men waited 
 on his progress. In the long and arduous struggle in 
 the Deccan, which lasted twenty years, the expenditure 
 of the Court was transferred to the seat of war, and 
 nearly two millions of souls crowded round the over- 
 grown camp. In the early history of Europe, we can 
 observe the existence of an analogous class of things 
 and the beginning of the changes which subsequently 
 took place. The palaces of the first and second Frank 
 monarchs were surrounded by a crowd of artificers, 
 who were fed by the expenditure of revenues derived 
 from various sources, but principally from the crown 
 domains. The practice of granting large tracts of 
 the soil, as benefices, was almost coeval with Expenditure 
 
 ' ' by laiid- 
 
 the Frankish monarchy. The residence of each iiowers- 
 beneficiary became then a separate centre of distribution, 
 and small villages of tradesmen and artificers clustered 
 round them. The stern spirit of insulation of the nobi- 
 lity, which had become feudal, hereditary, and independ- 
 ent, long sheltered the rising domestic arts of Europe ; 
 but they soon ceased to be the direct dispensers of wages 
 to the artizan. The employment they afforded was perma- 
 nent, and villages sprung up around them, giving birth 
 to a body of industrious individuals, who ac- [i;-"'/;^);;^^^^. 
 
 ^ i 1 jl r 1.1. tiirc to Capi- 
 
 quired means to advance the wages oi the taists.
 
 140 THEIR TRANSFER TO CAPITALISTS. [lect. hi. 
 
 workmen, to speculate on the demands of the landowners 
 in their neighbourhood, and to produce at their own 
 cost and risk such commodities as they felt sure, in some 
 reasonable time, would be taken off their hands. The 
 change was now so far completed. The artizans had 
 passed from one part of the labor fund to another. They 
 became directly dependent on the advances of capitalists, 
 not on the expenditure of revenue. But we must not 
 leave this part of our subject here, or appear to acquiesce 
 in an opinion sometimes broached, that the domestic 
 expenditure of the landed proprietors had nothing more 
 to do with the fostering and maintaining the non-agri- 
 cultural interest of the country. The capitalist ad- 
 vances wages to the workman, and takes the risk of dis- 
 posing of the commodities, which he produces only in 
 full reliance of finding a customer for his products. In 
 the rude ages the principal customers were those who had 
 possession of the surplus produce of the soil. In early 
 Europe these were the feudal landowners. When they 
 no longer advanced the independent artizan his wages, 
 their prospective expenditure made it rational for his 
 new employers to advance them ; and, when this hap- 
 pens, the busy scene becomes more complicated, and 
 numerous revenues, customers, and markets concur in 
 giving security for a master capitalist.
 
 141 
 
 F^ Vl 
 
 TRACT 
 
 ON THE 
 
 INCIDENCE or TAXES ON COMMODITIES THAT ARE 
 CONSUMED BY THE LABOEER.' 
 
 I propose in the following remarks to put some 
 assistance into the hands of those who are engaged in 
 discussing such questions as the probable results of an 
 alteration in the corn laws, or the real incidence of taxes 
 on commodities consumed by the laboring classes. 
 
 It is hardly possible to observe the statements 
 and arguments of either writers or speakers on such 
 subjects, without being forcibly struck by the contradictory 
 
 views held on 
 
 inconsistencies of the views put forth, some- this subject. 
 times by different, and sometimes by the very same 
 person. At one time the repeal of the com laws is 
 held out as a boon to the laborer. It is to increase his 
 real wages by giving him a greater command over the 
 necessaries of life. At the very next instant, it is to 
 give increased advantages to the capitalists ; the real 
 wages of labor, and the commodities consumed by the 
 
 1 This tract of Mr. Jones has no date affixed to it, hut a remark in the note 
 which will be found at page 147 shows that it was written at the East India College. 
 — Editor.
 
 142 INCONSISTENT VIEWS REGARDING 
 
 laborer, being the same, money wages are to fall, which 
 will enable more commodities to be exported at an in- 
 creased rate of profit. It is obvious that, to the exact 
 extent to which one of these results takes place, the 
 other cannot do so. It is impossible that real wages 
 should rise, and that they should also fall and the 
 capitalist profit by their fall at the same moment of 
 time. If the laborer get more commodities by the 
 change, to that extent his employer cannot profit by it ; 
 and if we admit that there may be an advantage which 
 may be shared between them, Ave shall still wish to 
 know to which side the balance of advantage will in- 
 cline, and how and according to what laws it will be 
 divided between each party when such a division takes 
 place at all. 
 
 So again as to the general mass of taxes imposed on 
 the commodities consumed by the laborer (of which the 
 high price of corn, assumed to be occasioned by the corn 
 laws, is only one. Sometimes we hear lamentations over 
 the fate of the laborer, oppressed by taxation, direct and 
 indirect, on the commodities he consumes ; at another 
 time we are told that the idea of the laborer's contri- 
 buting to such taxes is a mere illusion, that the result of 
 them is always, after a certain time, a corresponding 
 rise of wages, by which the burthen is thrown back on 
 the employers of labor, and goes to reduce the profits of 
 stock, until production, with a reasonable return to the 
 producing capitalist, becomes difficult or impossible. 
 
 To such an extent has this last theory been carried, 
 that a very eminent writer, the late Mr. David Eicardo, 
 seriously proposed to estimate the amount x)f such taxes
 
 THE INCIDENCE OF SUCH TAXES. 143 
 
 paid by the laborers of the country, and to lay a direct 
 tax of a corresponding amount on the rent of land, that 
 thus the owners of land and the owners of stock might 
 be put on an equal footing. I remember, not long ago, 
 to have heard a great engineer, who, I believe, employs 
 some thousands of men, say that his laborers must have 
 a certain quantity of tobacco, tea, sugar, etc., etc., and 
 that he considered the taxes on these as paid by himself 
 in the shape of the higher wages necessary to purchase 
 them. 
 
 It is clear that both these views of the case cannot be 
 con-ect. If the laborer's enjoyments are made less by 
 the tax, and he is oppressed by it, then to that extent it 
 is not paid by the capitalist ; and if higher wages are 
 the consequence of the tax, and the capitalist is oppressed 
 by it, then to that extent the laborer cannot suffer. 
 
 If, however, it should ultimately appear (as I think it 
 will) that the same amount and the same kind of tax- 
 ation laid on the commodities consumed by the laborer, 
 may be actually paid by either party, that is, Taxes do not 
 
 ^ fall exclusively 
 
 bv the laborer, or by his employer, under the o» the laborer 
 
 J T J i. J 7 or on his em- 
 
 different circumstances of different countries, pi°>"- 
 or of the same country at different times, then it will 
 be the task of political economy to show what are the 
 causes which, under those different circumstances, deter- 
 mine the ultimate incidence of such taxes, and make 
 them fall either on the shoulders of the laborers or on 
 those of their employers. 
 
 The investigation of these causes will form the chief 
 part of the task before us. In observing, however, the 
 inconsistency and confusion Avhich have prevailed, either
 
 144 THE INCREASE OF WAGES DOES NOT 
 
 in the ciuTent literature or the economical discussions 
 of the day, we shall soon be led to the con- the belief that 
 
 J ' they do so 
 
 viction that they originate principally in some ["Uti'cnTiews 
 
 - , -1 regarding the 
 
 very unsteady and imperiect views oi the popuuition. 
 laws which regulate the movements of the population. 
 This unsteadiness has confused some parts of the sub- 
 ject, and has altogether hidden (as we shall see) certain 
 wide and all-important fields of inquiry from the eyes 
 of some of our most eminent writers. 
 
 It is admitted by all economists that the manner in 
 which changes in the rate of wages react on the market 
 for labor, so as to produce subsequent changes, is by and 
 through alterations in the number of the laboring popu- 
 lation, which alter the relative state of the demand for, 
 and supply of, labor. A rise of wages may accelerate 
 the rate of increase of the people, and maj^, therefore, 
 make labor more abimdant and cheaper, while a decline 
 of wages may retard the rate of increase, — may make 
 labor more scarce compared with the demand for it, and 
 may thus lead to a reaction and subsequent rise of wages. 
 ISTo one denies this. But then we must remark l^^Xl'llf 
 that this reaction cannot take place without fowed'byan 
 
 crease of popu- 
 
 that movement of the population which is the fi^ij"^}^"^"^" 
 cause of it ; and, secondly, that though an ac- cJease!''" 
 celerated rate of increase of the population may follow a 
 rise of wages, the very opposite consequence, namely, 
 a retardation of the rate of increase may also follow such 
 a rise, and then wages will have a tendency to rise 
 yet more. On the other hand, although a retardation in 
 the rate of increase may follow a fall in wages, and react 
 on the labor market, so as to lead to an ultimate rise of
 
 NECESSARILY CAUSE .iX INCREASE OF POPULATION. 145 
 
 wages, yet an exactly opposite consequence may also 
 follow, and may lead to an increase of the population 
 which would tend to reduce the rate of wages still 
 lower. 
 
 On the first proposition I have laid down, it may 
 be as well to say a few words here and dismiss it. There 
 are very many persons, not very deep economists, who 
 believe that a fall in the price of provisions would be 
 followed by a fall in the wages of labor, quite indepen- 
 dent of any movement of the population, that is, of any 
 change in the state of the demand and supply in the 
 labor market. If wheat were to fall to half its price, 
 they conclude that the laborers would be content with 
 the same or a slightly larger quantity than before, and 
 that their money wages would fall at once, xhefaiuf 
 without waiting for any change in their num- aui^ld^d by°a 
 
 fall of wag-es, 
 
 bers compared with the demand for theii* ser- j.Vi^,^"'^™''//. 
 
 jiijji i?i. Ill 1.1 main the same. 
 
 Vices, and that the manuiacturer would be able 
 to produce more cheaply and export more. I say nothing 
 of the inconsistency of this opinion with the promise 
 held out to the people that the corn laws are to be 
 repealed for their benefit. The opinion itself is un- 
 true. Instead of a population, let us confine ourselves 
 to a class. There is a demand, we shall suppose, for 
 gloves. Large sums are ready to be employed in manu- 
 facturing them. There are only a limited numbei^of 
 working glovers. The demand for their services is great, 
 and their wages spring up to two guineas a week. It 
 would appear ludicrous to tell them that they ought to 
 consider, not the pressing demand for their labor, but 
 the quantity of bread and meat which the laborer ought 
 
 10
 
 14$ WAGES ARE DETERMINED BY 
 
 in conscience to be content with. There is no real dif- 
 ference between their case and that of the whole laboring 
 population of a nation. 
 
 From the different classes in one nation let us turn to 
 wa-es differ- thc diffcrences between the average wages of 
 countries- tho laborlug class in different nations. In 
 America the wages received by the laborer enable him 
 to eat meat three times a day, to drink cream with his 
 tea, and occasionally to indulge himself with an ice. In 
 England he consumes wheaten bread constantly, and 
 meat occasionally ; and in Ireland potatoes and salt. 
 Does any one imagine that these differences result from 
 the greater or less success of the employers in per- 
 suading their laborers by argument and conviction to 
 be content with different habits of living. The fact is, 
 that in America the number of laborers is small com- 
 pared with the demand for their labor, and they receive 
 high wages, which they dispose of as they please. The 
 American laborer spends them in good living ; the En- 
 glish laborer in America either saves them, or spends 
 them on entirely different objects, as has often been re- 
 marked when both were employed in public works there. 
 
 Whether, then, we look to the wages of different 
 classes of laborers in the same country, or to those of 
 different groups in different countries, we may be quite 
 they are always surc that tho prico of kbor, like the price of 
 
 determined bv ,•■ Tj i i • 
 
 the demand evcry othcr commodity, depends, at any given 
 labor. ^i-^Q ^^^ moment, on the supply of labor in 
 
 the market compared with the demand for it ; and that 
 without any reference whatever to the prices of the com- 
 modities on which the laborers may choose to expend
 
 THE DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF LABOUR. 147 
 
 their income. So much I believe any one at all familiar 
 with economical. inquiries will admit at once. 
 
 The error I have next to advert to originates with, 
 and has been propagated by, the economists themselves. 
 Admitting, without hesitation, that the price of the com- 
 modities consumed by the laborer, including that of his 
 food, is not what, at any given moment, determines the 
 price of the wages of labor ; they have sometimes con- 
 tended, and sometimes taken for granted, that, after cer- 
 tain intervals, the prices of the articles consumed by the 
 laborer would determine the wages of labor by reacting 
 on the supply of it, and thus affecting the relation of the 
 demand and supply in the market, which, at any given 
 time, regulates the price of labor. According to them, 
 a rise of real wages (that is, a greater command over the 
 commodities consumed by the laborer), whether occa- 
 sioned by a rise of the money amount of his ^^^^ ^^.^.^^ 
 wages, or a fall in the prices of the articles he of wages 'must 
 
 necessarily 
 
 consumes, will always give an impulse to popu- '*|j"t"|,'^,^\Pro- 
 lation, and will stimulate its vast powers of "''°"^" 
 rapid increase till the number of the laborers will be 
 greater relatively to the demand, so as to bring down 
 the real wages to the amount of the commodities which 
 he consumed before the rise took place, which initiated 
 this movement of the population. 
 
 Thus Malthus, and that, too, in one of his later works, 
 speaks of raw produce, or the food of the laborer, as 
 the only commodity which, in the long run, is always of 
 the same value, that is (according to his definition of 
 value), which always commands the same quantity of 
 labor ; and Mr. Eicardo, in his chapter on wages, speaks
 
 148 WAGES MAY PERMANENTLY INCEEASE. 
 
 of the natural price of labor being such, as to enable the 
 laborer always to command the same quantity of food.^ 
 Now, is this so ? Are the wages of labor, although 
 subject to fluctuations, in the long run, immutable? 
 A certain quantity of potatoes commands a cei'tain quan- 
 tity of labor in Ireland. Is there something in the re- 
 spective natures of potatoes and mankind, which makes it 
 certain that the wages of the Irish laborer will never be 
 more than will suffice to command the same quantity of 
 potatoes which he now consumes ? The opinion, in spite 
 of the authorities on which it rests, seems too prepos- 
 terous to contend with. I may assume it, I think, as 
 Wages may obvious, that, as a general principle, the wages 
 
 permanently 
 
 increase. q^ labor may, under certain circumstances, ad- 
 vance and permanently increase. I admit, of course, 
 that any given increase may possibly not be perma- 
 nent, but may give such an impulse to the multipli- 
 cation of the people as to bring wages back to their 
 former level. The problem then immediately rises before 
 us, as to what the circumstances are under which a 
 rise in the real wages of labor shall be permanent, and 
 what those are under which it shall be transitory and 
 followed by movements in the population which restore 
 the former state of things. It is this problem T am 
 about to attempt to solve. The reader will recollect 
 that a repeal of the corn laws, if followed by a lower 
 price of corn, is the same thing, at the time it takes 
 place, as a rise in the real wages of labor ; and further, 
 
 > If the disposition and aims of Maltliiis are looked upon with suspicion elsewhere, 
 it will not be here, where the pride of his collea<Tues, in his reputation as a philoso- 
 pher, is almost lost in their affectionate reeoUection of his placid and benevolent 
 virtues as a man.
 
 CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE THIS. 149 
 
 that the repeal of any tax on commodities consumed by 
 the laborer is, at the time it takes place, pro- ^.,^g remission 
 vided they fall in price, the same thing as a wiuau!e°° 
 
 laborer con- 
 
 rise in the real wages of labor. They both l^^l^,'^^^ 
 give the laborer for a time a greater com- ^''^^^^' 
 mand over the commodities he consumes. His money 
 wages have been fixed by circumstances which have 
 no necessary connection with the price of those com- 
 modities. They have not been calculated with any view 
 to giving him a certain quantity of them and no more. 
 
 But whether a rise of real wages shall be temporary 
 or permanent from such causes as lower the importance of 
 
 the inquiry, 
 
 price of corn, or shall be temporary or per- Jh!^';'I.'4''in the 
 
 J n 1 1 J.1 ' condition of 
 
 manent from such causes as lower the price the laborer 
 
 are permanent 
 
 of any other commodities consumed by the or temporary. 
 laborer, are only particular cases of the wider question 
 we shall have to deal with, as to the causes which deter- 
 mine the temporary or permanent character of changes 
 in the condition of the laborer and his command over 
 the various products of human industry suited to his 
 wants or tastes. 
 
 To approach this problem efficiently, I must enter, in 
 a somewhat enlarged and altered form, into the principles 
 of population, or the causes which govern the move- 
 ments of the numbers of nations. The imperfect and, in 
 some respects, erroneous manner in which those prin- 
 ciples have hitherto been stated, appears to me to have 
 created much of the doubt and difficulty which have 
 obscured the views and confused the opinions of practi- 
 cal statesmen on some of the most important points of 
 our public policy.
 
 150 FOOD AND POPULATION DO NOT INCREASE 
 
 That great work in wliich sound and well connected 
 views on the subject of population were first given to 
 the public, was entitled by Mr. Mai thus " An Essay 
 on the Principle of Population.'' The principle of popu- 
 lation, as announced in it, is, that population increases 
 in a geometrical, and food in an arithmetical, ratio. 
 If'yi^thul^^" Now it is clear enough that this single prin- 
 ^unded?* ''^^ ciple consists of two propositions, each of 
 which asserts a distinct fact, neither of which facts are 
 strictly true. 
 
 When it is stated that population increases in a 
 geometrical ratio, it is in substance asserted that a 
 population, having doubled itself in any given number 
 of years, has always the same power of doubling, in a 
 like number of j^ears, that it had when it began to 
 increase. Now the fact is not so. Let a country, of 
 which the numbers have been stationary or increasing 
 i^,t°f,f "//nJ^"" slowly, double its numbers, in twenty years 
 BpectiveiyTii tho proDortiou of fertile females in the young 
 
 an lirithiiietical ■'■•'■ *' cj 
 
 cafrauo.'"''*"" populatiou wlll bc less than it was when the 
 movement began. There will be a larger proportion of 
 female children, under the age of child-bearing, and the 
 new population will not possess exactly the same powers 
 of doubling, in the given period, that the old one pos- 
 sessed. Secondly, when it is stated that food increases 
 in an arithmetical ratio, it is, in substance, asserted that, 
 if the food which feeds the laboring population, be 
 represented by a number — one, for instance — the suc- 
 cessive additions to it in any given period of years, say 
 every twenty years, can only consist of equivalent units. 
 That the additions must go on in the order, one, two,
 
 IN ARITHMETICAL AND GEOMETRICAL RATIO. 151 
 
 three, four, and at the third period must amount to 
 three, and that such additions cannot be in geometrical 
 ratio and increase in the order, one, two, four, eight, etc. 
 
 Now this assertion is more obviously incorrect than 
 that which constitutes the first branch of the so-called 
 principle of population. It may be true of a given 
 country at this time, and of the whole earth at some 
 distant time, that it cannot double the food produced in 
 geometrical progression, and that the successive addi- 
 tions to food, in a given period, must consist only of the 
 quantity assumed to exist at the commencement of a 
 series of such periods. 
 
 But though this may be true in particular' cases, and 
 generally at some future time, it is not true in all cases, 
 and at this time. Look at South America, eastward of 
 the Andes, and its population : how long might they go 
 on increasing their food in geometrical progression ! 
 Look at any sketch of the cultivated and uncultivated 
 parts of the earth, and then calculate how long the 
 human race might go on doubling its food as well as its 
 numbers in geometrical ratio. 
 
 And looking at the moral causes which have deter- 
 mined, as they will determine, the rise and fall, the pro- 
 gress and disappearance, of nations, let any one ask 
 himself if, while the earth exists, there is even a slight 
 probability that the existing portion of the human race 
 will be in a position in which it is impossible for it to 
 increase the production of its food in a geometrical ratio 
 for many successive periods. 
 
 It may be said that both these propositions are ap- 
 proximatively true as to nations in the state of those
 
 162 SOME NATIONS INCREASE THEIR NUMBERS 
 
 about which Mr. Malthus meant to reason. Be it so. 
 Thcd^ nevertheless, appears an insufficient reason for 
 converting two propositions, containing each an incor- 
 rect statement of facts, into the dignity of a great prin- 
 ciple, and proclaiming the principle so obtained as being 
 the law on which all movements of population depend. 
 
 If Mr. Malthus had entitled his work, An Essay on 
 the Causes which determine Fluctuations in the Kum- 
 The conciu- bcrs of Maukiud, he would have opened the 
 
 BJons of his ' ■*• 
 
 ^^■hhstancli^g!' wuy to all tlic comprchcnsive and important 
 portant. conclusious at which he has arrived, without 
 
 either announcing a theory or doing violence to a fact. 
 
 There are certain periods during which nations have 
 been observed to double their numbers by multiplication, 
 — Mr. Malthus thought in twenty years, Mr. Sadler, I 
 think, labored to prove in not less than fifty years. I 
 have no doubt that Malthus was right ; but it matters 
 not, as it is of no great moment, in a general view, 
 which term we take. It is manifest that, if mankind 
 had gone on doubling at this rate for many periods of 
 twenty or fifty years, the earth would not have held 
 them. It is also manifest that all the peoples of the 
 earth have not increased, and are not now increasing, 
 their numbers at any such rate. 
 The real ques- Tlic questiou thcu prcscnts itself, what are 
 
 tion is, why j. j. 7 
 
 increMsf'their tho causcs wlilch prcvcut all nations, at all 
 
 numbers faster . „ . • j i • i /» j 
 
 than others, timcs, irom lucrcasmg their numbers as last 
 as we see some nations, at particular times, increasing 
 theirs ? A full answer to this one question leads at once 
 to the development of the Avholo subject of population, 
 and of those laws of nature which, acting through the
 
 FASTER THAN OTHER NATIONS. 153 
 
 physical structure on the moral and intellectual consti- 
 tution of the human race, limit and determine its 
 numbers. 
 
 This subject is connected with political economy, 
 mainly because the understandinnj of it is Tht-siibjcct 
 
 ♦' O csseiiti;il with 
 
 necessary to comprehend the causes of fluctua- effocTonwages. 
 tions in the rate of wages and of profits ; and it is with 
 this application of the subject that we have here prin- 
 cipally to deal. It has, besides this, a wide and vital 
 connection with the whole of political philosophy, and 
 with our conceptions of those moral laws by which the 
 Creator regulates the happiness and prosperity of indi- 
 viduals and of nations. 
 
 In enumerating the causes which make mankind in- 
 crease less rapidly than their power of multiplying their 
 species makes it possible they should increase in some 
 instances, Mr. Malthus divides them into three heads, 
 viz., Misery, Vice, and Moral Eestraint, defining the 
 latter to be abstinence from marriage accompanied by 
 a state of impeccable chastity. This third check was 
 an after thouglit. 'No mention of it is to be found in 
 his first edition, published in 1798. Now this division 
 is logically defective, and the defects lead to Mauhus- dhi- 
 
 , . . sidii of the 
 
 narrow and, m some respects, very erroneous checks to popu. 
 
 ^ . . lation defec- 
 
 views, which limited prejudicially Mr. Malthus' *'''^- 
 own survey of the subject, and led his followers into 
 some very serious and unfortunate errors. For, this 
 division of the checks to population being adopted, it 
 followed that, in all cases of individuals or of classes 
 where a deferred age of marriage could not be asserted 
 to be wholly and entirely free from any spot of frailty,
 
 154 MALTHUS' DIVISION OF THE 
 
 there the only check which was retarding the progress 
 of population was unmixed vice. 
 
 The three causes enumerated by Mr. Malthus em- 
 braced all the acting checks to the greatest possible 
 multiplication of mankind. Of these three, moral re- 
 straint, or impeccable chastity, was only one. Every 
 other check, therefore, must be comprised under the 
 head of vice and misery, and, when not misery, must 
 be vice. This error arose evidently from representing 
 the vice — which may be the accidental companion of 
 voluntary restraint — as the cause which produces the 
 whole effect on population. This is a mistake ; for the 
 effect is really produced quite independently of the 
 vice which accompanies it. 
 
 In order to make the erroneous views arising out 
 of this faulty division of checks more apparent, let 
 us survey the circumstances of one man, or class of 
 men. Let us observe the career of a professional man 
 refraining from marriage till the age of thirty-five, 
 and keeping constantly in prospect the establishment 
 of a home and a station for himself and his children : 
 it is not too much to assume that, to attain the end 
 he had in view, his career, during the time, has been 
 honorable and useful; that he has been careful of his 
 own self-respect, jealous of his honor, zealous in his 
 exertions, and that society is both served and adorned 
 by a class of such members : yet let the frailty of nature 
 overcome him once during this career, and at once, 
 according to Mr. Malthus, the whole check on rapid 
 multiplication, established by the existence of such a 
 class of men, becomes converted into a mass of unmixed
 
 CHECKS TO POPULATION DEFECTIVE. 155 
 
 vice. It is not misery which has been checking popu- 
 lation, — not abstinence from marriage, accompanied by 
 a state of impeccable chastity ; and, therefore, it is vice, 
 and vice alone, which has been restraining the natural 
 powers of increase of the people. ' 
 
 If, instead of vice, misery, and moral restraint, 
 Malthus had divided his checks into vice, misery, and 
 voluntary restraint, he would have made no 
 
 ^ ' The substitu- 
 
 forced addition to the power and influence of ^aryil/moZ'i 
 
 TT TIT 1 J i 1 1 • restraint, as a 
 
 Vice. lie would have seen that the absti- <=heck, an im- 
 portant correc- 
 
 nence of whole classes from early marriages ^'°°' 
 — which is one great concomitant of the progress of 
 civilization — is productive of mixed effects, of much 
 virtue as well as of some vice, and he would probably 
 have proceeded with a task, of which his mode 
 of viewing the subject concealed the importance, 
 namely, the ascertaining on which side the balance 
 preponderated, when society had to calculate how far 
 it was elevated and purified, and how far it was de- 
 graded and polluted, by the struggle against mere 
 animal gratification of the sexual propensities. For, not 
 to dwell long upon this part of the subject, which 
 will necessarily develop itself as we proceed, let any 
 one look round upon the human race and observe the 
 habits and feelings which contribute the most to adorn 
 and give energy to society, during its progress from 
 savage life to the highest stages of civilization; and 
 
 ^ The manner in -which Mr. Malthus was induced to adopt this faulty division — 
 which he adhered to through life — is remarkable, and may be traced without diffi- 
 culty by any one who wiU make himself master of the circumstances under which 
 his work was first written, and then compare his first edition with the subsequent 
 ones. But this belongs rather to the literary history than to the exposition of the 
 subject.
 
 156 ABSTINENCE FROM EARLY MARRIAGES 
 
 lie will find that they have their source in the check 
 which foresight and the desire of respectability and 
 comforts are continually presenting to the facile grati- 
 fication of the passion between the sexes in its most 
 sensual form. Yice itself is not the check, but the 
 spot of evil which accompanies a check, that brings 
 along with it both dignity and power, and is the 
 source of much of the light and beauty which pervade 
 the ranks of mankind, where society is the farthest 
 removed from its savage origin. 
 
 The fii'st gleam of light which shows the intellectual 
 and moral part of man's nature struggling with, and 
 gaining some ascendancy over, mere brute instinct, ordi- 
 narily manifests itself in the minstrelsy of nations ; and 
 poetry, at once the harbinger and the minister of civi- 
 lization, owes, all but universally, its young voice and 
 early influences to the kindling and elevating effects — 
 through the imagination — of aspirations for a future 
 union with the object of our afi'ections, which, by a 
 happy constitution of our nature, become at once more 
 pure and more energetic, as delay is interposed, and 
 hope preserved. 
 
 The spirit of chivalry presents, perhaps, the loftiest 
 tone of feeling and the most refined of manners which 
 the history of mankind discloses. Of the foundations 
 which supported it, what was so prominent and im- 
 portant as that species of adoration of the other sex, 
 which, unless restraint had been put on the immediate 
 gratification of animal passion, could never have existed. 
 The elevation of woman to be the companion and the 
 friend of life, the consequent increase of intensity of
 
 PRODUCTIVE OF MIXED EFFECTS. 157 
 
 affection, and holy esteem for the offspring of marriage ; 
 the refinement and courtesy of domestic manners ; tlie 
 polish, which humanizes and softens civilized man when 
 compared with his brethren of the woods ; — all these 
 would vanish from society were the mere animal being 
 again substituted for man : — for man, when forced to 
 control, while he concentrates, his passions, is led to 
 adopt feelings and manners towards the other sex which 
 rarely fail to adorn and improve the intercourse he has 
 with his own. 
 
 These effects of deferred and restrained passion on 
 the imagination and the manners may appear to some 
 far-fetched. They do not appear so to me. We may 
 turn, however, to more homely, though hardly less 
 valuable, results. Look around on society, 
 
 ' *' ' The restraint 
 
 and see what hopes and what feelings are p"ssion sTiu.""^ 
 animating and stimulating, and at the same 
 time, controlling and guarding the pursuits and ex- 
 ertions, eminently of the most useful classes, and to 
 some extent, of all the deserving classes in a nation. 
 Professional men, who struggle for the acquirements 
 and the intellectual power which will hereafter enable 
 them to serve and adorn their country, and the young 
 trading classes, who exert themselves in their respective 
 callings, — what is the one great cause which impels 
 them in their useful career, and makes them anxious 
 and jealous of their honor and good name, and desirous 
 of commanding the respect of those who may aid them 
 in their progress in life ? Is it not the hope of forming 
 at some future day an establishment of their own, and 
 of enjoying that domestic happiness, and those home
 
 158 THE VICE WHICH ACCOMPANIES RESTRAINT 
 
 comforts, wliich may place them in a position not in- 
 ferior to that occupied by those who have preceded 
 them. The necessity, then, of delaying the union be- 
 tween the sexes beyond the age of puberty, which the 
 foresight and the wants of man make universal, is the 
 source of a large portion of those habits and sentiments 
 which elevate the imagination, and give energy and 
 purity to the pursuits of nations. 
 
 Still some sexual vice, no doubt, accompanies this 
 state of things ; but the vice, be it little or much, is 
 obviously not the check to population, but is one of 
 The vice oc- thc manv consequences which flow from absti- 
 
 casioned by ^ j. 
 
 exceptionar' ncnce, Wc may lament this, but might expect 
 it. Those dispositions which most ennoble the human 
 character are all, in this state of trial, liable, when 
 carried to excess, to lead to faults; but we cannot, on 
 that account, conclude that their dominant influence is 
 wholly vicious. Looking at all the consequences on 
 human society of deferring the age of marriage beyond 
 that of puberty, I am well convinced that its tendency 
 to elevate the tone of feeling, to soften and purify the 
 manners, and to impart energy, vii'tue, and good conduct 
 among the ranks of society, is a good which in extent 
 and importance far overbalances the evil which occasion- 
 ally accompanies it. Let me not, for a moment, be 
 misunderstood as underrating the evil. Independently 
 of its moral and religious turpitude, the prevalence of 
 such vice has a tendency to destroy all the good eff'ects 
 of virtuous abstinence, to degrade women, to lessen the 
 general respect for the sex, and to weaken all the 
 motives to good conduct which pervade society when
 
 NOT THE CHECK TO POrULATIOX. 159 
 
 the lawful gratification of virtuous love is the source 
 of hope. 
 
 Avoiding, then, any such division of the checks to 
 population which would represent unmixed vice as the 
 sole restraining agent, whenever we cannot predicate 
 the impeccable virtue of the classes who marry late, or 
 not at all, and dividing the checks to population into 
 misery^ vice^ and voluntary restraint^ I shall touch on 
 each of these sufficiently to get a view of their action 
 upon the fluctuations in the number of the people. 
 
 The action of misery in keeping down the numbers 
 of nations is, unhappily, much more extensive than at 
 first sight may appear. The numbers of per- ^i^^^j con. 
 sons dyinsr from absolute want in a civilized chJck'musAe 
 
 " ^-' t;iken in a wide 
 
 society is, fortunately, small ; but, as a check "'"'^• 
 to population, misery includes the privation of any- 
 thing necessary to maintain the most healthful state of 
 existence ; and, in no country in the world, has the 
 bulk of the people ever been in possession of all that 
 is necessary to maintain that state ; ' that is, there is 
 no country in the world, in which the mortality among 
 the laboring classes is not greater than among the easy 
 classes, although the privations which the latter undergo 
 are not always of a nature which could properly be 
 described by the word misery^ if we were speaking of 
 anything but the rate of mortality. Thus, in England, 
 the people are generally considered to be better clothed, 
 fed, and sheltered than in any other considerable district 
 
 ' The respective quantities of good and evil, of virtue or of vice, produced by 
 the prevalence of voluntary restraint, either on human society at large or in the case 
 of particular countries, form a distinct branch of inquiry, and one which I have no 
 intention of more fully developing here.
 
 160 MISERY, COXSIDERED AS A CHECK, 
 
 in Europe. Still, in England, the investigation and 
 experience of the insurance of&ces have demonstrated 
 the fact, that the rate of mortality among the whole 
 population is very considerably greater than it is among 
 the classes who are in good circumstances. In Paris, it 
 has been stated, on good authority, that the same cir- 
 cumstance came to light in a different and somewhat 
 remarkable manner. It was observed that the different 
 rates of mortality, in different districts of the town, were 
 such as the medical men could not account for from any 
 apparently likely causes, such as elevation of soil, dry- 
 ness, or damp, etc. It occurred to some one to examine 
 what each district contributed to a body of taxes, called 
 the droits reunis ; and then it appeared at once that, in 
 the districts in which the inhabitants were in good cir- 
 cumstances and contributed the most, the deaths were 
 comparatively few, while in the poorer districts they 
 were more numerous. It is obvious that, until nations 
 attain a condition in which the body of the people are in 
 as complete possession as the superior classes are of all 
 that is necessary to maintain the most healthful state of 
 existence, misery^ in the sense in which it is here used, 
 that is, when spoken of as a check to population, will 
 always be a cause why the numbers of the people do not 
 increase as fast as they might do, were they in better 
 circumstances. It is perhaps unfortunate that the term 
 miscru was originally selected to denote this check. It 
 does not imply positive suffering, and is constantly 
 operating among masses of people, who, to all eyes but 
 those of the inquirer into the causes of different rates of 
 mortality, might appear to be in possession of an un-
 
 MUST BE TAKEN IX A WIDE SENSE. 161 
 
 usual degree of prosperity and comfort. Such privations 
 as we are speaking of act, no doubt, on the progress of 
 population, by weakening the constitution, making men 
 less able to bear up against epidemics or ordinary 
 diseases, and, above all, by increasing the mortality 
 among children. Their constitutions are naturally the 
 feeblest. Privations of any kind affect them more dan- 
 gerously, and have thus a tendency to destroy large 
 portions of the population before they attain the age of 
 puberty. 
 
 But if privations constitute one great cause of mor- 
 tality, a comparatively smaller rate of mortality in any 
 nation is a satisfactory indication that the privations to 
 which the body of its people are exposed is compara- 
 tively small. It is satisfactory to know that, in this 
 respect, England stands high, if not the highest, among 
 the nations of the world. Of her population, not more 
 than one in forty-five die annually. When Malthus 
 first published his work, in 1798, one in thirty-six was 
 the ordinary rate of mortality on the continent. The 
 continental nations are improving in this respect; but 
 the population of England, tested by the above indica- 
 tion, is still far a-head of them in comforts. 
 
 Vice, too, must be taken in a somewhat extended 
 sense, when enumerated as one of the three ricewMstuke- 
 
 • -I • t ^ ITT IT X wise.asacheck, 
 
 great causes which include all the checks to ^e interpreted 
 
 O in a very ex- 
 
 population. It must be assumed to mean every ^'"^"^ ''"'"• 
 voluntary habit by which, first, the number of deaths 
 is increased and the rate of mortality made greater, and 
 secondly, the number of births is decreased. The influ- 
 ence of vice acting in the first mamier is considerable. 
 
 11
 
 162 SO, ALSO, MUST VICE BE. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the enormous consumption 
 of ardent spuits by the British population has a ten- 
 dency to impair the constitution and diminish the aver- 
 age duration of life in a portion of the community. 
 Other habits of vicious indulgence will occur to the 
 reader. But to range under Mr. Malthus' three heads 
 all the checks to population, we must include under 
 that of vice many habits which it rather startles one 
 to hear called by that name. It surely seems hard 
 measure to call a man vicious who neglects to take 
 exercise, indulges in diet he knows does him harm, 
 or overworks himself, without the plea of necessity, 
 in his business or employment ; and yet these habits 
 do as much, or probably more, to multiply the num- 
 ber of deaths and increase the rate of mortality than 
 many of the vices, ordinarily so called, which lead to 
 the same results. 
 
 The phraseology of a writer who is so completely 
 the father of his subject as Mr. Malthus, ought never to 
 be lightly interfered with ; but it has often occurred to 
 me, that on the whole subject of Population we should 
 gain in clearness of conception and avoid exaggeration, 
 in some moral questions, if we were to get rid alto- 
 The causes of gctlicr of hls thrccfold division of the checks, 
 Su^nd and separate them into two classes, consisting, 
 
 those of dimin- 
 
 wouiVha'''e' fii's^) of the causes which increase the num- 
 abirdivi^[,yof ber of deaths ; and secondly, of the causes 
 
 the cliecks to ^ ... . 
 
 population. which diminish the number of births. Por- 
 tions of misery and vice would be found in each 
 division, but their nature and extent might be fairly 
 pointed out and estimated. We need do no violence
 
 INFLUENCE OF PRIMARY WANTS. 163 
 
 to language, in order to range, under these disastrous 
 terms, things not usually included in them; and we 
 should thus avoid extending their meaning beyond 
 their ordinary popular sense. In these pages, how- 
 ever, I shall adhere to the divisions of Mr. Malthus, 
 substituting only, as I have before proposed, the term 
 voluntary^ for that of moral ^ restraint. 
 
 The age of marriage, even among the most savage 
 nations, never coincides with the age of puberty. The 
 foresight which enables man to look forward to the 
 probability of not being able to command the necessaries 
 of life, — food and shelter, leads at once to a habit which 
 distinguishes the intellectual being from the brute crea- 
 tui'es which surround him. This necessity, too, of com- 
 manding appetite, while the affections grow and gain 
 strength in the struggle, gives birth at once to a tone 
 of mind, and imparts a stimulus to the imagination, 
 which are the first germs of the manners and the liter- 
 ature that are, at a future time, to adorn and illuminate 
 the abodes of civilized man. As nations, however, ad- 
 vance from the loAver stages of civilization to the higher, 
 causes multiply which make the foresight of future 
 privation a more powerful motive to abstinence from 
 early marriage, and extend the habit of such abstinence 
 over a larger portion of the population. Men not only 
 look forward to the gratification of those great primary 
 wants which are necessary, and which prevail even in 
 the rudest state of society, but a number of other wants 
 become known, of a more refined and elevated character. 
 We will call the wants of these objects which are 
 necessary to maintain existence, primavj wants ; and
 
 1G4 SECONDARY WANTS MULTIPLY 
 
 the want of all other objects useful and agreeable to 
 man, secondary wants. 
 
 As secondary wants multiply among the different 
 classes of society, motives to prudence in re- 
 
 Secondary ^ ' -^ 
 
 tre"niotivesto^ g^i'^ ^0 marrlagc multiply with them. The 
 weights are increased in one scale while those 
 in the other continue stationary. Each additional want 
 creates an additional motive to forbearance, while the 
 impulse towards marriage remains the same. 
 
 So much might probably have been assumed a priori. 
 The influence of this fact on the frequency of marriage 
 and on the progress of j^opulation will appear at once, 
 if we observe with some attention the habits of different 
 ranks and classes in the same nation, or of the same 
 rank in nations which have arrived at different stages 
 of wealth and refinement. The English agricultural 
 laborer usually marries as soon as he can earn the full 
 wages of day labor. Complete or protracted celibacy is 
 very rare in his class. Accustomed to the gratification 
 of few wants beyond those of a primary character, as 
 soon as he sees a chance of satisfying these, he marries. 
 A step higher in the scale the case is difi'erent. The 
 artizan or small dealer is familiar with habits that gratify 
 tastes of a somewhat more refined and costly character. 
 He aspires to be better fed, better lodged, and better 
 clothed ; and seeks some enjoyments beyond mere food 
 and shelter. If he is permanently to maintain the habits 
 he has been accustomed to, he must abide the time when 
 some portion of property and an opening in his business 
 may permit him to establish himself. This class, there- 
 fore, marries later. Instances of celibacy in both sexes
 
 THE MOTIVES TO PRUDENCE. 1G5 
 
 are more common as we advance somewhat higher. 
 If we look at the liberal professions, we shall they are a 
 find voluntary restraint arising; from a multi- populatTon i» 
 
 •^ ° the higher 
 
 tude of cherished objects which would be sacri- "^'^^^^^ 
 ficed by an imprudent marriage. Even in the very 
 first circles of society, where the fortunes of the in- 
 dividual members enable them to command in abun- 
 dance all possible comforts and luxuries, the desire of 
 station and influence are found sufficiently powerful 
 to control the habits and the natural desire for mar- 
 riage union. Among them celibacy is, perhaps, more 
 common than it is in any other rank. Among all 
 the classes we have been glancing at, it is the multi- 
 plication of the means of commanding comforts and 
 luxuries which forms tlie real check to the multiplica- 
 tion of the people, and not the want of mere food and 
 necessaries. 
 
 To observe the same truth in its application to the 
 laboring masses we must examine the habits, not of 
 different ranks in the same country, but those of the 
 same rank in different countries. The English agricul- 
 tural laborer, as we have observed, when he 
 
 ' ' and reach in 
 
 can command the means of satisfying his toThe'^iower 
 primary wants of food, shelter, and cloth- 
 ing, seldom delays marriage ; but then he is accus- 
 tomed to satisfy those wants by a better description 
 of food, clothing, and shelter than the laborer of other 
 countries ; and this superiority performs the function 
 of secondary wants with which he is not wholly un- 
 acquainted, and prevents him from surrounding him- 
 self with a family as recklessly as persons of the same
 
 166 TIIEY INCREASE WITH WEALTH. 
 
 rank would do in countries less prosperous than his 
 own. 
 
 Unhappily, Ireland always presents itself too readily 
 for comparison in this respect. The Irishman who in- 
 habits a cabin, which, to English eyes, seems wholly 
 unfit for human habitation, and subsists in it on potatoes, 
 notoriously marries more recklessly, earlier, and more 
 universally than the English laborer ; and, by the 
 common consent of all who have given testimony on the 
 subject, he marries the earliest and the most recklessly 
 in those districts in which his real wages — his means of 
 subsistence — are the least. 
 
 Throughout the whole mass of human society, there- 
 fore, it is the multiplication of the means of comforts 
 and of enjoyments which, during the career of nations, is 
 the great efficient cause which prompts men voluntarily 
 to refrain from the greatest possible exercise of their 
 theyincrense powcr to incrcaso thclr numbers; and in 
 
 as wealth in- , i i • 
 
 creasis. proportiou as wealth increases and spreads 
 
 throughout the nation, the motives to, and habits of, 
 such voluntary restraint acquire a stronger influence 
 over the progress of the population. The reader, to 
 whom it suggests itself that some vice will accom- 
 pany the prevalence of such a check, will recollect 
 that the vice itself is not the check, but an incidental 
 and partial consequence of it ; and that if this restraint 
 over the legal union of the sexes brings with it spots 
 of vice, it brings also in rich abundance a long train 
 of feelings and habits which contribute the most to 
 invigorate, adorn, and elevate the manners and the 
 intellect of nations.
 
 EFFECT OF CHANGES IN THE RATE OF WAGES. 167 
 
 We proceed to apply these principles to the investiga- 
 tion of the probable effect and ultimate results of fluctu- 
 ations in the amount of the real wages of labor. 
 
 0^ THE EFFECT OF FLUCTUATIONS K^ THE HEAL WAGES 
 OF LABOR 0:S THE MOVEilENTS OF POPULATION. 
 
 The laboring population are usually spoken of as a 
 homogeneous mass : and the measure of their means is 
 taken from the condition of the lowest rank amongst 
 them, whose wages are assumed to be the wages of the 
 whole. This is not strictly true as to any country, and 
 is yery wide of the truth as to England. If we make 
 allowance for the temporary depression of particular 
 trades and callings, the agricultural class subsists on the 
 lowest wages, but the agricultural class does not include 
 one-third of the population. The means of the other 
 two-thirds must be measured by a somewhat higher 
 standard, and, as to no inconsiderable part of those two- 
 thirds, by a very much higher standard. But further, 
 when speaking of the progress of population, its move- 
 ments are frequently reasoned upon as if they depended 
 wholly on changes in the rate of wages. This again is 
 not correct ; for various causes, moral and physical, 
 besides changes in the rate of wages, may contribute 
 powerfully to influence the tendency of population to 
 increase or decrease more slowly or more rapidly at 
 different periods of its existence. 
 
 After premising thus much, it must, however, be 
 readily admitted that the laboring classes constitute
 
 168 THESE CHANGES MAY, OR MAY NOT, 
 
 the bulk of all nations, and that their tendency to 
 increase or decrease their numbers is the main cause 
 of the changes that take place in the amount of the 
 ch->n-cs in the populatious of different countries. Again, 
 
 rite of wag'es •*■ 
 
 i'lifluuiliauf-' although changes in the rate of wages are 
 lation? '"''"" not the sole cause which impart a tendency 
 to increase or decrease the numbers of the laboring 
 classes, such changes in the rate of real wages are 
 the most prominent and influential of all the causes 
 which communicate such an impulse. We have, there- 
 fore, to inquire into the influence on the movements 
 of the population of changes in the rate of wages 
 taking place under different circumstances. 
 
 There is one possible position of the laboring classes, 
 in which any change in one direction, that is, a decrease 
 Mhenthat in tho rato of real wa^^es, must have one 
 
 rate is lowest, 
 
 uonmuir" invariable effect. If a people are at the 
 
 diminish , . r i j. •^^ l. ' j. 
 
 population. minimwn ol what will support existence, any 
 decrease in the real wages of their labor must be 
 followed at once by increased mortality and a dimi- 
 nution of their numbers. We have the testimony 
 of Turgot, that, while he was superintendent of the 
 Limousin, a part of the French population was then 
 in that condition. I somewhat doubt the correctness 
 of the fact, in spite of the authority on which it 
 rests, and I know of no other instance of the kind. 
 I wish it to be understood, however, that, to this 
 state of things, none of the propositions I am about 
 to lay down, apply ; but, excepting in this condition 
 of the laboring classes, every change in the rate of 
 real wages may, when it takes place under different
 
 AFFECT THE TROGRESS OF POPULATIOX. 169 
 
 circumstances, produce one of two opposite effects ; that 
 is, every increase of real wages may either accelerate 
 or retard the progress of population ; and every de- 
 crease may also either accelerate or retard that progress. 
 For instance, let us suppose the wages of wiun wages 
 
 ■11 •"^^^^i^ • ii "^'^ increased 
 
 labor m iLngland to be increased by one- the population 
 
 "^ may or may 
 
 third, no one doubts that this increase might "^^ '"""'=^««- 
 give an impulse to population ; that the multiplica- 
 tion of the people might become more rapid, and, 
 after a time, the supply of labor in the market more 
 abundant, compared with the demand for it, than it 
 would have been had no such rise of real wages 
 taken place. But then a contrary effect might also 
 take place : the habits of the people might alter ; 
 they might lay out their increased wages on objects 
 of more reffned consumption ; the number of their 
 secondary wants might be increased. They might 
 have fui'ther enjoyments in prospect, if they were 
 prudent ; more to sacrifice if they were the contrary : 
 they would then approach nearer to the classes which 
 were immediately above them. The age of marriage 
 might be deferred; celibacy might become more com- 
 mon, the influence of voluntary restraint more potent, 
 and then the effect of the rise of wages would have 
 been to retard and not to accelerate the rate of their 
 increase. The supply of labor would not, so far as 
 the rise of wages was concerned, have a tendency to 
 become greater than it would have been, had no such 
 rise taken place; on the contrary, it might become 
 less, — and that, in consequence of this very rise. 
 
 To take another instance. Let us suppose that, at
 
 170 VARIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES DETERMINE 
 
 some future period, wages in Ireland should rise to 
 the level of English wages. It is sui'ely possible that 
 the same, or a correspondent change, might take place 
 in the habits of the Irish people ; that they might be 
 found marrying later; that they were more under the 
 influence of voluntary restraint, and were increasing 
 theii" numbers less rapidly than they do at present. 
 What the main circumstances are which contribute to 
 determine that the one or the other of these two pos- 
 sible and different results, of an increase of wages on 
 the movements of the population, shall take place in 
 any given instance, is a question which we shall pre- 
 sently proceed to consider. 
 
 But before we do this, it may be well to observe 
 that any decrease of real wages among a people not 
 When wages roduced to tho jmmmtcm of subsistence, may, 
 
 are reduced 
 
 may''o?may°° whcu It takcs placo under different circum- 
 
 notbe reduced , i f n i ^ -ii p j_i 
 
 also. stances, be also loUowed by either oi the 
 
 two different results above adverted to ; that is, it 
 may either accelerate, or it may retard, the rate of 
 increase of the people. Let us suppose the rate of 
 English wages to be reduced to the Irish standard, 
 it is clear that the decreased wages might be accom- 
 panied by a more rapid increase of their numbers. 
 The population of Ireland has been, for some time, 
 increasing more rapidly than that of England, and 
 there is nothing in the climate or circumstances of 
 England to prevent the English from increasing as 
 fast as the Irish, on similar fare and with similar 
 habits. At the same time, it will hardly be denied 
 that an Irish rate of wages established in England
 
 TnE INFLUENCE OF FLUCTUATIONS IN WAGES. 171 
 
 might be followed by a diminislied population, and, 
 after a time, by a diminislied supply of labor. It 
 is enough for my present purpose, if it be admitted 
 that each of these opposite results is possible. Under 
 what circumstances the one or the other would be 
 the probable result is, once more, the question we have 
 to consider. 
 
 In attempting to point out the circumstances which 
 contribute to determine whether cliano;es in 
 
 ^ These diffe- 
 
 the rate of wages shall affect the numbers or ar" dependant 
 
 ii 7 7 •/ n ii IX • J O" the effects 
 
 the habits ot the people, i am quite aware of changes m 
 
 the rate of 
 
 that my enumeration of them is likely to haMuofthe 
 be incomplete. The inquiry is, I believe, ''^°''^^" 
 new ; and it will be difficult to discern at once all 
 those delicate springs of action which unite to form 
 the motives and fashion the habits of nations, in this 
 particular. Some of the most prominent circumstances 
 and the most decidedly influential may be at once named 
 and explained. I shall confine myself to seven ; they 
 are as follows, viz. : 
 
 1st. The form in which wages reach the hand of 
 the laborer. 
 
 2nd. The time consumed in efi'ecting any given 
 change in the rate of wages, or the slowness or rapidity 
 with which it is effected. 
 
 3rd. The abundance and cheapness^ or the scarcity 
 and dearness^ of commodities suited to the gratification 
 of secondary wants. 
 
 4th. The presence or absence of numerous gradations 
 in the rank and wealth of the population. 
 
 5th. The difference in the social and political posi-
 
 172 THE FORM OF WAGES 
 
 tion of countries, such as the facility or difficulty of 
 investiug property or of moving upwards in rank. 
 
 6th. The influence^ or want of influence^ of parents 
 in determining the age of marriage of their chiklren. 
 
 7th. The Jcnoivledge or ignorance of the laboring 
 classes ; in other words, their education or the absence 
 of it. 
 
 I have named these in what I conceive to be the 
 order of their power, the most influential fii'st, the 
 least so last. "Whether I am right in that order is, 
 however, a matter of small moment, if I can show the 
 reader in what manner each of them contributes, and 
 how it contributes, to determine what shall be the 
 ultimate result of fluctuations in real wages on the 
 numbers of the people and on the supply of labor. 
 
 First, as to the form of wages. The laboring popu- 
 Theformof latlou of tho ciobc, it must be observed, 
 
 ■wages is the o J J 
 
 6tenL"affect' is divided into three great classes, which 
 habits. obtain their wages from different soufces, 
 
 and ordinarily in different forms. 
 
 [The first two of these classes are laboring culti- 
 vators and paid dependants^ as already described.] 
 
 The third division of the laborers of the earth con- 
 sists of persons who receive their wages out of the capital 
 of their employers^ or out of a portion of wealth which 
 has been saved or accumulated. Taking the world at 
 large, this division of the population is comparatively 
 very small. In our oAvn country, however, and in 
 that almost alone, these hired workmen form by far 
 the most important part of the laboring population : 
 it comprises not only the workmen in the employ of
 
 IS THE CHIEF OF THESE. I73 
 
 our manufacturers and master workmen, but likewise 
 the whole, or nearly the whole, of our agricultural 
 laborers. 
 
 There are two prominent circumstances affecting their 
 positions and fortunes, which broadly distinguish this 
 class of laborers from both unhired laborers and hired 
 dependants. In the first place, the whole fund from 
 which they are paid is a fund which has to be saved, 
 which goes through a process of accumulation with a 
 view to profit ; and, as their numbers increase, it is 
 necessary for their continuous prosperity that the com- 
 munity, of which they form a part, should save and 
 accumulate capital at least as fast as they are multi- 
 plying their numbers. This is not the case, either 
 with unhired laborers or liired dependants. The for- 
 mation and existence of the funds on which they sub- 
 sist, has little or no connection with the power or 
 disposition of society to save and accumulate. The 
 wages of the unhired workman never exist in any 
 other form than that of a stock destined for immediate 
 consumption : what he produces in the year he con- 
 sumes in the year; his existence and welfare are 
 quite independent of the savings of any part of the 
 community. The funds, likewise, on which the hired 
 dependant lives, go through no process of saving ; 
 his subsistence depends not on the economy and accu- 
 mulation of the class which employs him, but on their 
 expenditure for the purposes of immediate enjoyment. 
 
 The next circumstance which distinguishes the posi- 
 tion of the hired workman from that of the unhired 
 laborer and paid dependant is this : the hired work-
 
 174 THE INQUIRY, HOW FAR THESE CIRCUMSTANCES 
 
 man is employed with a view to profit. His continuous 
 employment may be, and is generally, dependant on 
 the existence of a demand for the products of his labor 
 other than the demand of his immediate employer ; that 
 is, there must be a market for the commodities he 
 produces, or he must cease to produce them and to 
 receive his wages. Ilis condition and livelihood are 
 affected by fluctuations in the taste and consumption 
 of the most distant parts of the world.^ 
 
 In reference to the seven circumstances I have 
 enumerated, as contributing to stimulate or to check 
 the progress of population during fluctuations in the 
 rate of wages, or to any other causes that may lead 
 to the same results, there are two questions which it is 
 very desirable we should be able to answer, and which, 
 in the present state of our knowledge, we can answer 
 only imjDerfectly. First, what is the greatest amount 
 of force these circumstances can jointly exert? Are 
 they suflicient, when acting in one direction and under 
 the most favorable circumstances, to keep the popula- 
 tion stationary in numbers ? and, if not, to what extent 
 can they retard the rate of increase in wealthy nations ? 
 Secondly, what is the relative force of each of these 
 causes? and, if we find them acting in difl'erent direc- 
 tions, to what extent will they balance and control 
 each other ? 
 
 1 No remarks followed on tlie othei- six circumstances alluded to. The few 
 remaining pages of the MS. book were in blank. What follows was taken from 
 another book, the commcnceniont of which was the only guide to the connei.tion 
 between them. — Ed.
 
 ..rriLUENCE THE PROGRESS OF POrULATION. 175 
 
 Now to neither of these questions are we in a 
 position to return a positive answer. Sucli an answer 
 can only be given after a very careful and extensive 
 induction from facts; and that induction the nations 
 of the world can hardly be said to have begun. In 
 the absence of such induction, I am inclined to the 
 opinion (and I am aware what a mere opinion is) 
 that, in a society where all the cii-cumstances favorable 
 to voluntary restraint, or even the most powerful of 
 them, are acting in conjunction, the very prosperity of 
 a people, the abundance of their comforts and the 
 elevation of their habits, may lead to a rate of The equality of 
 
 . • I'lvii'ji J of births and 
 
 increase, m which the births may not more deaths pro. 
 
 bable where 
 
 than balance the deaths. There is nothing ai-e'^fZ'rabi"' 
 
 . , . Ill* 1 t° voluntary 
 
 SO very violent or improbable m such an restraint, 
 effect being produced by mere voluntary restraint. 
 When Malthus published his second edition, half the 
 English population lived to marry, and the number 
 of births to a marriage amounted to four and a quarter. 
 It is obvious, therefore, that, if the births had been four 
 only, instead of four and a quarter, the population 
 would have been stationary. There is, therefore, 
 nothing very improbable in supposing that, under 
 favorable circumstances, the age of marriage might be 
 so retarded and the cases of celibacy so increased, 
 that the number of births might be reduced to four. 
 The fraction by which they exceed the deaths in a 
 population increasing rapidly, is never so great but 
 that a combination of causes, acting with no great 
 force, on the whole number of births, may very well 
 make the fraction in excess disappear. The retardation
 
 176 RETARDATION OF THE AGE OF MARRIAGY.^<ES 
 
 of the age of marriage, which is the constant result of 
 the multiplication of secondary wants among the body 
 of the people, diminislies the number of births from 
 two causes. It multij)lies the cases of celibacy, and 
 it makes the existing marriages, as a whole, less pro- 
 ductive. In the case, indeed, of couples living and 
 continuing healthy, the number of births to each mar- 
 riage would probably be little, or at all, affected by 
 a moderate retardation in the average age of marriage. 
 But suppose that age at one time to be twenty-one, 
 and at another time to be twenty five, all the persons 
 who were producing births from twenty-one would not 
 live and continue healthy till twenty-five. A propor- 
 tion, we know, would die betAveen these ages, and 
 another jDortion might, at the latter period, be attacked 
 by disorders prejudicial to births, which disorders they 
 had escaped up to that period. So, too, in the case 
 of retarded marriages, the period of child-bearing is 
 extended. Let the average of that period be ten years, 
 then, when the age of marriage was twenty-one, it 
 would last to thirty -one ; when the age of marriage 
 was twenty-five, it would extend to thirt5^-five. But 
 between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-five there 
 are a certain number of deaths ; and a certain propor- 
 tion of marriages will not, therefore, produce the 
 average number of children when the age of marriage 
 is twenty-five, which they would have produced when 
 it was twenty-one. 
 
 A retardation of tlie age of marriage has also a 
 tendency to multiply the cases of celibacy. At twenty- 
 five persons have more forethought and prudence than
 
 THE CASE OF ENGLAND EXCEPTIONAL. 177 
 
 at twenty-one : fewer reckless and imprudent marriages 
 would then take place. The chances of life and of 
 the world would prevent others from marrying; and 
 of those who were so prevented, some would not marry 
 at all. 
 
 Against the probabilities which such arguments or 
 insulated cases offer, it may, however, be said that they 
 afford no sufficient foundation for any firm conclusions 
 on the subject ; and it may be alleged, with some plau- 
 sibility, that the case of England alone is sufficient to 
 confute any favorable views as to the probability of 
 the laboring population controlling their powers of in- 
 crease : that here wealth, artificial wants, and political 
 independence, have done their utmost, and yet that the 
 rate of increase has been such as to show that a like 
 rate of increase, if continued for some centuries, must 
 reduce the most flourishing nations to difficulties and 
 sufi'erings. 
 
 The cai^e of England, however, is one from which 
 no valid inference can be drawn as to the probable habits 
 of the population in other countries running a similar 
 career of prosperity. In her case, neither all, nor the 
 principal, causes which influence the progress of popu- 
 lation have been acting in the same direction. On the 
 contrary, many of these causes, and those important 
 ones, have been acting very unfavorably. We shall 
 see hereafter that this unfortunate circumstance is by 
 no means a necessary concomitant of her economical 
 position, or of the peculiar development of her pro- 
 ductive powers, or position of her productive classes ; 
 that other countries following, in all respects, the career 
 
 12
 
 178 AVERAGE RESULTS ONLY TO BE DEDUCED 
 
 of her industry, may escape many of the evils, while 
 they reap all the good, that has attended her own pro- 
 gress. We shall see, too, I hope, that in a happier 
 futurity what is deleterious may be eliminated, what is 
 wholesome strengthened, in the moral causes which de- 
 termine the condition of her laboring population and 
 the progress of their numbers. But the development 
 of these views belongs to another part of the work, and, 
 in the meanwhile, I would observe that the example of 
 single nations, like that of England, can never conduct 
 us to safe general conclusions. It is by one common 
 and laborious process alone that we can approach wide 
 and secure truths, when we are striving to know the 
 results of various causes acting, not on individuals, but 
 on bodies ; and that process is long, steady and compre-. 
 hensive observation. Our common nature, and our 
 consciousness, may enable us to guess what will be 
 the result of circumstances acting on individuals situated 
 as we ourselves are situated, or even, perhaps, as some 
 one individual is situated whom we intimately know and 
 can narrowly observe ; but, beyond that, the power of 
 reasoning and guessing at the results of moral and 
 political causes becomes illusory, and the attempt to 
 exercise it perilous. 
 
 When we would seek for average and constant re- 
 Average re- suits of such causes among large bodies of 
 
 suits can only „ ,, > T i j l 
 
 be obtained our lellow mcu, we must labor to observe 
 
 from long ex- ' 
 
 perience. ^.^^ obtaiu thoso rcsults from experience. 
 What precise number of births shall follow a parti- 
 cular marriage, or what number of deaths shall occur 
 among a dozen of our acquaintance, we know we
 
 FROM AN EXTENDED EXPERIENCE. I79 
 
 cannot say ; but extend the observation to bodies con- 
 sisting of millions, and the average number of births 
 or of deaths are facts which we find we can foresee 
 and calculate and act on with safety ; and thus it 
 is that the researches of the statesman, practical or 
 philosophical, and the processes by which he arrives 
 at general truths, are brought within the dominion 
 of the same general laws as those which direct and 
 reward the patient researches of the physical philoso- 
 pher. It is with nations, and not with individuals, 
 that he has to deal ; and that he may interpret the 
 causes which regulate the fortunes and destinies of 
 nations, he must watch and record and compare events, 
 and abandon, as a vain thing, a rash reliance on the 
 unassisted powers of his intellect to discover, by reason- 
 ing and argument, those moral causes by which the 
 course of events is regulated among large bodies of men 
 with a certainty no less unerring than the motions of 
 the planets, or any of the phenomena exhibited by the 
 material creation. 
 
 Now, on a career of research, such as I have been 
 indicating, the nations of the world have no such expe- 
 
 t /~\ o 1 ' n t rience has yet 
 
 hardly yet entered. Of the trams of observ- ^^""^ obtained 
 ation which must be the foundation of political truths 
 of the class we are now contemplating, some must 
 partake of a secular character. What effect time and 
 form and artificial wants, and the influence of educa- 
 tion, shall have on the movements of the population, 
 cannot be observed in a day ; and, if our observa- 
 tions are confined to one people, many ages must 
 elapse before we have opportunities of discerning the
 
 180 THIS EXPERIENCE ONLY TO BE OBTAINED 
 
 effect of these causes in modifying the results of changes 
 in the rate of wages. Politicians are too eager for im- 
 mediate results, too much engrossed by the influence 
 of passing events, and the desire of commanding the 
 obedience or belief of the generation amidst which 
 they live, to apply themselves steadily to the col- 
 lection and observation of facts which are to guide 
 the conclusions and the conduct of men at a distant 
 time. 
 
 Yet the history of other branches of knowledge teach 
 
 efficiently, we should think, both the necessity and the 
 
 rewards of patience and continuous labor, 
 
 It would re- •"■ ' 
 
 Sontim"r when great and wide truths are to be ap- 
 proached. In astronomy, the most perfect 
 of sciences, predictions of celestial phenomena are as- 
 sisted by observations which are the results of the suc- 
 cessive labor of many generations : none have been in 
 vain. A philosophical union of humility and hopefulness 
 will lead men to mistrust the importance, in the pro- 
 motion of knowledge, of the results of their individual 
 observations, and to rely, with firm confidence, for the 
 discovery of general laws on the gradually increasing 
 power of the united efforts of our race, extended through 
 large intervals of time and space. Such mistrust and 
 hopefulness form the very articles of faith which the 
 father of inductive logic strove the most strenuously to 
 inculcate ; and in no one of these comprehensive fields 
 of human knowledge, which depend for their progress 
 on extensive observations (not experiment), will man- 
 kind advance to great discoveries till such a faith has 
 led to extensive practice.
 
 BY PATIENCE, LABOR, AXD IXQUIKY. IS] 
 
 If, however, a spirit of statistical inquiry were fully 
 spread over the ^lobe, if the same pheno- 
 
 ^ . ■ '"> stttistieal 
 
 mena were observed simultaneously in all the .'"Iv'^rt.n" 
 more civilized countries, with a common per- 
 ception of their bearing on political questions, no very 
 long period would elapse before such observations 
 afforded the grounds for safe and useful conclusions. 
 We could not, if confined to one country, observe, 
 except during a long interval of time, the effects of 
 different forms of wages on the movements of the 
 population ; but simultaneous observations carried on 
 in England and throughout the continent, noting care- 
 fully the results of fluctuations in real wages where 
 different forms of wages prevailed, would put us in 
 possession of at least one element for such a calcula- 
 tion. It is true that regard must be had to the in- 
 fluence exerted in each country by the causes already 
 enumerated, and by other causes acting at the same time 
 with the former ; and this would be difficult, — but the 
 road to truth is always difficult. 
 
 Such observations, widely carried on and steadily 
 continued, will enable us to note the results in the 
 presence or in the absence of each of the causes of 
 which we are seeking the force. After an accumu- 
 lation of such accumulations, we shall have comj)leted 
 that " inductio quce ad inventionem et demonstrationem 
 '^ scientiarum et artium erit utilis, et quce naturam reipa- 
 '"'' rare debet per rejectiones et exclusiones dehitasP 
 
 I believe that, by extensive and continuous obser- 
 vations of this kind, may be detected the relative 
 effects of the causes I have enumerated, as determin-
 
 182 THE INDUCTIVE METHOD APPLICABLE TO 
 
 iug the iutiiience of changes in the rate of real wages 
 on the movements of the population. And then, the 
 circumstances of any given country being thoroughly 
 known, the effects of any such change in retarding 
 or accelerating the population may be anticipated with 
 some approximation to certainty. It may appear im- 
 probable that such united researches shall take place; 
 yet this is only so because men do not see that political 
 Political knowledge, ranged under general principles 
 b"Icqui"redby — tliat Is, poUticol scieuce — is attainable by 
 
 the same no t t 
 
 methods as the verv same eiiorts that have spread so 
 
 physical •/ ■•■ 
 
 science. ^ido tho domluion of physical science. When 
 
 men perceive clearly and distinctly that they may 
 approach by the same species of effort wide fields of 
 truth in each, it is difficult to believe that they will 
 always continue to prefer the labors which lead to a 
 knowledge of inanimate nature, or the brute creation, 
 to that nobler knowledge which unfolds the causes of 
 the fortunes of nations and constitutes a power which, 
 once developed, must exercise a commanding influence 
 over the character and happiness of mankind. 
 
 I have explained my own views of the next step 
 to be taken, by enumerating acting causes and point- 
 ing to the observations which must determine their 
 relative force and greatest amount of joint influence. 
 I have likewise stated that circumstances which I have 
 not enumerated contribute to the general effect, and 
 ought to be added to the list I have given. I shall 
 be glad to see such additional causes and their forces 
 detected by the acuteness and industry of others; and 
 it is a labor well worth the attention of all who are
 
 rOLlTICAL, AS WELL AS TO niYSICAL, SCIENCE. 183 
 
 disposed to enter vigorously on the task of enlarging 
 the bounds of knowledge in this branch of political 
 philosophy. In the meantime, and till such researches 
 are made, my own observation would lead me to be- 
 lieve that their relative strength will be found to be 
 pretty correctly indicated by the order in which I have 
 placed them. I have a fuller and more distinct belief 
 that time and form will be found to be permanently 
 the most influential of the seven.
 
 A SHOET TRACT 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY; 
 
 INCLUDING SOME 
 
 ACCOUNT OF THE ANGLO-INDIAN 
 EEVENUE SYSTEMS.
 
 [For tlie convenience of the reader, a paged Index to the 
 subjects treated of in this Tract is inserted at the end.]
 
 A SHORT TRACT 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The subject-matter of Political Economy is the 
 Wealth of Nations. Wealth consists of such material 
 objects as are voluntarily appropriated by mankind. 
 There are immaterial things which might reasonably 
 seem to come within the scope of the denomination, 
 wealth, — such as reputation, personal or mental accom- 
 plishments, etc. ; things, however, of which the pro- 
 duction and the distribution are without the limits of 
 human investigation : it is only of wealth constituted 
 by material things that Political Economy treats. 
 
 Some have cast a reproach on Political Economy, 
 as conversant only with the vulgar things of the mate- 
 rial universe, and as excluding from its view what 
 relates to men as moral and intelligent beings; but 
 none will entertain mean ideas of its importance who 
 are aware of the influence which men's physical con- 
 dition exerts upon their moral and mental frame, or 
 who have observed, in the history of nations, how 
 knowledge and religion invariably keep pace with the 
 march of social prosperity and of civilization.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY BASED ON EXPERIENCE. 
 
 r 
 
 A science consists of general principles. The science 
 of Political Economy consists of those general prin- 
 ciples which regulate the production and distribution 
 of wealth. 
 
 A general principle is one common to a great num- 
 ber of facts and circumstances. 
 
 To discover, then, the principles of Political Eco- 
 nomy, it will be necessary to examine all the facts 
 and circumstances connected with the production and 
 L distribution of wealth. 
 
 Theory and fact are often represented as opposed 
 one to the other ; but, strictly speaking, theory is the 
 result of an examination into facts, and is never opposed 
 to fact, even in appearance, except when it is fallacious, 
 in consequence of the examination having been im- 
 perfect or hastily conducted. 
 
 The principles which determine the position and 
 progress and govern the conduct of large bodies of 
 the human race, placed under different circumstances, 
 can be learnt only by an appeal to experience. It 
 would be absurd to suppose that any one, by mere 
 efforts of consciousness, by consulting his own views, 
 feelings, and motives, and the narrow sphere of his 
 personal observation, and reasoning a priori from them, 
 could anticipate the conduct, progress, and fortunes of 
 large bodies of men, differing from himself in moral 
 or physical temperament, and influenced by differences, 
 varying in extent and variously combined, in climate, 
 
 _soil, religion, education, and government. 
 
 ^ It may, however, be laid down as a fundamental 
 
 principle, that, although individuals often act differently
 
 ITS OBJECTS STATED. 189 
 
 in similar circumstances, yet bodies of men, for the 
 most part, act alike in similar circumstances. ^ 
 
 The objects of Political Economy are, as has been 
 intimated, 1, Laws determining the production of wealth ; 
 and, 2, Laws determining the distribution of wealth. 
 
 A law is the uniform result of any cause, known 
 or unknown. Unknown causes are not the less causes 
 for being unknown, as, e.g.^ what we call gravitation. 
 
 For the sake of convenience, we shall reverse the 
 mode of investigation which a strict philosophy would 
 enjoin, and shall first state the laws and then establish 
 them by the facts of Political Economy. 
 
 There are three causes which determine the pro- 
 ductive power of the industry of nations : 
 
 1. The continuity with which it is exerted. 
 
 2. The skill with which it is directed. 
 
 3. The power by which it is aided. 
 
 Of course, the primary sources of all material wealth 
 are the earth and the elements. Human labor gives 
 to wealth the various shapes in which it appears ; in 
 other words, it elicits and fashions it. Hence it follows 
 that the production of wealth depends upon the pro- 
 ductiveness or efficiency of labor. 
 
 In the earliest stages of society, the quality of the 
 soil affects the production of wealth ; but, in the later 
 stages, when the other causes come into play, it affects 
 it in a degree so small as to be inconsiderable. Thus 
 the fertile country between the Andes and the Atlantic 
 is not made to produce anything like what the poor 
 land of Great Britain yields to industry, continuous, 
 skilfully directed, and powerfully assisted.
 
 190 CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE 
 
 The advantage of continuous over desultory labor 
 is strikingly evinced by a comparison of the products 
 of English and Indian manufactures. It also appears 
 in the agriculture of nations in the different stages of 
 civilization ; for, amongst rude people, ignorant of the 
 artifice of a rotation of crops, the work of agriculture 
 is confined to the seasons of seed time and harvest. 
 To it in part it is owing that, in England, one laborer 
 is able to produce food for himself and for rather more 
 than two other persons, while on the continent it is 
 estimated that two laborers produce food for themselves 
 and one other. 
 
 Nor should the influence of continuity of labor, 
 and of any other cause increasing the efficiency of 
 labor, be overlooked or underrated in its bearing upon 
 the progress of nations in civilization. "When men 
 are so ignorant and clumsy that all their exertions 
 can but scantily provide them with the means of sub- 
 sistence, it is impossible that they should at all cul- 
 tivate those arts which raise societies out of the depths 
 of barbarism, and bestow comfort and enjoyment upon 
 life. If an association of six jDcrsons are maintained 
 by the agricultural labor of two out of their number, 
 there are loft four who may employ themselves in 
 other ways, usefully to the body at large, in making 
 clothing, or habitations, or tools, etc. Now, if four 
 of them were laborers upon the ground, and but two 
 engaged in non-agricultural business, it is plain that 
 their condition would be far worse and proportionately 
 less susceptible of improvement. 
 
 To attempt to demonstrate the value of a skilful
 
 THE PRODUCTIVE POWER OF LABOR. 191 
 
 direction of labor would be a waste of time ; for none 
 will question that a man of ingenuity, experience, and 
 knowledge is likely to make more out of his materials 
 of wealth than one who is untaught, unpractised, and 
 stupid. 
 
 The last cause is by far the most important of the 
 three assigned, as determining the productive power 
 of industry. In the rudest state of society, the hands 
 are the aiding power. The next advance which men 
 make is to the use of a plough, which, in its simplest 
 form, is a crooked stick, and then a piece of iron, 
 edged so as to tear up the ground. This advance is 
 a very great one, but still leaves us at a vast dis- 
 tance from the perfection attainable in agricultural 
 machinery ; for, between a modern and a primitive 
 plough, there is a far greater difference in respect of 
 auxiliary power than between a primitive plough and 
 a human hand ; between the plough used by English- 
 men and Scotchmen, compared with that of the Hindoo, 
 or of the Chinese who harnesses to it his wife and 
 his donkey, than between the latter compared with 
 the savage's fingers. Eecourse is had, in progress of 
 time, to mechanical powers, of which that of the lever 
 is the first that is employed to assist labor, as it is 
 found working in the handmill. Another step conducts 
 to that point where the power of the elements of wind 
 and water is laid hold of and brought into subservience 
 to humankind. It may be noticed, cursorily, that of 
 these two elements wind is less certain and less manage- 
 able ; but, of course, water is not to be found every- 
 where. And, in our own times, science has brought
 
 192 DEFINITION OF CAPITAL. 
 
 into play powers yet mightier and more tractable, 
 whose achievements have struck the public mind with 
 astonishment. It is unnecessary to do more than allude 
 to the chemical powers, — to the elementary gases, to 
 steam, to galvanism, and even common air, under 
 processes of compression. 
 
 Capital is a portion of wealth which has gone 
 through the processes of accumulation, and is used for 
 the purpose of further production. It is to be distin- 
 guished from that portion of wealth which, as soon 
 as acquired, is consumed, and is neither saved nor 
 expended in new production. Thus, to employ a 
 homely illustration, an Irishman's potatoes which he 
 eats as soon as they are ripe, cannot be called capital. 
 
 Capital is of two kinds : 
 
 1. That which is used in paying wages ; 
 
 2. That which is used, in any other way, to aid the 
 productive powers of labor ; and is therefore said to be, 
 specially, auxiliary capital. 
 
 It must be explained that the word production is 
 here made to bear a wider meaning than in common 
 speech. An article is not considered to be completely 
 produced until it is placed in the hands of the person 
 who is to consume it. Thus tea designed for English 
 consumption is not said to be produced till it has been 
 conveyed from China, through the mediation of different 
 individuals and through the instrumentality of auxiliary 
 capital in various shapes, to the English purchaser who 
 means to consume it. It is plain that if the tea-mer- 
 chant, instead of transmitting it from China to England 
 by such mediation and instrumentality, were forced to
 
 IT TXCREASES THE EFFICIEXCY OF LABOR, 193 
 
 send it iu his own cart to Canton, and then to buy 
 a ship in ^yhich it might be carried to England, and, 
 in short, to take it himself, and with his own means, 
 to its ultimate destination, he must apply to this end 
 a very large portion of the capital which otherwise 
 he would employ for the purpose of production, and 
 wliich can be attained at a comparatively trifling ex- 
 pense to himself by the auxiliary capital of others, 
 who derive emolument from such an employment 
 of it. 
 
 The functions of capital in increasing the efficiency 
 of labor, by rendering it more continuous, skilful, and 
 powerful, will now come under our consideration. And 
 first we shall sjieak of capital used in paying wages. 
 
 In countries poor in capital, a portion, more or less 
 large, of the laboring population are unhired and self- 
 dependent. The continuity of their labor ob\dously 
 depends upon the continuity of their custom ; — a remark 
 ajiplicable, too, to those who, in the thinly inhabited 
 districts of the East, ply every chance traveller for 
 custom, and are one hour at work, and idle the next. 
 On the contrary, in countries rich in capital, the labor- 
 ing population being for the most part hired, are subject 
 to the vigilant eye of their masters, and are not per- 
 mitted to relax their diligence. Capitalists, too, have 
 another advantage over unhired laborers, in being able 
 to afford to keep their goods for a time, — in not being 
 dependent for their livelihood, or for the prosecution 
 of their work, upon the immediate sale of their goods. 
 From the first of these circumstances, by a direct con- 
 sequence, — from the second, by an indirect one, it results 
 
 13
 
 194 AUXILIARY CAPITAL— ITS FUNCTION. 
 
 that the labor of hii*ed is more continuous than that of 
 unhired laborers. 
 
 Again, an unliired laborer, whether agricultural or 
 non-agricultural, performs every part and every process 
 of the work himself. The capitalist, on the other hand, 
 can introduce into his concern the principle of the 
 division of labor, which not only renders the labor of 
 his dependants more continuous, but bestows upon them 
 that skill which is the result of habitual practice. 
 r It appears, then, that the functions of capital used 
 in paying wages, in respect to increasing the efficiency 
 of labor, are to render labor more continuous and more 
 skilful. 
 
 We have now to speak of auxiliary capital. 
 
 It has been shown before, by a lengthy illustration, 
 how auxiliary capital assists the production of labor. 
 It provides machines — and, be it remembered, that 
 railroads and canals, etc., are machines, as well as ships 
 and coaches and mills, etc., though of a larger size — 
 by which mechanical, elemental, and chemical powers 
 are, as it were, violently forced into servitude to their 
 rational lord. 
 
 The function of auxiliary capital, therefore, is to 
 ' render labor more powerful. 
 
 Having considered the causes determining the pro- 
 ductiveness of labor, and, by consequence, the pro- 
 duction of wealth — having also considered the func- 
 tions of capital in respect to those causes — it will be 
 proper to observe, with a view to discover the causes 
 determining the distribution of wealth, among what 
 classes of a country's population wealth is primarily
 
 miMARY DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL WEALTH. I95 
 
 distributed. It appears to be distributed primarily 
 amoug three classes : 
 
 1. Laborers who recciv^e wages. 
 
 2. Owners of capital who receive profits. 
 
 3. Owners of land who receive the rent of land. 
 
 In other words, national wealth is primarily divided ' 
 into wages, profits, and rents. Thus it is immarihj 
 divided ; but subsequently, in the progress of civiliza- 
 tion, a large mass of incomes presents itself to our 
 view, derived from these primary sources, and shared 
 by numerous classes of professional men of various 
 callings. -' 
 
 It is obvious that the distribution of wealth must I ! 
 have a vast influence upon the whole economical con- ! \ 
 dition of society. An acquaintance with the laws by 
 which it is regulated is absolutely essential to the 
 right solution of fiscal problems and to the understand- 
 ing of the true principles of taxation. This subject, 
 too, is intimately connected with the subject of ex- 
 changes and the functions of exchanges in promoting 
 the wealth of nations, a subject assuredly of no,,jr>|^^ 
 mean importance, but of which, however, the im- 
 portance has been considerably overrated by certain 
 writers, who have represented it as of wider extent 
 and interest than any of the others. This delusion 
 had its origin in an abuse of language and an im- 
 perfect examination of facts. The authors of it de- 
 fined wealth as consisting of all commodities of an 
 exchangeable value, and by a natural though fallacious 
 inference, deduced that exchanges were the main sub- 
 ject of Political Economy. One of their number even
 
 196 THE LABORING POPULATIOX DIVIDED INTO IVTO CI A^SES. 
 
 attempted, though unsuccessfully, to re- christen Political 
 Economy with the name of the Science of Catal- 
 lactics. But it requires little reflection to perceive that 
 there are many articles of wealth which are consumed 
 by the producers, and never become the subjects of 
 exchange ; and, therefore, that a portion of the wealth 
 of nations is excluded from the view of those who 
 confine Political Economy to the study of exchanges. 
 Again, observing that wealthy persons possessed a great 
 deal of money, they concluded that wealth consisted 
 in bullion, and that foreign commerce was the means 
 by which nations became rich. They overlooked the 
 simple truth, that that must be as good as silver and 
 gold, for which men are willing to give silver and 
 gold in exchange. Exchange may alter the form, but 
 cannot increase the quantity of wealth. 
 
 From this digression we return to take a survey 
 of the condition of the laboring population of the w^orld. 
 It will be found that the motives to industry, which 
 operate in different communities, depend upon the re- 
 lations which connect the classes of those communities. 
 
 That portion of wealth which is devoted to the 
 maintenance of labor is called the Labor Fund. 
 
 The laboring population of the world may be, gene- 
 rally, divided into, 
 
 1. Unhircd laborers, who are paid by self-produced 
 wages: these are nearly all agriculturists. 
 
 2. Hired dependants, paid from revenue expended 
 in wages : this class comprehends, besides artisans, 
 
 1. Menials, paid from the income or revenue of 
 their masters ; and.
 
 SUBDIVISIONS OF THE FIRST CLASS. 197 
 
 2. Soldiers, sailors, public officers, etc., paid from 
 taxes, wliich constitute a part of the aggregate iu- 
 come or revenue of the community. 
 
 3. Hired laborers, paid from capital : this class includes 
 tradesmen generally and the remaining agriculturists. 
 
 The proportions of these classes vary in different 
 countries. Probably, half the population of the world 
 belong to the first class. In England, the last class 
 forms nearly half the population: in some countries, 
 the population are passing more or less slowly from 
 one state to another. 
 
 We shall examine the condition of each of these 
 classes, and fii'st of unhired laborers : these arc gene- 
 rally, either, 1. Tenants ; or, 2. Hereditary occupiers ; 
 or, 3. Proprietors. 
 
 We shall speak of them in the order of this sub- 
 division. 
 
 A few words, by way of preface, respecting the 
 origin of rent. In the actual progress of human society, 
 rent has usually originated in the appropriation of the 
 soil, at a time when the bulk of the people must culti- 
 vate it on such terms as they can obtain, or starve, and 
 when their scanty capital of implements, seed, etc., 
 being utterly insufficient to secure their maintenance 
 in any other occupation than that of agriculture, is 
 chained to the land with themselves by an overpowering 
 necessity. 
 
 TENANTS. 
 
 Those classes of tenants who form a part of the * 
 laboring population of tlie world, may be called }x>asant 
 
 _J
 
 198 • ORIGIN OF SERF OK LABOR-RENTS : 
 
 tenants, using the term peasant to indicate an occupier 
 of the ground who depends on his o\yn Labour for its 
 cultivation. Three such classes may be distinguished : 
 1. Serfs; 2. Metayers; 3. Cottiers. 
 
 1. Serfs. 
 
 The origin of serf or labor-rents is this : — 
 
 In the early and rude stage of society, the expedient 
 used by landed proprietors to get rid of the task of 
 raising food for their laborers is as follows : — They 
 set aside for their use a portion, of the estate, and leave 
 them to extract their own subsistence from it at their 
 own risk; and they exact, as a rent for the land thus 
 abandoned, a certain quantity of labor to be employed 
 upon the remaining portion of the estate, which is re- 
 tained in their own hands. 
 
 This state of things is found in the Society Islands ; 
 and similar arrangemeiits exist in some of our West 
 Indian islands, between the negroes and the owners of 
 the estates to which they belong. 
 
 But it is among the nations of Eastern Europe that 
 labor-rents prevail most extensively. In the countries 
 westward of the Ehine they once flourished, but have 
 now almost wholly disappeared. In the countries east- 
 ward of the Ehine they are still paramount, bearing, 
 indeed, more or less the signs of decay and alteration, 
 but yet fashioning the frame of society, and exercising 
 a predominant influence over the industry and fortunes 
 of all ranks of the people. 
 
 This class of tenants is not unfrequently found in 
 a state of personal slavery ; nor is it diflicult to trace
 
 THEIR HISTORY AND RESULTS, 199 
 
 tlic steps by wliich this mode of occupying laud lias 
 gradually established the bondage of the peasant. A 
 rude people, dependent upon their own labor or their 
 allotment for their support, were often exposed, from the 
 failure of the crops or the ravages of war, to utter 
 destitution. The lord was usually able, out of his store- 
 houses, to afford them some relief, which they had -no 
 means of repaying but by additional labor. From this 
 and other causes the serf did, and does, perpetually owe 
 to his lord nearly the whole of his time. Besides this, 
 they were mainly dependent on him for protection from 
 strangers and each other. From his domestic tribunal 
 he settled their differences, and punished their faults, 
 with an authority which the general government was 
 in no condition to supersede, and which became at last 
 sanctioned by usage and equivalent to law. Theii* time 
 and their persons being thus abandoned to the will of 
 their superiors, the tenantry had no means of resisting 
 fui'ther encroachments. One of the most general seems 
 to have been the establishment of a right by which the 
 landlord, providing the serf with subsistence, might 
 withdi-aw him altogether from the soil on which he had 
 placed him, to employ him elsewhere at pleasm-e. Then 
 followed an understanding that the flight of a serf from 
 the estate of his landlord, employer and judge, was an 
 offence and an injury. This once sanctioned by law and 
 usage, the chains of the serf were rivetted, and he 
 became a slave, the property of a master. In Eussia 
 he is so still ; but successive modifications have every- 
 where else re-endowed him with at least some of the 
 privileges of a freeman.
 
 200 TUE SERF AN UNWILLING, IMrERFECTLY AS^^STED, 
 
 There are two parts of the world in which Uibor- 
 rents have not produced, or been accompanied by, per- 
 sonal bondage— Switzerland and the Highlands: but 
 the patriarchal authoritj-^ of the Highland chiefs was 
 at once dignified and moderated by supposed ties of 
 blood. 
 
 Such is a general history of labor-rents, which may 
 be traced from Kussia, gradually decaying in form and 
 spirit, through Hungary, Livonia, Poland, Prussia and 
 Germany, to the Ehine, on the borders of which they 
 melt into different systems, and are no longer to be 
 recognised. 
 
 It will be well to examine the effects of labor-rents 
 on the efiiciency of labor, and, by consequence, on the 
 production of wealth. The industry of serfs, then, is 
 found to be neither continuous, skilful, nor powerfully 
 aided ; and this is easily explained. The peasant who 
 depends for his food upon his labor in his own allot- 
 ment of ground, and is yet liable to be called away at 
 the discretion and convenience of another person to 
 work upon other lands, in the produce of which he is 
 not to share, is naturally a reluctant laborer. "When 
 long prescription has engendered a feeling that he is 
 a co-proprietor, at least, in the spot of ground which he 
 occupies, then his reluctance to be called from the care 
 of it to perform his task of forced labor elsewhere, is 
 heightened by a vague sense of oppression, and he be- 
 comes more dogged and sullen. From such men, who 
 have no motive for exertion but the fear of the lash, 
 streimous exertion is not to be expected. Then, again, 
 their industry is but loosely superintended, and still more
 
 AND THEREFORE INEFFICIENT LABORER. 201 
 
 imperfectly assisted by the landowners, the Eussian, 
 Polisli, Hungarian, or German nobles, who are elevated, 
 when not corrupted, by the privileges and habits of 
 their order ; are seldom inclined to bestow attention on 
 the detail of the labors of husbandry ; and have, per- 
 haps, yet more seldom the means of saving capital and 
 using it. 
 
 Another bad effect is produced by labor-rents on 
 national industry : the indolence and carelessness of 
 the serfs are apt to corrupt the free laborers who may 
 come in contact with them. 
 
 These circumstances combining to render their labor 
 inefficient, amply account for the poverty and misery of 
 the laboring population of those countries in which 
 labor-rents prevail, where the soil and climate are by no 
 means unfavorable to the production of wealth. Un- 
 happily this very poverty and misery, their dislike to 
 steady exertions, their want of skill, of means and energy, 
 and the degradation of their whole character, are ob- 
 stacles to an amelioration of their condition, peculiarly 
 difficult to overcome. Such an amelioration can only be 
 substantially and permanently effected by the substi- 
 tution of produce or money for labor-rentSc There can 
 be no doubt that a change of this kind is sincerely and 
 earnestly desired by the rulers and landed proprietors of 
 Eastern Europe, actuated alike by reasons of policy and 
 motives of benevolence. But such a change, to be safe, 
 must be gradual; and must not be attempted to be 
 accelerated by violent and precipitate measures, in- 
 vading existent rights and interests, and shaking public 
 security. In England it was the growth of centuries,
 
 /" 
 
 202 Ills CONDITION MUST BE GRADUALLY AMELIORATED. 
 
 and took place insensibly : so that, even now, there 
 linger here and there not only labor-rents, bnt also 
 servile tenures. Slow indeed it ever must be. The 
 people, who are to share in the benefits which it intro- 
 duces, will not always co-operate with their masters in 
 bringing it to pass. For it is the effect of servitude to 
 make men insensible to the advantages of freedom. Of 
 this fact striking exemplifications occur in the story of 
 societies as well as of individuals. Some Scotch salt- 
 miners who, having been in a state of servitude, were 
 made free by an Act of Parliament, in compliance with 
 the petition of their proprietors, who hoped, by raising 
 them from their debased condition, to moderate their 
 pernicious influence on the free laborers, loudly com- 
 plained of their emancipation as a device on the part of 
 their masters to get rid of their reciprocal obligations to 
 them. In Poland, when, in 1791, Stanislaus Augustus 
 and the States were preparing a hopeless resistance to 
 the threatened attack of Eussia, a new constitution, 
 adopted too late, established the complete personal free- 
 dom of the peasantry. But the peasants, finding that 
 their dependence on the proprietors for subsistence re- 
 mained undiminished, showed no very grateful sense of 
 the boon conferred upon them ; they feared that they 
 should now be deprived of all claim upon the proprietors 
 
 for assistance, when calamity or infii-mity overtook them. 
 V 
 
 2. Metayers. 
 
 The metayer is a peasant tenant, extracting his 
 kvn wages and subsistence from the soil^ and paying 
 a produce rent to the owner of that soil : the kind-
 
 PRODUCE-RENTS— THE METAYER SYSTEM : 203 
 
 lord also supplies him with stock to assist his labor. The 
 payment to the landlord may, therefore, be considered 
 to consist of two distinct portions ; one constitutes the 
 profits of his stock, the other his rent. 
 
 Tlie existence of such a race of tenantry indicates 
 some improvement in the body of the people, com- 
 pared with the state of things in which serf rents 
 originate. They are entrusted with the task of pro- 
 viding the food and annual revenue of the proprietor, 
 without his superintending, or interfering with, their 
 exertions. 
 
 The metayer system is found springing up in various 
 parts of the world, engrafted occasionally on the serf 
 rents we have been reviewing, and more often on the 
 system of ryot rents we have yet to examine. But 
 it is in the western division of continental Europe, 
 in Italy, Savoy, Piedmont, the Yalteline, France, and 
 Spain, that the pure metayer tenantry are the most 
 common, and it is there that they influence most de- 
 cidedly the system of cultivation and those important 
 relations between the different orders of society, which 
 originate in the appropriation of the soil. Into those 
 countries, once provinces of the Eoman empire, they 
 were introduced by the Eomans, and, to discover their 
 origin in Europe, we must turn back our eyes for 
 an instant on the classical nations of antiquity. 
 
 Greece, when it first presents materials for authentic 
 history, was, for the most part, divided into small pro- 
 perties, cultivated by the labor of the proprietors, as- 
 sisted by that of the slaves. While properties are 
 small, the labor of cultivation must always be shared
 
 204 ITS ORIGIN IX GEEECE. 
 
 between the master and the slave : it was so in Latium. 
 Cincinnatus would have starved on his four acres, had 
 he trusted to the produce slaves could extract from 
 them, and neglected to lay his own hands on the 
 plough. Accordingly, we read in the Memorabilia of 
 Xenoj^hon that Ischomachus, a man Ka\o<i kcll dyadb'?, 
 used to pay great attention to his estate and super- 
 intend all its arrangements carefull3\ But, as civiliza- 
 tion went forward in Greece ; as Greece too became 
 consolidated, first by the Macedonian and afterwards 
 by the Eoman influence, the possessions of individual 
 proprietors naturally extended themselves over a larger 
 space, and profitable management by slave agents must 
 have become more and more impracticable. At last 
 a tenant was introduced, who, receiving from a land- 
 owner his land and stock, became responsible to him 
 for a certain proportion, usually half, of the produce; 
 and the proprietors gave up finally all interference with 
 the task of cultivation. These new tenants were called 
 mortitw^ and they are called so still in Greece. 
 
 The precise date at which they began to super- 
 sede the cultivation by proprietors is not known. It 
 is supposed by some that this happened after their 
 connection with Eome, and that nopTtTr]<;^ which is not 
 a word of ancient or classical Greek, Avas a transla- 
 tion of the Latin phrase colonus partiarius. But it is 
 probable that the mortitw appeared in Greece as soon, 
 if not sooner, than the coloni partiarii among the 
 Eomans, and that the word /j,opTLr)i^ was suggested by 
 M'OpTi], which was the name of the produce rent paid 
 by the Thcfcs of Attica.
 
 INTRODUCED INTO ITALY BY THE ROMANS. 205 
 
 The causes which introduced metayers into Italy 
 were precisely similar to those which ultimately esta- 
 blished them in Greece. The Eomans began by shar- 
 ing with their slaves the toils of cultivation. As the 
 size of estates enlarged, their owners became the super- 
 intendents of the labor they before assisted. In this 
 stage the art of agriculture was deeply studied in Eome, 
 as it had been in a similar stage in Greece, by a 
 class of men well qualified to carry it far towards 
 perfection. As the empire became larger the size of 
 estates increased ; the superintendence of the husbandry 
 carried on upon them became burthensome to the pro- 
 prietors ; and even the task of training properly the 
 vilUci or managers was abandoned, and the lands given 
 up to the discretion of an inferior class of slaves. The 
 immediate consequence was such a deficiency of the 
 produce, that some strange and unknown cause was 
 supposed to be enfeebling the fecundity of the earth 
 itself. Among even the more eminent Eomans, while 
 some talked of a long-continued unwholesomeness in 
 the seasons, others were inclined to a superstitious 
 belief, that the world was waxing old and its powers 
 decaying; that the exuberant crops reaped by their 
 forefathers had been the produce of its youthful 
 strength; and that the sterility which then afflicted 
 it was a symptom of its decrepitude. Columella saw 
 more accurately the real cause of the falling off in 
 the knavery and malpractices of the slaves, and re- 
 commended that those estates which it was not easy 
 for the proprietor often to visit, should be let. A 
 race of tenants then gradually acquired possession of
 
 20G STILL PREVAILS IX FRANCE, ITALY, AND SPAIX, 
 
 tlie surface of Italy and the provinces. They were of 
 A^arioiis classes, but tlie colini imrtiarii^ or medietarii^ 
 metayerSj seem always to have been the favorites. 
 
 This system of tenancy, ultimately established 
 throughout the whole Eoman empire, was never 
 wholly extii'pated, in the western part of Europe, 
 by the convulsions which accompanied its downfall. 
 Although depressed for a time by the violence of the 
 barbarians, and by the feudal system, it failed not 
 at length to regain its ancient position, and to reac- 
 quire its ascendancy over the general agriculture of 
 the country. 
 
 We cannot here afford to dwell upon its later history. 
 IJ^J'otwithstanding that the number and species of feudal 
 tenures were multiplied to a strange extent in France 
 by the practice of subinfeudation (a practice which 
 was checked in England, but prevailed widely on the 
 continent) the metayers had in their possession before 
 the revolution four-sevenths of the surface of that 
 country. Even now, in spite of the multiplication of 
 small proprietors effected during the revolution, they 
 are supposed to cultivate one half of it. 
 
 From many districts of Italy it is probable that 
 the coloni medietarii never disappeared, and that the 
 peasants, who now cultivate the soil, have succeeded 
 to them in an unbroken line. The large grazing farms 
 of Lombard}^, the tracts of the Campagna, the Maremna? 
 which occur on the coast, are occupied by capitalists; 
 for wherever large herds of cattle are to be maintained, 
 neither the peasants nor the landlords are able to sup- 
 ply them. But, in spite of these, and perhaps other
 
 AND IS FOUND IX AFFGHAXISTAN. 207 
 
 exceptions, Italy, from the Alps to Calabria, is still 
 covered with metayers. Mr. Coxe who some years 
 since visited the Valteline, and Mr. Gilly who more 
 lately was among the Yaudois, give a sad account of 
 the poverty of the metayers. In the provinces of 
 Spain, in which they most abound, they are said to 
 be exti'emely poor. The cultivation of the Canary 
 Islands is wholly in their hands. 
 
 In AfFghanistan is found a race of tenants called 
 Buzgurs, who seem to differ in no respect from the 
 metayers of Western Europe. This is a singular in- 
 stance in Asia, where this tenancy, although some- 
 times partially engrafted on ryot-rents, is perhaps in 
 no other spot to be found existing in its pure form. 
 
 The bearing of the metayer system upon the pro- 
 duction of wealth remains to be considered. The labor 
 of metayer tenants is certainly not very efficient. It 
 may be more continuous than that of serfs, as it is 
 more free. It cannot boast, however, of being skil- 
 fully directed, for the metayers do not even practice 
 that alternate husbandry and substitution of pulse and 
 green crops for fallows, which is the main basis of all 
 the most important improvements that have, in modem 
 times, taken place in agriculture. Nor is it well aided 
 by auxiliary capital. The fact is, that the divided 
 interest which exists in the produce of cultivation, 
 mars almost every attempt at improvement. The tenant 
 is unwilling to listen to the suggestions of the land- 
 lord ; and the landlord is reluctant to entrust additional 
 means in the hands of a prejudiced and usually very 
 ignorant tenant. The tenant's dread of innovation is
 
 208 MOXEY-REXTS-THE COTTIER SYSTEM. 
 
 natural ; he merely exists upon a system of cultivation 
 familiar to liira : the failure of an experiment might 
 leave him to starve. Still this dread of innovation on 
 the one side, combined with the reluctance to assist 
 on the other, makes it almost impossible to introduce 
 any improvements into this system of husbandry. 
 The common interest, however, which the metayer has 
 with his landlord is not wholly without good effects. 
 "When reduced to extremities, he has a patron to apply 
 to, who cannot, for his own sake, let him perish, or 
 even suffer beyond a certain point ; and, in calami- 
 tous seasons, advances of food and other necessaries 
 by the landlords are almost universal. 
 
 The only way to raise metayers into farmers is to 
 increase the efficiency of their labor ; and we have 
 seen how difficult any improvement in their practice 
 of agriculture is rendered by the peculiar relation which 
 connects them with the landowners. Such a change, 
 however desirable, must be slow in order to be safe. 
 An attempt made in the French revolution to chase 
 away metayer tenants from the country, and to sub- 
 stitute in their place small proprietors, possessed of 
 capital, was attended with but partial success. 
 
 3. Cottiers. 
 
 The cottier is a peasant tenant extracting his main- 
 tenance from the soil and paying a money-rent to the 
 lando^Tier. The distinguishing peculiarity of this race 
 of peasant tenants is that they pay a money -xQiit. In 
 this respect thej^ seem to be advanced beyond serfs 
 and metayers; and yet they are really the most
 
 WHY IT EXISTS IN IRELAND. 209 
 
 wretched of all peasant tenantry. Theirs is the least 
 extensive of all the systems of peasant tenancy. To 
 some extent, cottiers are found in various coimtries 
 of Europe ; but it is in Ireland alone that they con- 
 stitute the larger part of the laboring population. In 
 Scotland, they are numerous enough to be consider- 
 able ; but in England, their number is very small. 
 
 Money-rents are so very rarely paid by i:)easant 
 cultivators that, where they do exist among them, we 
 may expect to find the power of discharging them 
 founded on peculiar circumstances. In the case of 
 Ireland, it is the neighbourhood of England, and the 
 connection between the two countries, which supports 
 the system of money-rents paid by the peasantry. In 
 some districts, it even appears that the rents are paid 
 in money earned by harvest work in England. Were 
 Ireland placed in a remoter part of the world, sur- 
 rounded by nations not more advanced than herself, 
 and were her cultivators dependent for their means of 
 getting cash on her own internal opportunities of ex- 
 change, it seems highly probable that the landlords 
 would soon be driven by necessity to adopt a system 
 of either labor or produce-rents, similar to those which 
 prevail ovei the large portion of the globe cultivated 
 by the other classes of peasant tenantry. Once esta- 
 blished, however, the effects of the prevalence of 
 cottier-rents among a peasant population are impor- 
 tant. Some of these are advantageous, some prejudi- 
 cial. We shall shortly enumerate them. 
 
 The disadvantages of cottier-rents may be ranged 
 under three heads: — first^ the want of any external 
 
 14
 
 210 ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. 
 
 check to assist in repressing the increase of the pea- 
 sant population beyond the bounds of an easy sub- 
 sistence ; secondly, the want of any protection to their 
 interests, from the influence of usage and prescription 
 in determining the amount of their payments, by 
 which they are exposed to the consequences of their 
 own competition, which increases proportionately with 
 the increase of their numbers, till at length it destroys 
 itself, and injures the proprietors who hoped to benefit 
 by it; and, thirdly, the absence of that obvious and 
 diirct common interest between the owners and the 
 occupiers of the soil, which, under the other systems 
 of peasant-rents, secure to the tenants the forbearance 
 and assistance of their landlords when calamity over- 
 takes them. It is to be remarked that no case can 
 occur in which there is not in reality a community 
 of interest between these two parties; but their com- 
 mon interest in the other forms of peasant holding 
 is more direct and obvious, and, therefore, more in- 
 fluential upon the habits and feelings of both tenants 
 \ and landlords. 
 
 The principal advantage which the cottier derives 
 from his form of tenure, is the great facility with 
 which, when circumstances are favorable to him, he 
 can change altogether his condition in society. The 
 serf has many stages to go through before he can be- 
 come a capitalist and independent farmer ; and it is 
 hard for him to advance one step in this direction. 
 The metayer, too, before he arrives at this point, 
 must become the owner of the stock on his farm, and 
 be able to pay a money-rent. Botli these changes
 
 HEREDITARY OCCUPIERS-RYOTS. 211 
 
 take place slowly and with difficulty, especially the 
 last — the substitution of money-rents, which supposes 
 a considerable previous improvement in the internal 
 commerce of the nation; and is ordinarily the result, 
 and not the commencement, of improvement in the 
 condition of the cultivators. But the cottier is already 
 the owner of his own stock ; he exists in a society 
 in which the power of paying money-rents is already 
 established. If he thrives in his occupation, there is 
 nothing to prevent his enlarging his holding, increas- 
 ing his stock, and becoming a capitalist and a farmer 
 in the proper sense of the term. Should the events 
 of the next half century be favorable to Ireland, her 
 cottiers are very likely to disappear and to merge 
 into a very different race of cultivators. The right 
 means to bring about so desirable a change, are to 
 educate the cottiers to habits of industry and pru- 
 dence, and to diffuse intelligence among the landlords. 
 
 HEREDITARY OCCUPIERS. 
 
 It has been much disputed whether Eyots should 
 be considered as tenants or proprietors. To a certain 
 extent they are both, but not wholly so. They are 
 proprietors, inasmuch as they are unquestionably and 
 incontestably entitled to possess, and to transmit to 
 their children, the soil which they cultivate. They 
 are tenants, inasmuch as they have rarely a beneficial 
 interest in the soil ; or inasmuch as they have to pay 
 rent. Endowed, therefore, with this twofold charac- 
 ter, and putting forth pretensions to both, it will be
 
 ojo RYOT TE>'A.XTS PECULIAR TO ASIA. 
 
 convenient, for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, to find 
 a new deuomimition for them, and to style them as 
 above, Ilcreditary Occupiers. 
 
 The Ryot is a peasant, raising his own wages from 
 the soil and paying a rent, either in the shape of pro- 
 duce or in the shape of money, to the sovereign as 
 proprietor. This form of tenancy is, with a few ex- 
 ceptions, peculiar to Asia. It has been introduced by 
 Asiatics into Turkey in Europe. It also exists in 
 Egypt, and may, perhaps, hereafter be traced in Africa. 
 It is the result, not of positive institution, but of cir- 
 cumstances. All the great empires of Asia have been 
 overrun by foreigners ; and on their rights, as con- 
 querors, the claim of the present sovereigns to the soil 
 rests. In a country where the people have no com- 
 forts or luxuries that can be taxed, the monarch's 
 revenue must be got out of the surplus agricultural 
 produce. In early times, the monarchies of the East 
 were, in some measure, controlled by the priesthood, 
 but they have ever shown a tendency to become purely 
 despotic, and to exact an amount of revenue wholly 
 exhaustive of the Ryot's beneficial interest in the soil. 
 It was so in Egypt. The Pharaoh used, it is pro- 
 bable, to receive as revenue one-tenth of the produce 
 of the soil ; but, in Joseph's time, he took advan- 
 tage of the scarcity produced by a famine to obtain 
 the territory of his subjects, in return for the corn 
 he had husbanded, and then let it out to them for 
 a rent of one-fifth.' It was likewise so with the 
 Jews. They were so heavily taxed by Solomon, who 
 
 ' Gtn. xlvii., 24.
 
 MODE OF EXACTING REVENUE IN INDIA. 213 
 
 lived in a style of surpassing magnificence, and 
 was addicted to expensive speculations, that ten of 
 the tribes rebelled and revolted from his successor, 
 who refused to diminish their burdens.' It was so 
 too in Persia in the time of Cyrus, whose revenue 
 was a portion of the agricultural produce of the 
 country. 
 
 In India, according to the laws of Menu, one-sixth 
 in time of peace, one-fourth in time of war, of the 
 surplus produce was the allowance of the sovereign. 
 It is a debated matter whether the laws permitted 
 him to exact more in exigencies ; but it is certain 
 that, in practice, no definite rate ever prevailed for 
 any long period. The English found the mode of 
 exacting the revenue different in different parts of 
 India. Thus, in one village, the headman used to 
 subtract the sircar^ or government proportion of the 
 grain, from the stock of each husbandman, after it 
 was got in. In another, the harvest was annually 
 valued, and a sum of money proportionate to the 
 government share paid by the husbandman to the 
 Fotail. In a third district, the crops were valued 
 when green, and paid for according to estimate. In 
 a fourth, an estimate was taken and a bargain struck 
 for a certain number of years together. Elsewhere 
 the agents of Government made their bargain, not 
 with each Eyot separately, but with the whole body 
 conjointly, or with one or two of them as represen- 
 tatives of the whole.^ 
 
 ' 1 Kings, 12. 2 ggg Gleig's "^History of Iiidia,"^vol. i., Fumiltj Library.
 
 214 THE VILLAGE SYSTEM OF THE HINDUS 
 
 To render this clear, it will be well to describe 
 briefly the village system, the groundwork of Hindu 
 polity. A village, geographically considered, is a 
 tract of countiy comprising some hundreds or thou- 
 sands of acres of arable and waste land. Politically 
 viewed, it resembles a corporation or township. Tts 
 proper establishment of officers and servants consists 
 of the following : — the Potail, or head inhabitant, 
 who has the general superintendence of the affairs of 
 the village, settles the disputes of the inhabitants, 
 attends to the police, and performs the duty of col- 
 lecting the revenues within the village; the Ciirnum, 
 who keeps the accounts of cultivation and registers 
 everything connected with it; the TalUar, whose duty 
 seems to consist in a wider and more enlarged sphere 
 of action, in gaining information of crimes and offences, 
 and in escorting and protecting persons travelling from 
 one village to another; and the To fie, whose office, 
 being more immediately confined to the village, con- 
 sists, among other duties, in guarding the crops and 
 assisting in measuring them ; the Boimdarfj man, who 
 preserves the limits of the village, or gives evidence 
 respecting them in cases of dispute ; the Brahman, who 
 performs the village worship ; the Schoolmaster, who 
 is seen teaching the village children to read and write 
 in the sand ; tlie Calendar Brahman, or Astrologer, who 
 proclaims the lucky or unpropitious periods for sow- 
 ing or thrashing ; the Smith or Carpenter, who manu- 
 factures the implements of agriculture and builds the 
 dwelling of the Ryot; the Potman, or Potter; the 
 Washerman; the Barber; the Coivkeeper, who looks
 
 PROTECTIVE OF THE RYOT. 215 
 
 after the cattle ; the Doctor ; the Dancing girl^ who 
 attends at rejoicings ; the Musician ; and the Foet.^ 
 
 Thus a Hindu village formed a complete, compact, 
 and independent body, politic and ecclesiastic, contain- 
 ing within itself all the elements of government, officers 
 of religion, of law, of police, besides the administrators 
 of its economical affairs, and the most useful trades- 
 men. The influence of this system in India, where 
 the Government is apt to be despotic, is to support 
 the Eyots against the pressure of that government. A 
 system not very dissimilar, under a democratic polity, 
 in the United States of America, is found to bind and 
 hold together a loosely constructed society. 
 
 The Government looked to the Potail, and the Potail 
 to the Eyot ; and ordered surveys from time to time, in 
 order to ascertain how far an increase might be de- 
 manded, or reductions were necessary, in the revenue. 
 The Potail himself was immediately responsible to an 
 officer called a Zemindar. This officer was entrusted 
 with the collection of the revenue in districts of different 
 sizes, was entitled to a tenth of its amount, had some- 
 times lands assigned to him, and was endowed with very 
 considerable authority. His office, like the other village 
 offices and trades, became hereditary. 
 
 But all these subordinate interests were respected 
 only in times of peace and under moderate governors ; 
 and these were rare in India. Whenever the empire 
 was feeble, and the subordinate chieftains, Mohamme- 
 dan or Hindu, were able to exercise an uncontrolled 
 
 ' See Fifth Report of the Committee on East India affairs, quoted by Gleig in his 
 " History of India."
 
 1)16 BUT HAS FAILED TO STIMULATE TUEIE ENERGY. 
 
 power iu their districts, their rapacity and violence 
 seem usually to have been wholly unchecked by policy 
 or principle. There was at once an end to all system, 
 moderation, or protection ; ruinous rents, arbitrarily im- 
 posed, were collected in frequent military circuits, at 
 the spear's point, and the resistance, often attempted 
 in despair, was unsparingly punished by fire and 
 slaughter. Throughout India, however, the Adllage 
 system was found by the English, either in an inte- 
 gral or but partially broken state ; for even the bigotry 
 of the Mohammedan, and the rapacity of the llahratta 
 conquerors, respected those ancient institutions, which, 
 when foimd, were maintained ; and, when lost through 
 the death or desertion of the inhabitants, were re- 
 created.^ Of the new revenue systems since intro- 
 duced into India by the British Government, we shall 
 have occasion to speak hereafter, when we come to 
 treat of the subject of taxation, and shall, therefore, 
 say nothing now. "We conclude our account of Eyots 
 by remarking that the motives to industry which 
 operate upon them are few and weak. The village 
 system, by excluding the principle of competition, 
 throws a damp upon their energy. Notwithstanding 
 that agriculture is their chief occupation, they have 
 applied their minds but little to the science and the 
 art of it, which, though not absolutely in the lowest 
 stage, yet have long been stationary amongst them. 
 The modifications which present themselves in the 
 condition of the Eyots of the other great empires of 
 Asia, of Persia, and of China, and of the Turkeys, 
 
 ' Malcolm's " Central India," vol. ii.
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 217 
 
 we cannot afford even to notice, nor to examine the 
 curious admixture, wliich strikes the attentive observer, 
 of labor and metayer with ryot-rents.' 
 
 PROPRIETOES. 
 
 This class of unhired laborers are found to some 
 extent in France and Germany, and far more exten- 
 sively in the New World. The fact has already been 
 adverted to, that the revolution in France effected a 
 substitution, to a certain degree, of small proprietors 
 for metayers. There was a law in Germany, that the 
 Crown could not tax estates held by noblemen. It 
 naturally endeavored, however, to withdraw land as 
 much as possible from the hands of the nobility. 
 Accordingly, a new law was enacted, that no land 
 once held by a peasant could become the property of 
 a nobleman. Moreover, the Crown claimed a right to 
 tax those portions of a nobleman's estate which were 
 tenanted by peasants. Time and usage conferred on 
 these tenants a hereditary right to their allotments; 
 and the sense of independence thus engendered in 
 them, made them so idle and insubordinate, that their 
 landlords were well pleased to bestow upon them 
 their freedom in return for a proportion of the land 
 they occupied. By this compromise they converted 
 them into small laboring proprietors. A similar course 
 of events has produced a similar state of things in 
 Prussia. 
 
 The legislators of the United States inherited from 
 
 ' See, on this subject, Jones on Rents.
 
 218 WAGES OF UNHIRED LABORERS. 
 
 the other hemisphere, at the outset of their career, 
 the advantages of an experience accumulated dui-ing 
 centuries of progressive civilization ; and they perceived, 
 and acted upon the conviction, that the power and re- 
 sources of their young government were likely to be 
 increased more effectually by the rapid formation of a 
 race of proprietors, than by the creation of a class of 
 state tenantry. 
 
 We have now brought under view the principal 
 features of the condition of the three classes, into which 
 unhired laborers, who are almost all agriculturists, and 
 who constitute pretty nearly the whole agricultural 
 population of the world, are subdivided. A few re- 
 marks are to be made before we pass on to the other 
 
 divisions of laborers. 
 r~ . . . 
 
 The circumstances which determine the rate of 
 
 wages among unhired laborers are, obviously, ^• 
 
 1. The size of the ground they occupy. 
 
 2. Its fertility. 
 
 3. The conditions upon which they occupy it. 
 This last circumstance, which, in the single case 
 
 of proprietors, has of course no operation, is the most 
 influential of the three, in respect to serfs, metayers, 
 cottiers, and ryots. It becomes, indeed, invested with 
 immense interest, when the interaction that takes place 
 between the economical and the political condition of 
 the laboring classes of a nation is duly considered. It 
 was owing to the moral and intellectual degradation 
 produced by the poverty of the French metayers, 
 pinched as they were by the scantiness of their me-
 
 HIRED DEPENDANTS AND HIRED LABORERS. 219 
 
 tairies, harassed by the rapacious exactions of the taille, 
 and exasperated against the higher classes whom they 
 regarded as their oppressors, that the revolution proved 
 so bloody in the provinces of France. On the other 
 hand, it is to the hard conditions of tenure imposed 
 upon the Eyots of India by the foreign powers who 
 have successively ruled over them, that the political 
 degradation in which they have been so long sunk 
 is in part to be attributed. 
 
 Hired Dependants and Hired Laborers. 
 
 There remain to be spoken of the second and third 
 divisions of laborers, namely, hired dependants and 
 hired laborers, together constituting the non-agricul- 
 tural laborers of the world, and embracing also the 
 scanty, though most efficient, portion of agriculturists 
 that are not included in the first. 
 
 Hired dependants are converted into hired laborers 
 by the advance of national wealth. They are, there- 
 fore, to be found only in the poorest countries : they 
 abound, of course, in Asia. 
 
 At the outset, in treating of the functions of capital 
 relatively to the efficiency of labor, we compared the 
 industry of unhired laborers with that of laborers paid 
 from capital ; and we cursorily remarked that the same 
 unfortunate peculiarities, which were found to attach 
 to unhired industry, belonged also to industry paid 
 from revenue. On this point we shall now dwell more 
 largely, with a view to distinguish hired dependants 
 from hii'ed laborers with as much clearness as possible. 
 
 A journeyman artizan may be paid out of the
 
 220 THE PRODUCTIVE POWER OF INDUSTRY 
 
 revenue of a customer who needs the article he pro- 
 duces for his use. Such are the tinkers, and such are 
 tlie tailors, the jewellers, and most of the artizans of the 
 East. Or he may be paid out of the capital of an 
 employer, who means to sell or exchange the article 
 produced, and has saved money to advance as wages. 
 Such are the tradesmen generally of Eiu'ope ; and such 
 are nearly all the laborers, agricultural and non-agri- 
 cultm-al, of England. In the fii'st case, he cannot divide 
 his labor Avith others, and has no one over him, in- 
 terested and able to keep him continuously at work, 
 to du'ect his efforts by superior skill, and to give 
 them power by aiding them with auxiliary capital. 
 In the second case, all these disadvantageous cir- 
 cumstances are reversed. His labor, apportioned ac- 
 cording to the principle of the division of labor, and 
 vigilantly superintended, is continuous ; superintended, 
 too, by intelligent and wealthy capitalists, it is both 
 skilfully directed and powerfully assisted. 
 
 Destroy the capitalists of England, turn out the 
 workmen from the manufactories and the shops, and 
 let them ply in the streets for customers, who need 
 something Avliich they can produce, and who can ad- 
 vance them out of their revenue both the materials 
 of the Avork and their wages, and the difference would 
 at once appear between the productive power of industry 
 paid out of revenue and that which is paid out of 
 capital ; or between the non-agricultural industry of 
 Europe and that of Asia. 
 
 The povei'y of Asiatic populations, resulting fi-om 
 the ineffigiency of their labor, is sufficiently explained
 
 AFFECTED BY THE FORM OF WAGES. 221 
 
 to all who have comprehended the principles which 
 we have developed, by the fact that their agricultural 
 laborers are paid by self-produced wage:, and their 
 non-agricultm-al laborers out of revenue. And in like 
 manner will they infer the vast wealth of England from 
 the circumstance, peculiar to that country, of her whole 
 laboring population, both agricultui^al and non-agricul- 
 tural, being paid out of capital. From the inefficiency 
 of their agricultural labor arises the smallness of the 
 non-agricidtui^al portion of Asiatic populations ; and, 
 similarly, the largeness of the non-agricultural portion 
 of the population of England is owing to the peculiar 
 and uimvalled efficiency of her agricultm^al labor. 
 
 The rulers of Asia, we have seen, have always been, 
 by right of conquest, proprietors of the territoiy over 
 which they ruled. Hence it has happened that the sur- 
 plus produce of the soil has been distributed mainly by 
 the king's officers to the non- agricultural population, and 
 that non-agriculturists have swarmed about the court 
 of an Eastern monarch. It is recorded of Aui'ungzeb 
 that when, on one occasion, he made an excursion to 
 a watering place, he caiTied an extraordinary number 
 of artizans along with him. The markets of non-agri- 
 cultui'al produce shift their locality with the court or 
 the seat of empire, which not unfi-equently changes 
 with a new dynasty. 
 
 In the early stages of society, when there hardly 
 exists a non-agricultm-al population, the power of the 
 sword is necessarily entrusted to the agricultural laborers. 
 At a later period the military force of the coimtry is com- 
 posed both of artizans and husbandmen. The progress
 
 222 CAUSE OF THE EARLY EFFICIENCY 
 
 of civilization, however, divides the arts of war and 
 peace, and the soldier's profession becomes separated 
 alike from the work of the husbandman and the artizan's 
 craft. Soldiers, sailors, etc., bear a similar relation to 
 the community to that which menials bear to private 
 individuals, and are paid in a similar manner, viz., by 
 taxes, which are a part of the aggregate revenue of 
 the community. 
 
 It is natm-al to inquii'e to what cause is to be 
 ascribed the early and great efficiency of agricultural 
 labor, the consequently large and enlarging size and 
 number of non-agricultiu-al classes, and that rapid career 
 of prospcrit}^ which has substituted capital for the other 
 two branches of the labor fund in England. These 
 happy phenomena are to be atti'ibuted chiefly, though 
 not exclusively, to oui* just and liberal political insti- 
 tutions, which have been as propitious to oiu' national 
 fortunes as those of other nations have frequently been 
 adverse to theirs. Chief Justice Fortescue, in his "Z>/«- 
 logus cle Laudibus Legum Anglice^^'' bids the young 
 Prince Edward, who was confided to his tuition, com- 
 pare the condition of the French with that of the 
 English peasantry ; and demonstrates the superiority 
 of the latter to be owing, in great part, to the superior 
 excellence of the civil law in England. The wretched- 
 ness of the French peasantry (he represents) was the 
 result of the oppressive taxation to which they were 
 subjected and to the annoyance and spoliation which 
 they suffered from the king's troops, who were quar- 
 tered upon them to such an extent, that, to use For- 
 tescue's words (as translated by Amos), " there was not
 
 OF AGRICULTURAL LABOR IN ENGLAND. 223 
 
 any the least village but what was exposed to the 
 calamity, and once or Uvice in the year was sui'e to 
 be plundered in this vexatious manner." And yet the) 
 period at which England, viewed by the side of France, ( ' 
 was apparently so floiuishing, was the time of the 
 "Wars of the Eoscs, Avhen the agricultural population 
 of England were peasant tenants, as they continued 
 to be until the reign of Henry the Seventh. So pro- 
 ductive, however, was their labor, that there is recorded 
 to have been, after the wars, an extraordinary sui-plus 
 of agricultui'al produce. Nor was this a transient opu- 
 lence ; for fm'ther on, in Elizabeth's reign, every com- 
 modity is stated to have been dear except corn. 
 
 This superabundance of agricultm-al wealth concur-^ 
 ring with a demand on the continent for wool and 
 hides, in consequence of the establishment of manufac- 
 tories in the Netherlands, it appeared desirable to many 
 English landowners to change their arable into pasture 
 land. At that era nearly the whole of the soil of 
 England was cultivated by private individuals dming 
 a portion of the year, while it was common duiing the 
 remainder of it; as has been the condition, at different 
 periods, of nearly the whole world. This state of things 
 continued with us to a great extent up to the time of 
 Henry the Seventh, and partially even to the time of 
 George the Third. This common land it became the 
 object of the English landowners to enclose, and of course 
 it was convenient for them to discharge a considerable 
 number of agricultural hands, wliich they had before 
 employed, but which would no longer be of use to them. 
 This proceeding naturally excited much popular discon-
 
 224 ENCLOSURE OF COMMON LANDS. 
 
 tout, which increased as the process which caused it was 
 can-icd on through the reign of Hemy the Eighth, and 
 which reached its height and broke out in its full fury 
 diu'ing the minority of Edward the Sixth. It gained new 
 heat by blending itself with a mania for restoring the 
 Eoman Catholic religion, and gave rise to a series of in- 
 surrections among the peasantry of that persuasion. As 
 in those days every man was well armed and well skilled 
 to meld his arms, it is certain that nothing but the 
 difficidty of commimication among the rebels prevented 
 the rebellion from assuming an aspect very formidable 
 to the quiet and safety of the country. This civil war, 
 as it may almost be called, burst forth in Devonshire, 
 under the auspices of a Catholic priest ; but in l^or- 
 folk the rebels bore themselves most stoutly, and beat 
 the king's troops in a pitched battle. They might 
 easily have marched upon London, had not some troops 
 who, it fortimately happened, were just at that moment 
 setting out fi'om that city for Scotland, then at w^ar with 
 us, been immediately despatched to encounter them, 
 and, in the event, succeeded in suppressing them. The 
 enterprising spirit of English aristocrats quailed not 
 before these alarms, or their hopes of gain prevailed 
 over their fears. They effected the innovation for which 
 they had contended ; and before long the progress of 
 manufactm-es brought employment to those whom at 
 first it luid made beggars and vagabonds. Our history 
 has now reached the point at which we date the rise of a 
 body of capitalists in England, like our modern farmers, 
 in whose hands nearly the whol(> country is found in 
 the reign of James tlie First.
 
 GRDWrn OF CAriTAL. 22.5 
 
 Compare with the exuberant agricultural "vrealth of 
 England, at the time we have been speaking of, the 
 contemporaneous commercial prosperity of Genoa or of 
 Venice ; and the better promise of \'igorous growth 
 afforded by the former, is traceable to the more generous 
 and enlightened policy of our Government. In those 
 republican states, the severe exactions of the govern- 
 ment effectually obstructed the diffusion of non-agri- 
 cultural opulence. In England, the taxation was less 
 harsh; and, moreover, institutions arose, to foster the 
 infant weakness of the non-agricultiu'al classes. The 
 borough towns, endowed vntli immunities and pri^'ileges 
 and fortified with a military force, took them under 
 their protection, and thi-ew a shield between them and 
 the oppression of the nobles. 
 
 OF THE GEOWTH OF CAPITAL. 
 
 1 
 
 It has appeared, then, that the non-agricultural 
 
 population of the laboring world di-aw their wages either 
 from revenue or capital. Revenue accumulated becomes 
 capital, expendible in wages. Hence it follows that 
 whatever is a source of revenue may be a soui'ce of ' 
 capital ; and we arrive at the conclusion (which con- 
 flicts, however, with some prevalent opinions) that 
 capital may be accumulated fi-oni rents, wages, and 
 profits. We shall endeavor to establish this position. — -^ 
 
 That capital is largely, though quietly and im.per- 
 ceptibly, gathered from rents, appears from this fact, 
 that, on landed estates, all that is added to the soil, 
 in the shape of drains, ditches, buildings, etc., has 
 commonly been pui'chased by the lando^mer with the 
 
 15
 
 2_>G CAPITAL ACCUMULATES MOST RAPIDLY 
 
 saving's from liis rout. Insomuch that, in the rentals 
 of Uiro'c estates, a column is generally allotted to de- 
 ductions for expcnditiu'c ui^on the soil. 
 
 The statistical reports of the savings' banks of Eng- 
 land demonstrate wages to be a fruitful soiu'ce of capital. 
 It is not probable that much more than half of the 
 savings from wages of the laboring population of this 
 country are deposited in these banks ; yet it has been 
 estimated that the amount accumulated therein dming 
 one centiu'y, would exceed the whole amount of capital 
 annually expended by us in paying wages. 
 
 In the face, however, of these not very recondite 
 facts, it has been maintained that capital can be accu- 
 mulated solely from the profits of stock, an error re- 
 sulting from views confined to the state of things in 
 England, where it is chiefly so accumulated, instead 
 of extending to the rest of the world, where it is not 
 so accumulated in any considerable degree. A suffi- 
 cient refutation of the opinion is, that it could not 
 have been accumulated from stock in the fii'st instance, 
 when no stock existed. 
 
 This eiTor has led to others, which must be exposed, 
 as having obtained a notoriety by their mischievous 
 practical results. These same speculators, ayIio fancied 
 capital to be the sole growth of profits, broadly deduced 
 that the accumulation from profits Avill be great where 
 the rate of profits is high, and small where the rate 
 of profits is low. This deduction, so sj^ecious as to look 
 like a truism, is, notwithstanding, an extremely falla- 
 cious one, as it overlooks the essential difference of 
 the masses of stock upon which profits are raised. In
 
 WHtRE THE RATE OF PliOFlTS IS UAY. 227 
 
 countries, therefore, iu wliicli ^^rofits are low, as Eng- 
 land and Holland, there it hapj^ens that industry is 
 found in the most efficient state, and the rate at which 
 capital is accumulating is the most rapid. On the 
 other hand, in those countries in which the rate of 
 profit has been long and permanently high, as in Poland 
 and many of the ruder parts of Europe and Asia, tliere 
 the productive power of industry is almost proverbially 
 feeble, and the rate at which capital is accumulating 
 is notoriously slow. These facts warrant a conclusion, 
 just the reverse of that we have been contending against, 
 — a conclusion, paradoxical in appearance, but demon- 
 strably coiTeet, that a low and decreasing rate of profits 
 generally indicates a vast and increasing accumulation 
 of capital. 'Nov is the consequence an absui'd one, that 
 the absence of profits woidd mark a superabundant, 
 though a stagnant, capital. It would mark a most 
 advanced state, a state in which industry has become 
 so mightily efficient, so vastly productive, as to be able 
 to afi'ord to suspend its exertions for a while ; a state 
 of universal but temporary opulence. Such a state of 
 things is not likely ever to happen ; and, if it did 
 happen, could not last. Under such circumstances, any 
 surj)lus over, and above the capital expended at home 
 would be carried abroad, and there produce profits em- 
 ploj^able and accumulable. This migration of cai3ital, 
 and sometimes of capitalists, is observed to follow a 
 sudden decrease of the rate of profits and vail again 
 be adverted to. 
 
 Thus are their two first assumptions contradicted 
 by reason and experience. From these false premises
 
 228 ERRORS IX REFERENCE TO POITLATION 
 
 tliov logically enough educed tlie false inference that, 
 since in countries the most advanced in population and 
 wealth, the loAvest rate of profit was found, it was a 
 law, that the power of nations to accumulate capital 
 declined in proportion to the increase of tlieir num- 
 bers and tlieir resources. To this mass of errors they 
 added that of supposing labor to be, everywhere and 
 invariably, paid from capital (whereas it has been shoT\Ti 
 to be paid by self-produced Avages over the largest por- 
 tion of the earth), and then announced to the whole 
 laboring population of the world, that their Maker had 
 endowed them, as a part of their physical nature, TNith 
 a tendency to multiply more rapidly than the means 
 of subsistence. Nor vvas there any means of averting 
 the dismal fate that constantly tlu-eatened them, unless 
 the rate of profits could be brought and kept up to 
 the rate at which the population Avas increasing, or 
 the rate of increase of population could be forced doAvn 
 to a level with the rate of profits. As no scheme could 
 be devised for elevating the rate of profits, they turned 
 their attention to the other alternative, — the arrest of 
 population ; and they were bold enough to propose 
 checks which resolve themselves into guilt and degra- 
 dation. 
 
 It is no wonder, though greatly to bo regretted, that 
 the dislike and distrust deservedly earned by the pro- 
 mulgators of such abominable and pernicious doctrines, 
 should have been extended to the science of which they 
 professed to be the expounders. Such expounders, how- 
 ever, be it remembered, are discredited by a sound 
 and enlightened Political Economy. They Avere the
 
 AND THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL. 229 
 
 worst of philosophers before they became the worst of 
 moralists. The process by which they arrived at their 
 conclusions, involves almost every fault to which inat- 
 tention to foots and a perverse abuse of the reasoning 
 faculty could possibly give birth. 
 
 We shall not anticipate the subject of population, 
 but Ave shall demonstrate and illustrate the important 
 position that the power of accumulating from profits 
 is determined, not so much by the rate of profi.ts as 
 by the mass of stock. 
 
 IN'ations advanced in wealth expend, as one would 
 expect and may observe, much more of their capital 
 in aiding labor than in paying Avages. In England, 
 the amount of capital paid to laborers bears a propor- 
 tion to the amount of auxiliary capital of one to five ; 
 while in Russia, capital is almost equally divided be- 
 tween Avages and aids to labor. IIoAA^ever, in Russia 
 the rate of profits is higher than in England. Let it 
 be a rate of £15 per cent., and the profits upon £200 
 of capital, of Avhich half is Avages and half auxiliary, 
 will be £30. Let the rate of profits in England be 
 but £10 per cent., and the profits raised upon £G00 
 of capital, of AA^hich £100 is expended in Avages and 
 £500 is auxiliary, Avill be £60. If, out of his £30 
 profits, the Russian can put by £5, the Englishman 
 can put by £35 out of his £60 profits. 
 
 Such a demonstration would liaA^e be^^n deemed 
 superfluous, of a truth so obvious to honest minds, did 
 not some people fancy that the inequalities in the masses 
 of stock AATre counterbalanced and reconciled by the 
 difi'erences in the rates of profits.
 
 230 IMPORTED AND SELF-ACCUMULxVTED CAPITAL. 
 
 It is to be remarked that an increase of capital is, 
 in the first instance, the effect and not the canse of 
 social improvement ; afterwards they move in a cii'cle, 
 mntnally producing and produced. And hence it is 
 that capital imj)orted from abroad into a country can 
 never augment the efficiency of labor so extensively 
 or so permanently as capital generated and accumulated 
 upon the soil itself. Let us suppose a case to illustrate 
 this. Our Indian fellow subjects are about ninety mil- 
 lions in number, and may be divided into about eighteen 
 millions of families, of which it may be estimated that 
 nearly sixteen millions are agricultural. Could the con- 
 dition of this class of laborers be so much improved 
 that each family should be able to lay by annually 
 £2, in the shape of profits, the amount of capital 
 annually accumulated would be £32,000,000, and, in 
 ten years, would be swelled to the immense sum of 
 £320,000,000. What a length of time would it take 
 to transfer suoh a mass of capital from England, and 
 to circulate it through India. So, too, the present 
 miserable state of Ireland should be amended, not, as 
 some imagine, by the importation of English capital, 
 but by an improvement to be "v^Tought in the condi- 
 tion of the Irish peasantry, by a more just and lenient 
 rule than they have hitherto experienced, and by light- 
 ening their burden of taxation. It is only when the 
 growing wants' and consumption of a people are sup- 
 plied by self-accumulated capital, that we may expect 
 to sec non-agricultural wealth accompanying a redun- 
 daiicy of agricultural produce. 
 
 It Wiis because it left unimproved the condition of
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOUIUBLE TO ACCUMULATION. 231 
 
 the peasantry that the Linen Society established in 
 Germany failed to add as largely as was anticipated 
 to the capital of the countiy. The rejoicing occasioned 
 by its exporting in one year six thousand pieces of 
 linen was far greater than was called for by the real 
 value of the boon. 
 
 We shall now inquire what circumstances are most 
 favorable to the accumulation of capital. These are : 
 
 1. The abundance of the sources from which capital 
 is accumulated, which are rents, wages, and profits. 
 
 2. Secui'ity of profit. This circumstance is of great 
 importance, and mainly depends on the political insti- 
 tutions and economical systems of a country. In the 
 east of Eiu'ope, the state of virtual bondage in which 
 the peasantry are found ; in the western portion of that 
 continent, the grasping principle of taxation by which 
 the governments have been guided ; in India, the 
 vicious system of drawing the revenue from the land, 
 whicli, under Hindu and Mohammedan dynasties, has 
 sheltered merciless extortions ; — these causes, all re- 
 solvable into insecurity of profit, have been barriers to 
 accumulation of capital. In the fii-st two cases, there 
 was no motive to accumulation, when not the serf, but 
 his master, not the metayer, but the government, would 
 have been benefited by such accmnulation ; in the last 
 case there were strong motives to prevent accumu- 
 lation, when to be rich would have been a peril and 
 a crime. 
 
 3. A facility of investing capital. In this respect, 
 England has an advantage over perhaps all the other 
 nations of the earth. Besides all the ordinary modes
 
 232 THE IXFLUEXCE OF POLITICAL AND 
 
 of investment, she has a multitude of banks, and, for 
 the lower classes, savings' banks. 
 
 4. Such political institutions as afford equal chances 
 of advancement to all classes of the population. Than 
 the desire of elevation in the social scale, there can 
 hardly be a stronger incentive to industry in producing, 
 and carefulness in accumulating, capital. 
 
 5. Lastly, peace. This condition, as well as the 
 last, England possessed, while France was destitute of 
 them, during many centuries when both countries, side 
 by side, were forcing their way from barbarism to civili- 
 zation ; and to these felicitous circumstances may be 
 ascribed in part the pre-eminence of the former in 
 wealth and prosperity. 
 
 We have now discovered the sources of capital, and 
 the circumstances favorable to its accumulation from 
 those sources. It may be questioned, however, in what 
 degree these sources are actually available, and these 
 favorable circumstances are found to operate. 
 
 Since the year a.d. 1000 the populations of England 
 and France have increased with astonishing rapidity, 
 especially of late years. And we find that these coun- 
 tries are at present possessed of a capital far larger in 
 proportion to their numbers than at any former period. 
 Hence it may be inferred that the power which a 
 people has of accumulating capital is greater than its 
 power of multiplying its numbers. 
 
 Tlie province of tlie Economist is the Wealth of 
 nations. The province of the Political Philosopher is 
 tljc Happiness of nations, in its widest sense. As there 
 is a ('<)nstant interaction between the political and
 
 ECOXOMICAL PROGRESS, RECIPROCAL. 233 
 
 economical condition of a people; as the one is in- 
 variably influenced by changes in the other; we may 
 be excused for digressing to investigate the political 
 phenomena which follow upon the substitution of 
 capital for the other two brandies of the labor-fund. 
 
 The economical eff'ect of this substitution is to ren- 
 der labor more productive, by rendering it more con- 
 tinuous and skilful and better aided, than when it was 
 paid by self-produced wages, or from revenue. The 
 political effects appear to be, the multiplication of 
 orders, and the modification of aristocratic power by 
 the introduction of the democratic element into the 
 government of nations. On both these points we shall 
 take leave to enlarge. 
 
 As long as the owners of land impose the terms 
 with which they will part with its products, which 
 are the means of subsistence — that is, as long as wages 
 and profits are dependent on rent, — so long, it is clear, 
 labor and capital are alike subject to their control; 
 and the proportions in which they are distributed be- 
 tween agricultural and non-agricultural employments, 
 must be regulated by their authority, or contingent 
 upon their acquiescence. The fortunate dislike, which, 
 as a body, landowners entertain to the superintendence 
 of their estates, induces them to encourage the rise 
 of a body of capitalists, qualified to undertake their 
 position relative to the laboring classes, and thus at 
 once emancipates profits from the shackles which had 
 restrained their growth and mobility. Capital once 
 free, a new and long career of improvement imme- 
 diately commences with the invention of crafts, and
 
 234 CONDITION OF THE LABOURER UNDER 
 
 the more diligent cultivation and the more scientific 
 practice of the various arts which bless and adorn life, 
 terminating in the enlargement of the industry of in- 
 dividual laborers. A glorious and happy state of 
 things ensues. Eents and profits come to be deter- 
 mined by wages; the poor are no longer impoverished 
 that the rich may grow richer ; the three classes, 
 amongst whom national wealth is primarily divided, 
 are rendered independent of each other, with the con- 
 dition that casual loss must first be borne by the class 
 best able to bear it ; and, sensible of the perfect agree- 
 ment of their particular interests, harmoniously combine 
 to promote the prosperity of the community to which 
 they belong. 
 
 In the history of nations, poverty and servitude, 
 wealth and freedom, are observed to be generally allied. 
 In Asiatic empires, where the sovereigns are also pro- 
 prietors of the soil, the form of government is a pure, 
 unlimited despotism. In Eussia, where an order of 
 titled landlords intervenes between the throne and the 
 cottage, the peasantry suffer less from the exercise of 
 imperial authority, — which the influence of the noblesse, 
 sensibly felt, though not exerted through the organ 
 of political institutions, very materially controls, — than 
 from the noblesse themselves. In France, the power 
 of the nobility, sufficient to support the courts of justice 
 in their bold attempts to restrain the despotic power 
 of the monarch — a conduct which Montesquieu roman- 
 tically ascribes to the spirit of honor that glowed in 
 the bosoms of the French aristocrats, but which admits 
 of a much more intelligible explanation — was yet in-
 
 DESPOTIC AND FREE GOVERNMENTS. 235 
 
 sufficient to protect their metayer tenantry from a 
 grinding taxation. Compare now with the Asiatic 
 ryot, the Eussian serf, or the French metayer, the 
 English laborer paid from capital ; and it will be very 
 obvious that in name only are unhired more independ- 
 ent than hired workmen. Drive off from his allot- 
 ment the ryot, the serf, or the metayer, and you expose 
 him to starvation. An English laborer, discharged 
 by one farmer, readily procures hire from another. 
 Mare or less, indeed, the unhired laborers generally 
 are the passive instruments, or victims, of their masters. 
 The ryot suffers from peculiarly hard conditions of 
 tenure. The serf is subject to arbitrary corj)oreal chas- 
 tisement, and is not at liberty to quit the estate of his 
 lord. The metayer, should his landlord be an oppres- 
 sive man, cannot part from him till the year has brought 
 their engagement to its conclusion. The English la- 
 borer is free to change his master, his employment, 
 and his terms of service, whenever it pleases or suits 
 him so to do. 
 
 The influence and control over the laboring popu- 
 lation which accrues to the landowners from their pos- 
 session of the soil, is, as has already been intimated, 
 the real basis of aristocratic power. When that in- 
 fluence passes to the capitalists, — who, in a more ad- 
 vanced state of things, succeed to their relation, and 
 perform their functions, towards the working classes, — 
 the guarantees which remain to the aristocratic body 
 for the maintenance of their privileges and honors 
 are the institutions by which, as in England and 
 Franco, tliey are made a legislative assembly and an
 
 236 ECONOMICAL IMPROVEMENT LEADS TO 
 
 essential part of the government, and the strong hold 
 upon the minds and affections of the people which old 
 associations give to them, and which they may confirm 
 and establish by a reputation for wisdom, virtue, and 
 patriotism. 
 
 The middle classes of capitalists, descending from 
 the higher ranks, and approaching the body of laborers 
 by various gradations till they almost mingle with 
 them, form a species of moral conductors, by which 
 the habits and feelings of the upper classes are com- 
 municated downwards, and act more or less powerfully 
 upon the lowest ranks of the community. Just in the 
 same way as the fashions of dress and furniture of the 
 nobility and gentry of one age are found to have 
 ]3assed, and to prevail among the peasantry of a suc- 
 ceeding generation. 
 
 The importance which both capitalists and laborers 
 acquire from the improvement of their social and econo- 
 mical condition, leads in process of time to the insti- 
 tution of a representative House of Commons, and the 
 grant of electoral rights to the mass of the people. 
 These are the real safeguards of national liberty, which 
 honest and enlightened rulers should rejoice to bestow 
 as a boon, and not allow to be wrung from their re- 
 luctant hands amidst the alarms, or the horrors, of a 
 civil war. 
 
 Justice is, indeed, the standing policy of rulers. 
 The people whom they rule have a riglit to whatever 
 is for their good, and they have the power to enforce 
 that right. It is idle to discuss the expediency of 
 admitting the lower orders of society to a share in
 
 THE EXTENSION OF POPULAR EIGHTS. 237 
 
 the administration of affairs. Expedient or not, it is 
 necessary. It is inevitable. The lower orders will 
 take it by force, if it be not spontaneously granted to 
 them. And, therefore, it becomes a matter of vast 
 moment, that they should be so soundly educated and 
 instructed, as not to desire things hurtful to them- 
 selves or others. It is not, of course, expected that 
 they should grapple with the difficult problems of poli- 
 tical science ; nor should we care to inculcate upon 
 them, by repeated lectures, those of its leading prin- 
 ciples which have a practical import and bearing, — as, 
 that peace and order and an equitable dispensation of 
 law are their highest and most permanent interests ; 
 that a subordination of ranks is '^^enerally advantageous, 
 and, if it were not so, is unavoidable; that the pros- 
 perity of one part of the community is not essentially 
 inconsistent with the welfare of another; that, in our 
 condition, evil will ever be found mixed up with the 
 beneficial consequences of the wisest institutions; that 
 changes, to be safe, must be gradual ; and that violent 
 remedies are commonly more disastrous than the mala- 
 dies they were designed to cure. But let them be 
 trained to habits of honesty, veracity, obedience, so- 
 briety, and diligence. Let their best moral feelings be 
 developed, and nourished into stable dispositions. Let 
 the mental powers with which they are endowed by 
 nature be ripened, by constant exercise, into talents. 
 Such an education, which a sound philosophy enjoins, 
 as adapted at once to man's moral and intellectual 
 constitution, would fit them to discharge the duties of 
 their respective stations with integrity and ability. It
 
 233 DEMOCRATIC INFLUENCE CONDUCIVE TO PROGRESS. 
 
 -would be calculated to make them thoughtful, and at 
 the same time humble. While it woidd invite their 
 attention to the regulation of society, it would also 
 reprove that insolent and reckless ignorance which is 
 prone to lay an irreverent hand upon institutions, 
 covered with the hoar of years ; which lends a credu- 
 lous ear to the professions of mad, or dishonest, scio- 
 lists ; and trembles not to be making experiments, of 
 which the results, whether good or bad, cannot fail to 
 be widely and lastingly influential upon the happiness 
 of multitudes of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 For the consolation of those who have been accus- 
 tomed to regard popular interference in government as 
 the signal of anarchy and confusion, history proclaims 
 aloud, that the presence and influence of a democratic 
 element in the political constitution of countries is po- 
 tently conducive to their well-being, and progress in 
 improvement. In the actual course of things, a moral 
 and intellectual amelioration, an elevation of character, 
 and an increasing activity of mind, are foimd to accom- 
 pany, with equal paces, the advancement of a commu- 
 nity in wealth. 
 
 The social revolution which we have traced has 
 proceeded further in England than in any other part 
 of the globe ; and the consideration of its causes and 
 effects cainiot but be to Englishmen pregnant with 
 interest and instruction. 
 
 r P U L A T 1 X. 
 
 The rate of wages is determined by the amount of 
 the hibor - fund, divided by the number of laborers.
 
 POPULATION THEORIES REVIEWED. 239 
 
 It will be our business to examine the circumstances 
 which regulate the movements of population, generally ; 
 and those peculiar circumstances, whose operation is 
 confined to one or other of the different stages of 
 society which we have been reviewing, in which the 
 mass of the laboring classes are paid by self-produced 
 wages, from revenue or from capital. 
 
 The results of such an examination will be found 
 to be these. Yiewing the subject first as it affects the 
 human race generally, and without reference to wages, 
 we shall see that the disposition to exert the full 
 animal power of increase yields readily, in the upper 
 classes, to the accumulating force of various motives 
 for restraint, which necessarily multiply and gather 
 more joint strength, with the growth of those artificial 
 wants which are the fruit of wealth and refinement. 
 Limiting our observations, then, to the laborers, in 
 the less advanced stages of society, we shall perceive 
 a great influence exercised over the industrious classes 
 by others, which controls the full exercise of their 
 powers of increase; and when those ruder stages are 
 passed through, and the lower classes are, like the 
 higher, abandoned wholly to the guidance of such mo- 
 tives as may spring up within their own bosoms, we 
 shall again, in their case, have to trace the effects of 
 refinement and the multiplication of artificial wants 
 gradually influencing the whole mass, as they always 
 influence the upper portion of society. And where the 
 gradual spread of refinement does not produce the effect 
 of moderating the rate of increase of the mass of a 
 population, we shall be able to trace the failure to
 
 240 ERRORS OF MR. MALTHUS. 
 
 unfiivorable peculiarities in the circumstances, or in 
 the legislation of nations. 
 
 The f^reat work of 'Mr. Mai thus on this subject, along 
 with that portion of lasting truth which it was his 
 fortune first to demonstrate, contains an admixture of 
 errors, which we shall expose. 
 
 First let us remark that the principle of population (a 
 phrase not happily selected by Mr. Maltlms, because not 
 very intelligible) means nothing more than the simple, 
 demonstrable fact, that a people possess the power of 
 doubling their numbers in about twenty years. 
 
 Mr. Malthus assumed that, while population was con- 
 stantly increasing in a geometrical, the means of sub- 
 sistence increased only in an aritlimetical, ratio. Both 
 parts of the assumption, however, are fallacious. For let 
 us suppose a colony, consisting of a million of persons, to 
 double itself during the first twenty years of its exist- 
 ence, it is plain that the female part of the second 
 generation cannot be mature enough to repeat the 
 duplication during the next twenty years : and the 
 growth of the population is undeniably dependent upon 
 the number of perfect females in a community. More- 
 over, though there is doubtless a limit to the earth's 
 fertility, yet, so long as that limit is undefinable, none 
 may assert that the means of subsistence cannot for a 
 while be yielded in a geometrical ratio, to continuous 
 industry, skilfully directed and powerfully assisted. 
 The assumption with which we quarrel takes it for 
 granted that the rate of increase both of population 
 and of food is invariable ; and neglects to estimate the 
 disproportionate effect produced upon that rate, in dif-
 
 HIS DEFINITION OF MORAL RESTRAINT. 241 
 
 ferent stages of society, by the influence of moral and 
 prudential motives, and the improvements introduced 
 into the practice of agriculture. 
 
 It is quite certain, that nations do not exert to its 
 full extent their power of multiplying their numbers; 
 whence it may be inferred that there exist, in the ordi- 
 nary circumstances of nations, checks upon that power. 
 What these are we shall inquire. 
 
 Mr. Mai thus enumerates three checks: — 1. Vice; 2. 
 Misery ; and 3. Moral Eestraint, which he defines to be 
 abstinence from marriage, accompanied with impeccable 
 chastity. All partial restraint he classes under the 
 head of vice, along with libertinism. But this method 
 is not less incorrect in logic than it would be austere 
 in morals. If a man should refrain from marrying, for 
 fifteen years after he had attained the age of puberty, 
 but, during that period, should on one or two occasions 
 deviate from strict chastity, it cannot admit of question 
 that his long restraint was a check wholly of a virtuous 
 or prudential kind, and by no means resolvable, like 
 his illicit indulgences, into vice. Mr. Malthus's divi- 
 sion of checks is defective, as excluding partial re- 
 straint, and confounding the lapses of infirmity with 
 the deliberate and regular course of vice. It will, 
 therefore, be necessary to amend it, by a slight but 
 important alteration, viz., the dividing the checks into 
 
 1. Vice. 
 
 2. Misery. 
 
 3. Voluntary Eestraint. 
 
 1. — Vice includes, not only libertinism, but all those 
 vicious habits, which, by enfeebling the human eonsti- 
 
 16 
 
 n
 
 242 MISERY A POSITn^E, NOT PREYEXTITE, CHECK. 
 
 tution, shorten the duration of human life ; such as in- 
 temperance, etc. It may be remarked, that in new 
 countries, like America, where young persons many at 
 an early age, the amoimt of prostitution that takes 
 place is but small ; whereas, in old countries, like 
 England, where motives of various kinds combine to 
 prevent the youth fi'om marrying often till long after 
 the age of puberty, prostitution aboimds. 
 
 2. — Under the head of Misery are comprehended in- 
 sufficient or imwholesome food and clothing, unwhole- 
 some habitations and occupations, and all the various 
 forms of privation, by which the constitution is weak- 
 ened, and rendered less able to sustain the fatigue of 
 labor or the shock of disease. This is what is called 
 a positive, in contradistinction to a preventive, check, 
 as decreasing longevity, and not limiting fecundity. For 
 the fact is, that women are found to be more fertile 
 under privation, than otherwise ; and where deaths are 
 frequent, there births ai'e also numerous. On the other 
 hand, persons in easy circumstances, cceteris ]ja)'ibHS, 
 live longer than those who are pinched by poverty. 
 Hence the complaints one hears so often of the immor- 
 talitv of members of clubs and fellows of collesres, fi'om 
 the expectants of their vacated places. And it is very 
 true and intelligible that the rate of mortality in an 
 association of wealthy gentlemen is no criterion of the 
 rate of mortality in a community of rich and poor of 
 all degrees. Xot long ago, the French Government 
 were surprised by learning fi-om the statistical tables 
 of bii'ths and deaths, that the greatest mortality pre- 
 vailed in one of the healtliiest quarters of the city of
 
 VOLUXTARY RESTRAINT A VIRTUOUS CHECK. 243 
 
 Paris. So strange a phenomenon courted investigation. 
 It was ascertained that the amount of assessed taxes 
 drawn from that district was smaller than the amount 
 drawn from other quarters in which, notwithstanding 
 their being less healthy, the mortality was less rapid. 
 This new fact solved the riddle presented by the former 
 one. The less heavily assessed were of course those 
 who had less of this world's goods, and suffered more 
 from those wants and hardships which gi'adually de- 
 bilitate and at length desti'oy the principle of vitality. 
 
 3. — On the subject of Toluntaiy Eestraint, it is not 
 necessary to repeat the argument by which it has been 
 demonstrated to be, even when not accompanied by an 
 impeccable chastity, more or less a check of a virtuous 
 character on the increase of population. It has been 
 stated that the motives to it operate more widely and 
 powerfully in an old than in a new country. Whether 
 that condition of society, in which late marriages are 
 customary, is a condition of improved morality, — 
 whether, in short, voluntary restraint fi'om marriage 
 is, on the whole, productive of more viitue or vice, is 
 a question that wiU hereafter be considered. 
 
 That so acute and fair a reasoner as ]VIr. !Malthus should 
 have fallen into the error of logic we have been point- 
 ing out, is a marvel not altogether inexplicable. One 
 part of ]\Ii\ ^Slalthus' work was devoted to the refutation 
 of the evil doctrines broached in !Mi\ Godwin's essay 
 upon ''Political Justice." To that ingenious, but in- 
 cautious, speculator, the artificial distinctions and regu- 
 lations of social life appeai-ed to be the fruitful sources 
 of misery, and the very hotbeds of crime ; and in theii'
 
 24 1 MALTHUS AND GODWIN. 
 
 abolition his sanguine mind discerned the seeds of a rapid 
 and universal improvement, and the dawning of a golden 
 acre. Mr. Malthus contended that civil institutions, 
 — the institutions of marriage, of property, of govern- 
 ment, etc. — are the essential elements, and only durable 
 foimdations of society ; and that a state of equality, like 
 that which Mr. Godwin desired, could last but for a 
 short time, and would at length be broken to pieces 
 by the pressure of population upon food. With the 
 pencil of a master he depicted the horrors of a time, 
 when the multiplication of the numbers of such a com- 
 munity should be arrested by the sharp sword of famine, 
 driving them on to desperation, profligacy, and the 
 worst deeds of unbridled wickedness. To this argument 
 it was objected that vice and misery Avere supposed to 
 be the only two checks upon population, whereas it was 
 absolutely certain that men were often restrained by 
 moral motives from exercising their animal power of 
 propagation. And it was intimated that moral motives 
 might sufficiently repress the increase of the community, 
 without the co-operation of such allies as misery and 
 vice. This objection, however, does really leave Mr. Mal- 
 thus' argument intact, because the motives which lead 
 to restraint, whether partial or sustained, grow out of 
 inequalities of ranks and possessions, and could not in- 
 fluence a body, among whom these inequalities did not 
 exist. Mr. Malthus failed distinctly to perceive that the 
 check which he had excluded from view was one, which, 
 however efficacious it may be in the ordinary course 
 of things, and the regular stages of society, would have 
 no play in the peculiar state imagined by Mr. Godwin ;
 
 SELF-RESTRAINT PECULIAR TO MAN. 245 
 
 and lieuce it was thatj in introducing, into the second 
 edition of his book, moral restraint among the number 
 of checks upon population, he was induced to affix that 
 narrow definition of it, which limits and almost annuls 
 its action. 
 
 On looking to the animal and vegetable worlds, the 
 members of which, in common with men, possess an 
 indefinite power of propagating their kind, we find 
 them unable to control that power by the force of their 
 own will. The checks upon their multiplication are all 
 external. They perish for want of food, or of room. 
 They prey upon each other, or are destroyed by men. 
 But the human race have the privilege of exercising 
 self-restraint. They are gifted with the intellectual 
 power of foreseeing to a sufficient extent for the govern- 
 ment of their conduct the consequences of their actions, 
 and with the moral power of volition, accordingly with 
 the dictates of their reason and subjectively to the 
 judgment of their conscience. This self-restraint is so 
 far exercised that there is no record of the customary 
 age of marriage having at any time, in any country, 
 coincided with the age of puberty. Its strength in- 
 creases, and its sphere of operation enlarges, with the 
 advance of civilization ; as we shall attempt to show. 
 
 The wants of mankind are divided into primary and 
 secondary. Primary wants are a given quantity, and 
 include whatever is necessary to subsistence and health. 
 Secondary wants are an unlimited quantity, embracing 
 whatever contributes to comfort and enjoyment. Now, 
 when a man's rank and estimation in society depend 
 upon his ability to gratify his secondary wants, there
 
 246 CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DETERMINE THE EFFECT 
 
 is a strong inducement to him to defer marriage, with 
 the probably consequent exjoenses of a family, in order 
 to purchase that ability, with its accompanying rank and 
 estimation in society. It may be laid down as a rule, 
 therefore, that the number of secondary wants is the 
 cause determining the influence of moral and prudential 
 motives in restraining from marriage. And this position 
 is confirmed by an examination of the habits both of 
 different classes in the same country, and of the same 
 class in different countries. In England, the tradesmen 
 marry later than the agricultural laborers, and the pro- 
 fessional classes still later than the tradesmen. Again, 
 the Irish peasantry, who know but few secondary wants, 
 marry earlier than the English peasantry : and it is 
 also found that the earliest and most reckless marriages 
 take place among the poorest and most destitute of the 
 working classes of Ireland; whilst, in those districts 
 in which the condition of the Irish approximates to 
 that of English peasants, their habits also assimilate. 
 
 CIECrMSTANCES WHICH GOYERN THE EFFECT OF 
 WAGES ON POPULATION. 
 
 We shall now proceed to a portion of the subject, 
 which is full of interest to the economist ; and shall 
 examine the circumstances which influence the multi- 
 plication of the numbers of the laboring classes, and, 
 by consequence, the rate of wages. 
 
 First, however, an error must be noticed, common 
 to most writers upon the subject. In estimating the 
 different proportions contributed by rents, wages, and 
 profits, to the amount of national wealth, they have
 
 OF WAGES ON POPULATION. 247 
 
 regarded wages as a fixed, stationary, quantity. This 
 supposition, often at variance with other parts of their 
 own theories, and utterly untenable, was, nevertheless, 
 eagerly embraced, as simplifying a problem that is 
 really very difficult. Even Mr. Malthus partook of 
 this delusion, to a certain degree. He fancied that 
 the same quantity of labor could always be commanded 
 by the means of subsistence, and thence inferred that 
 the rate of wages was uniform and invariable, except 
 in so far as it was occasionally made to oscillate slightly 
 from one side to the other of its general position, by 
 the collisions of population with food. He argued that, 
 if food abounded, population would increase, till, out- 
 stripping the means of subsistence, it was impeded by 
 want, and gradually forced back to a level with the 
 means of subsistence : and that similar progressive and 
 retrograde movements would be repeatedly alternating. 
 This reasoning, however, is contradicted by facts. Any 
 change in the rate of wages may either accelerate, or 
 retard, the movements of population. There is but 
 one case in which this statement does not hold true. 
 That case is, when the population are already at the 
 minimum of subsistence, and a decrease takes place in 
 the rate of wages. Such a decrease, at such a time, 
 necessarily retards, and cannot possibly accelerate, the 
 movements of population. This single case excepted, 
 a rise of wages may lead to the increase of the popu- 
 lation, as it obviously supplies the means of maintain- 
 ing larger numbers ; or it may lead to the gratification 
 of secondary wants, and so obstruct its increase. A 
 fall of wages may repress the advance of population;
 
 248 THE EFFECT DEPENDS UPON THE MODE 
 
 but that effect may be obviated by the relinquishment 
 of secondary gratifications, which would preserve the 
 means of subsistence undiminished in quantity. 
 
 The circumstances mainly determining the effect of a 
 change in the rate of wages upon the number of laborers 
 in a community are, the form in which the laborers 
 receive their wages, and the length of time in which 
 the change of rate is brought about. 
 
 1. The form in 2vhich the laborers receive their 
 tvages. When wages are paid in Idnd, the effect of a 
 rise of wages is to accelerate, and of a fall of wages 
 to retard, the movements of population. A rise of 
 wages paid in produce is not so likely to create more 
 secondary wants, as to administer to the primary wants 
 of additional numbers. It is not so, where wages are 
 paid in money. There a rise of wages leads not to an 
 increase of population, but to the gratification of se- 
 condary wants. And a fall of money wages, except at 
 the crisis when the population are at the minimum of 
 subsistence, is less likely to diminish the population, 
 than to deprive it of some secondary gratifications. 
 
 This point is so important that we shall not mind 
 repeating it, if we may so make it plainer. Mr. Malthus 
 erred in arguing that, because a deficiency of the means 
 of subsistence is a check to population, therefore a 
 superfluity of them must necessarily be a spur to it. 
 For it is plain that a command over superabundant 
 food gives the means of gratifying secondary wants by 
 the exchange of food for other commodities, and in 
 this way frequently operates adversely to the growth 
 of a community.
 
 IN 'SVIIICn WAGES ARE TAID. 249 
 
 2. The length of time in which the change of rate 
 is drought about. It makes a vast difference whether 
 the change have been accomplished in a year, or a 
 century. The habits and feelings of a people are not 
 easily altered : and sudden changes are less salutary 
 than slow ones. A rise of wages, consequent upon a 
 great mortality produced by an epidemic malady, will 
 be apt to cause a forward movement of population, 
 which will shortly be arrested by misery. A gradual 
 rise of wages will beget a desire of secondary gratifi- 
 cations ; on the contrary, a sudden fall of wages will 
 retard population, which would not be affected by a 
 gradual declension. 
 
 These two cii'cum stances, the most potential of any 
 that regulate the influence of a change in the rate of 
 wages upon the movements of a laboring population, 
 act together, and are modified the one by the other; 
 and it is to their combined operation that the practical 
 economist will direct his attention. 
 
 Some other cii'cumstances affecting the multiplication 
 of a laboring population are, — 
 
 1. The degree of civil lihcrtg enjoyed hj the people. 
 In some countries a difference of race has placed an 
 impassable barrier between the aristocracy and the 
 peasantry ; in others, the body of the people are pre- 
 vented by unjust laws, or by economical obstacles, 
 from mounting into the higher classes. The hope of 
 elevation into the upper walks of society, and of attain- 
 ing stations of dignity, authority, or influence, is a 
 powerful motive to the deferring of marriage. 
 
 2. The number of intermediate orders. In countries,
 
 250 INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, 
 
 like Poland, where there are but two classes, nobles 
 and peasants, separated by an immeasurable distance, 
 the latter have no chance, and therefore no hope of 
 mounting to a higher position. In countries like Eng- 
 land, where there intervene numerous orders, each man 
 is stimulated by the desire of raising himself into the 
 order immediately above him : and this motive operates 
 forcibly and widely in restraining from early marriages. 
 
 The lower class, in such a country as Poland, are 
 pretty much on a par as to their condition. The only 
 way in which one peasant gains an advantage over 
 another is by a more careful economy, which enables 
 him to lay by something against seasons of sickness or 
 distress, and the period of old age. In such a state 
 of society, there are but few motives to accumulation. 
 Nor is it mse, in any state of society, to weaken or 
 diminish the motives to accumulation, by making pro- 
 vision for the poor in exigencies which they ought to 
 have foreseen and prevented. This was the folly and 
 fault of the old Poor Laws of England, from which 
 the new Poor Laws are happily free. Under the old 
 system, the poor never saved up against sickness, 
 scarcity, or infirmity, secure of obtaining relief from 
 the parish. Young couples have been known to apply 
 to the parish for assistance the day after their marriage. 
 To make a peasantry self-dependent, is, in some mea- 
 sure, to make them prudent and economical. 
 
 3 The degree of parental influence. On the conti- 
 nent, parents exercise a great influence, because their 
 children are dependent upon them for the necessaries 
 of life. Consequently, they can hinder them from
 
 PARENTAL CONTROL, AND NATIONAL EDUCATION. 251 
 
 marrying early. Tn England, on the contrary, children 
 are very independent of their parents. A lad can find 
 work and livelihood here as easily as his father; and 
 may therefore dispute his will with impunity. 
 
 4. National education. Education rightly conducted, 
 and including the development and training of the 
 mental powers, and the formation of character, as well 
 as mere instruction in knowledge, is, without question, 
 auxiliary to those motives which lead both to restraint 
 from premature marriages, and to tlie maintenance of 
 an immaculate chastity during the period of restraint. 
 An intelligent, prudent, industrious people will delay 
 marriage till they can marry with comfort. 
 
 Mr. Malthus entertained the opinion that it would 
 be highly advantageous for the lower classes to be in- 
 structed in the science of Political Economy. He fan- 
 cied that, if once convinced of the imprudence of early 
 marriages, they would afterwards refrain from them. 
 In this sanguine anticipation, however, it is painful 
 not to be able to concur. The mischievous effects of 
 early marriages often light upon, not the parties con- 
 cerned in them, but succeeding generations. A man 
 might possibly be deterred from prematurely forming 
 a matrimonial connection, could he be persuaded that 
 he himself would certainly suffer from it ; but he will 
 be little affected by representations of future contingent 
 peril to the class to which he belongs. However, the 
 circumstances and considerations that tend to restrain 
 from marriage will influence people, whether they are 
 conscious of being so influenced or not. They will be 
 practical, without being theoretical, philosophers. Nor
 
 252 MARRIAGES IN ENGLAND AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 docs it appear desirable for them to understand tlie 
 principles of the science; except in so far as a know- 
 ledge of the real causes of their distress might some- 
 times silence the murmurs of popular discontent. 
 
 These four circumstances noticed as generally influ- 
 encing the multiplication of a laboring population, also 
 influence, though in a degree which it is difiicult to 
 distinguish or estimate, the effect of a change in the 
 rate of T\^ages upon that multiplication. And it may 
 be observed, in concluding this part of the subject, 
 that in countries where an uniform rate of wages has 
 long prevailed, there the laboring population are found 
 in an inert and stagnant condition, both social and 
 economical, — a condition the more gloomy, because 
 marked by no signs of approaching improvement. 
 
 It is an ascertained fact that the number of mar- 
 riages in England is small compared with the number 
 of marriages in other countries, and yet the population 
 increase faster here than elsewhere. How is it to be 
 accounted for that a nation, among whom the number 
 of marriages is decreasing, should multiply more rapidly 
 than nations among whom the number of marriages is 
 increasing ? 
 
 This seeming paradox is of easy solution. While 
 the number of births is decreasing, deaths may also be 
 becoming fewer, and, possibly, in a larger proportion. 
 This is the case in England. It is astonishing to con- 
 sider the steady increase of the average length of life 
 which has been taking place amongst us of late years. 
 From the continental statistics, which are better than 
 our own, we learn that, fifty years ago, on the conti-
 
 THERE IS A LIMIT TO HUMAN LONGEVITY. 253 
 
 nent (and probably in England, too,) the proportion of 
 average deaths was one in thirty-six. It is now one 
 in fifty-seven. The rate of increase of population is 
 determined by the excess of births above deaths. In 
 a society where few deaths occur, fewer births are 
 necessary to maintain, or accelerate, the rate of popu- 
 lation. 
 
 There have been writers on this subject visionary 
 enough to dream of such a melioration of our social 
 and economical condition, as would confer immortality, 
 or, at least, indefinite longevity, upon the human race. 
 It is not, however, less certain that men must die ; 
 nor shall we waste words to prove that there is a limit 
 to the utmost prolongation of life that can be effected 
 by any inventions or discoveries. There is a point, 
 indeed, still distant, to which it is not unreasonable 
 to expect that progressive civilization may ultimately 
 carry us, when population will be rendered stationary 
 by the multiplication and joint operation of motives 
 restraining from marriage on the one hand, and, on 
 the other, by the prevalence of those habits and the 
 perfection of those arts which preserve in health and 
 vigour the vital principle. But, granting the case 
 supposed to be an extreme one, and beyond the chance 
 of realization, the argument founded on it is as good 
 as the argument founded by Mr. Malthus on a sup- 
 posed case equally extreme and improbable, and may, 
 therefore, fairly combat with it. Mr. Malthus supposes 
 the globe to fill with inhabitants, and asks whether 
 the next increase of population must not be productive 
 of misery. Only conceive an extraordinarily prosperous
 
 254 rROGRESSIYE CIVILIZATION MAY ULTIMATELY 
 
 state of things to occur with the extraordinary filling 
 of the globe Avith inhabitants, and a check appears 
 sti'ong enough to keep the population stationary. 
 
 Moreover, were there no causes of a moral kind at 
 work which confine population within the means not 
 only of subsistence, but of comfort and enjoyment, there 
 would be no ground for anticipating such a steady and 
 regular increase of numbers as would end in over- 
 peopling the earth. For when has a steady, regular, 
 increase of numbers ever taken place ? Wliich were 
 the happy ages that witnessed no social revolutions and 
 convulsions? Look at Mesopotamia, at Ai-abia, and 
 many other of the countries renowned in the annals 
 of antiquity, once scenes of activity, — theatres of great 
 acts, bii'thplaces of mighty nations,— now vast and bar- 
 ren solitudes, whose a^^^ul silence is but occasionally 
 broken by the hoarse notes of the bird of prey ! Sm-ely 
 the history of the past furnishes no record of an increase 
 of population so continuously rapid, as to bafile all 
 attempts to meet it by increased means of subsistence. 
 
 But is it really preposterous to imagine a population 
 arrested in its progress by the energies of social im- 
 provement ? Let us put the case. Fancy a small 
 society of twenty or thirty families ; place them, if you 
 please, on an island ; and alloAV them to be siuTOunded 
 Avitli comforts, and in a highly advanced moral and 
 intellectual state. Such a population would be likely 
 to live long, all the ordinary causes of premature decay 
 or destruction being excluded from assailing them ; and 
 a very few births would suffice to maintain their num- 
 bers. In such a body, too, at the same time, the moral
 
 RENDER POPULATION STATIONARY. 255 
 
 motives adverse to marriage would be peculiarly potent. 
 We cannot deem it absurd to contend that their force 
 might be fully equal to the violence of an animal 
 appetite. 
 
 We rest convinced, then, — and the conviction is as 
 pious and delightful as it is reasonable — that Providence 
 has not endowed men with a passion, whose operations 
 are continually menacing, or maning, then' happiness ; 
 but that, as it became a moral governor to act towards 
 his moral subjects, he has ordained their welfare to be 
 dependent on the right development and culture of 
 their moral and intellectual constitution, to advance 
 with the spread of virtue and knowledge, and to be 
 consummated in the final triumph and dominion of 
 religious truth. 
 
 There are, however, other arguments to be encoun- 
 tered, by which the doom of mankind to perish by 
 starvation is supported ; and, first, a race of speculators 
 present themselves, who believe the earth's fertility to 
 be daily decreasing. The effect of the progress of agri- 
 cultiu"e on the movements of population will be brought 
 under view, in this discussion. 
 
 Unhappily, Mr. Malthus has lent the sanction of his 
 great name to the dogma that population must inevita- 
 bly, in the course of things, di'aiu the resources of the 
 earth. Had he so far modified the proposition as to 
 say that the increase of numbers would gradually sweep 
 away all the comforts and luxiu'ies of civilized life, and 
 reduce men to the bare means of subsistence, it would 
 have been less pernicious though not more correct. Let 
 us, however, bring the odious dogma to the test of
 
 256 ENGLISH LABORERS, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 fact. If it be really a law that population should gain 
 upon food, it must follow that nations, as they grow 
 older, must either be worse fed, or must employ a 
 greater number of laborers in producing food. We will 
 inquire whether these consequences have followed upon 
 the growth of om- o^Yn population : and will compare 
 the present state of things with the ante-Elizabethan 
 times. 
 
 Certainly, we are not worse fed than our forefathers. 
 The food of the common people, before the great Queen's 
 reign, was rye-bread. It is now wheaten bread,— a 
 luxmy, enjoyed by the populace of no other countiy 
 besides England. Some persons, and amongst them no 
 less a man than Cobbett, have got a notion that in the 
 times of yore the commonalty were accustomed to feed 
 upon beef, mutton, pork, and good things but rarely 
 tasted by the poorer classes of om* ovm day. But the 
 old writers who use tliis language meant by the com- 
 monalty, not the lower, but the middling, orders, — not 
 villain serfs, but trading capitalists, etc. 
 
 Nor in England are more laborers employed in pro- 
 ducing food than heretofore. Before the Elizabethan 
 era, four-fifths of the English population Avere engaged 
 in agricultm-e : and now one-third only is so engaged. 
 To put the case in a more striking manner, whereas, 
 before Elizabeth's accession, fom* men produced food 
 for themselves and one other, now one man produces 
 food for himself and two others, and better food, too. 
 
 Mr. Malthus's dogma, then, falls to the ground, as 
 the deductions, of necessity arising out of it, are belied by 
 facts. But it will be interesting, and perhaps usefiU, to
 
 FARMING IX THE OLDEN TIME. 257 
 
 trace the origin and jDrogress of the fallacious reasoning 
 on which the dogma has been built. The authors of it 
 lay down the fact, that if upon a piece of land, which 
 has yielded as much as a bushel of wheat to the first 
 outlay of capital and labor upon it, you expend half 
 as much capital and labor in addition, you Avill not 
 obtain a bushel and a half, but probably no more than 
 a bushel and a quarter. Hence they proceeded to infer, 
 that, always and everywhere, an increasing expenditui'e 
 of capital and labor was accompanied with a decreasing 
 proportionate return of produce. 
 
 Let their fact stand imquestioned. When a very 
 minute spot has been weeded, dug, drained, and ma- 
 nured, as well as our present knowledge renders pos- 
 fiible, it may seem that more expenditure upon it must 
 be more feebly rewarded. Even as to such a limited 
 spot we might possibly be mistaken : but when we 
 include in om* view larger districts — not only countries, 
 but portions of land such as are usually cultivated 
 under the direction of one person — the case becomes 
 altogether diff'erent ; because we must then take into 
 calculation the increased power gained by increased 
 skill in the combination and succession of different 
 crops, and in the modes of consuming them, and making 
 them re-act on the fertility of the farms. 
 
 To come to illustrations. In the olden times a farm 
 of one hundred acres would be thus cultivated :— It 
 was divided into an outfield and an infield ; of which 
 the former was devoted to pasture, and the latter kept 
 ploughed for grain crops, — wheat, barley, or oats. 
 These, however, being exhausting crops, the land re- 
 
 17
 
 258 RESULTS OF IMPROVED CULTIVATION. 
 
 quired to be occasionally rested by fallows, or leys, as 
 tlie exliaustod fields were once called in England, when 
 abandoned to tlieir natiu-al produce for a time, though 
 destined to be ploughed up again. The infield was 
 always partially recruited by the manni'e furnishc^d by 
 the cattle ; and sometimes bits of the outfield would be 
 alternately sown with grain. 
 
 Since then, roots, artificial grasses, and various green 
 crops have been introduced, with which the fallows 
 and a considerable portion of the pasture - land are 
 covered; the soil, refreshed by an alternation of crops, 
 is found to require no rest from production ; a larger 
 number of cattle arc fed with the produce of ploughed 
 ground ; a greater quantity of animal maniu'e is ob- 
 tained : and the powers of the earth are thus kept 
 in more constant and vigorous action. The one himdred 
 acres v,i\\ now yield four crops annually, — two in one 
 field, and two in the other. From this reference to 
 history, it appears that the produce of the earth, so 
 far from experiencing a gradual diminution, is capable 
 of being indefinitely augmented, in proportion to the 
 increase of skill, and the assistance which it receives 
 from capital. 
 
 Ousted from all other positions, there is yet a resort 
 to whicli these alarmists betake themselves, for the 
 defence of their favorite dogma; and that is the fact 
 of colonization. To what other cause, they ask, can 
 colonization be attributed, except to the pressm-e of 
 population upon food? Xow it is quite certain that 
 our early colonization did not originate in this cause. 
 Some of our first colonial adv(>nturers wcro actuated by
 
 CAUSES OF COLONIZATION. 259 
 
 the hope of discovering mines : others, more enlight- 
 ened, had in view the ordinary objects of industiy and 
 commerce. But in none of the works written in recom- 
 mendation of the early schemes of colonization, — the 
 treatises of Gilbert, Peckham, Carlisle, Harriott, etc., — 
 is there to be traced any apprehension of an approach- 
 ing scarcity. 
 
 IS'or is it difficidt to give an answer to the question 
 so vauntingly asked. Capital may, doubtless, be ex- 
 pended far more profitably upon a vii'gin soil, than 
 upon an old soil, whose flagging energies need to be 
 stimidatcd by the devices of ingenuity. But does this 
 prove that improved skill and power cannot elicit more 
 abundant crops from an old soil than it bore to a 
 clumsy and feeble husbandly ? People who could 
 live in England in a much liigher style of comfort 
 than the laborers or capitalists of the Elizabethan age, 
 may yet prefer to transfer their capital or labor to 
 America or Australia, where it will enable them to 
 live like kings. Colonization is neither necessarily 
 the effect, nor infallibly the sign, of national indigenco. 
 The richest nations of the world, England and France, 
 are those which have sent out the largest number of 
 colonists. 
 
 It is not, however, for a moment to be denied, that 
 colonization is an useful outlet to population. Only 
 it is contended that it may as often be a refuge for 
 wealth greedy of aggrandizement, as for poverty thi'eat- 
 ened by the jaws of famine. We have seen, too, 
 that, on reaching a very high point of civilization and 
 prosperity, the population of a country would be likely
 
 260 INFLUENCE OE EXTENDING CIVILIZATION 
 
 to become stationarj-. Now a benevolent man could 
 not but wish an intelligent, moral, and happy people 
 to multiply. And this desirable object might be ef- 
 fected by colonization. A desire to escape from the 
 restless struggle of competition at home, together with 
 tlie attractions of a virgin soil abroad, might induce 
 a part of the population to emigrate, and so make room 
 for an increase of numbers. The fact of colonization, 
 then, affords no support to the dogma we are engaged 
 in refuting. 
 
 Still it is pertinaciously maintained that, as the 
 earth's extent and productive power are definite, and 
 manlvind's power of multiplying their numbers is un- 
 limited, the resources of food must at last fail the 
 swelliug multitude. But what a fallacious argument 
 is this, plausible though it be made to appear. For 
 do men use to the utmost their 2:>ower of propagating 
 their kind ? Are there no checks upon their exercise 
 of tliat power, growing out of their condition and cir- 
 cumstances? These arc questions for oui* antagonists 
 to answer. They must explain how it is that no more 
 than a tenth part of the globe lias at any time been 
 peoplcnl. Now they can only get over this difficulty 
 by asserting that the checks which formerly controlled 
 the increase of population will become fewer or feebler, 
 or cease to operate at all. And here we join issue 
 with them, confidently believing, as we do, that those 
 checks upon population which resolve themselves into 
 misery and vice will tend to become indefinitely 
 weaker, whilst that which is constituted by voluntary 
 restraint, and is indicative of moral and intellectual
 
 UPON THE PROGRESS OF POPULATION. 261 
 
 elevation, will for ever be gaining fresh might and 
 an enlarged sphere. Our antagonists deem it not 
 extravagant to anticipate a day, when wars, and intes- 
 tine disturbances, and crime, and vice, and ignorance 
 will have fled away before the victorious march of a 
 sound philosoj^hy; when the peace of the world will 
 be unbroken ; when the art of government will be fully 
 understood, and honestly practised; when knowledge 
 will be universally diffused, and intellect universally 
 expanded ; and social and economical improvement have 
 reached its highest pitch. Is it, then, to be expected 
 that the progress of civilization, while it informs and 
 invigorates the mind of nations, elevates their character 
 generally, and brings under restraint their malignant 
 and sordid passions, will fix them in a faster bondage 
 to one particular appetite ? Will a career full of glory 
 and happiness terminate in the horrors of famine, and 
 the yet more awful horrors of the wickedness to which 
 despair urges the wretched ? Surely not. We will, 
 on the contrary, venture to predict that, whenever vice 
 and misery shall be banished from the earth by im- 
 proved political institutions, the functions which they 
 performed as checks upon population, will be super- 
 seded by the widened and increased influence of fore- 
 sight and moral motives. While we hesitate not to 
 concede to Mr. Malthus, that a population, doubling 
 itself every score of years, would, in the com'se of a 
 century, be involved in extreme misery that would 
 not only obstruct its progress but diminish its size ; 
 we affirm that so rapid and extensive an increase is 
 in the last degree improbable, —and, in fact, impos-
 
 262 GOOD AXD EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 sible, without an alteration of the laws which at pro- 
 sent regulate human nature and human affairs. 
 
 And now we dismiss fi-om consideration these errors, 
 which we shall perhaps be thought to have refuted 
 too laboriously,— for doing which we may plead in 
 excuse that they have domineered over the science 
 of Political Economy for five-and-twenty years, and 
 are by no means yet thoroughly eradicated from the 
 public mind. 
 
 It remains to weigh together the good and evil effects 
 which the necessity laid upon nations, by the progress 
 of civilization, of deferring the age of marriage, pro- 
 duces on the condition of a community ; and to strike 
 the balance between them. 
 
 1. The most obvious effect of the postponement of 
 mamage to a riper age, is the scope thereby given to 
 licentiousness. This evil effect it is impossible to over- 
 look or deny. It must be borne in mind, however, 
 that licentiousness is not the worst of the vices, either 
 in point of moral turpitude or injimous tendency. 
 
 2. A second effect is an improvement of character. 
 There is a feeling of approbation and a sense of eleva- 
 tion accompanying acts of self-control. Besides this, 
 the delay of hope, or its suspense, blends with the 
 mere sensual passion, a delicate, resj)ectful, enthusiastic 
 feeling of love, which is the germ of poetry. The feel- 
 ings first woke up the imagination, and the earliest 
 poet was Love. 
 
 3. A third effect is the refinement of manners, which 
 have justly been styled lesser moralities, and are an 
 inferior kind of virtues. The female sex, when it
 
 DEFERRING THE AGE OF MARRIAGE. 263 
 
 ceases to be regarded as a toy which men may phiy 
 with at their will, or merely as an instrnment of grati- 
 fying their animal instinct, — when it requii'cs to be 
 coui'ted with a delicate and distant homage, and 
 its presence is felt to be a restraint npon all loose- 
 ness of language and behavioiu', — exercises an influence 
 on the character, the value of which it is not easy to 
 overrate. 
 
 4. A foiu'th effect is an increased energy, and a 
 care for their reputation, in all classes of the societ}^ 
 A young man who looks forward to having an establish- 
 ment of his own, and who desires to place all the mem- 
 bers of his family on a respectable footing, has motives 
 to industry and good conduct of a very cogent kind. 
 
 6. A fifth effect is the increased value which children 
 acquire in the eyes of their parents, and the greater 
 care that is paid to their education and instruction, 
 when, instead of being the offspring of a sensual 
 passion that is indulged as soon as felt, they are 
 the pledges of mutual attachment and fidelity, and 
 of an union which, being founded on sympathies and 
 congenialities, is destined to be as permanent as it is 
 intimate. 
 
 The good effects predominate greatly over the evil ; 
 and it will be observed that, in the com'se of im- 
 provement, the single evil effect gradually diminishes, 
 whilst the good ones become more and more promi- 
 nent. Hence a hope may be encom'aged that, ulti- 
 mately, nations will purify themselves from sexual vice, 
 and abstinence from marriage will be accompanied by 
 an impeccable chastity.
 
 264 POLITICAL FREEDOM ESSENTIAL TO 
 
 Philosophers have sometimes erred in assuming tiual 
 causes, and then endeavoring to account for phenomena 
 by a reference to their operation. Thus it was at one 
 time an axiom of Natural Philosophy that nature hates 
 a vacuum, by which it was attempted to interpret the 
 motions of the heavenly bodies. It was a safer, and 
 indeed a perfectly correct process, by which l^ewton 
 arrived at the principle of gravitation. lie collected 
 and examined the phenomena ; and he found that they 
 were all reconcilable with the supposition that the 
 different atoms of matter are attracted to the centre 
 of the earth by a force varying inversely with the 
 squares of their distance. And, similarly, the facts we 
 have been noticing warrant the conclusion that God 
 has adapted the nature and condition of men to their 
 moral discipline and probation ; and has put it in the 
 power both of individuals and societies, by the subjec- 
 tion of their animal passions to moral and prudential 
 motives, to attain to a great intellectual elevation, and 
 to acquire a moral worth and dignity. On the other 
 hand, there are wanting facts in support of the notion 
 that men are under the dominion of an evil being or 
 destiny, urging them on incessantly to misery and ruin. 
 
 "We have now done with the subject of Population. 
 
 We have already had occasion to remark how what 
 is just is also invariably expedient. But this is a 
 lesson which is at once so difficult and so important 
 for rulers to learn, that a fuller exposition of it may 
 not be without profit. It will be demonstrated incon-
 
 THE FULL DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY. 265 
 
 testably that no circumstances, however favorable, no 
 institutions, however specious, no appearances of pros- 
 perity whatever, can authorise a belief that the pro- 
 ductive powers of a nation's industry are being fully 
 developed, so long as the mass of its people are not 
 in possession of their just political rights. The facts 
 which attest this assertion have been previously stated, 
 and will only be alluded to in applying them to the 
 argument in hand. 
 
 1. First, as to the productiveness of agricultural labor. 
 
 In those backward stages of society, in which the 
 laborer of the soil is also occupant, whether his tenure 
 be that of a serf, metayer, cottier, or ryot, agriculture 
 has been found to be unskilfully practised and feebly 
 aided by capital, and consequently, to yield but scanty 
 returns to the labor employed in it. Now, looking to 
 the political position of such laborers, we see them to 
 be, more or less, slaves, — virtually, or actually, by cir- 
 cumstances, when not by law, inasmuch as they are 
 unable to change at will their homes or their masters. 
 The reasons are obvious why the labor of a slave must 
 be inferior to that of a freeman. It is, indeed, true 
 that Greece and Eome made progress in wealth at a 
 time when the mass of their communities were slaves. 
 But this only proves that domestic slavery may succeed 
 to a still worse state. So it was in the cases adverted 
 to. The slaves of Greece and Eome were captives 
 taken in war, who would otherwise have been put to 
 death ; an alternative not unfrequent among barbarous 
 people. But domestic slavery contains within itself the 
 seeds of its own decay or destruction. Slaves, un-
 
 26G THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF NON-AGRICULTURAL LABOR 
 
 manned by servitude, wlio have no part in the govern- 
 ment or property of the community they belong to, 
 will not defend it with courage, in the season of danger. 
 This can only be expected from free men, possessed of 
 comforts and privileges, and alive to their A^alue. It 
 was owing to the absence of large classes of free men, 
 and because the mass of the social body were in a 
 condition of servitude, that Greece was conquered by 
 the Eomans, and that, subsequently, imperial Eome her- 
 self was trampled under foot by the independent, bold, 
 and hardy barbarians. 
 
 2. Secondly, as to the productiveness of non- agri- 
 cultural labor. 
 
 The productive powers of non-agricultural labor are 
 plainly dependent, in a considerable degree, on those 
 of agricultural. Nor is this only because the numbers 
 of the non-agricultui-al classes are controlled, and indeed 
 determined, by the numbers of the agricultural. Doubt- 
 less, the efficiency of non-agricultural labor is in part 
 regulated by the number of persons, or the quantity of 
 industry, engaged in it. But another circumstance, yet 
 more influential in determining its efficiency, is the 
 amount of capital employed in giving it power: and 
 the amount of capital devoted to the assistance of non- 
 a.o-ricultural industry, must be what is not needed for 
 the aid of agriculture. Now the means of non-agri- 
 cultural production arc vastly more augmented by the 
 accession of capital than of industry. For, emphatically, 
 machinery is the great pillar of non- agricultural wealth. 
 Nor is it, as might at first be imagined, for the pro- 
 duction of articles consisting of the most precious mate-
 
 DEPENDENT UPON THOSE OF AGRICULTUEAL LABOR. 2C7 
 
 rials and requiring the greatest delicacy of workman- 
 ship that the most subtle and complicated machinery- 
 is brought into play. It is in the production of the 
 vulgar commodities of every day's use that the high- 
 est efforts of ingenuity have been made, and that the 
 most wonderful feats have been achieved. 
 
 And here at once the observation is forced upon us 
 that the productiveness of non - agricultural industry 
 must be limited by the demand for its products. Now, 
 a general demand for these is an indication of general 
 wealth, or ability to pay for them, and will never be 
 made by a people whose governors are prompt and 
 vigorous to demand the lion's share of that wealth, or 
 wish to prevent them from rising to that social and 
 economical position, which eventually becomes one of 
 political power. The exclusion of the lower classes 
 from political power and functions is a barrier to the 
 elevation of their character, which is commonly a re- 
 acting cause, as well as an effect of economical improve- 
 ment. A grasping taxation, on the other hand, acts 
 as a check on the multiplication of secondary wants, 
 — the parents of those prudential motives which defer 
 the marriage age, keep population within due bounds, 
 and produce, as well as indicate, an elevation of cha- 
 racter. It is therefore obviously, the most inexpedient 
 thing in the world, for it defeats its own ends, by 
 drying up the very sources of public revenue. 
 
 The case of France is in point. In the times of 
 Louis the Fourteenth France conceived a strong 
 jealousy of the growing wealth and prosperity of Eng- 
 land, who had long ago been enabled by the exuberance
 
 2G8 CONSEQUENCES OF EXCESSIVE TAXATION. 
 
 of her agricultural produce to divert her capital and 
 labor to uou - agricultural employments, and whose 
 manufactures were at the time greatly flourishing. In 
 the eagerness of their rivalry the French Government 
 founded a woollen manufactory at Abbeville, and in- 
 vited some Flemish nobles, whom they loaded with 
 honors and secured against all contingent risks, to 
 undertake the superintendence of it. The cloth it 
 produced was of the best quality : but, to the astonish- 
 ment of the government, there was no demand for it 
 in the country ; and, instead of a profit, the manufac- 
 ture became an expense. To what was this owing? 
 Unquestionably to the oppressiveness of the Taille. The 
 people, being taxed in proportion to their property, 
 exerted all their wits to cheat the government, and 
 to appear poor. Eousseau tells a curious story illus- 
 trative of this fact. Once, while travelling, he stopped 
 at a peasant's door, and asked for some refreshment. 
 The peasant, suspecting him to be a spy of govern- 
 ment, presented him at first with the coarsest fare; 
 but, conversation with his guest having removed his 
 apprehensions, he brought him good bread and wine 
 out of his cupboard. In the case of the manufacture, 
 it is plain that the people either could not afford to 
 wear superfine cloth, or preferred using inferior mate- 
 rials, to paying a heavier tax. 
 
 These observations will fitly introduce the subject 
 of Taxation.
 
 RENT, WAGES, AND TROFITS. 269 
 
 taxatio:n^. 
 
 Taxes are the share of the government in the reve- 
 nues of a country. 
 
 Taxes may either prove unproductive, or may shift 
 their incidence. Commodities taxed may be disused, 
 as soon as taxed ; or the tax may really be paid by 
 some other class than the one that seems to be bur- 
 dened with them. 
 
 The sources of revenue are rents, wages, and profits. 
 "We shall inquire whether each of these portions are 
 taxable, and to what extent. These questions have 
 been much debated, both in ancient and modern times. 
 The ancients fancied that rents alone were taxable. 
 Mr. Locke, whose high reputation gave currency to 
 his errors, and who was followed by the French Econo- 
 mists and some English writers, arrived at the same 
 conclusion, by a series of reasonings and assumptions, 
 from which it appeared to result that the amount of 
 wages and the rate of profits are determined by causes 
 which keep them beyond the reach of change, and pre- 
 serve them untouched amidst the workings of any pos- 
 sible scheme of taxation. That the rate of wages is 
 invariable — a position that defies all history — has al- 
 ready been at length disproved;' and the uniformity 
 of the rate of profits is a paradox so monstrous, as 
 not to demand a set refutation. Nevertheless this dis- 
 pute, in France, became the fuel of political strife and 
 agitation. Vauban, the celebrated engineer, and Du 
 Bois, a councillor of the Parliament at Eouen, took 
 
 ' See LeotuiTs on Wages.
 
 270 MODE AND DEGREE IN WHICH THEY ARE TAXABLE. 
 
 occasion, iu their writings, to condemn the TaiUo, and 
 to j)roposc tithing the agricultural produce. Du Bois 
 was imprisoned for his pain's : and Vauban being 
 represented to Louis by the ministry of the day as 
 hostile to his government, and being slighted by the 
 King in consequence, went up to his garret, and died 
 of a broken heart, the first martyr to Political Economy. 
 
 Du Quesnay was the father of the writers who go 
 by the name of the French Economists, and who, as 
 it was said, maintained this erroneous opinion. They 
 attacked what was called the balance of trade, and all 
 restrictions upon commerce. The English writers, who 
 advocated free-trade, but acknowledged the value of a 
 balance, were styled Demi-Economists. 
 
 If wages and profits vary, they will admit of reduc- 
 tion, and may be reduced by taxation, as well as by 
 other causes. 
 
 Our business will be to discover in what mode and 
 degree wages, rents, and profits, are severally taxable. 
 In the course of this investigation, it will be seen that 
 the tendency of taxes to shift their incidence or to 
 become unproductive, is very intimately connected with 
 the movements of the population, and with the rela- 
 tions between the laborers and the owners and tenants 
 of the land. 
 
 Eents appear in the history of nations to have been 
 the earliest subject of taxation ; or, in other words, in 
 the first stages of society, the revenue of governments 
 is drawn principally from the land. This was the case 
 in Asia, the quarter of the world first inhabited. It was 
 likowis(^ so in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, and in Persia.
 
 RENTS THE EARLIEST SUBJECT OF TAXATION. 271 
 
 Every one remembers how, when Themistocles fled to 
 the Court of Artaxerxes, and sought protection from 
 him, that monarch assigned him the revenues of three 
 cities for his support. And we read of Eastern princes 
 moving from one part to another of their dominions, 
 consuming their revenue as they moved. 
 
 We may refer for this to the chronicles of the Jews. 
 Of all their monarchs none surpassed Solomon either in 
 genius or magnificence. In perusing the story of his 
 reign, one is tempted to think that his gift of wisdom 
 was a talent for keeping his people quiet under oppres- 
 sion. The number of men employed in the construc- 
 tion of the temple, which was a work of seven years, 
 and in building his own house, which occupied thirteen 
 more, was immense : and all these must have been 
 maintained at the public expense.^ He bought his 
 timber of Hiram, King of Tyre, and paid for it by an 
 annual supply of wheat.^ He lived himself in the 
 most sumptuous style ; and had twelve officers ap- 
 pointed to provide victuals for himself and his house- 
 hold, upon each of whom devolved a month of duty in 
 the year. These officers, it would seem, collected the 
 produce from the people, who brought it to them at 
 certain appointed stations.^ Besides, he kept a large 
 military establishment, and, we are told, had forty 
 thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve 
 thousand horsemen.* The resentment which this ex- 
 orbitancy awakened, broke out into open rebellion, 
 when a less prudent and able prince succeeded to 
 
 1 1 Kings, v., 13-17. ' 1 Kings, v., 11. 
 
 •' 1 Kings, iv., 28. * 1 Kings, iv., 2G.
 
 272 THIS SYSTEM STILL I'REVALENT IN ASIA. 
 
 the throne, and ten tribes revolted and set np a new 
 king over tliem. 
 
 In China, at the present day, the provincial governors 
 receive the articles of their consumption. In modern 
 Persia, the civilians arc not unfrequently salaried in 
 the same way. The largest constituent in Anglo- 
 Indian revenue is the land tax, because nearly the 
 whole native population, and therefore nearly the whole 
 production, is agricultural. Even now, in parts of 
 India, the pin-money of the queens of native princes 
 consists in villages. 
 
 Let us look to Europe. During the regency of the 
 Duke of Orleans in Erance, in the minority of Louis 
 XV., a commission was instituted to inquire into the 
 revenues of the country ; and from their report it is 
 ascertained that the condition of Europe at that time, 
 in respect of taxation, resembled very closely the pre- 
 sent condition of Asia ; that is to say, the produce 
 of the soil was most heavily taxed. K'or does it make 
 against this assertion, that, under the feudal system, 
 services were taxed as well as commodities, and obli- 
 gations also imposed, such as to repair bridges and to 
 attend in courts of justice. The obligation to attend 
 in courts of law was, it may be cursorily remarked, 
 a valuable privilege, wrested from the people of Eng- 
 land under the Norman dynasty, when the county 
 courts, established by the Saxon kings, were abolished, 
 and all judicial powers vested in the court at West- 
 minster. Personal military service, though at first 
 rigidly exacted by the Norman monarchs, was after- 
 wards made exchangeable with a monev-tax. To the
 
 EARLY SOURCES OF REVENUE IN ENGLAND. 273 
 
 exaction of personal military service may be traced the 
 growth of a martial spirit, one of the elements of 
 chivalry; to tha substitution of a money tax, is inci- 
 dentally due the institution of a Parliament of Com- 
 mons. When peace succeeded to war; when military 
 services were no longer needed ; the King found it 
 expedient to sell his right of demanding them for regu- 
 lar subsidies, to settle the amount of which he convened 
 representatives of different counties. 
 
 Other sources of revenue had the English Monarch, 
 called incidents, some of which were not a little curious. 
 They consisted of wardships, escheats, reliefs, etc. The 
 strangest, and perhaps the most lucrative of all, was 
 the practice of selling in marriage, which lasted up to 
 the time of James the First. 
 
 But we must not linger among these details. The 
 fact is apparent, that in the dawn of civilization, the 
 land is the only, or the principal, material of taxation. 
 Some, however, have considered rents in every form 
 and position of society, as furnishing a fund peculiarly 
 suitable to be applied by governments for the common 
 weal. And this is a doctrine so false and so perni- 
 cious that some pains must not be grudged to refute it. 
 The authors of it define rent to be the excess of 
 profits made upon land over what could be made by 
 any other means. And these extraordinary profits are 
 due, they think, to the superior quality of the land on 
 which they are made. They regard them as the boon 
 of nature, whose gifts ought not to be confined to any 
 particular class, but to be equally shared by all. 
 
 In the first place, rent consists of surplus profits only 
 
 18
 
 274 HENT CONSISTS OF SURPLUS PROFITS, 
 
 in a country of capitalists, whose capital is endowed 
 with mobility, such as England. It is not so in a 
 country of capitalists whose capital is immobile, like 
 Ireland. Nor is it so in a country where no classes of 
 capitalists are found, as India. 
 
 Why is this? The reasons are plain. When no 
 classes of capitalists intervene between the landowners 
 and laborers, the former are obliged to supply the latter 
 with stock as well as with the ground on which it is 
 employed. Hence the payments made to them are 
 made up of profits as well as rents ; and as they have 
 in their hands the sources of food, and can impose at 
 pleasure conditions of tenure and use, wages in such a 
 state of things will be what they choose to allow, and 
 will seldom exceed the bare means of subsistence. With 
 the rise of capitalists, rents and profits become dis- 
 severed ; and this separation is followed by an improve- 
 ment of agricultural skill and industry, which enables 
 a diversion to be made of capital and labor to non- 
 agricultural employments. It may be taken for granted 
 that no capitalists will expend their capital on agricul- 
 ture, unless they can thus obtain profits at least equal 
 to what they could make by any other mode of expendi- 
 ture. Consequently, landholders must let them have 
 such profits, and must be content to take themselves, 
 as rent, only what can be made over and above them. 
 This point has been before adverted to. 
 
 In the second place, the surplus profits which are 
 said to constitute rents all over the world, are not owing, 
 solely, or principally, to the superior quality of the soil. 
 Doubtless, the quality of the soil aff'ects its production ;
 
 ONLY WHERE GAPITAI. LS MOBILE. 275 
 
 and the different quality of different soils is one of the 
 circumstances determining the different amount of their 
 produce. But it is a circumstance, as has been men- 
 tioned, of inconsiderable potentiality, when compared 
 with the increase of industry, of skill, and of auxiliary 
 capital ; and its action, though real, is scarcely percepti- 
 ble amidst the operation of those mightier causes. 
 
 Hence it is evident that it is only in a peculiar stage 
 of society that the difference between the profits of agri- 
 cultiu'al and non-agricidtural employment of capital, is 
 a correct measure of the payments made to landowners 
 in the shape of rents. To the actual state of things 
 over the greater portion of the globe, the definition of 
 rent as surplus profits, is inapplicable ; and those who 
 persist in including under so untrue, because imperfect, 
 a definition, all the payments made by the occupiers to 
 the proprietors of land, are guilty of the egregious folly 
 of attempting to make unchangeable realities bend to 
 their arbitrary caprices ; or, at least, of indulging in 
 speculations, which must always be barren of utility, 
 though capable of being abundantly mischievous. Let 
 those who think that the whole burden of taxation 
 should be laid upon rents, contrast the state of India, 
 where it has been necessary to do so, with the state 
 of England, where taxes are distributed among rents, 
 profits, and wages; and they must be marvellously 
 blind or obstinate, if they still hold to their opinion. 
 
 It can be shown to be highly inexpedient to absorb 
 rents by taxation in a country, where rents are really 
 surplus profits. For a portion of rent is commonly 
 expended by landlords in bettering their land, and so
 
 27G TAXES UN I'llOFITS, 
 
 adding to its value, by drains, ditches, etc. This portion 
 of rent has been stated to be, antecedently to the dis- 
 junction of profits from rents by the rise of interme- 
 diate classes between landowners and laborers, the whole 
 of the capital brought to assist the energies of human 
 industry ; and it is, in the more advanced stages when 
 rents and profits are alike determined by wages, not 
 indeed the sole, but still a fruitful, source of improve- 
 ments in agriculture. 
 
 Taxes on profits next claim to be considered. Profits 
 are taxable till capitalists move their capital out of the 
 country rather than pay the tax upon it. A diminution 
 of capital causes a smaller demand for labor, and, con- 
 sequently, a fall in wages. In other words, the tax in 
 this event has shifted its incidence from profits to wages. 
 At what point this result will occur, is a problem that 
 does not admit of an exact solution. For the causes 
 which determine it are moral causes, diifering in the 
 degree of their influence with different persons. Some 
 persons are attached to their own country, or dread ex- 
 patriation, more than others. Generally men will stand 
 a good deal of grievance before they will go to live 
 among strangers, or will consent to send away their 
 capital from under their own eyes and management. 
 It has been observed that when the rate of profits in 
 any foreign country is two per cent, higher than the 
 rate of profits at home, there is commonly a transfer of 
 capital from home to that foreign country. But specifi- 
 cally to mark out a point is impossible, when that point 
 is constantly varying its position. 
 
 Last, but not least in importance, is the subject of
 
 AND ON WAGES. 277 
 
 taxes on wages. The actual incidence of these depends 
 on their effect upon the movements of population ; and, 
 as taxes on wages are almost identical with a fall, and 
 the abolition of taxes with a rise, of the rate of wages, 
 their effect is determined by the same laws which regu- 
 late the influence of a change in the rate of wages upon 
 the movements of population ; and it is only by a refer- 
 ence to those laws that fiscal problems (such as the corn 
 laws) can be solved at air. It was demonstrated that, 
 except at one peculiar crisis, any change in the rate of 
 wages may either accelerate or retard the movements of 
 population. Now, suppose a reduction to take place in 
 the rate of wages, in the shape of a tax, under circum- 
 stances in which it would retard the movements of popu- 
 lation ; and suppose the reduction to be of one-third, or, 
 e.g.^ fourpence out of a shilling. The diminution of 
 numbers would certainly raise the rate of wages (8t/.), 
 and might not improbably raise it to its former height 
 (I5.). In this case, plainly, the wages of labor have 
 been elevated to meet the exigency of taxation ; or, in 
 other words, the tax has shifted its incidence from the 
 laborers to their employers, from wages to profits. 
 Again, suppose the same tax to be laid on wages, under 
 circumstances in which it would not affect the move- 
 ments of population, but would be met by a sacrifice of 
 secondary gratifications; the tax would not then shift 
 its incidence. Of course, whenever taxes shift their 
 incidence from wages to profits, the consequence must 
 be a depression of the rate of profits. In using this 
 consequence as an indication of the shifting incidence 
 of taxes on wages, it is to be steadily borne in mind.
 
 278 DIRECT AND INDIRECT TAXATION. 
 
 that the rate of profits ought always to be viewed in 
 coimGction with the mass of stock. 
 
 The tendency of taxes to become unproductive, de- 
 pends upon their nature, or objects. Taxes may be 
 either direct or indirect, or of a mixed kind. Direct 
 taxes are such as there is no means of escaping ; as a 
 poll-tax, an assess-tax, a house tax, etc. Indirect taxes 
 are such as it is in the option of every person to avoid, 
 or incur ; such, chiefly, as affect consumption, e.g.^ on 
 wine, coffee, tea, spirits, tobacco, etc. Mixed taxes are 
 either such as are indirect in form, but direct in reality 
 (as a tax on salt, which is a necessary) ; or vice versa. 
 The first kind of mixed taxes are, of course, unavoid- 
 able : the second optional. 
 
 In the early stages of society, taxation is neces- 
 sarily direct. The increase of indirect taxation marks 
 the increase of national wealth. For the true test of a 
 people's prosperity is not their wages, but their consump- 
 tion. The mass of Englishmen are better off than the 
 mass of any other people, because they alone of all the 
 people of the earth are fed with wheaten bread, meat, 
 and beer. Therefore it is that rulers should ever bear in 
 mind that the power of taxation depends on the well- 
 being of the people. Could the Irish peasantry be raised 
 to the condition of the English, their contribution to the 
 coffers of the United Kingdom would be trebled, and 
 would exceed what the King of Prussia derives from the 
 whole of his dominions. 
 
 Till the reign of the first Charles no attempt was made 
 in England to substitute indirect for direct taxation. 
 "When made by that monarch it gave birth to much
 
 UNPOPULARITY OF A PEOPERTY TAX. 279 
 
 political agitation. On determining to govern without 
 the assistance of Parliaments, he desired Sir W. [?] 
 Cotton to make researches, with a view to ascertain all 
 the modes of getting money which the Kings of England 
 had at any former time employed. Of these modes he 
 endeavored to avail himself. One of them was the 
 following : — There were a class of persons whose trade 
 it was to exchange foreign money ; and at that time, 
 when facilities of exchange were scant and paper money 
 unknown, this trade was a lucrative one. Charles 
 seized upon a monopoly of this trade. It is unne- 
 cessary to do more than direct the attention to the 
 history of those unjust and oppressive proceedings which 
 involved that prince in perils and woes, and brought him 
 at last to an ignominious death. And it will be enough, 
 too, to allude to the opposition by which Sir Eobert 
 Walpole's wise endeavour, at a subsequent period, to 
 extend the excise to a larger number of commodities was 
 met and defeated. 
 
 Some there are who imagine that direct taxation is 
 more expedient than indirect. It must be owned to be 
 a more certain source of revenue. But the fact is, that 
 men will not bear to have heavy taxes laid upon the 
 necessaries of life. During the late war, the English 
 Government imposed a property-tax, which raised four- 
 teen millions of money : but the tax was deemed very 
 oppressive, and produced more soreness than the fifty 
 millions which were raised in other ways. 
 
 To sum up. We have found that rents are the sole, 
 or principal, subject of taxation, in those stages when 
 they include profits, and when wages arc little more
 
 280 INJUSTICE OF T.IXIXG KENTS OK PROFITS EXCLUSIVELY. 
 
 than the means of subsistence ; — that, in the more ad- 
 vanced stages, -when profits are disjoined from rents, the 
 tendency of taxes on profits to shift their incidence de- 
 pends on moral causes which cannot be calculated with 
 precision ; — that the tendency of taxes on wages to shift 
 their incidence is determined by their efi'ects on the 
 movements of population; — and that the tendency of 
 indirect taxes, generally, to become unproductive, is 
 mainly contingent upon the economical condition of the 
 mass of a people, which again is influenced by their 
 political position and circumstances. We have found 
 that the three primary portions of national wealth are all 
 taxable. And as it would not be less unjust than foolish 
 to lay the whole burden of taxation upon rents, or 
 profits, so it would be a false charity and a false wisdom 
 to exempt wages altogether from imposts. Nothing is a 
 more sure sign of a vigorous constitution and a healthy 
 state in a country, than for every member of the com- 
 munity to be competent to bring some contribution, how- 
 ever small, to the general stock. These numerous 
 minute contributions will swell the general stock to a 
 larger size than fewer and larger ones gathered from the 
 wealthier classes alone. Thus the taxation of England, 
 in which taxes on wages form a considerable element, 
 produces fifty or sixty millions of pounds annually; 
 whilst that of India, which is drawn immediately from 
 the land, cidtivated by ninety millions of industrious 
 laborers, yields no more than sixteen millions. 
 
 There is, indeed, no matter so difiicult in practice as 
 the taxation of wages. At fii'st they are not a fit subject 
 uf taxation ; and when, at length, they become taxable,
 
 ANGLO-INDIAN REVENUE SYSTEMS. 281 
 
 they require to be taxed with great leniency and discre- 
 tion, else their growth is stunted, and they are again 
 rendered unproductive of revenue. Favorable circum- 
 stances and happily adjusted institutions have brought 
 the people of England into so thriving a condition that 
 they can endure to have their comforts pretty heavily 
 taxed. "Not equally fortunate have been our East 
 Indian fellow-subjects, amongst whom the British Go- 
 vernment have introduced various revenue systems, to 
 a brief account of which we shall devote our remaining 
 space. 
 
 THE ANGLO-INDIAN EEVENUE SYSTEMS. 
 
 The payment of a land-tax in kind indicates a state 
 of low civilization, very slowly susceptible of ameliora- 
 tion. On this account we cannot but view it with 
 regret and feelings akin to despondency. It is, how- 
 ever, one of the least burdensome modes of taxation 
 that can be imagined ; and far less so than the money- 
 tax for which, in process of time, it comes to be substi- 
 tuted. At first, the money payment is, of necessity, 
 an indefinite one. The proportion due to the govern- 
 ment is commonly estimated at the price it will fetch 
 at the neighbouring market, some deduction being made 
 from that price as a compensation for the trouble of 
 exchanging it. But as it is much more convenient to a 
 government to receive a fixed, than a varying amount, so 
 it will be exacted as soon as possible. Thus it happened
 
 282 CONSEQUENCES OF FAilMING THE INDIAN RE\'ENUES. 
 
 iu India. Hard it would be even for the most wise 
 and lionost government to impose a definite money 
 payment that shall not be oppressive. The rulers of 
 India who introduced the money payment were neither 
 honest nor wise, and taxed their subjects cruelly. The 
 Englisli who succeeded them, though better intentioned 
 and more enlightened, were not able greatly to improve 
 the state of things. To them a money-payment was 
 always and absolutely necessary. Their predecessors 
 had contrived to make sliift with a payment in kind, 
 when money could not be got without difiiculty : but 
 they had no means of disposing of raw produce. More- 
 over, whilst in their career of conquest they overthrew 
 native independencies, they abolished or diminished the 
 courts which were markets to the contiguous districts. 
 Theu- armies, which were constantly traversing the 
 country, though large, were fugitive customers. 
 
 The expedient adopted by the English, on entering 
 upon their administration, was to farm the revenues. 
 This brought matters to a crisis. The farmers were 
 always and everywhere tyrants, and tyrannised upon 
 system. They had to make their own profits besides 
 collecting the dues of government, and, their office being 
 a temporary one, took care to make the best use of their 
 time. Their cruelty drove the ryots from their homes 
 and districts. 
 
 Such was the condition of things which led Lord 
 Cornwallis to attempt a permanent settlement of the 
 revenue. There can be no doubt of the fair and even 
 benevolent spirit in which the arrangement we advert 
 to was made by this nobleman : yet it is equally un-
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS'S ARRANGEMENT. 283 
 
 questionable, that it was grounded upon delusions, that 
 impaired its justice, and robbed it of its healing vii'tue. 
 Great ignorance prevailed at that time (which our ex- 
 tended acquaintance with India has but partially re- 
 moved), with regard to the manifold and diversified 
 rights connected with the soil, which bear no resem- 
 blance to the relations which have presented themselves 
 to our notice, in viewing the landed property of Europe. 
 The extreme rigour with which the English had at first 
 insisted upon their proprietary rights, to the neglect of 
 all subordinate claims, had been felt to be oppressive, 
 if it could not be condemned as illegal. Lord Corn- 
 wallis, perceiving the expediency of restoring confidence 
 to the cultivators, and anxious to shake ofi* the imputa- 
 tion of tyranny, entered into an agreement, by which 
 the farming agents of the government, who were called 
 zemindars, were converted into direct landlords of the 
 ryots, and made responsible for a fixed and permanent 
 tax. This new plan was fibrst tried in Bengal Proper : 
 the estates were made over to the zemindars ; and access 
 was given to the ryots to English courts of law, where 
 they might lodge suits against their new masters. 
 
 For a time all seemed to go on well. The natives of 
 Bengal are a tame race, unapt to offer resistance to 
 authority backed by power; and, perhaps, they were 
 not immediately sufferers by the change. This appear- 
 ance of success induced the British government to ex- 
 tend the experiment to the ceded districts, inhabited by 
 a braver and hardier peasantry. It must here be men- 
 tioned that the persons holding the name of zemindars 
 were an anomalous class, differing in situation and
 
 28 i RESISTANCE OF THE RYOTS. 
 
 cliaractcr, and agi'ccing only in tlieir intermediate func- 
 tions between the government and the ryots. Some had 
 been the headmen of villages; some pensioners, who held 
 lands in jaghire, as a reward for public services ; some 
 officers of government who were salaried in this way ; 
 some were small tributary princes; and even of the 
 special collectors, some had the office for a limited 
 period, others had a life-tenure of it, to which others 
 again added a hereditary interest. It happened in a 
 Eajpoot village, which fell to the headman, under the 
 title of zemindar, that the villagers, indignant at this 
 usurpation of their rights, refused the demands of their 
 upstart lord, whose estate, on the defalcation of his 
 appointed payment, was seized and sold by the govern- 
 ment to a Bengalee of low rank, still more odious to 
 the haughty Eajpoots. Cases of a like kind abounded ; 
 and the ceded districts became a scene of tumult, threat- 
 ening every moment to break out into overt rebellion. 
 In consequence, the permanent settlement was sus- 
 pended, and investigations were again set on foot and 
 diligently conducted, which threw some light over a 
 complication of rights and relations, which it has baffled 
 the greatest industry and ingenuity fully to unravel, 
 and which still seems likely to remain for a long while 
 involved in the shades of doubt and uncertainty. 
 
 Meanwhile things were taking a different, but not a 
 happier, turn in Bengal Proper. The peasants, too 
 cowardly to oppose the resistance of physical strength 
 to the oppression of government, availed themselves of 
 those means of redress and compensation which were 
 open to them. They went with their complaints to the
 
 THE NEAV SETTLEMENT IN BENGAL. 285 
 
 courts of law. In one districts no less than thirty- 
 thousand suits were lodged. On the other hand the 
 zemindars could only proceed for arrears of debt against 
 a ryot by tedious processes of law; while they were 
 themselves subject to summary treatment by the govern- 
 ment, and afterwards, when exempted from imprison- 
 ment, liable to the confiscation of their estates, on the 
 failure of any one monthly instalment of their annual 
 debt. They were consequently unable to pay with regu- 
 larity the stipulated amount ; and the expedient, to 
 which they resorted, of underselling their estates, saved 
 them from ruin, only for a time. In about 12 or 15 
 years from the introduction of the system, the zemindars 
 had almost entirely disappeared. In their place, a new 
 landed aristocracy sprung up, composed of monied Cal- 
 cutta men and Tehsildars, or native officers of the courts 
 of justice and in the revenue department. Under them, 
 however, as in a less degree under their predecessors, 
 cultivation was rather extended than improved. 
 
 In lieu of the permanent settlement, a new settle- 
 ment, of which the characteristic is that it is not per- 
 manent, has been introduced into the upper provinces 
 of the Bengal Presidency. The government lets the 
 estates for a period of thirty years, exacting a rent that 
 is not invariable. In judging of the policy of this 
 system, it should be considered that it was necessary 
 to innovate, where the original institutions of the 
 country had been so shattered, as to be unavailable as 
 a groundwork of fiscal arrangements. 
 
 We have to remark in respect to it that there is 
 no real hardship in our apparent resumption of the
 
 286 THE NEW SYSTEM JUST AND NECESSAEY. 
 
 proprietary rights of the soil. The people are actually 
 better off than before. A lease of thirty years is, pro- 
 bably, in India equivalent in its effects to a perpetual 
 lease, as in England an annuity for a hundred years is 
 calculated to be equivalent to a perpetual annuity. It 
 is sufficient to stimulate and to reward industry. 
 
 Well-meaning, perhaps, but not wise, are they who 
 cry out for a large reduction of the land-tax in India. 
 The wishes of the benevolent, however sincere and 
 earnest, cannot speed the happy day when the condition 
 and character of the Hindoos shall have been elevated 
 by English energy and influence to a level with their 
 masters. That day, we cannot disguise from ourselves, 
 is still far distant. When it comes, it will, of course, 
 open sources of indirect taxation. Till then, if we mean 
 to govern India effectually, to suppress mischief within, 
 to ward off enemies from without, to carry into execu- 
 tion schemes for the reform of the administration of 
 affairs, and for the moral and intellectual training of our 
 subjects, we must secure a revenue, that shall increase 
 in proportion to the increasing demand for expenditure ; 
 and for this purpose, we must insist on sharing in the 
 ■increasing produce of the country. The measure is re- 
 quired and justified by public interests. The new 
 S5'stom appears, then, to be founded upon sound prin- 
 ciples ; and it will easily admit of any modifications 
 that may be called for by local circumstances or per- 
 sonal considerations. 
 
 We pass from the Bengal to the Madras Presidency. 
 
 To the southern parts of India the Mohammedans had 
 not penetrated ; and there Hindoo institutions remained
 
 THE RYOTWARY SYSTEM IN MADRAS. 287 
 
 in their completeness and vigour. There, too, the English 
 began by farming the revenues, in doing which they 
 encountered the same difficulties which had m. . chem in 
 northern India. A similar course of investigations was 
 pursued, which led, however, to very different conclu- 
 sions from what the Bengal government had arrived 
 at. For those who conducted these investigations in the 
 Madras Presidency announced the inference they had 
 elicited from them to be, that there were no interme- 
 diate rights between the ryots and the sovereign, and 
 that whatever did not belong to one of these belonged 
 to the other. An an-angement was consequently made, 
 by which the government was henceforth to transact 
 the matter of rent with each individual ryot, without 
 the intervention of other parties. This was called the 
 Eyotwary system, and was, it is plain, founded upon a 
 principle just the reverse of that which was the basis of 
 the Zemindary system, but was equally false and equally 
 fatal. The one disregarded the rights of the ryot, its 
 framers having been deluded by a name into confound- 
 ing together an infinite diversity of proprietary claims 
 and interests ; while the other swept away, suddenly and 
 violently, a multitude of relations, linking the highest 
 with the lowest. Of these two deplorable eri'ors, the 
 second was the more marvellous. That in the Madras 
 Presidency, where the village system was yet entire, such 
 men as Colonel Eead and Sir T. Munro should have 
 contsructed a new system, conspicuous for its perverse 
 contrariety to the cherished feelings and the inveterate 
 habits of the people, must ever be almost as much a 
 subject of wonder as of regret. Heedless of the diffi-
 
 288 RESULTS OF THE RYOTWARY SYSTEM. 
 
 cultios of a moral kind, and undeterred by the physical 
 impediments that stood in the face of their experiment, 
 they scrupled not to lay rude hands upon that curious 
 and precise piece of mechanism, the boast of Hindoo 
 policy, and which in the north of India had been spared 
 alike by the bigoted Mohammedan and the fierce Mah- 
 ratta. 
 
 The fii'st thing rendered necessary by this new system 
 was a mapping and measurement of the land in its num- 
 berless allotments. A gigantic task, that never could 
 be efficiently done ! A cui'ious fact, however, soon came 
 to light. The English government were quite disposed 
 to render the burthen of taxation as light as possible ; 
 and, therefore, reduced considerably the nominal amount 
 exacted by the former sovereigns. Yet the people were 
 unable to pay even this reduced amount. This was, 
 doubtless, owing in part to the effects of so sudden a 
 change of system. But it was also discovered, that the 
 people had contrived to cheat the native princes of a 
 considerable portion of the nominal payment. 
 
 Under this new system, the payment was to be a 
 permanently definite one. But it was found that an 
 invariable revenue was a thing that existed in specu- 
 lation only. The people could not pay as much when 
 the crops were scanty as when they were abundant. 
 The legal liability to pay remained indeed unaltered, 
 but the actual payment constantly varied. 
 
 Moreover, the rights of the ryots were found not 
 to be perfectly uniform ; and other rights entirely dis- 
 tinct, and recognised by the natives under separate 
 designations, also stole gradually into view.
 
 ITS FATLUHE AND ABANDOXMEXT. 289 
 
 And, in consequence, the first Ryotwary System was 
 abandoned. 
 
 Whilst we lament the failure of these systems, it is 
 consolatory to our own feelings as well as an act of 
 justice, to kecjD in mind that they originated in the 
 most equitable intentions, and an earnest desire to im- 
 prove the condition of the natives. The dispatches of 
 the home authorities, and the reports of their servants 
 in India, attest these right and honorable dispositions ; 
 which are still further demonstrated by the introduction 
 of a new system, called the Mouzawar, formed upon 
 the model of the ancient village system, and evidently 
 framed in accordance with the native customs and pre- 
 judices. 
 
 I*?'othing could be more promising than this system, 
 under whose shadow the people had lived happily and 
 prosperously in times gone by, and which was still 
 working well in Bombay : and yet never did any 
 system fail more quickly, more signally, or more com- 
 pletely. 
 
 In former days the headman had been under control 
 and responsibility. The old village system which we had 
 rashly destroyed, had provided checks to their power. 
 When we were building up a new system in imitation 
 of that old one, we ignorantly or carelessly left out 
 those checks; we trusted that things would of their 
 own accord revert to theii' ancient course, and that the 
 influence of habits and associations that could not be 
 supposed eradicated, would supply the place of legal 
 enactment. The event showed us to have been too 
 credulous and sanguine. The new set of headmen 
 
 19
 
 oyo SUBSEQUENT MoDI ['JCATION AND EEYIVAL. 
 
 turned out exceedingl}^ avaricious and oppressive ; and 
 it was deemed necessary to relinquish the Mouzawar 
 system. 
 
 A return to the Eyotwary system was now the only 
 alternative. A second time therefore was this system 
 introduced, with some important modifications which 
 aim at doing justice to those intermediate rights which 
 were before passed over : and it still prevails in the 
 Madras Presidency. 
 
 In the Bombay Presidency, which has had the good 
 fortune to be ruled by very wise men, the Hindoo insti- 
 tutions have been preserved, and gradually improved 
 and reformed.
 
 P K I :\i I T I V K 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 KEPRINTED FROM THK "EDINBURGH REVIEW" (No. CLXXII.), APRIL, 1847
 
 PRIMITIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 "Whoever has heard of Adam Smith, has heard of the 
 almost romantic value which our ancestors set upon the 
 possession of the precious metals ; yet few persons are 
 acquainted with the singular processes by which they 
 sought to bring home the golden fleece, or with much 
 more than the names of the early writers who had the 
 honor of first enlightening their countrymen on the true 
 nature of this Midas folly. But this is a chapter in our 
 economical history which it must be always interesting 
 to look back upon : and more es]3ecially at present — 
 when the most impregnable of the strongholds of pro- 
 tection has been stormed and taken before our eyes; 
 and when it is evident that all the minor restrictions 
 upon commerce which yet survive, by whatever fallacies 
 and by whatever interests they may be supported, must 
 nevertheless come to the same, certainly not untimely, 
 end. 
 
 This delusion as to the function of the precious metals 
 has been said to rest on a confusion of terms. It had 
 a much deeper foundation — an imperfect perception of 
 facts. Those once fully appreciated, the loose use of
 
 294 EAELY MISTAKES RELATIVE TO 
 
 lano'uao-e proved no obstacle to the further progress 
 of knowledge. The long existence of the delusion itself 
 vdW not be disputed, however : and it is to its influence 
 on the legislation and social economy of the nation that 
 we now wish to direct attention. 
 
 England possessed no mines of the precious metals 
 which could be worked on such a scale as seriously to 
 affect the amount of national riches, according to the 
 then received notion of riches. It was clear, therefore, 
 that the riches of the country must come from abroad ; 
 and how to draw them thence, was the problem our 
 statesmen wished to understand, and very roughly and 
 characteristically attempted practically to solve. Their 
 first handiwork was coarse and clumsy enough : and yet 
 the principles on which they proceeded were substan- 
 tially the same as were maintained for centuries after 
 by all the leading statesmen of the world, and by men 
 who, like Sully and Colbert, were undoubtedly in other 
 respects far a-head of the times in which they lived. 
 We must not wonder, therefore, to find our early legis- 
 lators as rash, and as confident in error, as any of those 
 around them. 
 
 One of the most remarkable though not the earliest 
 indications of their views, occurred in the reign of 
 Ricliard II. An uneasy feeling, constantly recurring 
 at very short intervals, agitated the country. Our bul- 
 lion A\a8 failing us — our riches Avore vanishing — destruc- 
 tion was at hand ! And so the king and his counsellors 
 resorted for the most absolute wisdom to the city of 
 T.ondon ; and the furred and bechained dignitaries were 
 f-allcd on to declare what miglit avail to ward off the
 
 THE FU>'CTlUAt>; OF THE PRECIOUS METALS. 295 
 
 impending calamity. Their answer contained the es- 
 sence of a theory which was not formally annihilated 
 till the days of Galiani, Quesnay, Harris, and Adam 
 Smith — We mnst contrive to buy less of the foreigner, 
 than we sell to the foreigner ! And, admitting the 
 non-productiveness of our own mines, and putting con- 
 quest and spoliation out of the question, the conclusion 
 seemed very reasonable ; and our ancestors then, as for 
 some time before, accepted it as irrefragable. 
 
 The peculiarities of our earlier legislation sprang at 
 once out of these convictions. The politicians of the 
 day determined that the state should be actually present, 
 by its agents, at every bargain made in the chief articles 
 exported from the country ; and should forcibly make 
 such bargains directly productive of bullion. When 
 they had thus got the bullion, they determined with 
 equal firmness that it should never leave the country ; 
 and that they would watch the details of every trans- 
 action which might lead to its escape with jealous and 
 never-sleeping eyes. 
 
 To effect their purposes, they adopted a very compli- 
 cated system, which we may call The halancc-of -bar gain 
 system ; and which, though its object was precisely the 
 same with that of the balance-of-trade system, long sub- 
 sequently established, yet sought to attain that object 
 by very different means. The later and more thought- 
 ful speculators formally eschewed all inspection of the 
 dealings of individuals ; and only sought, by foreign 
 negotiation and domestic legislation, so to influence the 
 productions and general commerce of the country, as 
 indirectly to achieve their purpose of selling more to
 
 2y6 ESTABLISHMENT VF STAPLE TOWNS, 
 
 foreigners than tlioy bought from them ; and distinctly 
 rejected all the ingenious and all the ferocious provisions 
 of that earlier balance-of-bargain system which we are 
 about to describe. 
 
 The provisions of that earlier system divide them- 
 selves into two classes. The first contains those by 
 which it was sought to bring bullion into the country ; 
 the second, those by which it was sought to prevent it 
 from going out. It is difficult to say which were the 
 most unjust, the most harsh, and the most mischievous ; 
 and equally difficult to say which was viewed by the 
 public with the most complete complacency — as the 
 perfection of patriotism, wisdom, and statesmanship. 
 The first set are always prefaced by loud praises of this 
 noble realm, and boasts of regard for its prosperity. 
 It did not, indeed, produce gold and silver ; but it pro- 
 duced commodities foreigners could not do without ; 
 and care, it was promised, sliould be taken that they 
 were paid for in gold and silver, and that the real 
 riches of the country were thus kept for ever on the 
 increase. 
 
 Two instruments were used for this purpose — the 
 Staple Towns, and the Corporation of the mayor and 
 constables of the staple. The establishment of Staple 
 Towns arose out of the social position of all Europe in 
 the early part of the middle ages. The machinery of 
 the mayor, constables, and corporation of the staple, 
 was, as far as we know, peculiar to England; though 
 Scotland, as we shall see, parodied them with tolerable 
 closeness. These towns were at first merely places of 
 refuge for persecuted commerce. Sea and land were
 
 AND PIEDS-POUDRES COURTS. 297 
 
 then equally unsafe. The sea, more especially, was 
 infested by pirates, English and French, among whom 
 the people of the Cinque Ports and St. Maloes were 
 conspicuous. These persons made the navigation of the 
 Channel and the narrow seas impracticable. Traders, 
 therefore, were reduced to thread their way through 
 the most protected parts of the Continent. Germans 
 and Belgians, Italians, Africans, and the inhabitants of 
 the Levant, met at certain great fairs : of which that 
 of Troyes, in Champagne, was long one of the most 
 remarkable. The resort was a mine of gold to the 
 feudal lord who protected it ; and the traders cheerfully 
 submitted to his fixed and moderate scale of tolls and 
 exactions. 
 
 Something more, however, than mere exemption from 
 wrong, was soon found needful. The merchant from 
 Barbary or Spain dealt at Troyes with dealers from 
 Norway or Prussia ; and if differences arose, how were 
 they to be decided ? Neither could follow the other 
 for justice to his distant and barbarous home. Pecu- 
 liar courts of justice were therefore established. The 
 traders, the best and longest known, were called by the 
 Count of Champagne to form part of a tribunal, which 
 was completed by the presence of his chancellor, steward, 
 and feudal officers. They decided on the spot. The 
 dusty -feeted (pieds-poiiclres) litigants were dismissed 
 with a prompt sentence ; and the decrees of the Court 
 of the Fair of Troyes are said by Savary to have been 
 considered sacred even on the coast of Barbary. These 
 pieds-poudres courts spread over Europe. That of St. 
 Bartholomew's, the great cloth fair of England, was one
 
 298 ATTEMPTS TO DIVKKT TllADE 
 
 of the most iinportaut, and has vanished into thin air 
 ahnost before our e3^es. 
 
 By degrees the Channel and narrow seas became more 
 safe. The Italians built stout argosies, and defied 
 pirates ; and the Kings of England and France, and the 
 Dukes of Brittany, found it expedient to curb, if they 
 could not eradicate, the thieves of the Cinque Ports and 
 of St. Maloes — the last the hardest to manage of all. 
 It was then that the towns of the ^Netherlands became 
 a sort of perpetual fairs. The cost of land carriage was 
 got rid of by using them ; and they soon learnt to offer 
 the same protection and the same facilities and con- 
 veniences which had attracted dealers to Troyes, and 
 other secure continental fairs ; that is, they promised 
 the protection of their walls to all traders; they laid 
 down very moderate scales for tolls and dues ; and they 
 established courts, very like the pieds-poudr'es courts, 
 though still with a difference. Foreign merchants were 
 called to make part of them ; but the feudal element 
 of seneschals and chancellors was got rid of, it is most 
 probable, — very happily for the litigants. Part of their 
 laws, and some of their magistrates, may doubtless be 
 traced back to the Eoman codes and Eoman municipal 
 towns. A good sample, indeed, of these courts may be 
 found in our own statute book. Edward III., wishing 
 to divert trade from the Continent to England, tried 
 hard to secure to dealers here the same advantages they 
 found abroad ; and established a Staple Court in various 
 towns of his dominions — a scheme which his utter in- 
 ability to protect the persons and property of foreign 
 merchants from rji])iu(^ and oppi-ession. made nui;-atory ;
 
 FROM THE C0XT1XE:ST TU EXGLAND. 299 
 
 although he had made a vaiu promise that they should 
 not be interfered with by iwelates^ lords, or ladies. 
 
 These towns, however, as they existed on the Conti- 
 nent, were chosen by the English legislature as the 
 theatres of strenuous attempts to make every bargain 
 in the leading products of England conducive to the 
 pouring a given quantity of bullion into the kingdom. 
 They were called staple towns, it is supposed, from the 
 German word stapelen^ to heap up, because, as they 
 were perpetual fairs, commodities were to be found 
 heaped up there all the year round. Of the stajile com- 
 modities of England (as appears by 27th Edw. III. 
 and elsewhere), were wool, hides, leather, lead, and tin. 
 "Wool, especially, was the subject of the peculiar care 
 and fond reliance of our early English financiers. To 
 make the wool available for their purj)oses, they esta- 
 blished at all the staples a Corporation, consisting of 
 the mayor, constables, and brethren of the staple. The 
 noble remains of the palace of this Corporation at Calais 
 are only now in the progress of demolition by the hands 
 of Erench masons, who are erecting very shabby dwel- 
 lings on the site. This incorporated body Avas bound 
 to fulfil two offices ; — one at all times important, another 
 not less important in the eyes of the financiers of the 
 day. First, they were bound to see to the collection 
 of the customs due to the king on the export of wool. 
 Secondly, they were bound to see that part of the pur- 
 chase-money in every particular bargain was paid in 
 foreign corn or in bullion (principally the first), des- 
 tined for England. The proportion of the price to be 
 paid, and I'cmitted home in bullion, varied from time to
 
 300 EXPORTS LIMITED TO CERTAIN FOREIGN STAPLES. 
 
 time in England ; but was always regulated. Scotland, 
 which adopted the same plan, extended it to her exports 
 more generally. In 1488, for each serplaith of wool, 
 last of salmon, or 400 cloth, four ounces of silver ; for 
 each last of herrings, two ounces were required; and 
 for other goods paying customs, in proportion. 
 
 It was in 1313 that this plan of both home and 
 foreign staples was first adopted by England. The 
 mayor and constables were authorised to select some 
 town in Brabant, Flanders, or Artois, and to punish by 
 fine all dealers carrying wool or wool fells to any other 
 place; and were authorised for a time to change the 
 staple towns at their discretion. Accordingly, Antwerp 
 and Bruges, and, as subordinate to Antwerp, St. Omer 
 and Lisle, became the only points at which foreign 
 clothiers could seek their English wool. 
 
 The reign of Edward III. exhibits more strikingly 
 than any other the influence and results of this plan on 
 the finances and prosperity of the country. His extra- 
 ordinary resources in his wars with France, seem to 
 have been almost entirely derived from duties on the 
 export of wool. Sometimes, indeed, he impatiently 
 seized on the commodity itself, and paid ,£6 in tallies 
 for what he sold for £20. Ordinarily, however, he was 
 content with the vigorous management of his ciistotners 
 at the staple towns. The blind ferocity — it deserves no 
 milder name — with which he and his parliaments car- 
 ried all their measures for thus securing public revenue 
 and public riches, by the management of the wool, is 
 perhaps best evidenced by his famous statute of the 
 staple. Seeing the gain made by the foreign towns
 
 THE EXPORTATIOX OF STAPLE GOODS PROniBITED. 301 
 
 which were successively the seats of the English com- 
 merce, he determined to try to draw the trade home ; 
 and he established staple courts, staple law, and staple 
 privileges, in various towns of England and Ireland. 
 He promised, as we have before seen, protection to all 
 foreign comers ; and, conscious of the state of the coun- 
 try, and of the weakness of his police, he promised to 
 procure for them the protection of certain great men 
 in the neighbourhood of his new staples. But he sadly 
 miscalculated on his own influence, and on the habits 
 of his subjects. In the very next year an act was 
 passed, of which the preamble recites, that the foreign 
 merchants resorting to our staples had been ill used and 
 robbed ! It need hardly be added, that his scheme for 
 attracting the staple trade to England utterly failed. 
 But while he was yet eager with the plan, it is really 
 startling to observe the reckless and cruel determination 
 of both king and legislature to make all men and things 
 submit to aid their projects. 
 
 Edward had begun his career of glory by a great 
 naval victory at the Swyn ; where, with 260 ships, he 
 utterly destroyed a French fleet of 400 — the first sea- 
 fight in which a king of England had commanded in 
 person since Alfred. Yet, for the sake of the gain he 
 grasped at from the English staples, he was prepared 
 to sacrifice the whole mercantile navy engaged in foreign 
 commerce, and that apparently without hesitation or 
 compunction ; and his parliament was quite ready to 
 second him. The statute passed in 1353 accordingly 
 prohibits the natives of England, Wales, and Ireland, 
 under penalty of death^ and forfeiture of all their pro-
 
 302 Al'TE-MI'TS TO ATTRACT 't'EE PRECIOVS JfETATS 
 
 peril/ of whatever nature, from exporting any staple 
 c;oo(Is or being in the smallest degree interested, 
 directly or indirectly, in the sale of them abroad. Nay, 
 the king tied himself up, and his heirs, from ever 
 granting licenses to any English, Welsh, or Irish mer- 
 chants for exporting such goods ; and declared, that 
 if he should grant any such licenses — for which, let it 
 be remembered, he received a price — they should be 
 void, and should not protect the exporters from the penal- 
 ties of the lav) ; that is, from death and confiscation ! 
 It was not, indeed, till 1357, when the dream of riches 
 from English staple towns was entirely dispelled, that 
 this portentous law was relaxed ; and English mer- 
 chants, as well as foreigners, were permitted to export 
 wool hides and wool fells — though still under certain 
 restrictions. 
 
 From the reign of Edward, till its capture by the 
 French, Calais continued the most constant, and, fi'om 
 the reign of Henry YL, the sole English staple ; and 
 succeeding sovereigns and parliaments pursued with 
 unceasing anxiety the policy of insisting on part of 
 the price of every sack of wool sold being paid in 
 money, — to be recoined, if foreign, at the English mint. 
 The instance of Berwick affords one among other strong 
 indications of the exclusive attachment of the govern- 
 ment to this system. Berwick, almost destroyed in the 
 Scottish wars, seems to have been an object of care and 
 compassion to its English sovereigns ; and, to repair its 
 losses, and raise it from ruin, they declared it a sort 
 of free port ; or rather bestowed on its burgesses the 
 right of exporting staple commodities to whatever port
 
 TO ENGLAND, AND TO KEEP TIIE?i[ THERE. 30;j 
 
 they pleased — and Berwick grew rich on this privilege. 
 It might have been expected that the gOA^ernment and 
 people would have learned a lesson from the experiment, 
 and tried to make rich other ports of England by the 
 gift of like privileges. Not so, however: the example 
 was very distasteful, and was voted a very bad one. 
 
 The Staplers' Company represented that the men of 
 Berwick throve by breaking the Staple, in despite of 
 the approved policy of England. They professed that 
 they would take better care of both the king's revenue, 
 and of the task of enriching the realm, than the Ber- 
 wickers did : and, upon no better grounds, the markets 
 of Europe were forbidden to the men of Berwick ; and, 
 however reluctant, they were driven, like all the rest 
 of their fellow-subjects, to the foreign staples. 
 
 Having thus confined to one spot the dealings in 
 wool, and other staple articles, and so enabled itself, bv 
 its officers, to be present at ever}^ bargain in those com- 
 modities, the English government had made it certain 
 that, from year to year, and reign to reign, a constant 
 stream of the precious metals would flow into England. 
 Their next care was to keep it ; and a more complicated 
 combination of equally vigorous measures was resorted 
 to, to effect this object. We may enumerate as the 
 four principal : — Isthj. The establishments of the Mint. 
 Indly. The searchers and customers, as the custom- 
 house officers were called, of the outports. 3rf%. The 
 king's exchanger, and his sf"aff. ^thly. The statutes of 
 employment. 
 
 To understand the peculiar importance of the Mint, 
 we must remember that, when the foreign coin, received
 
 304 ILLUSIOXS AS TO THE RELATIVE VALUE 
 
 as part of the price of staple commodities, had reached 
 England, it was the object of especial care on two 
 dilfcrent grounds. There existed constant fears, — 1^/, 
 that it might be re-exported ; 'Incllij, that it might be 
 uttered in England at some value different from that 
 which the king and his officers declared to be its true 
 value when measured against English coin. To attend, 
 in the first place, to this last ground of apiwehension : — 
 The history of opinions shows us mankind laboring 
 under different illusions as to the nature of coin and 
 currency which held their place for periods of different 
 duration, and cannot be said to be wholly dispersed. 
 First, men misunderstood the relative value of bullion 
 or money, and of the commodities they exchanged for. 
 Errors on this point lasted till the spirit of Adam Smith 
 culminated. If he was not the first to discern those 
 errors, he was their destined destroyer. Secondly, men 
 misunderstood the relations of bullion and coined money 
 to each other, and undoubtingly believed that the king's 
 commands could bestow upon a coin a value not mea- 
 sured by its value as bullion. Errors of this kind are 
 what we have immediately to deal with. William 
 Stafford, in the reign of Elizabeth, was the first English- 
 man to grapple with these ; and as he was the first, 
 so perhaps he remains the acutest and most felicitous 
 expositor of them ; but it was not till Locke's work 
 appeared that they were practically eradicated from tlie 
 English mind. Thirdly, men mistook still longer the 
 relations between different portions of a public currency 
 which consisted partly of coin and partly of paper. The 
 discussions on the Bank Eestriction Act first threw the
 
 OF BULLTox, COIN, AND f'o:\r?*rf )nrrii:s. 300 
 
 necessary light on this part of the subject. Fourthly, 
 much confusion existed as to tlic relations and mutual 
 action, — on the one hand, of national currencies, whether 
 of coin, of paper, or mixed ; and on the other, of that 
 private currency, composed of circulating hills, &c., by 
 which by far the greater proportion of pui'chases and 
 sales are noAv effected. In what manner these affect 
 each other, and whether we can measure, and in what 
 manner we can measure, the effects of any given con- 
 traction of the first or public currency on the mass or 
 rate of circulation of the second or private currency, are 
 questions to which economical science is not yet pre- 
 pared with a satisfactory answer. 
 
 But it is only with the second class of these illusions 
 that we have now to deal. In the days we are speak- 
 ing of, it was believed to be one of the most precious 
 and exalted attributes of Kings to fix the value of the 
 coinage. For either subject or stranger to interfe^^e 
 with this prerogative, by coining, was worse than mur- 
 der, or any other felony. It was petit treason; and 
 subjected the malefactor to a death of an odious nature. 
 Now, the persons who uttered foreign coin in this king- 
 dom might infringe on this cherished prerogative ; not 
 directly indeed, but indirectly and secretly ; and it was 
 always feared they would. 
 
 It is obvious that the Frenchman, or other foreigner, 
 who volunteered to pay for English commodities with 
 coins of his own country, must have determined how 
 many of those coins were equivalent to the price asked 
 him in English money ; and, while he was thus setting 
 a value on his own coin, he could not possibly avoid 
 
 20
 
 [iOij APPOINTMENT OF A KING'S EXCHANGER. 
 
 setting a value on the English king's coin too. But 
 this was to interfere with the king's prerogative ! It 
 was an abuse and a crime ; which, according to those 
 days, might contribute to a great national calamity. 
 For, if the king's coin was undervalued in exchange, 
 either directly or through bills, it w^ould be sure to find 
 its way out of the country, and go to regions where it 
 was better ajDpreciated : and so this noble realm would 
 be drained of its coin ; that is, its riches would fly 
 away — it would be ruined and destroyed ! 
 
 No measures, then, could be too strict or too severe 
 to prevent so great a calamity. To do them justice, 
 our forefathers were rarely sparing of severity in their 
 criminal legislation ; and, least of all, when they were 
 frightened. They were very thoroughly frightened for 
 many generations at the threatened effects of under- 
 valuing the king's coin in exchange, and the severity 
 of their legislation kept pace with their fears. 
 
 It was based on the principle that no foreign coin 
 should be used in England for any other purpose than 
 that of being exchanged for English at the king's Mint, 
 or by the king's exchangers, according to their valua- 
 tion of the foreign money. Thus the sovereign, by his 
 officers, always set his own value on his own coin ; and 
 no foreigner interfered with his prerogative. To carry 
 out this plan, a king's exchanger was appointed, with 
 almost unlimited power over the money transactions 
 of the country. He was to appoint as many substitutes 
 as he pleased — and, in truth, the merchants were always 
 grumbling for more. Those officers, at their discretion, 
 were to ^ determine the value of all foreign coins in
 
 NEGOTIATION OF FOREIGN BILLS OF EXCHANGE. 307 
 
 English money ; and the stranger who landed with 
 outlandish money in his possession was bound to take 
 the shortest road to the nearest place at which an officer 
 of the royal exchanger could be found, and there to 
 exchange his money for as much English coin as the 
 exchanger told him it was worth. If he was found 
 with his foreign money about him, under circumstances 
 which made it probable he was not on his way to get 
 it exchanged by the proper officers, the money was 
 seized, and he was subjected to very savage penalties. 
 
 The foreign coin received at the staple towns, and 
 that which got into the hands of the king's exchangers, 
 was all to be sent at once to the Mint and re-coined ; — 
 thus the king's high prerogative was fully vindicated. 
 These processes completed, no gold or silver coin circu- 
 lated in England of which the declared value was not 
 assigned to it by the English sovereign, who never 
 doubted that he had thus gifted it with its character, 
 and determined the measure of its power as a medium 
 of exchange. 
 
 The exorbitant authority of the king's exchanger only 
 increased with time. The negotiation of foreign bills 
 of exchange attracted notice and suspicion. It was clear 
 that the process of negotiating such bills could not be 
 gone through unless a certain sum in foreign coins was 
 valued against what was treated as an equivalent sum 
 in English coins. The king's coin might therefore be 
 undervalued in this exchange. To guard against this 
 evil, again, no measures could be too strong : and, ac- 
 cordingly, the negotiation of such bills was strictly con- 
 fined to the royal exchanger and his agents ; who were
 
 308 EARLY ATTEMPTS TO I'REVKXT 
 
 to charge for their trouble (says one of the letters 
 patent) such a sum as should seem to them reasonable. 
 
 Selden cites a charter of King John. But the first 
 of these great officers, of any note, whose name is known 
 to us, was Michael de la Pole, a merchant, who had 
 become the financial agent of Edward III. He was the 
 ancestor of the Duke of Sufi'olk, who connected his blood 
 with that of the Tudors. The last who possessed a 
 valid patent as royal exchanger was Lord Burleigh. 
 Other patents, however, were subsequently prepared; 
 and drafts of them are in the British Museum. But 
 none, at least none giving the monopoly of bills of ex- 
 change, appear to have been issued. Charles I. in 1628 
 appointed the Earl of Holland to the ofiice of sole ex- 
 changer of gold and silver bullion ; and declared his 
 right in a publication by authority, entitled " The Office 
 of his Majesty's Exchange Eoyal." The Company of 
 Goldsmiths petitioned the king against it. Selden ques- 
 tioned the legality of a portion of the patent in the 
 Commons. And it was evident that the time was come 
 when there was an instructed mercantile public ; and a 
 vernacular literature, which watched over, discussed, 
 and sometimes influenced, measures of this description. 
 
 But the inspection of all dealings of traders, with a 
 view to prevent the exportation of money, was not yet 
 complete enough to satisfy the vigilant fears of the 
 State. It was determined that before they left the 
 country, they should give satisfactory proof that they* 
 had employed all the monies they had received for their 
 
 * IStli Henry VI., c. I; Rastall, i. 255 ; relaxed by 17th Edw. IV. c. 1.
 
 THE EXPORTATION OF MONEY. 309 
 
 imported cargoes iu tlic purchase of English commodi- 
 ties for exportation ; so that no money remained in their 
 hands to be carried away. The various statutes passed to 
 enforce this rule are called by our old writers, Statutes 
 of Employments ; and when, after some ages, they fell 
 into desuetude, many an earnest prayer was uttered for 
 their revival, as a last precious product of the wisdom 
 of departed generations. 
 
 The machinery and rules by which the object was 
 sought to be attained varied somewhat from time to 
 time ; but the most complete and stringent statute of 
 employment is probably that of the 18th of Henry VI. 
 c. 4. The obliging foreign merchants to reside with 
 official hosts was an old regulation, which might proba- 
 bly, with some pains, be traced to other countries and 
 remoter ages. These strangers' hosts were sometimes 
 the object of bitter denunciations for forestalling, and 
 other wicked deeds; but they were now selected by 
 Henry and his councillors as the fittest instruments for 
 carrying out their object of securing the employment of 
 the monies received by foreigners in the purchase of 
 British commodities. After reciting that earlier reme- 
 dies had not been found sufficient, the statute provides 
 that all merchant strangers coming to traffic in any port 
 in England, shall be under the surveying of certain 
 people called hosts, to be assigned to them by the 
 officers of the town ; which hosts should be creditable 
 persons, expert in trade, and not trading in the com- 
 modities of their guests. These hosts are to be privy 
 to all the bargains made by the strangers ; and to see 
 that within eight months they sell their whole cargoes,
 
 aiO FOREIGN TRADERS AND THEIR 'HOSTS.' 
 
 and re-invost the proceeds in English goods. The host 
 is to keep an accurate book of every bargain made by 
 the foreigner ; and twice in the year, at the beginning 
 of Easter and Michaelmas terms, is to send a transcript 
 of the said book to the Exchequer.* For his pains he 
 was to levy twopence in the pound on the strangers' 
 sales and purchases. If any merchant neglects to report 
 himself to take a host, and be obedient to him, he is to 
 be put in prison, and remain there without bail or main- 
 prise till he has found good security that he will con- 
 form to the law ; and is further, for his contumacy, to 
 make fine and ransom at the liingh 'pleasure. Other 
 clauses provided the punishment for each bargain 
 not accompted for, and for negligence or connivance of 
 the English port officers, or of the hosts. 
 
 Edward IV., whose statute of employments is some- 
 times improperly quoted as the last, perhaps thought 
 he was mitigating the act just quoted when he allowed 
 the alien merchant, though not attested by his host, to 
 prove that he had legally employed all the money he 
 had received in England by such evidence as should 
 appear reasonable to the custom officers at the port he 
 re-embarked at. The position of the foreigner was not, 
 probably, much bettered by the change. We need 
 hardly add that the obvious precaution of an army of 
 searchers, ransacking every ship about to sail from 
 England, was not omitted. 
 
 * A practice also prevailed of ruakiiig the host's foreign traders give bonds to 
 the Exchequer that they would employ all their receipts in purchasing English 
 commodities. If the books of host's accompt, ordered by this statute to be re- 
 turned twice a-ycar to tlio Exchequer, were not satisfactory, tlic bonds were 
 entreated.
 
 INTERFERENCE WITH TRAVELLERS. 311 
 
 One gap still remained to be stopped : a considerable 
 number of pilgrims to foreign shrines, and travellers to 
 Eomc, were constantly leaving England. At one time, 
 the King's exchanger, deciding himself on their needs 
 and means, gave them licence to take their reasonable 
 expenses in coin with them. By degrees they were 
 allowed to purchase in England bills on the countries 
 to which they were going. But the sellers of the bills 
 were usually foreigners : and the transactions of foreign- 
 ers in bills had always an evil complexion in the eyes 
 of the governments of those days. It was vehemently 
 suspected that what money they received for the pil- 
 grims' bills they would contrive to smuggle abroad ; 
 and it was therefore enacted, that whenever such a bill 
 was negotiated, the foreigner should give bond to the 
 exchequer that he would within a given time export to 
 the Continent a cargo of English commodities, fully 
 equal in value to the money he had received for the 
 bill. 
 
 It is not to be imagined that the system embodied 
 in these regulations was always consistently carried 
 out. The pressure of circumstances and caprice initst 
 have often broken in on it. The wars and necessities 
 of Edward III., especially, kept him always painfully 
 on the alert to take any momentary advantage which 
 presented itself; and Macpherson, the annalist of com- 
 merce, declares that at one time he seemed to clumge 
 his plans every month. Still we have before us the 
 spirit, general scope, and ordinary action of the com- 
 mercial and financial policy of those ages : and putting 
 aside, for the present, the question of their wisdom, the
 
 312 DISASTROUS RESULTS OF LIMITIXG THE 
 
 boldness and jDartial success of this strange policy of our 
 ancestors may Avell interest and surprise us. For it 
 cannot be denied that they partly effected their two 
 objects, of attracting constantly a stream of coin from 
 the Continent, and of opposing very formidable obstacles 
 to its escape. 
 
 By confining the staple trade to particular spots, the 
 government was enabled to be present, by its officers, 
 at every bargain made in staple commodities. To 
 ensure the receipt of a part of the price in bullion, or 
 coin, and its transmission to England, was thencefor- 
 ward an easy task. To keep it there was, to be sure, 
 not quite so easy : but it cannot be denied that if the 
 object had been attainable, the measures to ensiu'e it 
 were fearless, comprehensive, and not ill combined. Its 
 consequences cannot be looked at without dismay. 
 
 Let us suppose, for a moment, that the system was 
 in complete operation ; every sale of staple commodities 
 inspected by the government ; every bargain of foreign 
 merchant importers registered and returned to the ex- 
 chequer, or sifted by the officers at the outports ; the 
 tricks of the exchangers made impossible by the agency 
 and authority of the royal exchangers ; the subordinate 
 exchangers and the officers of the Mint and Customs, 
 busily employed in converting foreign coin and bullion 
 into English, and vigilantly guarding against its escape 
 from the country: — in our days it wants no parade of 
 argument to show how fearfully disastrous such a policy 
 must have been in its action — first, on the production 
 of England^s wealth, and then on the interests of those 
 who consumed any description of foreign commodities.
 
 STAPLE TRADE TO PARTICULAR LOCALITIES. 313 
 
 The production of the country was forcibly stinted ; 
 her most important products, her staple commodities, 
 were shut out of the markets of the world. The demand 
 for them was thus necessarily limited, their price 
 lowered, the stimulus to production lessened. The suf- 
 ferers here, indeed, were principally the great land- 
 holders of England — the owners, in those days, of the 
 greater part of her flocks and herds. Yet, strange to 
 say, these very landowners formed the only really influ- 
 ential branch of that legislature by which such schemes 
 were warmly and continuously supported. The con- 
 sumers of foreign commodities were affected as seriously. 
 Indeed, it is difficult to discover how any supply was 
 obtained at all ; clearly it could only be maintained by 
 great sacrifices on the part of the consumers. The 
 humiliating superintendence, the difficulties, the risks, 
 and the manacles which impeded the free course of 
 foreign merchandise, were all, we surely know, paid for 
 Avith interest to the foreigner who encountered them. 
 The growth of the mercantile navy seemed hopeless ; 
 and occasionally we have seen it was deliberately 
 crushed. The interference with the course of exchange, 
 so far as it was effectual, crowned the embarrassments 
 of the merchants as a body, as other provisions of the 
 system enchained their freedom of action as individuals. 
 
 The blow first struck at this system, we must admit, 
 did not come from the prevalence of scientific notions — 
 though such notions afterwards finished the scotched 
 snake, and prevented its revival. It was the growth 
 and changed circumstances of the nation which first 
 put this complicated and cherished machinery out of
 
 314 THE "MERCHANT ADVENTURERS,' 
 
 gear, and suspended its action. Those circumstances 
 may be ranged under four heads : — The establishment 
 of the Merchant Adventurers, and their privileges — the 
 extent and necessity of dealings by foreign bills of ex- 
 change — the degradation of the currency under Henry 
 yilL, — the capture of Calais by the French, in the 
 reign of Mary. 
 
 The Merchant Adventurers were a body associated 
 for the exportation of cloth. They appear first under 
 Henry III., in 1248, at Canterbury, with the name of 
 the brotherhood of St. Thomas Beckett ; but as the ex- 
 port trade enlarged itself, they became a national asso- 
 ciation, effecting great purposes, and armed with great 
 privileges. The brotherhood of St. Thomas had already 
 obtained certain privileges of John, Duke of Brabant; 
 in after days, the company of Merchant Adventurers 
 could boast that they hUd established treaties in Bruges, 
 Middleburgh, Antwerp, Bergen -op -Zoom, Ziericzee, 
 Amsterdam, Dordt and Utrecht, Hamburgh, Stade, East 
 Friesland, and Oldenburgh, and that they exported 
 cloths to the value of one million sterling. 
 
 Wheeler describes their import trade to be on a cor- 
 responding scale ; and proceeds to enumerate German 
 wares, Italian wares, Estcrling wares, Portugal wares, 
 and Netherland wares, to the extent of sixty-one named 
 articles ; and a yet larger variety more generally de- 
 scribed: — "The knowledge and consideration of which 
 large purchases hath made those Merchant Adventurers 
 thought worthie to be made of, cherished, and desired 
 by all princes, states, and commonwealths." 
 
 Such an import and export trade in the hands of
 
 THEIR FUNCTIONS, AND PRIVILEGES. 315 
 
 such a body put an eud, of course, to the supremacy 
 of the staple towns and merchant staplers, who grum- 
 bled and reviled the interlopers accordingly. 
 
 These Merchant Adventurers, by their advocate 
 Wheeler, claim also the credit of obtaining of them- 
 selves, from foreign states, the treaties and privileges 
 through which this trade was carried on. And this 
 brings us to a point in the commercial history of the 
 European nations upon which we dwell with more 
 interest, because it is perhaps best illustrated by the 
 transactions of our own Scottish forbears. To under- 
 stand the diplomatic functions committed in England 
 to such companies, and in Scotland to the royal burghs, 
 we must go back to those earlier ages, in which we have 
 seen fairs and staple towns the refuge of persecuted 
 commerce and affrighted traders. The delegation of 
 powers of treating with foreign states, and stipulating 
 for such protection as fairs and staple towns offered, 
 arose in later times from a perception of the benefits 
 of more extended fields for commerce, and from the 
 unwillingness or inaptness of the governments of the 
 day to provide, by national diplomacy, for its progress 
 and protection in foreign states. The task which they 
 were not yet ready to undertake themselves, they wil- 
 lingly encouraged their subjects to undertake. England 
 and Scotland acted in this point with like aims, but 
 different instruments. In Scotland, the royal burghs 
 assembled in convention, very much in the style of 
 independent states, appointed ambassadors, and made 
 treaties, by which they secured the protection of Scot- 
 tish trade abroad, and especially in the Netherlands.
 
 31G TlIK ROYAL BURGHS OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 Mr. Yair, one of their cliaplaius at Campvere, has left 
 a curious and authentic sketch of their establishments 
 and doings there. In 1578 my lords the deputies of 
 the towns of Scotland are pleased to direct and send 
 their honorable Henry Nisbet, their commissioner, as- 
 sisted T^-ith George Hacket, their conservator, with 
 absolute power to contract and conclude a treaty in their 
 name at Campvere ; and similar treaties were renewed 
 in the name and by the ambassadors of these royal 
 burghs, up to 1748. Yair's book is full of interesting 
 details ; and as it is a sketch of the history of the Scotch 
 trade to the Netherlands, as well as of their staple at 
 Campvere, it gives a curious picture of the earlier Scot- 
 tish merchants, and of their manners, so late as the 
 middle of the sixteenth century. The rule and sover- 
 eignty over the Flemish trade had not been yet handed 
 over to the Scotch burghs, it should seem, in 1532 ; 
 for the king issued some remarkable rules for the regu- 
 lation of the trade and traders in that year. They are 
 given at large by Yair, page 99. We may be allowed 
 to smile at some of them. The exports from Scotland 
 were principally wool and wool fells, and this brought 
 the inhabitants of the pastoral districts to the mart. 
 Theii' appearance seems to have created some agitation 
 among the burgomasters of Campvere, and their stately 
 vrows. The ample and numerous garments of the Dutch 
 veiled the nakedness of the human form with almost 
 superfluous decency ; and they shrank from a High- 
 lander in his kilt as they would from a threatening 
 monster. The King of Scotland seems, accordingly, to 
 have condescended to their prudery ; and he gave dircc-
 
 AND THE FLEMISH TRADE, 317 
 
 tions that none sell in merchandise except he be honestly 
 ahuilzed (decently clothed) ; and if he be not so, the con- 
 servator, after warning him, is to take as much of his 
 goods as will properly clothe him. After being thus 
 breeched against his will, and, what was worse, at his 
 own expense, the bonnie Scot had further penances in 
 store for him. After buying their meal in the market, 
 these rude traders found it convenient, it seems, to take 
 it home in their own sleeves, or on the points of their 
 daggers ; and the prejudices, perhaps the alarms, of the 
 peaceful burghers of Campvere were again soothed, by a 
 strict j)i'oliibition of such practices. 
 
 When, howeA''er, either royal burghs in Scotland, or 
 merchant companies in England, were permitted to find 
 new markets, where they could and how they could, the 
 exclusive privileges, and the old use of the merchant 
 staplers, and the monopoly of staple towns, were clearly 
 at an end ; and so much of the balance- of-bargain system 
 was crippled, as had enabled the Government to keep 
 gold constantly flowing into the country, by controlling 
 and interfering with every sale in staple commodities to 
 foreign merchants. The management of all transactions 
 in exchange, by which the safe custody of the money of 
 the realm was supposed to be in a great measure secured, 
 was maimed and lost about the same time. 
 
 While the English monarchs and their ministers 
 honestly sought to uphold the real value of their coin 
 when exchanged, either directly or by bills, against the 
 coin of foreign states, their host of exchangers, who, 
 under the royal exchanger, gave English coin for foreign, 
 or monopolized the negociation of bills, might not unna-
 
 318 DEBASEMENT OF THE COINAGE 
 
 turally appear to be necessary for national objects ; and 
 be sustained and vindicated with earnestness. A time, 
 however, was come, when, instead of vindicating ear- 
 nestly the real value of the English coin, it became 
 desii-able to draw off attention from that point as com- 
 pletely as possible, and, in fact, to sink the subject. 
 Tampering with the coin, debasing its purity, and lessen- 
 ing its weight, had long been practised on the continent 
 most recklessly and dishonestly ; and the usual and 
 unavoidable results had followed. All those whose in- 
 comes, like that of many of the landholders, consisted of 
 fixed sums payable in money, were injured. A French 
 writer, Le Blanc, with somewhat startling ingenuity, 
 traces the English victories at Cressy and Poitiers to 
 these practices of the French monarchs. The chivalry 
 of France, he says, was so impoverished by them, that 
 their nominal income was no longer sufficient in the 
 market to equip them properly with arms and horses ; 
 and they became no match for their better appointed 
 opponents. 
 
 We have here a source of consolation, somewhat over- 
 stretched no doubt; but the English monarchs, though 
 long much behind the French in their encroachments, 
 were by no means impeccable ; and Henry YIII. soon 
 outstripped all former bad doings, domestic or foreign. 
 He reduced the weight of his coins much ; he debased 
 their purity shamefully ; and this last practice he carried 
 to an extent which made the coins themselves tell-tale 
 witnesses of tlieii- worthlessness and his shame. The burly 
 monarch's efligy was usually stamped with a full fiice ; 
 of this, the nose of course was the most prominent part,
 
 IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 319 
 
 and it began to wear first, and to show the inferior 
 metal. His subjects, dutiful and cowering as they 
 usually were, ventured to mock a little at this ; and 
 said, his Grace must certainly be in a bad plight, since 
 he had been obliged to get Parson Brock (the manager 
 of his Mint) to make him a copper nose. Any attempts 
 to oblige foreigners to take such coins as representing 
 the old money would have been obviously futile ; and 
 the only policy to be adopted was that of getting as 
 much for them, and drawing as little attention to their 
 real worth, as was found possible. 
 
 There remained, indeed, the control of the negociation 
 of bills of exchange ; and it was long before the English 
 people could be persuaded that that control could be 
 abandoned without danger, if not ruin. One of the first 
 tasks of our vernacular literature, indeed, was to raise a 
 sort of hue and cry on this point ; and four-and-twenty 
 tricks of the exchangers were enumerated, by which, as 
 by a sort of necromantic art, it was maintained that they 
 could direct the flow of money as they pleased, and ruin 
 the helpless and unconscious kingdom whose treasure 
 they found it profitable to exhaust. 
 
 Some impression was made in the reigns of Henry 
 YIII., Elizabeth, and James, by such assertions ; and 
 we can trace several strenuous though abortive efforts to 
 revive the office, and strange and pernicious monopoly 
 and despotism, of a royal exchanger. Under Henry 
 YIII. the danger was warded off by the Greshams. The 
 nation has done but scant justice to the merits of these 
 royal merchants, as financiers and statesmen. They 
 found the English monarchs wholly dependent on
 
 320 THE ' STATUTES OF EMPLOYMENTS.' 
 
 foreigners (ordinarily those of the Low Countries) for 
 advances of money under the most urgent circumstances. 
 It was they who brought the native resources of the 
 country into play : and they did this, by effecting the 
 two separate and very difficult tasks, of teaching honesty 
 and punctuality to the State, and confidence to the monied 
 men. !N'o piece of civil service ever contributed more to 
 the independence and greatness of England — a fact which 
 Europe, from one extremity to the other, soon very 
 sensibly felt. 
 
 A patent had been actually prepared, re-establishing 
 the royal exchanger, and a proclamation was about to 
 follow, calling his functions into activity. The elder 
 Gresham remonstrated boldly. He told Henry YIII. 
 (what was only recently true, however) that foreign 
 commerce could no more exist without exchange, than a 
 ship float without water ; and declared, that if the course 
 of the mercantile exchange was interrupted, the trans- 
 actions of the approaching Bartholomew fair, then the 
 great domestic cloth mart of England, would be para- 
 lysed : — and the stern and obstinate Tudor listened, and 
 refrained. 
 
 Of the various bulwarks by which the wealth of 
 England had been guarded and enclosed, there still 
 remained on the parliament rolls the Statutes of Employ- 
 ments. It is clear enough to us that such laws were far 
 in the rear of the age of Henry and Elizabeth. The 
 course of exchange had been set free ; an extensive 
 foreign traffic opened by treaties to Englishmen ; and a 
 domestic mart established for manufactured goods, which 
 it was of national importance should be frequented. It
 
 THE BALANCE OF TRADE SYSTEM. 321 
 
 would have been an insane attempt, under such circum- 
 stances, to seize on every foreign merchant that arrived, 
 watch his person, control his bargains, and force him to 
 employ his money, and remit the proceeds of his cargo, 
 not according to his will and interests, but at the bidding 
 of English prejudices and tyranny. Yet the statutes of 
 employments were pet favomites of the nation, which 
 indignantly demanded their full execution long after the 
 greater part of the ancient legislation which we have 
 been tracing, was abandoned — reluctantly, it must be 
 admitted — to its fate. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth, and the period which inter- 
 vened between that date and the accession of Charles II., 
 may be described as one long interregnum, in which the 
 partisans of the whole system, and the opponents of its 
 revival, began that war of discussion which ended in the 
 establishment of the balance-of-trade system; of which 
 the essential characteristic was, that retaining the object 
 of the whole system — the constant accession of fresh 
 masses of bullion through foreign trade, it entirely 
 abandoned and repudiated all the expedients and the 
 machinery by which the earliest framers of the balance- 
 of-bargain system had attempted to secure the same 
 object. The writer by whom the change was finally 
 established, was Thomas Mim, an eminent merchant of 
 London. But let us cast a glance upon the gulf which 
 separates him from the writers who first wielded our 
 fresh vernacular literature for the purpose of influencing 
 the economical, or rather almost exclusively the mercan- 
 tile, measures of the government. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth, which is looked back to with 
 
 21
 
 322 EARLY MERCANTILE LITERATURE. 
 
 sucli fondness and triumph by the modem English, was 
 observed with much less kindly eyes by the generation 
 which witnessed it. The vast rise in the money price of 
 all commodities — the universal dearth^ as it was called, 
 which resulted from the joint action of the influx of the 
 precious metals from America, and the debasement of the 
 currency ; the decay of the ancient borough towns ; the 
 distress of the agriculturists from enclosures, and the 
 clearing away of the occupying peasant tenantry; and 
 the complete cessation of action, in all parts, of that 
 ancient and cherished system of policy by which the 
 wisdom of their progenitors had supplied England with 
 riches, and guarded them — all these circumstances com- 
 bined, convinced not merely the multitude, but most of 
 the thinkers and writers who then first began to con- 
 template such subjects, that the nation was passing 
 through a period of gloom and peril, of which the issues 
 must be strange, disastrous, and deadly. 
 
 It does not fall within om* compass to give anything 
 like a complete view of this young literature. "We select 
 the names of a few persons, the spirit of whose writings 
 gives a fair indication of the state of the nation's mind. 
 Mills, Malynes, Missenden, and Stafl'ord, all wrote during 
 the reigns of Elizabeth or James. 
 
 Mills raises the voice of a customer, or officer of the 
 outports : he exclaims upon the decayed influence and 
 defeated monopoly of the Company of Merchant Staplers; 
 and calls loudly for the protection of the ancient prin- 
 ciples and practices, by which the foreign trade of the 
 country, better watched and more efficiently controlled, 
 was forced by the wisdom of the state to contribute to its
 
 THEORIES OF EXCHANGE. 323 
 
 wealth and strength ; and he is patriotically indignant 
 with all the new channels and agents of trade through 
 which that old system had been subverted. 
 
 Malyncs, through a long life, sounded a trumpet 
 against the tricks of the exchangers ; and in the Canker 
 of England'' s CommomueaUh, St. George for England,^ and 
 a really valuable folio, his Lex Mercatoria^ and some other 
 productions, endeavoured to rouse the country to a con- 
 sciousness of the secret wound through which its life- 
 blood, according to him, was ebbing away. 
 
 Missenden answered him; exposed the fallacy of many 
 of his statements, and propounded a tolerably correct 
 theory of exchange. 
 
 Malynes was accused, and not, apparently, without 
 some reason, of sinister and selfish designs. He, a 
 Fleming by birth, had shared in some contract with 
 the Mint for a copper coinage — not a very prosperous 
 venture apparently ; and Missenden, after telling him 
 that he had worn his theories till they were as thread- 
 bare as his coat, intimates that the Fleming meant to 
 turn to his own advantage the powers of a royal ex- 
 changer, which he was eager to revive and put in action. 
 It probably was so. The elder Cecil, Lord Burleigh, 
 was actually in possession of a patent for the office, with 
 all its extravagant powers of control and extortion, which, 
 however, he steadily refused to use. Malynes reproaches 
 him bitterly for his unwillingness to put his powers in 
 action ; and sometimes most impudently accuses him of 
 not knowing how to do so. James I. had been offered 
 four hundred thousand pounds if he would renew the 
 office in favor of the applicants, with whom Malynes, it
 
 324 PATRIOTISM UF THE CECIL FAMILY. 
 
 is highly probable, was connected ; and drafts of patents 
 are to be found among the Lansdowne papers in the 
 Museum. It was also sought to interest the younger 
 Cecil in this scheme, which, however, failed. Their 
 opposition to it is one of the brightest spots in the 
 history of that illustrious house. To refuse to exercise 
 a patent for the renewal of which, in a few years, four 
 hundred thousand pounds was offered, was to abstain, 
 and that obviously from patriotic motives, from making 
 a royal fortune. It might have been acquired, too, not 
 only with the assent, but with the applause, of a con- 
 siderable portion of the public. The wisdom and absence 
 of greed which such conduct implies, ought not to be 
 forgotten; and form a much better foundation for the 
 respect and admiration of posterity than all the official 
 craft and cunning which made up in those days too 
 much of a great statesman's stock in trade. 
 
 Of about the same date with Malynes, Mills, and 
 Missenden, but earlier, came the work of William 
 Stafford ; of another order, however, and emanating from 
 a loftier and better disciplined mind. The author was 
 a man of profound learning — certainly classical, appa- 
 rently theological. He was inclined to Puritan opinions, 
 and had given some offence to Queen Elizabeth, most 
 likely by writing on church discipline. In the work we 
 are speaking of, he undertook to bring his learning and 
 acquirements to bear on all the various current com- 
 plaints of the badness of the times. His work con- 
 sists of three Dialogues, forming a ' Compendium, or 
 Briefe Examination of certain ordinary complaints of 
 divers of our countreymen in these our days; which,
 
 STAFFORD'S DIALOGUES. 325 
 
 though they are in some parts unjust and frivolous, yet 
 they arc all, by way of dialogues, thoroughly debated 
 and discussed.' 
 
 To the political economist the book is principally in- 
 teresting for its acute and masterly exposition of the 
 necessary consequences of the debasement of the coin ; 
 and the proof of a truth which neither kings nor their 
 people had at that time fully esteemed, namely, that 
 ' the substaunce and quantity is esteemed in coyne, and 
 not the name.' 
 
 To those who take pleasure in tracing the progress of 
 our literature, the work has an interest of a wholly dif- 
 ferent kind. The English language was only beginning 
 to be used for the purposes of scientific discussion, and 
 the heads of the more learned class of writers were still 
 full of the majestic roll of Latin periods. But as the 
 language was only beginning to be used, it had as yet 
 no store of foreign or compound terms. The race had 
 not yet appeared who were destined to 
 
 ' Confound the language of tlie nation 
 By long-tailed words in osity and ation.' 
 
 The pure homespun English of the day, set to a majestic 
 cadence, and enshrined in classical sentences, gives a re- 
 markable and occasionally pungent character to Stafibrd's 
 style ; and certainly arrests the attention better than the 
 shorter, sharper, and, it must be owned, clearer arrange- 
 ments of periods in our own days. Staff'ord's management 
 of his matter is not less learned and classical than that of 
 his sentences. He has adopted the form of dialogue, and 
 it is manifest that he has those of Cicero ever before him. 
 His knight, his mart-chaunte-man, his doctor, his hus-
 
 326 IXDICATIUXS UF NATIONAL PROGRESS. 
 
 bandmaiij and craftsman, ' recount the common and uni- 
 versull grieves that men comphiyne of now a dayes ; and 
 boiilt out the very causes and occasions of them,' with the 
 same studied courtesies, and with manners very like those 
 wliich adorn the classical personages of the De IS^atura 
 Decorum, or the Tusculan Disputations ; and ' adjourn 
 from the house to the garden under the vjTie, for a good 
 Iresh and coolc sitting in the shadowe,' very much in the 
 fashion of the more eminent visitors of the Eoman villas. 
 
 The manners of the daj'-, the change in the habits of 
 different classes, on which they themselves looked with 
 more amazement than satisfaction, the course of trade, 
 of religion, and opinions, all find a place ; and we see the 
 puzzled observers endeavoring to catch and measure the 
 shifting images of their time, with an earnest homeliness 
 of phrase, and extensive knowledge of the condition and 
 needs of the people, which make the tract an historical 
 curiosity, as well as a striking monument of an im- 
 portant era in our literature. It is, besides, the first 
 model of economical speculation by a philosopher : by any, 
 in fact, but mere practical and unpretending hands. 
 
 We now know that all the circumstances which excited 
 fears and suspicions at the time were symptoms and con- 
 ditions of the rapid progress of the nation in the arts of 
 peace, in commerce, unfettered industry, and increasing 
 wealth. It appears clearly, however, from all the works 
 we have bestowed a passing glance on, that the actors in 
 the drama were indulged in no convictions of this fact to 
 console and reassure them. 
 
 It is time, however, to turn to the works of the man 
 by whom all these yearnings and attempts for the rcstora-
 
 THOMAS MUN. 327 
 
 tion of the balance-of-bargain system, or any of its parts, 
 were finally and conclusively put an end to. 
 
 That man was Thomas Mun, an eminent London mer- 
 chant. His first work published, signed with his initials 
 only, T. M., is scarce. It came to a second edition in 
 1621. His last decisive work was published by his son, 
 after his own death, and soon after the restoration of 
 Charles the Second ; its title is, ' England's Treasm-e by 
 Foreign Trade, or the balance of our foreign trade is the 
 rule of our treasure.' The two pamphlets, read together, 
 afford unquestionable internal evidence of their being by 
 the same hand ; and exhibit a curious spectacle of the 
 author's gradual emancipation from a lingering reverence 
 for parts of the old, and his progress towards the distinct 
 and undoubting faith with which he at length lays down 
 the new system. That new system, as we have before 
 intimated, had still the same object with the old — the 
 increasing the treasure, that is, the coin and bullion of 
 the country, through its foreign trade. But the new 
 differed from the old, in discarding entirely all the pro- 
 visions and machinery of earlier ages ; abandoning all 
 interference with the bargains of individuals, and con- 
 fining its attempts to guide the trade of the country to 
 measures of general policy. It is worth while to trace 
 shortly the occasions which called forth his speculations, 
 and their progress and transformations. 
 
 The trade to India began to assume some importance 
 in the reign of Elizabeth ; and it was from the first sus,- 
 pected and disliked by all but those actually concerned 
 in it. The adventurers could only begin their operations 
 successfully by exporting money ; and they had regular
 
 328 EARLY ECONOMICAL ERRORS 
 
 licences for that purpose. But nothing more was neces- 
 sary to rouse the fears and' ii'e of the country. The un- 
 conscious fathers of our Indian empire were assailed as 
 the shameless enemies of their country ; whose wealth, 
 whose strength, whose treasure, they were habitually 
 making less. Thomas Mun was apparently one of the 
 associated merchants engaged in the East India trade ; 
 and he was roused to vindicate their innocence. Engaged 
 in this task, the thought appears to have struck him, 
 which it seems quite wonderfid had not struck all the 
 world long before, that to confine the attention to only 
 the first processes of a lengthened and circuitous course 
 of trade, was taking a very narrow and one-sided view 
 of the matter— that a fuller investigation, by tracing the 
 mercantile venture to its last results, might show that, 
 although it began by exporting some bullion, it might 
 end by importing much more ; and thus add to the trea- 
 sure and vitality of the country, instead of exhausting 
 them : and he set himself about proving that this was 
 eminently the case with the East India trade. He traces, 
 of course, the transactions of the exporters to India, 
 through Asia and Europe, till the English merchants 
 have got then- money home, with large additions ; and 
 this done, he was for the time triumphant. 
 
 But he was as yet far from being weaned from the 
 time-honored prejudices of his countrymen in favor of 
 the disused economical contrivances of their forefathers. 
 After answering satisfactorily the objections to the India 
 trade, and showing, he says, ' that it hath not hurt this 
 commonwealth,' he proceeds to take a view of the true 
 causes of ' those evils which we seek to chase away ' — and
 
 WITH REFERENCE TO FOREIGN TRADE. 329 
 
 then enumerates ' four principal causes which carry away 
 our gold and silver.' 'The first cause concerneth the 
 standard ; the second concerneth the exchanges of moneys 
 with foreign countries, and the practice of those strangers 
 here, in this realm, who make a trade by exchange of 
 moneys. The third cause concerneth neglect of duties ; ' 
 and here, as if to crown his adhesion to the flag of the 
 old system, he exclaims with patriotic indignation — ' But 
 what shall we think of those men, who are placed in 
 authority and office for his Majesty, if they should not, 
 with dutiful care, discharge their trust concerning that 
 excellent statute (anno 17, Edward IV.), that all the 
 moneys received by strangers for their merchandise 
 should be emj^loyed upon the commodities of this realm ? 
 the due performance of which would not only prevent 
 the carrying away of much gold and silver, but also be 
 the means of greater vent of our own wares.' 
 
 We have mentioned this statute of Edward IV. before, 
 as modifying one of Henry VI. ; but Mun was mistaken 
 in supposing it to be the operative ' statute of employ- 
 ment,' when he wrote. Henry VII. had passed another, 
 and extended its provisions to traders from Jersey, 
 Guernsey, and Ireland.* But these statutes of employ- 
 ment, in all their shapes, formed the most tyrannical and 
 mischievous portion of that systematical interference with 
 the bargains and dealings of individuals, which we have 
 before been describing ; and Mun's eyes were assuredly 
 very imperfectly unsealed, when he was unconscious of 
 their deformity, and joined in an ignorant clamour for 
 their resuscitation. 
 
 * .3rd Henry VII., c. 8.
 
 330 - MUN'S SECOND BOOK. 
 
 A great and decisive enlargement of his views, how- 
 ever, had taken place before we meet with him again. 
 He had waxed old and wise. ' He was (says his son) 
 in his time famous among merchants ; and well known 
 to most men of business, for his general experience in 
 afiairs, and notable insight into trade; neither was he 
 less observed for his integrity to his prince, and zeal to 
 the commonwealth.' And the commencement of his im- 
 portant posthumous work is worthy of the character thus 
 n-iven by filial piety — grave, self-possessed, elevated, holy 
 — the language of one not unconscious of the fact, that 
 he was about to settle questions which had agitated 
 nations : and to thi'OAV his own appointed portion of new 
 light on the paths thi'ough which they must advance 
 towards happiness and strength. 
 
 'My son (he begins), in a former discourse I have 
 endeavoured, after my manner, briefly to teach thee two 
 things : the first is piety, how to fear God aright, accord- 
 ing to his works and word ; the second is policy, how to 
 love and serve thy country, by instructing thee in the 
 duties and proceedings of sundry vocations, which either 
 order, or else act, the affairs of the commonwealth ; in 
 which, as some things do especially tend to preserve, and 
 others are more apt to enlarge, the same : So I am now 
 to speak of money, which doth indifl'erently serve to 
 both those happy ends." 
 
 The spirit of the book will best be understood by 
 comparing it with Mun's earlier pamphlet. lie dwells 
 here, as there, on the necessity of looking at the last 
 results of mercantile adventures, in order to ajiprcciate 
 ilicir action in increasing or diminishing tlie bullion, the
 
 THE BALANCK OK ItARdAIN SYSTEM. 331 
 
 treasure of the country : J>ut lio now discards, as idle 
 devices, all those parts of the balancc-of-bargain machi- 
 nery to which he had before adhered. lie discusses 
 separately the statutes of employment he had before 
 especially commended — the enjoining (as Avas once the 
 nation's wont) to ' the merchant that exporteth fish, corn, 
 or munition, to return all or part of the value in money ; ' 
 he derides all fears of the effects of the undervaluation 
 of our money in exchange, and of the other necromantic 
 tricks of the exchangers ; and at last concludes — ' But 
 let the merchant's exchange be at a high rate, or a low 
 rate, or at the par pro pari, or put down altogether. 
 Let foreign princes enhance their coins, or debase their 
 standards ; and let his Majesty do the like, or keep them 
 constant as they now stand. Let foreign coins pass 
 current here in all payments, at higher rate than they 
 are worth at the mint ; let the statute for employment 
 by strangers stand in force, or be repealed ; let the mere 
 exchanger do his worst ; let princes oppress, lawyers 
 extort, usurers bite, prodigals waste ; and, lastly, let 
 merchants carry out what money they shall have occa- 
 sion to use in traffic — yet all these actions can work 
 no other effect on the course of trade than is declared 
 in this discourse ; for so much treasure only will be 
 brought in or carried out of a commonwealth, as the 
 foreign trade doth over or under balance in value ; and 
 this must come to pass, by a necessity beyond all resist- 
 ance. So that all other courses which tend not to this 
 end, howsoever they may seem to force money into a 
 kingdom for a time, yet are they, in the end, not only 
 fruitless, but also hurtful ; they are like to violent floods
 
 332 RESUME 0¥ THE SUBJECT. 
 
 which bear down their banks, and suddenly remain dry 
 again for want of water.' 
 
 The long agonies of the balance-of-bargain system 
 were now over. We have heard its knell. Mun's book 
 was received as the gospel of finance and commercial 
 policy ; and his prmciples ruled for above a century the 
 policy of England, and much longer that of the rest 
 of Europe. 
 
 The task we had appointed ourselves is now over. 
 We have traced, from its construction to its disappear- 
 ance, the rude but strong commercial and legislative 
 machinery by which our forefathers sought to enrich 
 the realm, and preserve its increasing riches. Let us 
 cast, however, one rapid glance in advance. We have 
 seen that Mun never doubted the truth of the propo- 
 sition, that bullion alone constituted real riches. It 
 took another hundred years to expel this fallacy, even 
 from the more enlightened part of the public mind ; and 
 they were a hundred years of great activity, both of 
 English mind and English policy. Through the whole 
 course of it, a large body of mercantile literature urged 
 on the Government the interests of trade, and the all- 
 importance of its balance ; till the real interests of both 
 producing and consuming classes were almost put out of 
 siglit. And statesmen obeyed the impulse. They be- 
 lieved, as Colbert believed, that to gain bullion was to gain 
 the only true riches hj which their country could thrive ; 
 and they too talked and wrote, and fought and treated, 
 and circumvented, and thought they overreached some- 
 times a rival, sometimes an ally, sometimes a poor 
 colony, in tlic pursuit of the one great patriotic duty
 
 OBSTINACY OF EARLY PREJUDICES, 333 
 
 of enricliing the realm through the bahmcc of trade. 
 In the meantime, the truth that all commodities were 
 a part of the wealth of a nation, seems for ever forcing 
 itself on the notice of the busy writers who occupied the 
 stage ; and seems to have escaped them by a miracle 
 somewhat similar to that by which the spell-bound 
 knights of Arthur's court were rendered unconscious 
 of the actual presence of the holy Sangreal. A volume 
 of instances might be adduced to show this ; the most 
 remarkable, however, and it must suffice, is that of 
 Davenant. In one of his numerous works he sets about 
 proving that the Custom Ilouse books were not always 
 conclusive evidence of the real balance of trade ; and he 
 says, that however unfavourable the indications in those 
 books may be, yet, if the breed of animals is improving, 
 if buildings, mills, ships, rents, etc., are increasing, we 
 may rely on that increase as a proof — of what ? Of an 
 increase of the wealth of the country ? IN'ot at all ; but 
 as a proof that the balance of trade must, after all, 
 be more favourable than the mere Custom Ilouse ac- 
 counts show it to be. Davenant, of course, remained 
 firm in the faith that bullion alone constituted wealth. 
 Without adverting to the glimmering revelations of 
 partial truth which sometimes vary the utter darkness 
 of the times on this point, we may observe that, before 
 Adam Smith's work appeared, Galiany, Quesnay, Harris, 
 and Hume, had all unveiled the fallacy which had so 
 long received the blind homage of mankind — Quesnay, 
 Harris, and Hume, with precision — Galiaui, the first in 
 time and genius, with a beautiful purity and simplicity of 
 style ; and a profound and acute philosophical discrimi-
 
 334 ADAM SMITH AND HIS PRECURSORS; 
 
 nation, which place him in the first rank of philosophers 
 of any age or nation. But Smith was the first to see 
 the whole value of the great truth they had disclosed, 
 and to follow it out to its consequences with equal confi- 
 dence and care. And it accordingly became at once in 
 his hands, what it had been very lamely and imperfectly 
 in theirs, the foundation of a new structure of economical 
 science. Having shown that bullion was not exclusively 
 wealth, he not merely proceeded to show that commo- 
 dities were national wealth, but to analyse and explain 
 the circumstances which determine their plentiful or 
 stinted production ; and from his work we may date the 
 beo-inninff of that era in economical knowledge which is 
 still in progress — and probably in an earlier stage of its 
 progress than the self complacency of our own genera- 
 tion is very willing to admit. 
 
 We are aware that in thus speaking of the precursors 
 of Smith we run the danger of arousing some jealousy 
 and some anger ; but as nothing can be more base than 
 the malignant eagerness with which such facts are some- 
 times used to disparage greatness, so nothing can be 
 more idle than the fears of those who imagine that they 
 really detract from the solid fame of a writer like Smith. 
 
 None but those ignorant of the ordinary march of 
 knowledge Avill think it derogatory to the great Econo- 
 mist that he did not create all the light he used ; that 
 he seized the trembling and imperfect beams which, in 
 the general progress of thought, many other intellects 
 had begun to emit, and knit them with a strong hand 
 into a perfect ray ; which sheds a light upon the path 
 of nations that can only disappear with the disappear-
 
 THEIR RELATIVE CLAIMS UPON OUR GRATITUDE. 335 
 
 ancc of the accumulated knowledge of our race. Such 
 is the appointed task of all great leaders, in both moral 
 and physical science ; and such are the achievements 
 which leave the human race their everlasting debtors.
 
 5^" 
 
 TEXT-BOOK OF LECTURES 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 NATIONS, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE EAST INDIA COLLEGE, HAILEYBURY. 
 
 22
 
 POLITICAL ECOxNOMY OF NATIONS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 OF L A B K. 
 
 I PEOPOSE in these lectures to examine what may be 
 termed the political economy of nations. In other words, 
 I shall attempt to trace from history and observation, in 
 what manner, and by what agencies, different popula- 
 tions now produce and deal with, or in other days have 
 produced and dealt with, theii- respective amounts of 
 national wealth. I believe that we shall find such a 
 survey the safest method of deciding on what causes 
 have determined the relative wealth of different com- 
 munities in past times, or determine it in our own. 
 
 Such an investigation will necessarily be something 
 different from an inquiry into the mere abstract prin- 
 ciples of political economy. 
 
 To those principles, as now popularly current, I shall 
 have frequent occasion to recur; sometimes to explain, 
 sometimes to modify, and in some instances to contest, 
 them. I shall get through this portion of our task.
 
 340 SUBJECT OF LECTURES. [lect. i. 
 
 however, as briefly as I can consistently with clearness, 
 and shall consider it thronghout as subordinate to the 
 analysis and investigation which I have pointed out 
 as our proper work. 
 
 Such an analysis of the economical habits of the 
 various divisions of the human race must obviously have 
 its interest and use, in whatever mode we may think it 
 best to approach a knowledge of sj^stems of abstract 
 truth on the subject of national wealth. 
 
 There are persons who believe that investigations 
 such as those we are about to enter upon must precede 
 any successful attempt to lay down universal principles. 
 Such persons will see in the fulfilment of our task, only 
 a preliminary, though a necessary, step towards the 
 formation of any sound system of economical philosophy. 
 
 There are others, on the contrary, who believe that a 
 system of abstract principles may be safely collected 
 from a much narrower field of observation. I say 
 nothing now on the comparative soundness of these 
 opposite opinions, but this last set of persons must still 
 recognize in the examination on which we are about 
 to enter, the only practicable mode of using abstract 
 principles for the great purpose of explaining the past 
 and present economical career and circumstances of the 
 various nations of the globe. 
 
 It will be convenient, and we shall not find it diffi- 
 cult, to preserve, during our progress, those divisions 
 in our observations on national industry which have 
 become common in the literature of the subject. 
 
 We shall observe, therefore, different communities, or 
 ratlier groups of communities, modern and ancient : —
 
 i,KCT. I.] THE PRODUCTION OF WEATTH. ;H1 
 
 1. — As tliey produce tlioir wealth. 
 
 2. — Distribute it. 
 
 3. — Exchange it. 
 
 4. — Consume it. 
 
 5. — Yield portions of it to the State, or are taxed. 
 
 THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 Before we proceed to examine in detail the position 
 and habits of the productive classes in particidar na- 
 tions, there are some preliminary questions of a genc^ral 
 nature, the explanation of which will facilitate our 
 further progress. 
 
 We will proceed, then, 
 
 1. — To define the wealth we mean to treat of. 
 
 2. — To point out its sources. 
 
 3. — To describe the general causes which limit or de- 
 termine the wealth produced by different communities. 
 
 4. — To sketch the habits, position, and facilities of 
 a population which would be perfect as a producing 
 machine. 
 
 As to this fourth point, you will be pleased to re- 
 member that no nation has even approached perfection 
 as a producing machine, and that it is not improbable 
 none ever may. Still, if we have the picture and plan 
 of such a nation before us, it will enable us better to 
 understand at what stage of progress towards perfec- 
 tion the nations we shall have hereafter to review have 
 lingered. The great majority of them will be seen still 
 at a very remote one.
 
 342 DEFINITION OF WEALTH. [i.ect. i. 
 
 DEFINITION OF WEALTH. 
 
 The wealth to which we shall confine our researches, 
 consists of such "Material objects as are voluntarily 
 appropriated by man."^ 
 
 A wider and, in some respects, no doubt, a perfectly 
 defensible definition of wealth is sometimes used. It 
 is made to include the moral and intellectual acquire- 
 ments of a people, such as the wisdom and knowledge 
 of their rulers, the science of physicians, lawyers, or 
 engineers, the talents of poets or artists, and all like 
 things. 
 
 I will not now stay to inquire either, in the first 
 place, how far the laws which regulate the production, 
 or the rewards of such acquirements, are identical with, 
 or analogous to, the laws which regulate the production, 
 distribution, and the exchangeable value of those sub- 
 stantial and material commodities pointed out in the defi- 
 nition I have given you ; nor, secondly, will I discuss 
 to what extent the same phraseology might safely be 
 extended to both, and general conclusions applicable 
 to both, set forth in it. 
 
 It is enough for our present purpose to declare that 
 our own inquiries into the political economy of nations 
 will only extend to their mode of producing and dealing 
 with such wealth as is included in the term, when de- 
 fined and restricted, as I have here defined and restricted 
 it. The subject, confined within these bounds, will 
 
 ' This is tbc definition of Malthus, very slightly altered. See " Definitions in 
 Political Economy," p. 234.
 
 I.ECT. I.] THE SOURCES OF WEALTH. 343 
 
 be found extensive enough for a very wide grasp. If 
 you suffer your attention to flag, I am afraid it may, 
 as we proceed, be found rather too wide for some of 
 yours. 
 
 THE SOURCES OF WEALTH. 
 
 The source of wealth is the earth; or, if we speak 
 of them separately, the sources of wealth are the earth 
 and its waters. These produce all the objects appro- 
 priated or fashioned by the labors of man. Human 
 labor itself is not, strictly speaking, an original source 
 of wealth, although, without such labor, no wealth 
 comes into man's possession. The habit of treating 
 labor as the source of wealth was probably founded 
 on some expressions of Adam Smith, on whose autho- 
 rity it has been propagated. The error has already 
 been noted and corrected.^ 
 
 From causes which will presently show themselves, 
 the erroneous phrase did not affect either the truth or 
 usefulness of Smith's doctrines on the subject of labor ; 
 but, in the historical view we are now about to take, 
 the distinctions between the barrenness or fertility of 
 the sources of wealth at the command of different people 
 must not be wholly lost sight of. 
 
 The productiveness of the industry of nations really 
 depends, then, on two circumstances. First, on the 
 fertility or barrenness of the original sources of the 
 wealth they produce. Secondly, on the efficiency of 
 
 ' See Senior.
 
 344 EFFICIENCY OF LABOR IN PRODUCING WEALTH, [lect. i. 
 
 the labor they apply in dealing with those sources, 
 or fasliioning the commodities obtained from them. 
 
 To see the influence of the first cause, take the case of 
 two farms farmed equally well, but differing in their 
 original quality. The better land would yield a greater 
 produce to an equal amount of labor bestowed upon 
 it. The same fact is obviously true if we take two 
 kingdoms instead of two farms. 
 
 But differences in fertility in the original sources of 
 wealth do not enter into the reasonings of the science 
 of political economy. Such a difference is a fact to 
 be observed and allowed for in particular instances, 
 and as to which all reasoning is useless; and this is 
 one cause which made the error of taking labor as 
 the source of wealth harmless in scientific works. ^ 
 
 THE EFFICIEXCY OF LABOR IN PEODUCING WEALTH. 
 
 There is another and a more striking cause. 
 
 In a majority of instances, a majority so great as 
 nearly to comprehend the whole, — the efficiency of the 
 labor of nations, is what determines their relative wealth, 
 and not differences in the fertility of their soil and 
 waters. The earth, which with its productions it is 
 given to man to use, yields in different regions and 
 
 ^ We might get rid of the necessity of any distinction between the different 
 fertility of ditfercut sources of wealth, if we chose to measure the efficiency of labor 
 solely uy its produce. Thus, if twelve men produced 100 quarters of corn on a bad 
 farm, and six produced the same quantity on a good, we might say the labor in the 
 last case had been more efficient than in the first. But by such a phraseology we 
 should obviously confound two causes of the relative wealth of communities which 
 arc essentially different, and our view of the subject would at once become imperfect 
 and contused.
 
 LECT. I.] EFFICIENCY OF LABOR IN PRODUCING WEALTH. 345 
 
 climates a produce more or less bountiful. But the 
 human agent, the reasoning being, is to be observed in 
 practice all but independent of this difference. Where 
 he is industrious, skilful, provident, and his labor armed 
 with such powers as his industry and his providence 
 can create, there are to be found wealthy nations, 
 although inhabiting territories comparatively barren. 
 Where he is slothful, negligent, and feebly armed 
 with such powers as human industry and knowledge 
 may supply, there are to be found poor and savage 
 populations, amidst the greatest profusion of the gifts 
 of the soil and waters. 
 
 The tract of the globe which presents the most 
 abundant sources of wealth is South America, eastward 
 of the Andes, along the courses of the great rivers. Its 
 population is one of the poorest in the world. 
 
 The sources of wealth in England are inferior to 
 many, superior to few, of those of the continental na- 
 tions. The efficiency of her labor is, for causes which 
 await our handling, greatly superior to that of any 
 nation of the earth, and her wealth is in proportion 
 to that superiority. 
 
 Political economists, therefore, were well justified in 
 confining the efforts of that part of their science which 
 relates to the production of wealth to the discovery 
 of the causes which affect the efficiency of labor, and 
 have committed but an unimportant error in not dwell- 
 ing on differences in the natural fertility of countries. 
 
 Our own peculiar point of view, however, will occa- 
 sionally make it necessary to bring back the distinc- 
 tion to our recollection.
 
 34G EFFICIENCY OF LABOR IN PRODUCING WEALTH [lect. i. 
 
 Ill observiiig the political economy of some of the 
 nations which have, in other times, taken the lead in 
 forwarding the progress of human industry, or which 
 are now spreading the knowledge and the results of 
 its comparative perfection over the globe, we must 
 make great allow^ances for the abundant fertility of 
 the sources of their wealth, for the teeming richness 
 of the valleys of the Euphrates, the Nile, the Oxus, and 
 the Ganges ; as well as for the inexhaustible tracts of 
 rich and virgin soil on which the people of America 
 labor and increase. 
 
 Having premised so much, however, we may drop dif- 
 ferences in the fertility of the sources of wealth, and 
 turn to a subject incomparably more important and 
 interesting; that is, to the examination of the causes 
 which determine differences in the efficiency of the labor 
 of the different people of the globe ; and so practically 
 determine, in an immense majority of cases, their relative 
 wealth. 
 
 But the wealth of a whole population obviously de- 
 ponds, not merely on the fertility of the industry of that 
 portion of it emplo3^ed in production, but on the propor- 
 tion which such productive laborers bear to those who 
 are not emploj^ed in producing wealth. A nation, if 
 three-fourths were soldiers or menial servants, would be 
 poor, however fertile the labor of the other fourth might 
 be. The causes which determine the proportion between 
 productive laborers and those laborers who, according to 
 our definition of wealth, are properly designated unpro- 
 ductive, are intimately connected with, and dependent 
 on, political institutions, and on what we sliall hereafter
 
 LECT. I.] CAUSES OF EFFICIENCY OF PKODUCTTVE LAROR. 347 
 
 have to exhibit as the foimdation of those institutions, — 
 their economical organization. This subject will unfold 
 itself during our progress ; and it will be convenient 
 to postpone any consideration of it to a much later 
 period of that progress. 
 
 We will confine ourselves, in the first instance, to 
 an investigation of the circumstances which determine 
 the efficiency of productive labor — of that labor which 
 is actually employed in producing material wealth. I 
 need hardly guard you, I hope, against the common 
 error of supposing either that that ])ortion of the com- 
 munity which is not so employed is unproductive of 
 anything useful, or that the epithet " unproductive," 
 as applied to them, is degrading. 
 
 CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE THE EFFICIENCY OF PRO- 
 DUCTIVE LABOR. 
 
 We will discard, for the present, the consideration 
 of any difi^erences in the strength of individuals, and 
 suppose all men to exert an average amount of mus- 
 cular force. Such an average being assumed, then the 
 efficiency of human labor will depend — 
 
 1st. — On the continuity with which it is exerted. 
 
 2ndly. — On the knowledge and skill' with which it 
 is applied, to effect the purpose of the producer. 
 
 3rdly. — On the mechanical powder by which it is 
 
 1 I use the word skill in a somewhat restricted sense ; that is, to denote the appli- 
 cation of knowledge to the production of wealth.
 
 348 CAUSES OF EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. [lect. i. 
 
 aided, — that power consisting, as we shall jDresently 
 see, of more than one element.' 
 
 Of the effect of the continuous application of human 
 labor in increasing its productive powers, little need 
 be said. It is self-evident that labor, steadily con- 
 tinued, must be more productive than that which is 
 desultory. Besides the time obviously lost by an in- 
 termission of labor, time is always indirectly lost in 
 setting the task going, or in discontinuing one species 
 of exertion and changing to another. This fact, if it 
 should be thought to need illustration, will be found 
 most ingeniously and fully illustrated by Adam Smith, 
 in the part of his great work which treats of the 
 effects of the division of labor, and to that I refer 
 you.2 
 
 Secondly. — The efficiency of human labor is affected 
 by the degree of knowledge and skill by which it is 
 directed to effect the purposes of the producer. Let 
 the object be to make a horse-shoe. An ignorant 
 savage might hammer for a whole day on a piece of 
 cold iron, and not produce one. A knowledge of the 
 effects of heat on the malleability of the metal enables 
 a skilful blacksmith, even supposing him to use the 
 same tools, to make twenty in the same time. 
 
 ' Tlie division of the tasks of labor affects, directly, its continuity, and, indirectly, 
 its skill. It docs not necessarily affect its mechanical power at all, and never to any 
 great extent, compared with other causes which determine that power. And though 
 It affects its continuity, it is not the only, nor the primary, nor the most potent, cause 
 ])y which the continuity of human labor is affected during the progress of national 
 industry. The effects of the division of labor have not been overrated ; but when it 
 is treated as the sole cause of advances in the hrtility of national labor, other con- 
 comitant and more powerful causes are overlooked. It will be part of our business 
 to demonstrate this, 
 
 ^ See Weidlh of Katioim.
 
 LECT. I.] MECHANICAL POWER. 340 
 
 And this simple case is only one of a comprehen- 
 sive catalogue of like ones on a greater scale. 
 
 All the knowledge we possess of all the materials 
 with which men deal while supplying their wants or 
 luxuries, produces similar effects ; and that knowledge 
 becomes both more deep and more extensive as the 
 human race advances in scientific research and acquii'e- 
 ments. The nature of vegetables, of metals, minerals, 
 and the best mode of dealing with them to effect the 
 purposes of handicraftsmen and manufacturers, — all, in 
 fact, that botany, mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry, 
 and mechanical science can teach on such points, only 
 displays a collection of instances, like in kind, though 
 differing in extent, to the discovery of the powers of 
 heat in facilitating the blacksmith's work. To what 
 a large extent this species of aid influences the effi- 
 ciency of human labor, we may learn by a bare in- 
 spection of the workshops and manufactories of England, 
 and, indeed, of several other European countries. The 
 extent to which, by like means, the efficiency of human 
 labor may be increased hereafter, could only be esti- 
 mated, if we could estimate the probable future exten- 
 sion of physical knowledge, on all points which bear 
 on the industry of nations. 
 
 MECHANICAL POWER, AS AFFECTING THE EFFICIENCY 
 
 OF LABOR. 
 
 When speaking of the power exerted by human 
 beings as laborers, we have already said that it will 
 be convenient to waive any consideration of the dif-
 
 350 MECHANICAL TOWEE, [lect. i. 
 
 ferent muscular strength of diflfercnt individuals, and 
 to suppose ourselves speaking of an average man.^ 
 
 The jjotver exerted by human laborers in producing 
 wealth, and the efficiency of their labor, so far as it 
 is dependent on power, is, however, by no means con- 
 fined to such power as is indicated by their own mere 
 muscular force ; it may be increased in two ways. 
 
 1st. — By enlisting in their service, motive forces 
 greater than their own — extra-human forces we may 
 call them. 
 
 2ndly. — By employing any amount or kind of motive 
 forces at their command, with increased mechanical 
 advantage. Power and force are often used as synony- 
 mous words by writers and engineers. Thus, in speak- 
 ing of an engine of 40 -horse power, they mean an 
 engine which possesses the same motive forces as 40 
 horses. But the same motive force exercises very dif- 
 ferent degrees of power when applied with different 
 degrees of mechanical advantage. Let a steam-engine 
 with a motive force of 40 horses be attached to a loaded 
 train on a common turnpike-road, and it will make 
 but little way ; level the road perfectly, and lay down 
 iron rails to diminish friction, and the same engine 
 will convey the train at a pace which has been described 
 as annihilating space and time. The poiver of the human 
 laborer who drives the engine has been changed by 
 
 ^ The force of a man is calculated by engineers as one-fifth of that of a horse. 
 The force of an average horse is supposed to be just sufficient to raise a weight of 
 32,000 lbs. over a pulley to the height of one foot in a minute; the force of an 
 average man then, calculated at one-fifth of this, will be such a force as can raise a 
 weight of 6,400 lbs. to the height of one foot in a minute. The calculation is that 
 of the celebrated Watt, and is probably a tolerably close approximation, although 
 there are great varieties of slightly dissimilar estimates.
 
 LECT. I.] AS AFFECTING THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. 351 
 
 the greater mechanical advantage with which he now 
 applies the motive force at his command, — the force 
 itself remaining unaltered. 
 
 As in this, perhaps the greatest, so also in the small- 
 est of those advances in the efficiency of human labor, 
 which depend on an increase of power, the same dis- 
 tinction may be observed. If we take two men unpro- 
 vided with implements, and set them to turn over the 
 earth in a field, their motive forces will be those of 
 two sets of human muscles : provide one of them with 
 a spade, and although their respective motive forces 
 remain equal, the man who has the implement will 
 be at least 100 times as powerful and efficient a laborer 
 as the man who has only his fingers to work with. 
 
 This distinction between the increase of motive forces, 
 and the increase of contrivances and means, to apply the 
 same motive forces with greater mechanical advantage, 
 becomes important when we are comparing the efficiency 
 of the labor of different nations, and has not been suffi- 
 ciently attended to. The cause is obvious. Increased 
 motive forces strike the eye, and produce concentrated 
 and prominent results. The effect of various tools, 
 implements, and machines, by which motive forces, with 
 which we are abeady familiar, are applied with greater 
 advantage, and thus supply the human race with greater 
 power and efficiency, often escape the observation, and 
 are left out of the calculations of statistical observers and 
 writers ; although by being distributed among, and used 
 by the whole mass of, the laborers of a community, they 
 produce, in the aggregate, a vast effect on the relative 
 productive powers of nations.
 
 352- MECHANICAL I'OWEK, [lect. i. 
 
 Of both the circumstances I have mentioned — the 
 neglect of the distinction, and the importance of it — 
 two remarkable instances have lately occurred in the 
 case of persons estimating the different productive powers 
 of French and English labor. 
 
 M. Dupin institutes a formal comparison between the 
 forces at the disposal of the two populations of France 
 and England; he calculates the motive forces used by- 
 each Avith all the exactness he can : the horses, the 
 water-wheels, the wind-mills, the breadth of canvass 
 which receives the force of the wind to impel vessels, 
 fuially the steam-engines ; but he entirely omits in his 
 calculations differences in the implements and machinery 
 through which all these various motive forces are applied 
 by each nation. It is obvious, surely, that he here omits 
 data which are of first-rate importance in determining 
 the relative productive powers of the two countries. To 
 take a simple instance, the case of horse-power. The 
 best form of a plough is a fact yet to be ascertained ; 
 but we know that the best form known will do as much 
 ■work, and as well, with two horses, as the worst with 
 four. The relative number of horses in France and 
 England will therefore give us no information as to the 
 productive powers of the two populations, as far as those 
 powers are aided by horses, unless we know the relative 
 merits of the implements which determine with what 
 mechanical advantage a horse's power is applied in the 
 agriculture, and indeed in various other occupations, of 
 the two countries. 
 
 On the appearance of English workmen to assist 
 in the formation of railways in France, the French
 
 LECT. I.J AS AFFECTING THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. 353 
 
 soon became aware of the importance of the distinc- 
 tion. 
 
 In the Journal des D'chals^ there is a comparison of 
 the efficiency of the English and the French laborers 
 employed on the Eouen railroad. The writer first gives 
 some curious facts as to the different muscular force of 
 the workmen, and as to the manner in which it was 
 equalized when the French adopted the English diet, 
 and then proceeds : 
 
 " Besides this, as we have already said, the English 
 workman is generally provided with better tools than 
 the French, and this superiority contributes, in a great 
 degree, to that result so eminently advantageous to him, 
 that you may give him a larger amount of wages, with- 
 out increasing the ultimate cost of the work. The tools 
 of the savage are his ten fingers only ; in proportion as 
 society advances in the path of civilization, man invents 
 tools, which become in fact additional organs whereby 
 his strength and action are increased. The English 
 bring more ingenuity to the construction of tools and 
 engines than any other people. By these means they 
 facilitate and simplify labor. Amongst them tools are 
 invented or improved every day. The steam-engine is 
 with them a tool, and no more.* 
 
 " In the same way the English have found means to 
 improve tools which one would have thought had reached 
 the last degree of perfection. It might have been re- 
 
 1 I am not to be supposed to adopt all the statements of the French paper. The 
 steam-engine is not a mere tool, it gives additional motive force, not merely the means 
 of using forces the laborer already possesses, with a greater mechanical advantage. 
 
 23
 
 354 MECHANICAL POWER, [lect. i. 
 
 marked on the Eouen Eailway that their barrows, their 
 pickaxes, their hatchets, and their spades, were different 
 from ours." 
 
 It will be obvious that the French writer was right in 
 his opinion, that the perfection or imperfection of the 
 tools by which the labor of the many millions of French 
 and English workmen is applied to the task of produc- 
 tion, form a point of quite first-rate importance in deter- 
 mining the different efficiency and productive power of 
 their labor. And this difference, it will be again recol- 
 lected, is wholly independent of any difference in the 
 motive forces at the command of each. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer upon this distinction, be- 
 cause, as I have shown, it has been overlooked, even 
 in the case of so eminent a person as M. Dupin. I have 
 another reason. When we come to examine the causes 
 of the feebleness of the industry of some of the groups 
 of nations which will pass us in review, we shall find 
 that it is not to any deficiency of motive forces that the 
 sterility of their labor is to be mainly attributed, al- 
 though this may be the only cause which attracts the 
 attention of hasty enquirers, but rather to a deficiency 
 in the structure and abundance of the different imple- 
 ments and machines by which the motive forces they 
 possess might be made available ; to a deficiency, in 
 short, of good tools, implements, and common machines. 
 The causes which have led to that deficiency, and which 
 tend to perpetuate it, we shall have to trace partly to 
 the institutions, partly to the peculiar and unchanging 
 relations of the producing and other classes in whole 
 clusters of nations. I wish to bespeak your attention
 
 LECT. I.] AS AFFECTING THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOE. 355 
 
 beforehand, to the importance of observing the pheno- 
 mena which bear on this point : an importance which 
 is increased by a fact which I may state now, but of 
 which I must defer the proof, namely, that the indii'ect 
 influence of these institutions and social relations on the 
 power of national labor, is mainly felt in a branch of 
 the labors of mankind, the fertility or sterility of which 
 affects in a peculiar manner, and fi'om a peculiar cause, 
 the general wealth of nations. 
 
 The progress of mankind in appropriating fresh sources 
 of motive force, is more marked at each stage of its 
 advance, but is less continuous and varied, than that 
 of contrivances to use more advantageously motive forces 
 already known. 
 
 The extra-human forces hitherto ordinarily employed 
 in producing wealth are those of animals, water, wind, 
 and steam. The use of animal force is familiar to almost 
 all agricultural communities, however rude.' The very 
 different force, however, of the animals emj)loyed by 
 different nations, is an important circumstance in deter- 
 mining the general motive forces of their populations ; 
 we shall have hereafter to revert to this. 
 
 The use of the force of streams of running water be- 
 came known in Europe only in the age immediately 
 preceding our era. "We are in the dark as to its appear- 
 ance in the East. The power of the winds, except for 
 the single purpose of navigation, was approjDriated much 
 later, and wind-mills appear to have been unknown till 
 the tenth or eleventh centuries. We cannot fix on the 
 
 ^ Some African nations are supposed to carry on their agriculture by human 
 labor alone.
 
 356 MECHANICAL POWER, [lect. i. 
 
 people to whom the credit of their invention is due. 
 The earliest date recorded by Beckmann was French, 
 and is found in a record of 1005. Beckmann, how- 
 ever, faintly claims the invention for Germany, on the 
 sole ground of the superior mechanical genius of his 
 countrymen ; a ground which T\dll probably appear less 
 plausible beyond the frontiers of Germany than it did 
 within them. On the whole, I am disposed to believe 
 the invention belongs to the Netherlands, and that wind- 
 mills were first used there for drainage. A curious fact, 
 accidentally recorded, marks their gradual spread in 
 those countries. In the fourteenth century the power 
 and good things of this world were still nearly divided 
 between the feudal nobility and the chm-ch ; about 1391 
 it seems that some Dutch monks wished to erect a 
 wind-mill. The feudal control of the great landowners 
 over the motive powers of water had long been esta- 
 blished, and they viewed the new rival jealously and 
 greedily. When the lord of Woerst, therefore, heard 
 of the intention of the monks to erect a wind-mill within 
 the limits to which his superiority extended, he forbade 
 them to proceed with their project, and declared that 
 all the wind in that district belonged to him. The poor 
 monks applied for protection to their spiritual chief, the 
 Bishop of Utrecht ; and the prelate replied in a violent 
 passion (says the Chronicle), that no one had power over 
 the wind within his diocese but himself and the church 
 at Utrecht. The crozier appears, as was not unusually the 
 case, to have prevailed against the sword, and the brother- 
 hood were allowed to erect a wind-mill where they pleased : 
 tliat is, however, under the Bishop's letters patent.
 
 LECT. i] AS AFFECTING THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. 357 
 
 Considerable intervals then separated the discoveries 
 of the means of using the motive forces of running water 
 and of wind. Another long interval elapsed before the 
 next in order was appropriated, steam ; the general use 
 of this, the present generation may be said to have seen 
 established. To wealthy nations it is obviously more 
 valuable than all the others, more powerful, more man- 
 ageable, more independent of localities ; already in Great 
 Britain it is estimated to assist the industry of the 
 country by a motive force equal to that of many millions 
 of men. 
 
 Attempts have been made to use other forces for like 
 purposes. The pressure of air into a vacuum, the ex- 
 plosive force of gunpowder, the action of the electric 
 fluid, have been partially so handled, as to show that 
 for certain purposes they may be made to give motion 
 to machinery, and so may be used in production. 
 
 For the present, however, steam stands unrivalled; 
 but in the present state of human knowledge, discovery 
 follows discovery with a rapidity which mocks the slow 
 advances of other ages ; and it is not merely possible, 
 but seems reasonably probable, that we are at the 
 thi-eshold of inventions, which will arm the human race 
 with forces more varied and greater than those which 
 it at present wields.
 
 358 THREE CAUSES DETERMINE [lect. n. 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 ON CAPITAL. 
 
 Let us look back on the general propositions we have 
 already arrived at, on the subject of the production of 
 wealth. 
 
 We have seen that the productive power of nations 
 depends partly on the fertility or barrenness of the 
 original sources of their wealth ; partly on the efficiency 
 of their labor. That the relative efficiency of their labor 
 is ordinarily, in practice, the predominant cause which 
 determines their relative wealth, in spite of any differ- 
 ences in the fertility of the sources of wealth at their 
 command. 
 
 That the efficiency of labor is determined by three 
 causes. 
 
 1st. — By its continuity ; 2ndly, by the skill and 
 knowledge with which it is applied ; and, 3rdly, by its 
 mechanical power ; and that the power exerted by man 
 in producing wealth depends partly on the motive forces 
 he can command ; partly on the mechanical advantages 
 with which he applies motive forces, of all descriptions, 
 to the task of production. 
 
 I shall endeavour in this lecture to exhibit the means 
 by which a community would gradually assume the
 
 LECT. II.] THE EFFICIENCY OF LABOR. 359 
 
 form of a perfect producing machinej or rather by which 
 it must gradually approach that form, because it is little 
 likely that any community will ever actually attain it. 
 I give this preliminary sketch, because, as I have al- 
 ready intimated, it will afford us constant means of com- 
 parison and estimate when we are observing the actual 
 jjosition and productive powers of the groups of nations 
 which will soon pass in review before us. 
 
 Let us remember then, that the efficiency of national 
 labor, abstracting it altogetlier from differences in the 
 sources of wealth, depends on its continuity ; on the 
 knowledge and skill with which it is applied to effect 
 the purposes of the producer; and on the power by 
 which it is aided, that is, on the amount of motive forces 
 it can command, combined with the degree of mechanical 
 advantage with which it can apply those forces. 
 
 DEFINITION OF CAPITAL. 
 
 Now there is a particular portion of wealth, by the 
 appropriation of which to the purposes of production, 
 all these effects are accomplished ; that is, by its use, 
 labor is made more continuous ; a class of agents is 
 created, by whom additional knowledge and skill are 
 brought to bear on its application ; and the two elements 
 of mechanical power, additional motive forces, and the 
 means of apj)lying them with the greatest mechanical 
 advantage, are both of them provided and multiplied. 
 
 That particular portion of wealth is called capital; 
 defined by Mr. Malthus, to be " That portion of the stock
 
 360 FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. [lect. ii. 
 
 of a country which is kept or employed, with a view to 
 profit, in the production or distribution of wealth." He 
 had previously defined stock, " Accumulated wealth, 
 either reserved by the consumer for his consumption, 
 or employed Avith a view to profit." 
 
 We shall find this portion of the wealth of nations 
 advancing the contimdtfj , and sJcill^ of their labor con- 
 stantly, though we can hardly say necessarily and 
 inevitably ; because we can conceive that, with the 
 material world and man, constituted as they are, the 
 greatest degree of continuity of human labor, and its 
 most skilful application, might be secured by other 
 means, although observation will show us that it is by 
 the means of capital that they have hitherto attained 
 comparative perfection ; and reflection may convince us 
 that the future will follow the past in this respect. 
 
 It is somewhat difi'erent with the next great element 
 of the efficiency of human labor, mechanical fower ; for 
 while the constitution of the material world and the 
 physical nature of man remain what they are, we can- 
 not even conceive that great cause of the eflBciency of 
 labor to be created in any other manner than by capital. 
 It must necessarily be by such an accumulation that the 
 means of appropriating extra-human forces to production 
 are provided, and also the means of employing either 
 such extra-human forces, or the force of human laborers, 
 with the greatest mechanical advantage. 
 
 It may occur to you, perhaps, that if all the causes 
 which increase the efficiency of human labor are com- 
 prised in, and are nearly identical with, the use of in- 
 creasing masses of capital in production, tlien our inquiry
 
 I.ECT. II.] CAUSES OF ACCUMULATION. 361 
 
 into tlie political economy of nations, as far as their pro- 
 duction of wealth is concerned, becomes a very simple 
 affair, because we have only to remark the causes which 
 limit, or determine, the relative amounts of capital they 
 respectively acquire or use. 
 
 Now it is quite true that the relative efficiency of the 
 labor of different nations is mainly effected by the very 
 different amounts of capital which they respectively em- 
 ploy in production : but it by no means follows that this 
 fact makes the task of tracing the progress of their 
 relative productive powers a simple one. 
 
 We shall find that powers and facilities to accumulate 
 varying quantities of capital to be employed in increas- 
 ing the fertility of industry, often depend very much 
 on institutions springing u^ in the infancy of societies, 
 and affecting, during the whole of their observable 
 career, the distribution of their wealth, and all the 
 relations and means of the productive classes. The 
 tracing back to such institutions the derivative arrange- 
 ments and capacities of the population in varied groups 
 of nations, is a task we may hope to accomplish, but 
 which cannot, from its nature, be either very simple or 
 very easy. 
 
 That we may facilitate it the more, however, we will 
 proceed to give a general sketch of the causes which 
 determine, 
 
 1st. — The power of countries to accumulate capital. 
 
 2ndly. — Their inclination and habits in using that 
 power. 
 
 Srdly. — Their capacity to employ, successively, such 
 fresh masses of capital as increase its bulk relatively to
 
 362 THE SOURCES OF CAriTAL. [lect. n. 
 
 the numbers of the population by which those fresh 
 masses are to be used. 
 
 THE SOURCES OF CAriTAL. 
 
 Capital, as we have already seen, consists of wealth 
 saved from revenue, and used with a view to profit. 
 
 The possible sources of capital, therefore, are obviously 
 all the revenues of all the individuals composing a com- 
 munity, from which revenues it is possible that any 
 saving can be made. 
 
 The particular classes of income which yield the most 
 abundantly to the progress of national capital, change at 
 different stages of their progress, and are therefore found 
 entirely different in nations occupying different positions 
 in that progress. We shall observe this more at large 
 presently. In the meantime, there is no nation at any 
 stage of its economical progress, in which the revenues 
 of every grade and class of its population, may not, and 
 do not, yield something to the progress of the general 
 mass of capital. 
 
 For the purpose of observing these revenues in the 
 hands of those who actually contribute to the growing 
 capital of countries, we must obviously trace them into 
 the varied hands of all those who would consume them, 
 if they did not save them. It is upon the general balance 
 of their revenues and their consumption that the growth 
 of capital depends. Political economists, indeed, ordinarily 
 treat of the wealth of all nations as primarily divided 
 into the rent of lands, wages, and profits ; and for most 
 of the purposes of analysis, this division is sufficiently
 
 LECT. II.] WAGES, A SOURCE. 363 
 
 correct and minute. For our actual purpose, however, 
 we must recollect that the accumulators of capital consist 
 not only of those who are the immediate recipients of 
 rent, wages, and profits, but of a numerous body of 
 persons, among whom the rents, the wages, and profits 
 of a country arc divided, as national and private credi- 
 tors, mortgagees, annuitants, and others; who, although 
 the revenues they consume are unquestionably originally 
 derived from rents, from wages, or from profits, yet 
 present a distinct body of consumers, whose peculiar 
 influence on the progress of capital, in some stages of 
 society, must by no means be neglected. 
 
 We will begin, however, with the great primary divi- 
 sions of national wealth, as direct sources of accumulated 
 capital, and speak of derivative incomes afterwards. 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 To commence with wages. This is evidently the first 
 source. Man must labor before any wealth can be ap- 
 propriated or produced ; and from the results of his un- 
 assisted labor the first savings must have been made. 
 
 We may pass, however, from the earliest and rudest 
 to the most advanced and productive stages of economical 
 organization. In our own country, the savings from 
 wages are considerable. The savings from the wages of 
 manual labor are not, ns we shall presently see, con- 
 temptible ; but these are not all. Wages, in the lan- 
 guage of political economy, comprise the rewards of all 
 mere personal exertion, of all skilled, as well as unskilled 
 labor, the fe(^s and incomes of all professional men, of
 
 364 
 
 SAVINGS OF LABORERS [lect. ii. 
 
 artists, clerks, and of the higher classes of mechanics. 
 That portion of the incomes of all tradesmen which does 
 not consist of profits mnst be included too under the 
 head of wages. 
 
 To take the class of manual laborers : — In May, 1842, 
 the Savings' Banks of England had deposited twenty-four 
 millions and a half of money (£24,571,084) in public 
 securities, Of this a very great part, there can be no 
 doubt, was accumulated from the wages of bodily labor.' 
 
 If the twenty-four millions be the result of seven years' 
 accumulations, there would have been an annual deposit 
 of about three millions and a half. But the Savings' 
 Banks do not contain all, nor, as I suspect, quite half, 
 the accumulations of the laboring classes, as distinct 
 from professional laborers. If we take the accumula- 
 tions of all ranks of manual laborers at four millions a 
 year we shall not probably exceed the truth. To make 
 
 1 The following classificatiou of depositors in the Savings' Bank at Manchester 
 
 wall give some notion of the proportion : — 
 
 Amount of 
 
 Classification of Depositors. Number. Deposits. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 Domestic servants (nearly 7 in 8 females) 3,063 80,009 5 10 
 
 Clerks, shopmen, warehousemen, and porters 1,511 41,336 14 4 
 
 Minors....:. 3,033 45,153 12 2 
 
 Milliners, dressmakers, and needlewomen 430 11,139 9 8 
 
 Shoemakers, tailors, and hatters _. 309 8,685 9 1 
 
 Cotton spinners, weavers, and their assistants 911 25,531 16 10 
 
 Silk spinners, weavers, and their assistants 131 3,530 
 
 Calico printers, bleachers, dyers, packers 412 13,096 14 7 
 
 Engravers and pattern designers 195 5,346 3 6 
 
 Mechanics and handicraftsmen 816 23,759 14 3 
 
 Bookbinders and letter-press printers 73 1,507 12 
 
 Masons, bricklayers, and their laborers 390 10,497 13 7 
 
 Joiners, coachmakers, and cabinetmakers 473 15,391 18 8 
 
 Cab and omnibus drivers, mail guards, etc 41 1,588 19 2 
 
 Policemen, soldiers, and pensioners 94 2,654 4 3 
 
 rrofcssionalteachcrs and artists 323 10,312 16 6 
 
 Tradesmen and small shopkeepers 538 20,072 2 2 
 
 Farmers, gardeners, and their laborers 350 13,819 9 11 
 
 Descriptions not specified 1,844 65,306 10 9 
 
 14,937 £398,740 13 3
 
 LKCT. II.] IN ENGLAND. 365 
 
 up the whole accumulation from wages, however, we 
 must add to these the savings of all the professional 
 classes and skilled laborers* in the country, that is, of 
 those particular classes which, there can be little doubt, 
 lay by the largest proportion of their precarious incomes. 
 These annual savings may be estimated moderately at 
 another half million ; but to be quite safe, let us confine 
 ourselves to four millions. 
 
 Four millions a year in fifty years would amount to 
 two hundred millions, a sum which, if the population 
 double in that time, will be of itself nearly sufficient to 
 advance the wages of the additional number of families. 
 
 Wages are clearly, therefore, a source of accumulation 
 which is not to be neglected when we are calculating the 
 capacities of any nation to increase its capital. But the 
 savings from wages in England, where there are other 
 and much more copious sources of accumulation, are of 
 less comparative importance than savings from wages in 
 other countries we shall have to survey. We shall find 
 that, in many of those countries, the prospect of future 
 savings from wages presents the only chance we can 
 perceive of any efficient advance from theii' present very 
 imperfect powers of production. 
 
 RENTS. 
 
 The next source of savings, almost contemporaneous 
 with wages, is the rent of land. 
 
 We shall hereafter have occasion to examine the very 
 different circumstances which determine the amount of 
 the rent of land in different stages of the economical
 
 366 RENTS, A SOURCE OF CAPITAL, [lect. ii. 
 
 career of nations. We need not trouble ourselves with 
 any such investigations here. 
 
 Wien land has been appropriated and cultivated, such 
 land yields, in almost every case, to the labor employed 
 on it, more than is necessary to continue the kind of 
 cultivation already bestowed upon it. Whatever it pro- 
 duces beyond this, we will call its surplus produce. 
 Now this surplus produce is the source of primitive 
 rents, and limits the extent of such revenues, as can 
 be continuously derived from the land by its owners, as 
 distinct from its occupiers. 
 
 Over a considerable part of the globe these primitive 
 rents are one great source of the capital actually em- 
 ployed in agriculture : that is, of a mass of capital which, 
 however insufficient, still greatly exceeds in those coun- 
 tries, all which they employ in other occupations. 
 
 In Eussia, the capital employed on the domain lands 
 of the nobles, that is, on lands in their own occupation, 
 amounts to more than half the whole agricultural capital 
 employed on private estates in the empire. They supply, 
 too, a considerable portion of the capital used by their 
 serf-tenants. 
 
 In Western Europe, where a tenantry is found paying 
 produce-rents, their seed, their live stock, and imple- 
 ments, are provided by the landlord. There can be no 
 doubt that a great part of this capital has been provided 
 out of the rent of land, and that much of any future in- 
 crease, supposing the relations of landlord and tenant to 
 remain the same, must originate in the same source. 
 
 But even in the much more advanced state of econo- 
 mical organization in the midst of which we ourselves
 
 LECT. II.] WHICH IS RAPIDLY AUGMENTING. 367 
 
 live, the rent of land, though an unobtrusive, remains a 
 most important source of national accumulation. It is 
 estimated that half of the value of the lands of England 
 has been bestowed upon them by what are commonly- 
 called landlords' improvements, such as ditches, fences, 
 drains, gates, buildings, and the like. 
 
 The value of the lands of Great Britain probably some- 
 what exceeds just now one thousand millions. Here, 
 then, is a capital of five hundred millions mainly derived 
 fi'om the rent of land ; and this capital is at the present 
 moment in a very rapid state of augmentation from the 
 same source. 
 
 At no period in the history of the nation were more 
 vigorous efforts made, than those now making by the 
 landed body to do all that science and wealth can do, to 
 make permanent improvements on their estates, and to 
 meet the difficulties with which the agriculture of the 
 country has to struggle. 
 
 Some very peculiar results follow from the progress of 
 that portion of the national capital which is invested in 
 the improvement of the soil. These I shall have here- 
 after to explain to you. At present I merely point to 
 the fact, that accumulations from the rent of land are, in 
 all stages of the economical progress of nations, a very 
 important portion of their capital. 
 
 PROFITS. 
 
 We come now to profits. I need not warn you, after 
 what has just been said, against supposing them to be the 
 only sources from which capital is formed or increases.
 
 368 PROFITS, A SOURCE OF CAPITAL. [lect. ii. 
 
 But it is important you should remember that there is 
 a long stage in the progress of the productive powers 
 of nations : that stage, indeed, at some point of which 
 most of the nations of the earth are to be found, during 
 which the accumulations from profits necessarily bear a 
 small proportion to the accumulations from wages and 
 rents, simply because that proportion of the revenues of 
 the people which is derived from the profits of stock is 
 exceedingly small when compared with the revenues 
 derived from wages or from rent. We shall find a large 
 portion of the earth in which the national territories are 
 in the possession of a body of manual laborers who are 
 the occupiers of the soil, and who till it with such capital 
 as manual laborers can command, while what the soil 
 yields is divided between these laborers and different 
 descriptions of landowners ; while incomes from other 
 sources are rare and scanty. 
 
 In this position of society, as we shall more clearly 
 see hereafter, the proportion of the national revenue 
 derived from wages and rent is usually very consider- 
 able, and that derived from profits very small, because 
 the mass of national capital employed is small.' While 
 this state of things lasts, accumulations from the mass of 
 wages and rents must in almost every case enable the 
 productive powers of such nations to make the first start 
 in advance, and the obstacles which, in practice, prevent 
 such accumulations, and impede such a start, will form 
 an important point of our subsequent enquiries. 
 
 ' Adam Smith saw tliis clearly enough, but he treated this state of things as 
 transitory. It has, hitherto, in tnith, been permanent over by far the greater part 
 of the globe.
 
 LECT. 11.] ERRORS WITH REFERENCE TO PROFITS. 369 
 
 But when a considerable advance in the powers of 
 national industry has actually taken place, profits rise 
 into comparative importance as a source of accumula- 
 tion ; and if the advance is very considerable, may 
 become the most important source — though the other 
 sources already dwelt upon never can become incon- 
 siderable — and, indeed, increase in positive abundance, 
 as the masses of capital and of profits become compara- 
 tively greater. 
 
 On profits, as a source of accumulation, I have one 
 other remark to make, to which popular errors on the 
 subject give some importance. The power of a nation 
 to accumulate capital from profits does not vary with 
 the rate of profit ; that is, it is not great when the 
 rate of profit is high, and small when the rate of profit 
 is low ; on the contrary, the power to accumulate capital 
 from profits, ordinarily varies inversely as the rate of 
 profit, that is, it is great where the rate of profit is 
 low, and small where the rate of profit is high.' A 
 slight inspection of the diff'erent nations around us, 
 must convince us of the fact, and with a little con- 
 sideration the cause is sufficiently obvious. 
 
 In England and Holland the rate of profit is lower 
 than in any other part of Europe ; omitting Holland, 
 England is notoriously accumulating capital fi'om her 
 profits faster, relatively to her population, than any 
 
 1 Many errors, as to the effects of a fall in the rate of profits on accumulation, on 
 the means of employing labor, and on the progress of population, would have been 
 avoided, had later writers attended carefully to the writings of a master whom they 
 all profess to respect. (Sec Wealth of Nations, Book ii. c. 3.) " Though that part 
 of the revenue of the inhabitants which is derived from the profits of stock is always 
 much greater in rich, than in poor, countries, it is because the stock is much greater ; 
 in proportion to the stock, the profits are generally much less." 
 
 24
 
 370 NATIONAL WEALTH INCREASES WITH A [lect. ii. 
 
 other country in the old world, and more especially 
 faster than those backward countries in the east of 
 Europe, where the rate of profit on the small quan- 
 tities of capital they employ is the highest. 
 
 If we look back on the past history of England, we 
 shall find that during the period in which her wealth 
 and capital have been increasing the most rapidly, the 
 rate of profits has been gradually declining ; and if 
 any other nations are to proceed from their present 
 position to her's, it is, therefore, not merely possible, 
 but, judging from her example, probable, that their 
 increasing quantities of national capital will be accu- 
 mulated with a declining rate of profit. 
 
 Again, a little consideration will show the cause of 
 this fact. Let us assume any two nations to have equal 
 populations; the power of each nation to accumulate 
 capital from profits, would depend on the relative masses 
 of the profits produced by them, which again would 
 depend not alone on the rate of profit in each, but 
 on the rate of profit taken in combination with the 
 relative quantities of capital employed. 
 
 If, in paying and employing one million of French- 
 men, one hundred millions of capital are employed at 
 12 per cent, profit, and in paying and employing one 
 million of Englishmen, three hundred millions of capital 
 are employed at 10 per cent., then the mass of profits 
 would be, in France twelve millions, and thirty millions 
 in England. I believe the relative amount of English 
 capital to be greater than that here assumed, but the 
 assumption will answer the purpose of illustration. In 
 such a case, it is clear that the nation with the lower
 
 [lect. II. DECLINING RATE OF PROFITS. 371 
 
 rate of profit might accumulate very much more largely 
 than the nation with the higher. If France could save 
 four millions out of twelve, it is not impossible for Eng- 
 land to save twenty-two out of thirty. It is not at 
 all probable that the richer nation would save such a 
 proportion ; but it is both possible and highly probable, 
 that it would make fresh accumulations from its profits 
 very much faster than the poorer. 
 
 The increasing quantity of capital of the richer na- 
 tion would certainly be accompanied by a greatly in- 
 creased productive power in all branches of human 
 industry, and by a rise in the amount of wealth dis- 
 tributed as wages and rent ; but it is also usually 
 accompanied by a decrease in the rate of profits, or 
 a decrease in the proportion which the annual revenue 
 derived from the capital employed bears to its gross 
 amount. 
 
 The proof of these facts, and their bearing on the 
 distribution of wealth, I shall have to show you here- 
 after. I liave said enough at present to prove that 
 the notion that a declining rate of profits is neces- 
 sarily an indication of a diminishing power to accu- 
 mulate from profits, is a very obvious error. 
 
 If it be said that all other things being equal, the 
 rate of profits will determine the power of accumulat- 
 ing from profits, the answer is, that the case, if prac- 
 tically possible, is too rare to deserve consideration. 
 We know, from observation, that a declining rate of 
 profits is the usual accompaniment of increasing diifer- 
 ences in the mass of capital employed by different 
 nations, and that, therefore, while the rate of profits
 
 372 DERIVATIVE INCOMES AS A [lf.ct. ii. 
 
 in the richer nation declines, all other things are not 
 equal. 
 
 If it be asserted that the decline of profits may be 
 great enough to make it impossible to accumulate from 
 profits at all, the answer then is, that it would be foolish 
 to argue on the assumption of such a decline, because 
 long before the rate of profits had reached such a point, 
 capital would go abroad to realize greater profits else- 
 where, and the power of exporting will always establish 
 some limit, below which profits will never fall in any 
 one coimtry, while there are others in which the rate 
 of profits is greater. We will discuss that limit here- 
 after. 
 
 DERIVATIVE INCOMES AS A SOURCE OF ACCUMULATION. 
 
 In speaking of the sources of accumulation, we have 
 hitherto dwelt exclusively on the three great primary 
 divisions among which all the wealth produced by na- 
 tions is in the first instance divided. We must not 
 forget that an estimate of the accumulations of the 
 owners of these will not comprehend all the incomes 
 from which additions are actually made to the capital 
 of nations. In modern times we have seen a revenue 
 of between thirty and forty millions enjoyed by the 
 owners of national debt. Now the disposition of such 
 a class to accumulate, difi'ers somewhat from that of 
 the owners of wages, profits, and rent ; and an allow- 
 ance must be made for the effects of the creation of 
 such a revenue, and tlie habits of its owners, before 
 we can see all the causes which determine the annual
 
 LECT. II.] SOURCE OF ACCUMULATION. 373 
 
 accumulations of England. In surveying, hereafter, the 
 progress of some of the more prominent and interest- 
 ing among the nations of antiquity, we shall find very 
 important additions made to the national capital out 
 of a public revenue derived from mixed sources : addi- 
 tions which assuredly would not have been made in 
 the same form if that revenue had remained in the 
 pockets of the people. On the peculiarities of such 
 derivative revenues, and on their favorable or unfavor- 
 able influence on the progress of national capital, in- 
 dustry, or arts, I do not feel it necessary to dwell 
 now. These things will come in their place. One 
 broad, general principle will answer all our present 
 purpose. To estimate the power of nations to accu- 
 mulate capital from their various sources, we must 
 trace those revenues into the hands of the persons, 
 be they who they may, who have ultimately the power 
 of saving or of consuming them. No income must 
 be omitted, from the beggar's dole to the prince's 
 revenues ; for it is upon the joint power and will of 
 all classes of the community, without distinction, to 
 save something, that the growth of the national capital 
 is determined. 
 
 We have seen, then, that the powers of nations to 
 accumulate capital are limited by the joint amount of 
 rent, profits, and wages, however ultimately distributed ; 
 that these revenues at different stages of economical 
 progress contribute in their primary shape, in different 
 proportions to the annual accumulations of a country : 
 and that to trace the quantity saved in particular na- 
 tions, we must not rest satisfied with observing their
 
 374 CAUSES OF THE INCLINATION TO ACCUMULATE, [lect. ii. 
 
 revenues in the shape of rent, of profits, and of wages 
 alone, but must trace tliem to their ultimate distribu- 
 tion, and observe them in the hands of all the classes 
 or individuals with whom the choice rests at last, of 
 consuming or saving, any portion of them. 
 
 THE CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE THE INCLINATION TO 
 ACCUxMULATE. 
 
 The joint amount of all the revenues of two different 
 populations, which we will suppose of equal size, being 
 for our present purpose assumed to be equal, they may 
 still accumulate capital at very different rates. We 
 will endeavor to get a view of some of the causes of 
 such differences. We may arrange them under five 
 heads : — 
 
 1st. — Differences of temperament and disposition in 
 the people. 
 
 2ndly. — Differences in the proportions in which the 
 national revenues are divided among the different classes 
 of the population. 
 
 3rdly. — Different degrees of security for the safe 
 enjoyment of the capital saved. 
 
 4thly. — Different degrees of facility in investing pro- 
 fitably, as well as safely, successive savings. 
 
 5thly. — Differences in the opportunities offered to the 
 different ranks of the population to better their position 
 by means of savings.
 
 LECT. 11.] NATIONAL TEMPERAMENT AS A CAUSE. 375 
 
 DIFFERENCES OF TEMPERAMENT AND DISPOSmON IN 
 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 I shall not dwell much on this, because I doubt if 
 it has much practical influence ; still it will perhaps 
 generally be thought to have some. If we take com- 
 munities consisting, some of Dutchmen or Jews, others 
 of Irishmen, Welchmen, or Frenchmen, it may be 
 imagined that some of those communities would, from 
 differences of moral constitution and character alone, 
 accumulate out of equal revenues, at very different rates. 
 To abstain from present consumption, with a view to 
 future advantage, requires obviously some degree of 
 prudence, of foresight, and some power of self-denial, 
 and with these moral qualities, it may be said, different 
 nations are, from physical constitution, very differently 
 endowed. But bodies of men are, in truth, much more 
 the creatures of the circumstances in which they are 
 placed, than, at first sight, they may seem to be : and 
 if, in all other respects, the communities of the various 
 nations I have mentioned were placed in the same posi- 
 tion, I doubt much if their accumulations would indicate 
 any powerful influence of differences in moral or phy- 
 sical constitution. At all events, such differences, if 
 they exist, cannot be accurately appreciated till we can 
 observe the different populations under precisely the 
 same circumstances ; and this cause, if cause it is, of 
 differences in the rate of accumulation, need not be 
 dwelt on.
 
 376 EUL'AL AMUL'MTS OF NATIONAL REVENUES [lect. ii. 
 
 DIFFERENCES IN THE PROPOllTIONS IN WHICH THE 
 NA'J'IONAL KEVENUES ARE DIVIDED AMONG THE 
 DIFFERENT CLASSES OF THE rOl'ULATION. 
 
 All annual amount of national revenue being given, 
 it may, 
 
 First, be distributed scantily or plentifully ; that is, 
 it may constitute revenues easy, or the reverse, among 
 the classes who have to consume it. 
 
 Or, secondly, in two different countries it may be 
 so distributed that different classes of society have the 
 power of consuming or saving. 
 
 Where the revenue of each individual is extremely 
 scant}', there is obviously less power of accumulating 
 than where revenues of the same amount are distributed 
 among a smaller number of persons. £100,000 dis- 
 tributed as wages in England is likely to lead to accu- 
 mulation, which the same sum distributed in Ireland, 
 at Irish rates of wages, could not lead to. The same 
 holds true as to rents, profits, and also as to every 
 species of derivative revenue. We need not dwell on 
 the general proposition, that where the revenues of indi- 
 viduals are, for their station, plentiful, there ^vill ordi- 
 narily be a greater accumulation than when an equal 
 amount of wealth is distributed in more numerous and 
 scantier revenues. 
 
 That there should be any saving at all, the revenues 
 of individuals must, on the average, be rather more 
 than is sufficient to maintain them in their position 
 in society ; that there should be any considerable saving.
 
 LECT. a] MAY BE DIFFERENTLY DISTRIBUTED. 377 
 
 the revenues of individiuils must considerably exceed 
 that point. 
 
 But equal amounts of revenue are distributed in dif- 
 ferent countries, not only in different proportions, but 
 among different classes of society, different descriptions 
 of consumers, and this makes a very considerable dif- 
 ference in their tendency to accumulate. 
 
 In the early stages of the progress of every agricul- 
 tural people, we see the annual products of the industry 
 of the nations divided almost exclusively between, 1st, 
 occupiers of the ground who are manual laborers ; 2ndly, 
 the owners of the soil ; and, ordly, a body of dependents 
 on these last, who are also laborers. While this dis- 
 tribution takes place, the progress of accumulation is 
 slow, and after a time, the mass of capital employed 
 is apt to be stationary : the incomes of the two laboring 
 classes are scanty, and that, as we have seen, is a suffi- 
 cient reason why accumulation from their resources is 
 difficult. The third class, the landholders, are driven 
 by necessity to some accumulation from their rents, for 
 otherwise cultivation could not be carried on, and their 
 own annual revenues sustained ; and such an accumu- 
 lation, on their parts, forms ordinarily a most important 
 portion of the capital of such nations ; but when the 
 accumulations of the landholders have reached the point 
 necessary to maintain cultivation in its actual condition, 
 their habits, as a body, are adverse to the carrying 
 saving further. 
 
 To the distribution, therefore, of the greater propor- 
 tion of the produce of the national industry among 
 laborers, occupiers, landowners, and their dependents,
 
 378 CAUSES WHICH IMPEDE ACCUMULATION. [lect. ii. 
 
 we may trace the stationary condition of the capital, 
 and, consequently, the stationary condition of the power 
 and fertility of national industry among many of the 
 people and communities of the eastern and western 
 divisions of the old world. 
 
 It is, and ever has been, a cause of very wide in- 
 fluence, instances of which will hereafter come in abun- 
 dance before us. 
 
 DIFFERENT DEGREES OF SECURITY FOR THE ENJOY- 
 MENT OF ACCUMULATIONS. 
 
 It is obvious that bodies of individuals will only exert 
 themselves to save what they have no reasonable ground 
 to fear will be taken from them : and open rapine and 
 violence, whether proceeding from bad government or 
 a badly organised condition of society, is an impedi- 
 ment to the accumulation of capital, which needs no 
 illustration. 
 
 "We must remember, however, that this kind of in- 
 security exists long in the career of many nations, and 
 is the cause of stationary productive powers over a 
 considerable proportion of the earth's siu'face. 
 
 But open violence is not the only soiu'ce of want of 
 security for the enjoyment of saved wealth. Bad sys- 
 tems of taxation may produce the same effects ; and 
 that sometimes the longer and the more mischievously, 
 because the governments which adhere to them, and 
 the people who suffer from them, have no very clear 
 apprehension of their injustice, or their influence, on
 
 LECT. II.] THE FEUDAL SYSTEM IN ENGLAND. 379 
 
 the productive powers of the nation. We may take 
 France before the Eevolution as presenting an instance 
 of this : similar instances on a smaller scale might be 
 selected in abundance from the rest of Europe. 
 
 The population of France before the Eevolution con- 
 sisted of twenty-five millions of people. Of these, 
 twenty millions derived their revenues from the land. 
 It is obvious enough that the national accumulation very 
 much depended on the habits and powers of this very 
 large proportion of the population ; although, from vari- 
 ous delusions which we shall have to exhibit hereafter, 
 the importance of this fact seems to have been imper- 
 fectly appreciated by the government, and indeed, when 
 philosophy at length took the subject in hand, by the 
 philosophers of that country. 
 
 When the feudal system was the common law of 
 Europe, persons who held land by military service were 
 not liable to be taxed without their own consent, be- 
 cause certain recognised dues or services, called the 
 feudal incidents or money commutations for those in- 
 cidents, limited the liabilities of these military land- 
 holders, except in cases where they expressly consented 
 to give more to their immediate superior, or to the 
 crown. All other classes were liable to be what was 
 called tallaged, which substantially meant taxed, accord- 
 ing to their ability, such ability being estimated by the 
 imposer of the tax, whether the king, or some immediate 
 local superior. 
 
 It was thus that the inhabitants of the royal boroughs 
 in England, including London, w^ere taxed at the plea- 
 sure of the early Norman kings of England, while their
 
 380 TUE TAILLE IN FRANCE. [lect. ii. 
 
 nobles taxed in a like manner the inhabitants of towns 
 in their domains. In this country that power was soon 
 extinguished. But it is with France we have now to 
 do. This tax, there called the taille, is traced by- 
 French inquirers to the Eoman province, and the reign 
 of Augustus. The authentic history of the French 
 finances shows that, as early as 1444, it had become 
 the principal resource of the French treasury, and it 
 remained so up to the Eevolution, the progress of which 
 it beyond all doubt stimulated. 
 
 The persons, and sometimes the property, of the 
 French nobles, were exempt from direct taxation ; the 
 main bui'then of the taille fell upon the occupiers of 
 the land; upon a great ^ majority of them in exact pro- 
 portion to their visible means. Their savings, if seen in 
 their effects, were insecure, because they were made 
 the ground of fresh exactions.^ Plentiful manui'es, good 
 cattle and implements, even decent clothes, only brought 
 down calamity on the presumptuous possessors : and 
 there are ludicrous stones told, however, by grave people 
 on grave occasions, of a separation into ragged and 
 decently clad occupiers of the same qualities of land, 
 the line of demarcation between which two bodies accu- 
 rately followed the boundary lines of two fiscal divisions, 
 in one of which, round a town, the taille had been com- 
 
 1 By persevering pretensions and frauds, the noble and official classes were con- 
 stantly extending exemptions for themselves and tenants extremely unreasonable, and 
 proportionably burdensome to the poor occupiers who did pay ; and this to an extent 
 whi('h nothing but some familiarity with the French official publications could make 
 for one moment credible. The crown was as constantly and angrily struggling against 
 these frauds and pretensions, but still feebly ; since it had no rational or just prin- 
 ci])l('s on the subject to assert. (See Memoires concernant les Impositions, Tom. ii., 
 20, 6G, and passim.) 
 
 - Detail dc In Fra)icc, Tom. i., p. 3o. Sec also Liaite Royal do Vauban, 25.
 
 LECT. 11.] FACILITIES FOR THE INVESTMENT OF SAVINGS. 381 
 
 imited for taxes on consumption, and in the other of 
 which it was collected in the usual way, according to 
 the visible means of the payers. 
 
 The effect on national accumulation, of the discourage- 
 ment to saving caused by the entire insecurity of the 
 growing property of such a very large proportion of the 
 population, is sufficiently obvious. I give it here only 
 as one instance to shew that ill-devised schemes of taxa- 
 tion, even among highly civilised people, where no spirit 
 of injustice, of which the government is conscious, pre- 
 vails, may exert a powerful and most deleterious effect 
 on the progress of national accumulations. Other in- 
 stances occur, in too great plenty, in the past history 
 and present polity of other nations, which we may have 
 to touch on when we arrive at the subject of taxation. 
 
 DIFFERENT FACILITIES FOR THE INVESTMENT OF 
 SAVINGS. 
 
 Supposing the safety of every man's accumulations 
 secured from open violence or fiscal wrong, different 
 countries we shall find differing much in the facilities 
 they offer for the investment of such savings. 
 
 In England, every poor man who saves 55. has a 
 savings' bank to resort to. Every one in a somewhat 
 higher class has the public funds to resort to, or he can 
 buy a railway share, or enter a trade ; there is no sum, 
 small or great, for which an immediate investment is not 
 to be found. This is not the case in other countries : 
 such facilities arise only in advanced stages of the growth
 
 382 
 
 INFLUENCE <»F THESE FACILITIES. [lf.ct. it. 
 
 of the national capital, which growth, in this as in other 
 cases, stimulates its o^\^l farther progress, and makes the 
 last steps of that progress far more easy than the first. 
 
 It is obvious that, among a poor people, where the 
 national revenues are scanty, and divided principally 
 between the owners of land and laboring occupiers, the 
 numerous and varied investments of a richer country 
 cannot exist. The creation of savings' banks and their 
 success is the fact which, perhaps, best evidences the 
 influence of such facilities in stimulating accumulation. 
 This applies, however, only to the savings of the inferior 
 classes. There can be no doubt that the influence of the 
 same cause is felt through all the superior classes of a 
 nation, and that all other things being equal, mere dif- 
 ferences in the facility of investing savings promptly, 
 safely, and profitably, would create very appreciable 
 difl'erences in the amount accumulated in a given time : 
 but this stimulant acts with its greatest force when taken 
 in combination with the next. 
 
 THE INFLUElJfCE OF FACILITIES FOR IMPROVING THE 
 SOCIAL POSITION OF THE ACCUMULATORS. 
 
 When there is perfect security for the enjoyment of 
 accumulations ; when there are great facilities for in- 
 vesting them ; and when obvious means present them- 
 selves of making such accumulations the means of 
 advancing the social position of the saving parties, 
 then all the circumstances are combined, which impart 
 tlie will and desire to save, through all ranks of a
 
 LECT. II.] OTHER OBSTACLES TO ACCUMULATION. 383 
 
 population. It might seem, at first sight, that the mere 
 enjoyment of the income which invested capital gives 
 would be a sufficient stimulus of the kind we are now 
 enumerating ; but although it may be difficult to con- 
 ceive such secure enjoyment in a country where the 
 social position of the accumulators would not be ad- 
 vanced by it, it is not the less true that, in the actual 
 progress of nations, obstacles to any change in the 
 position of large masses of the people are practical and 
 very efficient obstacles to the spread of the spirit of 
 accumulation. 
 
 In Europe, those obstacles may be divided into three 
 classes : Distinctions of blood and race ; Paucity of non- 
 agricultural occupations ; Vicious legislation and regula- 
 tions as to the privilege of carrying on those occupations. 
 
 For a long period all the liberal professions, except the 
 Church, were closed, throughout almost the whole of 
 Europe, to the great body of its people, because they were 
 not noble : a distinction which was grounded usually on 
 original differences of race ; but which, however grounded, 
 existed generally. We may observe, in England, the 
 efforts made by the mercantile and trading classes to 
 educate and to support their children in professions 
 which they truly regard, only as steps to the farther 
 and permanent elevation of their families. Savings and 
 accumulations consequent on success are the means by 
 which such efforts are made efficient for their object ; 
 and we may form some notion of the heavy discourage- 
 ment which would slacken the accumulation of capital, 
 if this power of upward progress were wholly with- 
 drawn.
 
 384 PAUCITY OF NON-AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT [lect. ii. 
 
 The paucity of non-agricultural employment is another 
 cause which, over large regions of the earth, makes it 
 difficult for the mass of the population to change their 
 social position. 
 
 In France, before the Eevolution, it has been already 
 stated, that out of twenty-five millions of people, twenty 
 millions were connected with the land ; non-agricultural 
 occupations absorbed only one-fifth of the population. 
 There is great reason to believe that, over the greater 
 part of continental Europe, the non-agriculturists bore 
 even a less proportion than this to the agriculturists. 
 The field open to the families of the twenty millions 
 was a small one, and it was narrowed yet more by an- 
 other cause which tended to keep the mass in their 
 position, which other cause we are next to notice. 
 
 The body of artizans in the towns formed a consider- 
 able portion of the non-agricultural classes ; their families 
 increased as the agriculturists themselves were increas- 
 ing. The objects of these artizans very naturally was to 
 secure employments similar to their own for their chil- 
 dren. From various causes, political and fiscal, the 
 French and other governments had given considerable 
 powers of self-regulation to the guilds or companies 
 which were composed of these artizans, and all the 
 authority and influence of such guilds and companies 
 Avere used and abused, in order to limit, to the smallest 
 possible extent, accessions to their numbers. 
 
 The number of apprentices was limited : difficult and 
 absurd conditions were to be fulfilled before those ap- 
 prentices could be metamorphosed into independent 
 workmen : for the detail and the results of this system
 
 LECT. 11.] AND TllADP: KESTRICTIONS, ARE OBSTACLES. ;i85 
 
 ill England I refer you to Adam Smith.' There are two 
 remarkable instances which will throw a light on the 
 general effects of them on the Continent, sufficient for 
 our i^resent purpose. 
 
 A body of writers in France, " the Economists," esta- 
 blished a periodical magazine, called Les Ephemerides 
 du Citoijen^ which forms, when collected, an extensive 
 and very scarce work, exhibiting a curious picture of 
 the opinions and practices of that day. It was, at that 
 time, dangerous to attack either the institutions or 
 administration of the monarchy ; and when wishing to 
 expose the abuses of these French companies of handi- 
 craftsmen, a writer of the Ephhn'crides^' figuring France 
 and Paris under the names of Cochin-China and its 
 capital, gives an account of the adventures of a peasant 
 who had journeyed to the great city with his son Naru, 
 and his daughter Dinka, hoping to establish them there 
 in some honest calling. He applied to a tailor, baker, 
 pastrycook, shoemaker, but he found obstacles in the 
 laws of each company, and he found those laws protected 
 everywhere by inquests, officers, regulations, and tri- 
 bunals. After plodding the round of all the workshops 
 in the town, and finding them closed, he listened with 
 dismay to the discussions and decisions of the legal 
 tribunals. These he heard decide solemnly that to 
 make a whip legally, seven privileged classes of artizans 
 must concur, and that none of them must dare usurp 
 the handling of that portion of the whip which belonged 
 exclusively to another : while the seller of the whip 
 must do nothing at all, but be a dealer, and a dealer 
 
 " Cap. 10.. Tart II. - Sec Eptuhiuh-idcs fur 1769. Tom. I., Part II. 
 
 •25
 
 386 INFLUENCE OF TRADE GUILDS. [i.kct. ii. 
 
 only. Hopeless as to his son, whom he found rejected 
 everywhere, and threatened with savage penalties if he 
 intruded, he had better hopes for his daughter. He 
 finds, however, that she can be neither a milliner, nor 
 embroidress, nor a painter of fans, nor a weaver of rib- 
 bons, nor a maker of artificial flowers, nor a seller of 
 natural flowers, in the streets, for these are all privileged 
 and protected occupations. About to return home in 
 despair, an old crone ofi^ers to take his pretty daughter 
 to carry a cake basket for her, and promises, if she serve 
 her well, to procure her, when she grows older, a licence 
 (a privilege as it was called) to sell cakes on her own 
 account. The same accommodating friend procures a 
 footman's place for the son, and the honest peasant 
 returns home, leaving both his children to be very 
 quickly corrupted and ruined. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this is an unexaggerated 
 account of the state of the non-agricultural industry in 
 France immediately before the Eevolution. The picture 
 might, indeed, be somewhat darkened without injuring 
 its truth. 
 
 The other incident I alluded to, as throwing light on 
 obstacles opposed to improvements in the social position 
 of the mass of the people, comes from a remoter part of 
 Europe, and is nearer to our own time. When Dr. 
 Bright, known to many of us as an eminent physician, 
 was travelling as a j'^oung man in Hungary, he chanced 
 to meet a party of gipsies, of whom one had a coat so 
 fantastically fine that the traveller was moved to enquire 
 whence it came, and how the wearer got it. It turned 
 out to be a chef-d'oeuvre, that is, one of those specimens
 
 LECT. ii.J GENERAL PREVALENCE OF THESE RESTRICTIONS. 387 
 
 of workmanship which companies of artizans throughout 
 Europe were in the habit of requiring from apprentices 
 before they were admitted to work on theii- own account. 
 This garment, when made according to the requirements 
 of the masters of the craft, had turned out too fine for 
 common use, and so had fallen into the hands of the 
 gipsy.' 
 
 ISTow Hungary at that moment, with a population of 
 eight millions, was estimated to contain only thirty 
 thousand artizans. The unhappy serfs, in order to 
 make the first steps towards improving their social 
 condition, had to find a place in this small body, which, 
 as we see, made admission as difiicult as possible by 
 regulations such as that which produced the curiously 
 wrought coat of the gipsy. 
 
 From one end of Europe, therefore, to the other, the 
 same spirit prevailed, and for centuries sensibly neu- 
 tralized the motives to parsimony and saving which 
 exist wherever an easy advance in social position offers 
 itself to every portion of the population. 
 
 We have seen, then, the leading causes which facili- 
 tate and stimulate habits of saving, and the accumula- 
 tion of capital. The possession of liberal revenues by 
 all classes according to their station constitutes the means 
 of accumulation. 
 
 The inclination to save is influenced to some possible, 
 though probably slight, extent, by the provident and 
 self-denying, or improvident and self-indulging, disposi- 
 tion in the people, and that independently of other cir- 
 cumstances. This allowed for, and the revenues of two 
 
 ' See Brighl's llioujnry.
 
 388 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF THE CAUSES [lf.ct. ii. 
 
 populations being assumed to be equal, then the rate of 
 accumulation in each will bo mainly influenced by 
 
 1st. — The degree of security enjoyed by each. 
 
 2ndly. — By a favourable or unfavourable distribution 
 of revenues, that is, by a distribution among classes more 
 or less disposed and able to save. 
 
 Then facilities of profitable investment. 
 
 Then facilities of effecting, through accumulation, ad- 
 vances in social position. 
 
 A knowledge of these facilities is, of course, the same 
 thing as a knowledge of the obstacles which impede ac- 
 cumulation. That is to say, 
 
 The revenues of large masses of the population too 
 scanty to allow of saving from them : or a distribution 
 of important revenues among classes little disposed to 
 accumulate. 
 
 Want of security. 
 
 Want of facilities of investment. 
 
 The absence of means of advancing in social position 
 through accumulation. 
 
 These are all of them obstacles that may appear of 
 transient importance to those who confine their observa- 
 tion to a state of society such as that we live in. Here 
 the accumulation and use of capital, reacting on the 
 power and will to accumulate, have nearly or quite 
 removed such obstacles. Here are revenues, compara- 
 tively plentiful, flowing from an efficiency of industry 
 which capital has effected. Here are security, facilities 
 of investment, and a social condition, in which accu- 
 mulated capital finds varied employments for its posses- 
 sors, eonstitutins; a graduated scale of social ranks, of
 
 LECT. II.] WHICH IMPEDE AND ENCOURAGE ACCUMULATION. 389 
 
 which one, slightly in advance, seems always, through 
 prudence and self-denial, readily attainable by the rank 
 not too remotely below it. We may observe that capital 
 has not only created, but secures these advantages. It 
 creates bodies in the state who cannot, when once they 
 exist, be shut out from a political influence, which in- 
 fluence, embodied in institutions, makes the continuance 
 of these advantages a condition of the tranquil and safe 
 existence of the community itself. 
 
 It is far otherwise with the very great majority of the 
 nations we have to review. 
 
 In them the scanty revenues of the great bulk of their 
 populations exhibit small means to accumulate, and the 
 various obstacles to accumulation which we have been 
 enumerating, acting sometimes in combination, some- 
 times separately, and with varying degrees of compara- 
 tive force, are still constantly present. They check and 
 discourage that progressive increase of capital which 
 even the slender means of such communities might, 
 under more favourable circumstances, effect. 
 
 The observation of the practical influence of such 
 obstacles, and their mode of action in particular groups 
 of nations, will form an important part of our task. 
 
 We have, in the meanwhile, the fact before us, that 
 England is largely in advance of the rest of the world ; 
 that few nations are following up her footsteps, and of 
 these, none rapidly, some with an almost imperceptible 
 motion. This great fact of the obstinate lingering of 
 the largest part of the population of the globe, behind 
 what we know to be a possible advance in produc- 
 tive powers, is a phenomenon of which it behoves us
 
 390 ECONOMICAL POSITION OF NATIONS. [iect. ii. 
 
 to exhibit the existence, and explain the cause, as accu- 
 rately and distinctly as we can. 
 
 But we are still only approaching our task of more 
 detailed observation on the economical position of par- 
 ticular nations, and a few additional general sketches 
 will assist in better preparing us for it.
 
 LECT. III.] WHAT CAPITAL CONSISTS OF. 391 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 ON THE GRADUAL MANNER IN WHICH CAPITAL OR 
 CAPITALISTS UNDERTAKE SUCCESSIVE FUNCTIONS 
 IN THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 We have seen that capital is the instrument through 
 which all the causes which augment the efficiency of 
 human labor, and the productive powers of nations, are 
 brought into play. 
 
 This is in accordance with the conditions on which 
 Man, as lord of the creation, holds almost all the pre- 
 rogatives with which he has been invested with Provi- 
 dence. Capital is the stored-up results of past labor 
 used to produce some effect in some part of the task of 
 producing wealth.^ It consists, therefore, of whatever 
 the human race provides for itself while extending its 
 power over the material world. Man, born one of the 
 feeblest of animals, becomes thus their lord, and that 
 of the Earth which he commands and uses, through the 
 
 • It will be ronvcnicnt, and it is reasonable, to consider the act of production as 
 incomplete till the commodity produced has been placed in the hands of the person 
 who is to consume it; all done previously has that point iu view. The grocer's 
 horse and cart which brings up our tea from Hertford to the College is as essential 
 to our possession of it, for the purposes of consumption, as the labor of the Chinese 
 who picked and dried the leaves. By keeping in view this comprehensive meaning 
 of production, we shall be better able, as we go on, to observe the functions and use 
 of different portions of capital.
 
 392 SAVED CAPITAL IS ADVANCED AS WAGES [lect. hi. 
 
 develojmient of the higher parts of his nature ; that is, 
 he is dependent on his foresight, self-denial, and in- 
 genuity, for creating ; and on his perceptions of justice, 
 prudence, and political wisdom, for protecting and secur- 
 ing the means by which he rises to his place in the scale 
 of earthly beings. 
 
 CAPITAL EMPLOYED AS WAGES. 
 
 But this stored-up result of past labor, — this capital 
 by which he aids his efforts, does not perform in every 
 community all the tasks it is capable of performing. It 
 takes them up gradually and successively in all cases ; 
 and it is a remarkable and an all-important fact, that the 
 one special function, the performance of which is essential 
 to the serious advance of the power of capital in all its 
 other functions, is exactly that which, in the case of the 
 greater portion of the laborers of mankind, capital has 
 never yet fulfilled at all. 
 
 I allude to the advance of the wages of labor. It 
 wants a distinct understanding of this, and, indeed, of 
 many other phenomena which act as drags on the pro- 
 gress of nations, to enable us to comprehend why it is 
 that so few nations have done, what some rare examples 
 show may be done, towards developing the powers of 
 national industry ; and why, also, it is that the present 
 condition of the feebler and the more backward, by far 
 the most numerous class of nations, has lasted so long, 
 and is likely to last so much longer. 
 
 The wages of labor are advanced by capitalists in the 
 case of less than one-fourth of the laborers of the earth.
 
 LECT. III.] ONLY WITHIN VERY NARROW LIMITS. 393 
 
 And here I must dwell for a moment on the meaning 
 of terms. You will remember that, with Mr. Malthus, 
 I have defined capital to be wealth saved from revenue, 
 with a view to profit. It is in this sense I now repeat 
 that the great elementary function of advancing the 
 wages of labor has not been assumed by capital, or by 
 capitalists, in the case of the great majority of the 
 laborers of the human race ; this fact I shall show is 
 both indisputable and of vital importance in accounting 
 for the comparative progress of nations. 
 
 We might, if we pleased, no doubt comprise, under 
 the same term, capital, all the wealth devoted to the 
 maintenance of labor, whether it has gone through any 
 previous process of saving or not ; and we might defend 
 this by saying that all such wealth performed the same 
 function, that of maintaining the laborer at his task. 
 
 I will detain you by no wrangle as to the propriety of 
 doing this; one thing is clear, however, that we must, 
 then, in tracing the position of the laboring classes and 
 of their paymasters in different nations and under dif- 
 ferent circumstances, distinguish between capital which 
 has been saved and capital which has undergone no 
 process of accumulation ; between, in short, capital 
 which is revenue, and capital which is not revenue, 
 but is something else. All the importance of this dis- 
 tinction will meet us hereafter, while dilating on the 
 influence of the fertility of human labor, of the laborers 
 being ranged under different descriptions of paymasters. 
 
 At present, I only assert that there is a difference 
 between the influence on the productive powers of 
 nations, of that wealth which has been saved, and is
 
 394 AGRICULTUKAL WAGES, EXCEPT IX CERTAIN CASES, [lect. hi. 
 
 dispensed as wages with a view to profit ; and of that 
 wealth which is advanced out of revenue for the support 
 of hibor. With a view to this distinction, I use the 
 word capital to denote that portion of wealth exclusively 
 which has been saved from revenue, and is used with a 
 view to profit. 
 
 You will perceive, I am persuaded, the distinction, 
 and will understand me when I say that it will be one 
 of the most important parts of oui* task to trace its effects 
 and influence on the productiveness of the industry of 
 nations. 
 
 The fact that saved and accumulated capital is used 
 to advance the wages of only a small part of the pro- 
 ductive laborers of the earth, needs no proof to any 
 one who will take even a slight glance at the facts 
 which surround him. In every nation of the Old "World, 
 except England and Holland, the agriculturists far out- 
 number the manufacturers ; and in every country of 
 the Old World, except England and Ilolland, the wages 
 of the agricultuiists are not advanced out of funds which 
 have been saved and accumulated from revenues, but are 
 produced by the laborers themselves, and never exist in 
 any other shape than that of a stock for their own imme- 
 diate consumption. 
 
 It may be as well to point out here how this fact 
 affects their powers of production, or the continuity, the 
 knowledge, and the power, with which labor is exerted. 
 This will assist us in framing the sketch which we pro- 
 posed to give of a community which should be perfect as 
 a producing machine. 
 
 Let us see, then, first, how this fact affects the con-
 
 LECT. III.] ARE PRODUCED BY THE LABORERS THEMSELVES. 395 
 
 tinuity of labor ; and then how it affects the knowledge 
 and the power brought to the act of production. 
 
 The capitalist who pays a workman may assist the 
 continuity of his labor — First, by making such con- 
 tinuity possible ; secondly, by superintending and en- 
 forcing it. 
 
 Many large bodies of workmen throughout the world 
 ply the street for customers, and depend for wages on 
 the casual wants of persons who happen at the moment 
 to require their services, or to want the articles they can 
 supply. The early missionaries found this the case in 
 China.' "The artizans run about the town from morn- 
 ing to night to seek custom. The greater part of Chinese 
 workmen work in private houses. Are clothes wanted, 
 for example ? The tailor comes to you in the morning 
 and goes home at night. It is the same with all other 
 artizans. They are continually running about the streets 
 in search of work, even the smiths, who carry about 
 their hammer and their furnace for ordinary jobs. The 
 barbers, too, if we can believe the missionaries, walk 
 about the streets with an arm-chair on their shoulders, 
 and a basin and boiler for hot water in their hands." 
 
 This continues to be the case very generally through- 
 out the East, and partially in the Western World. 'Now 
 these workmen cannot for any length of time work con- 
 tinuously. They must ply like a hackney coachman, 
 and when no customer happens to present himself, they 
 must be idle. If in the progress of time a change take 
 place in their economical position, if they become the 
 
 ^ Ephemdrides dii UHoyen for 1767- Part JIL, p. 06.
 
 396 CAPITAL EMPLOYED AS WAGES [lect. iii. 
 
 workmen of a capitalist who advances their wages be- 
 forehand, two things take place. First, they can now 
 labor continuously ; and, secondly, an agent is provided, 
 whose office and whose interest it will be to see that 
 they do labor continuously. 
 
 First, they ca7i labor continuously. The capitalist who 
 advances their wages has resources which enable him to 
 wait for a customer ; the average number of persons who 
 will want the articles produced by his workmen is esti- 
 mated with a surprising approach to accuracy ; if they 
 do not come at the moment the article is finished, they 
 will come within some reasonable time : the capitalist 
 can afford to wait till they do come. Here, then, is an 
 increased continuity in the labor of all this class of per- 
 sons. They labor daily from morning to night, and are 
 not interrupted by waiting for or seeking the customer, 
 who is ultimately to consume the article they work on. 
 
 But the continuity of their labor, thus made possible^ 
 is secured and improved by the superintendence of the 
 capitalist. He has advanced their wages ; he is to re- 
 ceive the products of their labor. It is his interest and 
 his privilege to see that they do not labor interruptedly 
 or dilatorily. 
 
 The continuity of labor thus far secured, the effect 
 even of this change on the productive power of labor is 
 very great. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that 
 the power is doubled. Two workmen steadily employed 
 from morning to night, and from year's end to year's 
 end, will probably produce more than four desultory 
 workmen, who consume much of their time in running 
 after customers, and in recommencing suspended labor.
 
 LECT. III.] PROMOTES CONTINUITY OF LABOR, 397 
 
 But the effect of the change of paymasters on the con- 
 tinuity of labor is by no means yet exhausted. The 
 different tasks of industry may now be further divided. 
 Some division took place when a diversity of employ- 
 ments was established ; but still, while each workman 
 found his own customer, he was obliged to make, him- 
 self, the whole of the article he produced. Now that 
 a capitalist advances the wages of the workmen, if he 
 employ more than one man, he can divide the task be- 
 tween them ; he can keep each individual steadily at work 
 at the portion of the common task which he performs 
 the best. The continuity of their labor is now much 
 improved. But further, if the capitalist be rich, and 
 keep a sufficient number of workmen, then the task may 
 be subdivided as far as it is capable of subdivision. The 
 continuity of labor is then complete, and the community 
 reaps all the effects of this complete continuity in the 
 increased mass of national wealth produced. 
 
 Capital, by assuming the function of advancing the 
 wages of labor, has now, by successive steps, perfected 
 its continuibj. It, at the same time, increases the hiovj- 
 ledge and sMll by which such labor is applied to produce 
 any given effect. 
 
 The class of capitalists are from the first partially, and 
 they become ultimately completely, discharged from the 
 necessity of manual labor. Their interest is that the 
 productive powers of the laborers they employ should be 
 the greatest possible. On promoting that power their 
 attention is fixed, and almost exclusively fixed. More 
 thought is brought to bear on the best means of effecting 
 all the purposes of human industry ; knowledge extends,
 
 398 CAPITAL EMPLOYED TO ASSIST LABOK. [lect. m. 
 
 multiplies its fields of action, and assists industry in 
 almost every branch. The second element of productive 
 power, knoivledge^ and the skill consequent upon it, is 
 then brought largely and widely into play. We cannot 
 calculate the precise effect of it on the general produc- 
 tive power of nations, but we know and can see that the 
 effect is immense, though it elude our powers of calcu- 
 lation. 
 
 ArXILIARY CAPITAL DEFINED. 
 
 But further still, as to mechanical power. Capital 
 employed not to pcifj^ but to assist labor ^ we will call auxil- 
 iary capital. The national mass of auxiliary capital may, 
 certain conditions being fulfilled, increase indefinitely: 
 the number of laborers remaining the same. At every 
 step of such increase there is an increase in the third 
 element of the efficiency of human labor, namely, its 
 mechanical iiower. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment to observe what those con- 
 ditions are, which must be fulfilled as auxiliary capital 
 thus increases its mass^ relatively to the population. 
 
 I assume, then, at present, that the laborers we are 
 observing, subsist on wages advanced by a capitalist, 
 and also that they are provided with as much auxiliary 
 capital as, in the actual state of knowledge in the com- 
 munity, can be profitably employed to assist them. What 
 
 ' Whenever I speak of the increase of auxiliary capital, I shall, unless I give 
 warning? to the contrary, mean to speak of its increase relatively to the nurahcrs of 
 the productive laborers of a population, and shall nut mean to speak of its positive 
 increase onlv.
 
 LECT. Ill ] CONDITIONS OF ITS EMPLOYMENT. 399 
 
 conditions, then, must be fulfilled that the mass of auxil- 
 iary capital employed to assist them may increase ? 
 
 There must concur three things : — 1st, The means of 
 saving the additional mass of capital ; 2ndly, The will 
 to save it ; 3rdly, Some invention by which it may be 
 made possible, through the use of such capital, that 
 the productive powers of labor may be increased ; and 
 increased to an extent which will make it, in addition to 
 the wealth it before produced, reproduce the additional 
 auxiliary capital used, as fast as it is destroyed, and also 
 some profit on it. 
 
 We have already explained the causes which deter- 
 mine the power and the will to save capital. Leaving 
 these, then, we confine ourselves now to the third condi- 
 tion, on which alone fresh masses of auxiliary capital 
 can be employed. 
 
 "When the full amount of auxiliary capital, that in the 
 actual state of knowledge can be used profitably, has 
 already been supplied, it is clear that an increased range 
 of knowledge can alone point out the means of employ- 
 ing more. Further, such employment is obviously only 
 practicable if the means discovered increase the power of 
 labor sufficiently to reproduce the additional capital in 
 the time it wastes away. If this be not the case, the 
 capitalist must lose his wealth. If he drain land, the 
 labor employed on it must, by the time the drains fill 
 up or are destroyed, reproduce the expense of those 
 drains, or the capitalist has diminished his means. But 
 the increased efficiency of the laborers must, besides this, 
 produce some profit, or he would have no motive for em- 
 ploying his capital in production at all.
 
 100 -NO FINAL LIMIT TU ITS APPLICATION. [lf.ct. iii. 
 
 It is very important to I'emark, however, that all the 
 wliilc tliat, by employing fresh masses of auxiliary capital, 
 those two objects can be effected, there is no definite and 
 final limit to the progressive employment of such fresh 
 masses of capital. They may go on increasmg co-exten- 
 sively with the increase of knowledge. But knowledge 
 is never stationary ; and, as it extends itself from hour 
 to hour in all directions, from hour to hour some new 
 implement, some new macliine, some new motive force 
 may present itself, which will enable the community 
 profitably to add something to the mass of auxiliary 
 capital by which it assists its industry, and so increase 
 the difference between the productiveness of its labor 
 and that of poorer and less skilful nations. 
 
 We are prepared now, I think, to understand what I 
 proposed to describe to you, before we entered on a de- 
 tailed examination of various groups of nations : namely, 
 under what circumstances a community would be perfect 
 as a producing machine.
 
 i.FXT. iv.J UNPRODUCTIVE LABOR. 401 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 ON THE MOST PERFECT FORM OF SOCIETY AS TO 
 PRODUCTION. 
 
 Before we proceed further in this direction, we must 
 turn back for a moment to the distinction between pro- 
 ductive and unproductive labor. 
 
 The portion of the community which is unproductive 
 of material wealth may be useful, or it may be useless. 
 
 These unproductive laborers may be useful : they may 
 enlighten, govern, defend, or adorn, a nation, or may 
 contribute in some mode to increase the happiness and 
 innocent enjoyments of their fellow men. Or they may 
 be useless : that is, they may do none of these things. 
 
 These propositions, assisted by a careful examination 
 of nations classed according to their different circum- 
 stances, needs, and intellectual and moral and social 
 position, would lead probably to some tolerably correct 
 estimate of the most desirable proportion between the 
 part of a population employed in producing wealtli, and 
 the part not so employed. But for such an inquiry we 
 are as yet by no means ripe, and it is, besides, foreign 
 to our present purpose. 
 
 I assume, therefore, for the present, this most desir- 
 able proportion to be determined and known, aud I pro- 
 
 2(j
 
 402 CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH LABOR [lect. iv. 
 
 ceed to consider how the productive laborers should be 
 arranged so that as a body they may form a perfect pro- 
 ducing machine. 
 
 It is clear, first, that we shall require the whole of the 
 productive laborers to be ranged under capitalists dii^ect- 
 ing their exertions and ensui'ing the greatest possible 
 continuity to those exertions. We should require, 
 secondly, that these capitalists should be possessed of all 
 the knowledge which, in the actual state of the attain- 
 ments of the human race, could be brought to bear on 
 the task of dealing with those parts of the material 
 world which men attempt to handle and work on, in 
 such a manner as to effect the purposes aimed at by 
 human industry the most readily. 
 
 Thirdly, we should require that the mechanical power 
 with which the laborers carried on their work through 
 all the varied employments of the population, was the 
 greatest in every instance which could be created by any 
 methods then known, of using auxiliary capital to aug- 
 ment the power of labor, whether by appropriating mo- 
 tive forces, or applying them. 
 
 On any given day a productive population so arranged, 
 would be in a position to produce the greatest quantity 
 of wealth which the fertility of the sources of wealth at 
 its command made possible. 
 
 I have already stated that no nation has even ap- 
 proached such a state of perfection as a producing 
 machine. Over by far the greater part of the globe, the 
 great majority of the laboring classes do not even receive 
 their wages from capitalists ; they either produce them 
 Iheniselvcs, or recei\^e them from the re\'cnue of their
 
 LECT. IV.] WOULD BE MOST PRODUCTIVE. 403 
 
 customers. The great primary step has not been taken 
 which secures the continuitij of their labor ; they arc 
 aided by such knowledge only, and such an amount of 
 mechanical potver^ as may be found in the possession of 
 persons laboring with their own hands for their subsist- 
 ence. The skill and science of more advanced countries, 
 the giant motive forces, the accumulated tools and 
 machines which those forces may set in motion, are 
 absent from the tasks of the industry which is carried on 
 by such agents alone. 
 
 Even in more advanced countries, the progress to- 
 wards the full development of the efficiency of labor is 
 strikingly imperfect, if we carry our survey through all 
 the classes of their laboring population. 
 
 Let us observe England, which, taking her whole 
 population, is by far the most advanced of all. 
 
 Here and here alone all classes of laborers are ranged 
 under the direction of capitalists, the agricultural as well 
 as the non-agricultural. The peculiar influence of this 
 last fact on the amount of wealth produced, we shall 
 presently have occasion to advert to. 
 
 There can be no doubt, too, that the continuity of 
 labor, the presence of science, skill, and of abundant 
 masses of auxiliary capital, give an efficiency to English 
 industry, which is to be seen during peace in her abun- 
 dant wealth, and has been felt during war by the world, 
 through the stature and majesty of the financial and 
 military power which she has displayed. 
 
 But when we compare the productive powers de- 
 veloped by England, not with those of nations more 
 backward than herself, but with a sketch of a com-
 
 404 NON-AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENTS. [lect. iv. 
 
 munity perfect as a producing-machine, we cannot but 
 see how very far, indeed, even our own country is from 
 having even approached such perfection. 
 
 How far are we from applying all the available know- 
 ledge which exists in the country, to augment the skill 
 with which labor is applied in a great variety of occupa- 
 tions. 
 
 Take agriculture for one important instance. A know- 
 ledge of good farming is spread thinly, and with wide 
 intervals, over the country. A very small part of the 
 agricultural pojmlation is aided by all the capital which 
 the experience of some persons, and perhaps districts, 
 shows might be available in this branch of the national 
 industry. 
 
 But to turn rather to non-agricultural employments. 
 In some of our great manufactories all the elements of 
 productive power are to be seen, no doubt, develoj)ed 
 and combined more perfectly, than in any other region 
 of the earth. But the working in these is the occu- 
 pation of only a small portion of our non-agricultural 
 laborers. In country workshoj)s, in the case of all 
 handicraftsmen and mechanics who carry on their sepa- 
 rate task with little combination, there the division of 
 labor is incomplete, and its continuity consequently im- 
 perfect. Science and knowledge are only slowly descend- 
 ing to the assistance of this great mass of our population. 
 The elements of mechanical power, the huge motive 
 forces, which, for certain purposes, as yet limited, we 
 have appropriated ; the perfect provision of exquisitely- 
 contrived tools and machines, which those motive forces 
 ma}- one day more generally sot in motion, are wanting
 
 lECT. IV.] ECONOMICAL CHANGES. 405 
 
 over wide spaces in all departments of the industry of 
 the non-agriculturist. Abandon the great towns, observe 
 the broad surface of the country, and you will see what 
 a large portion of the national industry is lagging at a 
 long distance from perfection, in either continuity, skill, 
 or power. 
 
 Let me repeat, therefore, that when we sketched out 
 what would be the perfect development of the productive 
 powers of a people, we did so only to attain a standard 
 with which to compare the different positions of a great 
 variety of nations. All of them are approaching, or may 
 hereafter approach, that high standard, not one closely, 
 most of them at remote and widely separated distances, 
 which it will be our business to observe and distinguisli. 
 
 But observations of this class alone will not suffice 
 when we are seeking after all the causes which influence 
 the industrious career of nations. 
 
 Great political, social, moral, and intellectual changes, 
 accompany changes in the economical organization of 
 communities, and in the agencies and the means, affluent 
 or scanty, by which the tasks of industry are carried on. 
 These changes necessarily exercise a commanding influ- 
 ence over the difierent political and social elements to be 
 found in the populations where they take place : that 
 influence extends -to the intellectual character, to the 
 habits, manners, morals, and happiness of nations. 
 
 It has been said, with superfluous modesty it aj^pears 
 to me, that these changes in social organization, and the 
 subjects they lead us in sight of, are not the proper 
 object of economical science, which is wealtli, and wealth 
 alone.
 
 406 CONNECTION OF ECONOMICAL [lect. iv. 
 
 Economical science can never, however, be success- 
 fully pursued, if such subjects be wholly eschewed by its 
 promoters. There is a close connection between the 
 economical and social organization of nations and their 
 powers of production. The agencies by which they 
 work, the relations between the different classes of the 
 great producing masses, re-act on the productive capa- 
 cities of the body, and such capacities can never be 
 clearly understood, without a distinct perception of why 
 and hoio this is. The explanation of this is most dis- 
 tinctly a part of the proper and peculiar task of the poli- 
 tical economist. 
 
 If we were even erroneously to admit, out of complai- 
 sance to some of those who have adopted a narrowed 
 view of the province of political economy, that all which 
 bears directly on the social structure, morals, and happi- 
 ness of nations lies beyond that province, still we should 
 not be turned for a moment from our own selected course 
 of investigation. Beyond political economy, strictly so 
 called, but still closely and indissolubly connected with 
 the truths it taught, would then lie those applications of 
 it by which alone it could be made to assist in unfolding 
 the shifting political and social influences which accom- 
 pany the march of nations from rudeness and feebleness 
 to power and civilization. This application of the science 
 would ever be, to the best order of minds, that which 
 makes its results valuable, and the labor of approaching 
 them tolerable. 
 
 I have some fears that your own views and inclina- 
 tions may be warped in a different direction from that 
 against which I have been warning you. You may.
 
 LECT. IV.] WITH SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 407 
 
 perhaps, bo impatient to grasp at once the moral and 
 political results of the science, and spurn the labor of the 
 road by which alone a position must be approached from 
 which you can grasp those nobler results firmly and 
 safely. 
 
 It will be an impatience pardonable at your age, but 
 very mischievous withal. 
 
 We have before us the wide scene of the nations of 
 the earth earning, by the decree of heaven, their daily 
 bread by labor, and man is connected with man by 
 ties which grow and are formed by their fellowship 
 in the task. Those ties and relations extend from 
 the monarch on the throne, through all the varied 
 division of the population of nations, to the laborer 
 at his work. 
 
 Out of these physical conditions and moral ties spring 
 the most exalted virtues, public and private, which can 
 adorn or protect society. We must not despise those 
 ties, nor let the physical wants of men, and these their 
 first social consequences, seem alien to the loftier parts 
 of our nature. As well might we despise the precious 
 brilliant because it is elaborated in the mine from the 
 lowest earthly elements. 
 
 We shall speak hereafter, no doubt, and that without 
 at all diverging from our proper path, of laws and legis- 
 lators, — of the voice and arm of justice embodied in 
 sacred institutions, — of the influence of self-imposed 
 restraint on the lower appetites of our nature, and we 
 shall see how the manners and the morals, and the most 
 precious energies of nations, receive their polish and 
 their strength from the struggle. We shall trace the
 
 408 PREJUDICES TO BE COMBATTED [lect. iv. 
 
 history of opinions and see how the strength and the 
 abcnations of human intellect have influenced, in their 
 turn, the fate of generations and nations. Our sub- 
 ject will lead us necessarily into the region of such 
 inquiries. But if we are to treat them as philosophers, 
 we must be patient and learn their inner nature as we 
 learn a language, by dwelling on and dissecting its 
 humblest elements. Such primary elements in economi- 
 cal and political philosophy are the needs and wants of 
 man, and the ties and duties which arise during his 
 efforts to supply them. Let us but be content to track 
 these things carefully and steadily among the varied 
 people which are about to present themselves to our 
 observation, and I venture to promise that you shall not 
 be discontented with the loftiness or dignity of the views 
 of men and communities, of the moral government of 
 God, and the varied career of nations, at which we shall 
 arrive before our course is over. 
 
 Yet one more word of warning. It is perhaps too 
 much to expect from your years, that you should keep 
 your minds in an exactly -balanced state of neutrality 
 as to opinions, which, my own experience has shown, 
 are often very distinctly formed before you come to this 
 place. 
 
 One class of those opinions I have observed to lead 
 to something like an aversion for the advanced and 
 com^^licated state of society in the midst of which we 
 live. The crowded state of the towns, the turbulent 
 character of the workmen, some gross habits and some 
 serious vices which are connected with these, and occa- 
 sioujd spectacles of appalling want in contrast with sur-
 
 LEtT. IV.] BY THE STUDENT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 409 
 
 rounding luxury, — these things discourage many pure 
 and ardent minds. The eager and bustling pursuit of 
 wealth by the middle classes, the occasional insolence 
 of vulgarit}^ and riches, and the disgust inspired by 
 seeing these in combination, sullying, as it were, the 
 legislative bodies, and degrading the highest functions 
 of public life, these things add to the unfavorable im- 
 pression. Young people long for the air of purer, 
 though poorer communities, for the less revolting habits, 
 the less dangerous position, of a scattered population. 
 Social and political ties, and manners and morals, all 
 less obviously dependent on the gross pursuit of gain, 
 secure a preference, and an earnest liking, which is out- 
 raged when mere wealth seems adduced to balance their 
 supposed advantages. 
 
 On the other hand, riches and wealth have advocates 
 not less zealous. To establish a productive community, 
 a wealthy people, is with some the great object of politi- 
 cal improvement, and nations in which the people and 
 the public are poor, arc subjects only for commiseration 
 or contempt. 
 
 These sets of opinions are both tainted by error. To 
 begin with the last. 
 
 It would be a mournful necessity which drove us to 
 believe that the nations who occupy a low position as 
 the producers of wealth, are necessarily wanting in the 
 elements of virtue, knowledge, or happiness. Among 
 such nations the great bulk of the population of the 
 earth is now to be found ; it has ever been so. In 
 their bosom, in ancient days, the Domestic Arts origi- 
 nated ; the Fine were elaborated ; and many a triumph
 
 410 THE HABITS OF COMMUNITIES CHANGE [lect. iv. 
 
 won for the intellect of Man, in some of the highest 
 branches of human knowledge. 
 
 The race of man has assuredly not existed until the 
 nineteenth century, or waited for the greatest known 
 development of its power to produce wealth, in order 
 that it might be possible for nations to be polished, 
 virtuous, happy, or great. 
 
 Prejudices of an opposite kind haunt sometimes a 
 different class or order of minds, and are not at all less 
 unreasonable. These are the prejudices against om* 
 own state of society to which I have before alluded. 
 
 If we were obliged, however, to believe that there 
 was something in the development of productive power 
 which placed communities in a position in which the 
 higher and purer order of virtues, public and private, 
 could not flourish, and in which all classes of the people 
 were vulgarized by the pursuit of wealth, our convic- 
 tions would be swayed by a necessity more mournful 
 even than any we have contemplated. When we saw 
 the human race exercising^ that command over the 
 material world, the possession of which seems to mark 
 Man as more than a mere child of Earth, we should 
 be obliged to believe the march of his power to have 
 been attended by a correspondent degradation of his 
 nature, and that the power itself was only that of evil 
 genii, who are gifted with it but as a curse, and possess 
 it only as the means of harm and sin. 
 
 As communities change their powers of production, 
 they necessarily change their habits too. During their 
 progress in advance, all the difi'erent classes of the com- 
 munity find that they are connected with other classes
 
 LECT. IV.] AS THEIR rOWERS OF PRODUCTION CHANGE. 411 
 
 by new relations, are assuming new positions, and are 
 surrounded by new moral and social dangers, and new 
 conditions of social and political excellence. 
 
 The various conditions to be fulfilled in order to pro- 
 duce the most favorable results during these changes, 
 are greater and more difficult as man advances in wealth 
 and productive strength ; and this is only consistent 
 with what we discern throughout all tho branches of 
 the moral government of the world. But those con- 
 ditions, though difficult, are by no means impossible. 
 
 The unfavorable view, however, sometimes taken of 
 the social and political complexion of countries abound- 
 ing in 25roductive power and wealth, is, perhaps, in a 
 great measure owing to the narrow field to which our 
 observations of them must be confined. England is thej 
 only great country which has taken what we have seen 
 to be the first step in advance towards perfection as a 
 producing machine ; the only country in which the 
 population, agricultural as well as non-agricultural, is 
 ranged under the direction of capitalists, and where the 
 efi'ects of their means and of the peculiar functions they 
 can alone perform, are extensively felt, not only in the 
 enormous growth of her wealth, but also in all the econo- 
 mical relations and positions of her population. 
 
 Now England, I say it with regret, but without the 
 very slightest hesitation, is not to be taken as a safe 
 specimen of the career of a people so developing their 
 productive forces. 
 
 Untoward events have dogged the progress of the 
 nation; some connected with faults of legislation and 
 administration; some arising out of circumstances over
 
 412 MOR.VL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT [lect. iv. 
 
 which neither legislators nor administrators exercised 
 any influence, and which escaped, perhaps, any timely 
 attempt to control them, because the annals of the world 
 gave no warning of them, and afforded no opportunity 
 of observing them elsewhere. 
 
 If this suggest many regrets for the past, it still gives 
 better hopes for the future. The evil that has mingled 
 itself with our institutions or our habits, may be weeded 
 out ; the good influences we have missed, may still be 
 won to purify and protect us ; and other nations, if they 
 assume our economical organization and power, may 
 escape many of the evils that have afflicted our progress, 
 or from which we suffer now. 
 
 While treating of the distribution of wealth, and of 
 the laws which regulate population, it will be a grave 
 part of our task to separate what there is necessarily 
 good, what necessarily dangerous or pernicious, to 
 social order, virtue, and happiness, in those particular 
 changes in the position of different classes of society, the 
 germs of which exist everywhere, but which we can 
 observe largely developed throughout the mass of the 
 population in this countrj^ alone. 
 
 Truth, be it agreeable or repulsive, must be our sole 
 object. I will venture to indicate, however, here, my 
 own belief, which has not been hastily formed, that if a 
 reasonable and quite attainable development of the moral 
 and intellectual qualities of the body of the people go 
 hand-in-hand with the changes which accompany the 
 advance of productive power, there is no reason to look 
 gloomily at the social and political prospects of advanc- 
 ing nations, because it will then be found that a wealthy
 
 i,r.cT. IV.] SHOULD ACCOMPANY ECONOMICAL PROGRESS. 413 
 
 jDGople, though greater perils and more dangerous respon- 
 sibilities siuTound their course, may, if they do justice to 
 their greater opportunities, make advances in improving 
 the intellect, virtue, and happiness of the mass of their 
 population, even greater than any which have yet been 
 seen elsewhere. 
 
 Such intimations might be supported by a few cheer- 
 ing facts, but can be of little value till they are followed 
 up by detailed analysis and sound and sufficient proofs. 
 Still I do not withhold my opinion here, because it 
 would be really a painful task to be pointing oat, as I 
 am about to dc, ^h*^ mpons W -;,Liicli the industry of 
 nations waxes strong and fertile, while I knew that any 
 portion of my hearers believed that I was, in doing so, 
 only indicating a road which must end in a national 
 corruption of habits, manners, morals, and institutions.
 
 414 
 
 THE LABOR FUND [lect. v. 
 
 LECTUEE V. 
 
 OF THE LABOE FUJTD OF THE WOULD, AND THE NATIONS 
 WHO SUBSIST ON ITS LARGEST DIVISION. 
 
 We -,-ill begin our task of detailed examination by- 
 dividing the labore^K, r^ ^ho onrtl^ i^^^o ^rc-uiyj, discin- 
 guislied from each other by the particular branch of the 
 labor fund of the world, from which the majority of their 
 population derive their subsistence. 
 
 The labor fund of the world consists of the portion of 
 wealth devoted to the maintenance of labor. If we 
 speak of its amount for one year only, as is usual when 
 no notice to the contrary is given, it will consist of all 
 the wealth annually devoted to the maintenance of labor. 
 
 The labor fund of every particular nation consists, of 
 course, of all the wealth annually devoted to the main- 
 tenance of the laborers it supj)orts. 
 
 When we speak, not of money, but of the commodities 
 devoted to the maintenance of labor, all the portions of 
 the labor fund have the common property of being suited 
 to the maintenance and consumption of the laboring 
 classes. 
 
 But this general fund, in spite of this common pro- 
 perty, is separated into three great divisions, distin- 
 guished from each other by the different manner in
 
 LECT. v.] SEPARATED INTO THREE DIVISIONS. 415 
 
 which they reach the hand of the laborer, and by the 
 different relations which they establish between him and 
 other classes of society. 
 
 The general labor fund consists — 
 
 1st. — Of wages which the laborers themselves produce. 
 
 2ndly. — Of the revenues of other classes expended in 
 the maintenance of labor. 
 
 Srdly. — Of capital, or of a portion of wealth saved 
 from revenue and employed in advancing wages with a 
 view to profit.^ 
 
 Those maintained on the first division of the labor 
 fund we will call unhired laborers. 
 
 Those on the second, paid dependants. 
 
 Those on the third, hii-ed workmen. 
 
 The receipt of wages from any one of these three 
 divisions of the labor fund determines the relations of 
 the laborer with the other classes of society, and so 
 determines sometimes directly, sometimes more or less 
 indirectly, the degree of continuity, skill, and power 
 with which the tasks of industry are earned on. 
 
 The fertility of the industry of nations, therefore, in 
 which any large proportion of the population is main- 
 tained on any one of these funds, is proportionably 
 affected by the degrees of continuity, skill, and power, 
 which belong to the group of laborers subsisting on it. 
 
 We will begin our investigation by observing that 
 group which is the largest, the most ancient, and con- 
 tributes the most to determine the wealth produced by 
 the human race taken as a whole. 
 
 ^ Capital is always employed with a view to profit ; but it is only when cniploycd 
 in this particular way, that it becomes a pait of tlie labor fund of nations.
 
 416 PROPOSITION IN WHICH EACH DIVISION [lect. v. 
 
 We may previously remark, however, that all the 
 thi-ee divisions contribute something to support the 
 laborers of most of the countries of the globe, though 
 they contribute in very different proportions. 
 
 The first division, self-produced wages, maintains more 
 than half, probably more than two- thirds, of the laboring 
 population of the earth. These laborers consist every- 
 where of peasants who occupy the soil and labor on it.^ 
 
 In England this division is hardly discernible, though 
 in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, it rises into importance. 
 
 The second division of the labor fund, revenue expended 
 in maintaining labor, supports by far the greater part of 
 the productive non-agricultural laborers of the East. It 
 is of some importance on the continent of Europe ; while 
 in England, again, it comprises only a few jobbing me- 
 chanics, the relics of a larger body, of whose gradual 
 disappearance or absorption into another class of laborers, 
 we shall have hereafter to trace the steps and the conse- 
 quences. 
 
 The third division of the labor fund, capital, is seen in 
 England employing the great majority of her laborers, 
 while it maintains but a small body of individuals in 
 Asia : and in continental Europe, maintains only the 
 non-agricultural laborers, not amounting, probably, on 
 the whole, to a quarter of the productive population. 
 
 Still there is, probably, no country in which some 
 individuals of the population are not supported on each 
 of the three divisions of the general labor fund, however 
 different the proportions may be in different countries. 
 
 I have not, you may observe, made any distinction as 
 
 ' 1 oxcludc ;i tVw tislierinon and hunters.
 
 i.KCT. v.] CONTRIBUTES TO SUITOIIT LABORERS. 417 
 
 to slave-labor. In the point of view in which we are 
 approaching the subject, no distinction exists. The civil 
 rights of laborers do not affect their economical position. 
 Slaves, as well as freemen, may be observed subsisting 
 on each branch of the general fund. 
 
 The serf-slaves of Eastern Europe, and the negroes on 
 particular spots in some of the West Indian Islands, are 
 peasant-occupiers, and produce their own wages. 
 
 The slaves which form part of the luxurious household 
 of great men in the East, subsist on the revenues of their 
 owners. Many of the Eussian serfs are still slaves, but 
 released from the soil on paying their masters for a 
 license. These men subsist, for the most part, as inde- 
 pendent workmen, fed from the revenues which casual 
 customers expend in employing them. 
 
 In the classical nations of antiquity, and in some 
 countries now, we find the funds advanced for the sup- 
 port of slaves, to consist of capital employed with a view 
 to profit. Such were the fourteen slaves which formed 
 part of the inheritance of Demosthenes. Such, too, were 
 the slaves employed, by their masters as artizans, in 
 many of the West Indian Islands. 
 
 In every case, however, slaves fall into one or other of 
 the three economical divisions in which we have ranged the 
 laborers of the earth. Whatever their economical position 
 may be, the absence of civil rights affects, no doubt, con- 
 siderably their national character as workmen, and pro- 
 duce other evil effects in society of a hundred-fold more 
 consequence than the feebleness of their efforts as laborers. 
 
 When glancing, however, hereafter, at the progress of 
 Greece and Rome, and of the colonies of Greece, we shall
 
 418 SLAVE LABOR. [i.ect. v. 
 
 have to point out that the economical position and advan- 
 tages, or disadvantages, of the slave are of more import- 
 ance in determining the productiveness of his labor than 
 his civil rights. The deprivation of these is never with- 
 out its effects on tlie efficiency of industry. But still 
 slave-labor exerted under the most favorable economical 
 circumstances, well directed, well overlooked, and sup- 
 plied in abundance witli the powers which capital can 
 bestow, as was the case more especially with the agri- 
 cultural slaves of Greece and Eome in their best days, is 
 assuredly more productive than the labor of the freemen 
 who are the most unfavorably situated as to these points. 
 
 We stand, I hope, in no need of extravagant over- 
 statements on such a subject to sustain our hatred of 
 slavery, or our conviction of its deleterious effects on the 
 nations it afflicts and consumes. 
 
 I have further to remark, that while for the present I 
 adopt these divisions of human laborers only, with refer- 
 ence to the 'production of tuealth^ that is, with a view to 
 display and explain the peculiar or relative productive 
 powers of the nations in which they respectively pre- 
 dominate, yet the same division will last and be most 
 convenient to us when we are following up the other 
 great branches of our subject. 
 
 That is, Avhen we are inquiring how the wealth pro- 
 duced by various nations is distributed ; what causes 
 influence the fluctuations of population ; how taxes im- 
 posed on articles of consumption really affect the various 
 classes of the people ; or in what manner the growth of 
 home markets, and of foreign trade, re-act upon the 
 Tintionnl hal)its and powers of production.
 
 i.F.cT. VI.] WAGES OF MANUAL LABOR. 419 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 
 
 The lectures which immediately succeed will be de- 
 voted to the Distribution of Wealth. 
 
 All wealth is primarily divided by political economists 
 into the wages of labor, the profits of stock, and the rent 
 of land. 
 
 This division is open to some cavil, but it will be most 
 convenient to accept it. We will begin, then, with the 
 wages of labor. The wages of labor comprise the reward 
 received for any personal exertion, at whatever time, and 
 in whatever form that reward reaches the laborer. We 
 shall confine ourselves for the present to the wages of 
 manual labor. Due notice will be given when we mean 
 to comprehend the wages of any other labor. 
 
 But large divisions of the rent of land are inseparably 
 connected with wages, and by their variations they 
 mutually determine each other. This will be more fully 
 shown hereafter. It is mentioned now that I may fore- 
 warn you I mean to take these divisions of the rent of 
 land while I am investigating wages, and to discuss 
 them both together.
 
 420 CAUSES WHICH DETERMINE AVAGES [lf.ct. vi. 
 
 THE TWO CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DETERMINE THE 
 WAGES OF LABOR. 
 
 It is clear that, taking the world at large, or any par- 
 ticular portion of it, the wages of labor will be deter- 
 mined : 1st, — By the amount of wealth devoted to the 
 subsistence of laborers ; 2ndly, — By the number of 
 laborers who divide it. 
 
 We have obviously, then, before us, the double task 
 of ascertaining the circumstances which determine the 
 amount of the funds devoted to the subsistence of 
 laborers, and of ascertaining the causes which determine " 
 the numbers of the laboring classes. We will begin 
 with the causes which determine the amount of the 
 funds devoted to the maintenance of laborers. 
 
 They present themselves to the observer in three divi- 
 sions : — 
 
 A quantity/ of ivealth 'produced hy the laborer himself as 
 the occupier of the soil. 
 
 This branch of the labor fund supports a far greater 
 proportion of the laboring classes of the earth than either 
 of the other two, and is so far entitled to a most steady 
 examination. 
 
 The revenues of superior classes expended in the main- 
 tenance of laborers. 
 
 This branch of tlie labor fund has exerted in all coun- 
 tries, and still exerts in some, a predominant influence 
 on the position and employments of the non-agricultural 
 classes, and it has considerable historical interest of its
 
 LECT. VI.] AND THE NUMBER OF LABORERS. 421 
 
 own, besides that due to its actual prevalence and im- 
 portance. 
 
 Wealthy accumulated and saved from revenue, advanced 
 to the laborers with a view to the profits of its owners. 
 
 This portion of the labor fund of the world is the most 
 active in developing the productive power of nations, 
 and in changing their social and political elements. It 
 prevails more widely and exclusively in England (not 
 Great Britain) than anywhere else, and is on both these 
 accounts invested with a peculiar interest. 
 
 It is obvious that these different branches of the labor 
 fund have all one common result. They maintain 
 laborers. It is equally obvious that each branch is 
 affected in its fluctuations by causes not common to all, 
 but peculiar to itself, which must be separately investi- 
 gated before we can understand the circumstances which 
 determine the amount of each at any given time and 
 place. 
 
 The following divisions of the subject will be found 
 convenient in conducting this investigation. We shall 
 examine wages, 
 
 1st. — As determined by the rent of land. 
 
 2ndly. — As determined by the produce of land inde- 
 pendently of rent. 
 
 3rdly. — As determined by the expenditure of the 
 revenues of other classes in the dii*ect maintenance of 
 laborers. 
 
 4thly. — As determined by the advance to the laborei-s 
 of saved and accumulated capital. 
 
 Over a very large portion of the globe the wages of 
 the majority of laborers depend upon the terms on which
 
 422 LABORING PKOPRIETORS. [lect. vi. 
 
 they occupy land. We will explain the causes which 
 have led to this state of things before we examine its 
 results in the actual condition of such laborers, or in the 
 circumstances which occasion fluctuations in that posi- 
 tion. 
 
 Men, obviously enough, are in the infancy of society 
 wholly dependent on what they can themselves produce 
 from the earth ; first, by collecting its spontaneous pro- 
 duce, and then by what they can obtain by cultivation. 
 
 If the mere desire of obtaining subsistence were the 
 only feeling by which the human race was influenced, 
 we should find the individual members of different popu- 
 lations spreading themselves over their territory, and 
 producing their own subsistence, or wages, by laboring 
 in the character of proprietors. 
 
 It appears to some reasoners that this is the just and 
 natural state of society. We will, at present, say nothing 
 for or against the justice of such an arrangement ; but it 
 clearly is not the most natural, if the natural conduct of 
 a community is that to which it is impelled by the joint 
 action of all its impulses, and not by the exclusive action 
 of any one. 
 
 Those elements of human nature, which lead to the 
 appropriation of the soil, produce the next steps in the 
 progress of society. 
 
 Man, in his rudest state even, as a gregarious animal, 
 has an instinctive belief in a right of property in the 
 soil vested in the community of each tribe or nation. A 
 similar feeling may be traced in the animal creation. 
 The dogs, for instance, of different districts of Constan- 
 tinople allow the members of the same community to
 
 LECT. VI.] PROGRESS or SOCIETY. 423 
 
 exist, US well as dogs may, in the different divisions of 
 the town ; but, when a stranger dog appears, the joint 
 rights of the community are at once asserted, and the 
 intruder is chased away or devoured, as the case may be. 
 
 A similar feeling pervades the human race, and has 
 been the foundation — be it a good or bad one — of most 
 of the fabrics of society, which we can observe in past 
 times, or see in our own. 
 
 But societies of men soon rise above the passive 
 equality of brutes, and feel themselves represented by 
 some portion of their community, be it a chief, an assem- 
 bly of elders, or a portion of the tribe in council. The 
 moment this substitution of the rights of a portion of a 
 community for those of the whole takes place, the pro- 
 cess of property in the soil is begun. It is vested in 
 those who so rej)resent the community, and its various 
 economical, as well as social and political, effects imme- 
 diately follow. Let us trace them. 
 
 There are three different positions in which we can 
 observe those laboring occupiers of land who form the 
 largest portion of the population of the globe. 
 
 First. The State may be the supreme owner of the 
 soil, and the occupiers cultivate under conditions imposed 
 by the State. We shall, for convenience (the grounds 
 for which will appear hereafter), name that class of 
 laboring cultivators, hereditary occicpiers. 
 
 Secondly. A body of landowners, intermediate be- 
 tween the occupiers and the State, may impose the con- 
 ditions on which the occupiers cultivate ; these culti- 
 vators will then be called, in the ordinary sense of the 
 word, tenants^ and will exhibit several subdivisions.
 
 424 THE MOBILITY OF CAPITAL REGULATES [lect. vi. 
 
 Thirdly. The occupier may be found as a simple pro- 
 prietor, like the American or Australian, or Cape of 
 Good Ilope peasant, to whom the State has handed over 
 the property which, as representing the commuity, it has 
 acquired a title to dispose of. The wages of such culti- 
 vators once fixed on the land are determined by its pro- 
 duce without reference to rent. 
 
 Such hereditary occupiers and tenants in past ages 
 have comprised a vast majority of the human race, and 
 their wages have been determined by the conditions im- 
 posed on them as occupiers of the soil, in other words, 
 by the rents they have paid. As in their cases, rent has 
 necessarily determined wages — so their wages have and 
 do necessarily determine the rent of land. A full per- 
 ception and recollection of the truth of these propositions 
 will be necessary in the development of our subject. It 
 will be best then to explain them here. 
 
 In England rent and wages have no such influence on 
 each other. Here agriculture is carried on by capitalists 
 who employ less than one-third of the laboring popula- 
 tion ; the remaining two-thirds are in the employment 
 of other capitalists who invest their property in an in- 
 definite variety of occupations. If the agricultural capi- 
 talists did not make the same, or nearly the same amount 
 of profit which they could obtain in other occuj^ations, 
 they would slowly and gradually perhaps, but still cer- 
 tainly, leave agriculture, and transfer their property to 
 some more remunerating employment. This power of 
 moving their capital, and with it the labor it supports, 
 imposes on the landowner the necessity of restricting his 
 demands upon his tenantry. If he docs not leave them
 
 LECT. VI.] THE RENT OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 425 
 
 as much profit as they can make elsewhere, his land will 
 assuredly in the .long run, be deserted, and he would 
 make no rent at all. For like reasons, if his tenantry 
 insist on retaining more profit than is made in other 
 occupations, some persons employing capital in those 
 occupations will as assuredly resort to agriculture, always 
 a favorite business, and the tenant grasping at extraor- 
 dinary profits will be expelled. The rent, therefore, to 
 be given for any portion of land consists of the profits to 
 be made on it, in excess of the profits to be made in 
 other occupations, and will never be permanently more 
 or less. 
 
 In this country, then, nothing can permanently raise 
 or lower the rent of land but cii'cumstances which in- 
 crease or diminish the surplus profits which can be made 
 on it. This proposition is not only true, but is pregnant 
 with many deductions of very great interest and import- 
 ance, when we are considering the economical machinery 
 of England or any countries, or rather districts, for there 
 are no whole countries similarly situated. 
 
 But it will be observed that all the processes by which 
 the rent of land is thus limited to surplus profits, and is 
 disconnected with wages, depend on, and are almost 
 identical with, the power of moving capital and labor 
 from one occupation to others, where a certain common 
 or ordinary rate of profit can be realized. The capacity 
 of being so transferred may be called the " mobility" of 
 capital and labor, and in countries where agricultural 
 capital and labor have no such mobility, that is, no 
 such capacity of being moved from one occupation to 
 another, we cannot expect to observe any of the results
 
 42G "WHERE CAriTAL IS NOT MOBILE, [lect. vi. 
 
 which wc see to arise here from that mobility exclu- 
 sively. 
 
 Now, in the case of nine out of ten, at least, of the 
 occupiers of the cultivated surface of the earth, the 
 laborers and the capital employed in agriculture have 
 no such mobility ; they cannot be so transferred from 
 agriculture to diiferent occupations, but are confined to 
 the cultivation of the earth by an insuperable necessity, 
 by adamantine chains, which cannot be broken by any 
 human power. 
 
 The rent of land in these countries must therefore be 
 determined by different causes, and I proceed to show 
 you how it is determined by wages, or rather how 
 the rent and wages in such countries determine each 
 other. 
 
 The existence of a number of non-agricultural oc- 
 cupations giving employment to a population large, 
 or, indeed, otherwise than very small, in proportion to 
 the agricultural body, is a phenomenon which has come 
 late in the economical progress of any nation ; and, as 
 to the vast majority of nations, has never come at all. 
 They are, in this respect, not far from where they started. 
 Their agriculture maintains those who labor at it, and 
 not many more. 
 
 Even in France, before the great Eevolution, out of 
 twenty -five millions of souls, only five millions were 
 employed or maintained in any other way than by the 
 land. The people of the other countries of Europe are, 
 almost all, even more exclusively agricultural than 
 France then was. 
 
 Ill such a state of things the great body of the laborers
 
 LECT. VI.] KENT AND WAGES DETERMINE EACH OTHEE. 427 
 
 are occupiers of land, and they must find land to occupy 
 and labor on, or they must starve. 
 
 The capitalists have not yet appeared, who occasionally, 
 though rarely, elsewhere take the command of agricul- 
 tural labor, and supply the funds on which the laborer 
 exists. His sole resources are his own labor and the 
 possession of land from which he may extract subsist- 
 ence. If he quits the land, or is driven from it, he 
 perishes. 
 
 But if he is depressed by unjust conditions, by too 
 heavy a rent, he may move his capital at least, it may 
 be said, to some other emj)loyment, and realize in that 
 some common rate of profit. This supposes that other 
 employments are open for his capital, and the supposition 
 may be fallacious ; but let it pass. 
 
 There is an overpowering necessity which, in the 
 absence of a body of caj^italist employers, ties the poor 
 peasant's capital to the soil as well as his labor. In 
 rude stages of agriculture, very little, it is true, besides 
 human labor is absolutely necessary in the task of culti- 
 vation ; but, however small, still some stock is necessary — 
 some simple implements, the hoe, the spade, and other 
 assistants ; for without some such stock, the land, and the 
 labor bestowed upon the land, would not together afford 
 the cultivator subsistence. If he parted with his spade 
 and hoe, and scratched the earth with his ten fingers, he 
 and his family would be nearly as likely to starve as if 
 he was turned off the land altogether. Where, then, he 
 has no other employment to resort to, the little stock 
 which assists in making his labor productive of subsist- 
 ence is tied to the land bj* a ncccssitj' as strict as that
 
 428 WHERE WAGES ARE NOT PAID OUT OF CAPITAL, [lect. vi. 
 
 which ties his labor to it, and his threatening to with- 
 draw it in order to get his rent lowered, would be a mere 
 mockery. Philosophers, indeed, may speculate on his 
 doing this, but his position drives away all such power 
 and all such ideas from him. 
 
 Such is the condition of the vast majority of the 
 cultivators of our earth, from the Atlantic sea-board of 
 Spain and Portugal to the Pacific. On the industry 
 of such a body of men the power, and indeed existence, 
 of the great empires of the East have in all times rested, 
 as they rest now ; and in somewhat different forms the 
 agriculturists of the West fill up different divisions of 
 the same great class. 
 
 The conditions imposed upon them once more evidently 
 determines the rate of wages. Of the produce of the 
 soil, a part is left in the hands of the occupier — it con- 
 stitutes his wages ; a part goes to the owner of the soil 
 — it constitutes his rent ; and the produce remaining 
 stationary, you cannot increase the one without dimi- 
 nishing the other of these quantities. 
 
 There is one proposition applicable to all classes of 
 laboring occupiers holding land on conditions. At a 
 certain limit, all demands of the landlord must stop. 
 There is a point at which the laws of nature interfere 
 to make any but mere temporary exactions beyond that 
 point not merely difficult but impossible. Enough must 
 be left to the laborers to maintain themselves, and 
 rear such a family as will secure another generation 
 of laboring occupiers, or the land will be slowly, or 
 quickly, depopulated, and will yield either no revenue, 
 or a decreasing revenue, to its owners.
 
 LEOT. VI.] THE CULTIVATOR IS TIED TO THE SOIL. 429 
 
 Take a district of India for one example. The 
 cultivators cling to their lots of land, and will endure 
 much oppression before they abandon them ; but, if 
 sufficient subsistence is not left to them, one of two 
 things must happen : the mortality will increase and 
 the cultivating population become less, and then the 
 produce must become less, and what the landlord can 
 appropriate becomes less too; and, if the pressure con- 
 tinues under these circumstances, and violent attempts 
 are made to extract the same revenue, the district 
 will, in time, become depopulated, — or the population 
 must abandon the soil. Instances of such a result 
 are not rare in Oriental countries — Persia, Turkey, 
 India, etc. 
 
 In Europe, the demands of the landlord are usually 
 stayed by a perception of the approach of such results. 
 The peasants in France who pay produce-rents may be 
 seen reduced very closely to such limits ; ' and so in 
 other cases. 
 
 But if the peasants have need of ground the land- 
 owners have need of tenants. Experience shows what 
 extent of ground a family can cultivate, and what part 
 of the produce the tenant must retain to continue his 
 race, and with it cultivation : and custom, and pre- 
 scription, establish rules and terms, which prevent the 
 disappearance of the population, though they may not 
 prevent its suffering. 
 
 Such is the minimum of the wages of occupying 
 cultivators, which is consistent with the continuous 
 revenue of the owners of the soil. 
 
 » Be Tracy.
 
 430 IN^ THE ABSENCE OF CAPITALISTS [lect. vi. 
 
 The maximum is, happily, more indefinite ; we are in 
 no condition to treat of that yet. 
 
 FIRST DIVISION OF LABORING OCCUPIERS CULTIVAT- 
 ING LAND ON CONDITIONS ; OR, IN OTHER WORDS, 
 PAYING 'KE^i:.—n:ere(litary Occupiers. 
 
 This large section of the laboring classes has possession 
 of the greater part of the cultivated soil of Asia. 
 
 Their leading characteristics throughout that wide 
 region are alike, though not always identical. 
 
 I will endeavor to explain the common causes which 
 have led to the actual position of these cultivators. 
 
 The despotic governments which have ever prevailed 
 in those countries have ordinarily claimed for the monarch 
 not merely a dominion over his territories, but the pro- 
 perty of the soil in them. But this claim once made 
 and submissively admitted, what appears to European 
 eyes a vital modification of these supreme territorial 
 rights, naturally and almost necessarily took place. 
 
 In the absence of capitalists, the existence of a labor- 
 ing tenantry is necessary that there may be any cultiva- 
 tion at all. 
 
 The revenues of such States, however, have ever con- 
 sisted of the whole or a portion of the surplus produce 
 of the land, that is, of the produce which remains when 
 the cultivators have been fed, and the expenses of 
 cultivation, seed, etc., provided for. 
 
 Till an entire change in the organization and habits of 
 eastern communities takes place, no considerable revenue 
 can over be derived from nnv other source.
 
 LKCT. VI.] THERE MUST BE A LABORING TENANTRY. 431 
 
 In the continued absence of capitalist farmers, the 
 prolonged existence of such a race of laboring cultiva- 
 tors is, then, as essential to the monarch as their esta- 
 blishment. So far from wishing to displace or disturb 
 the occupying peasant, the State displays everywhere an 
 anxiety to retain him. His ruin, his disappearance, or 
 desertion, are all so many steps towards the ruin of the 
 State itself; and he is coaxed, threatened, or coerced to 
 stay, wherever skill or power to keep him to his task 
 are not wanting.^ 
 
 But if the continued presence of families of cultivators 
 is useful to the State, their right of continuous occupation 
 is matter of life and death to themselves. 
 
 There are, once more, no other employments open to 
 the body of them, no capitalist to advance their main- 
 tenance in any employment : nature's original provision 
 — the earth, and their power of labor on it, are what 
 they must exclusively depend on ; and if a subsistence 
 can so be secured to them, they purchase it with any 
 reasonable, and, indeed, unreasonable sacrifices, exactly 
 as they woidd ransom their lives. 
 
 They accept, then, a right of hereditary succession as 
 the greatest of boons ; they claim it as the most essential 
 of privileges. The vital interest of the State and its sub- 
 jects thus concur in producing that wide- spread position 
 of the great landowner and the cultivators, wliich we are 
 now reviewing, and which prescription soon perpetuates : 
 a supreme and paramount authority, that is, exacting 
 a revenue from laboring cultivators as the condition of 
 
 ^ See, among other proofs, Auniiigzche's instrurtions to his offiecrs in Pffttoti's 
 Frineijjies of Jisiatic Monarcliies.
 
 432 EFFECTS OF FOREIGX CONQUEST [i-f.ct vi. 
 
 their possession of the land ; and a body of such cultiva- 
 tors having admitted claims to an hereditary occupation 
 which deprive the monarch of all right to the possession 
 of their allotments while they fulfil their obligations of 
 supplying the revenue to the State. We have seen that 
 in this, as in all other cases of laboring cultivators oc- 
 cupying land on conditions^ nature opposes an insuperable 
 obstacle to the indefinite progress of the demands of the 
 landowner. 
 
 It is well when, before this check comes into opera- 
 tion, policy or law, or custom, prevent the disastrous 
 processes by which it works out its result. 
 
 It is well when depopulation, or resistance, or deser- 
 tion, are kept at bay by the moderation of Oriental 
 governments ; and this is very generally the case. We 
 see, indeed, oppression and disaster at work with lament- 
 able frequency ; but, on the whole, the systems of State- 
 management stop short, under ordinary circumstances, 
 of the destruction of the population. 
 
 It is not my purpose, in this general sketch, to attempt 
 to distinguish, in detail, the systems of difi'erent States. 
 It must be remembered, however, that, after they have 
 settled into form, they have, in almost every case, been 
 disturbed and modified by foreign conquerors. The na- 
 tions of the interior of Asia — that is, the Tartars — have 
 usually supplied these conquerors. Even the Mahometan 
 States have generally received theii* new lords from this 
 quarter, after the stream of Arabian immigration had 
 ceased, as it rather quickly did, to flow. 
 
 The rule of the new masters too often put an end to 
 any symptoms of an improving condition, which, in some
 
 i.ECT. vi.J UPON THE CONDITION OF CULTIVATORS. 433 
 
 cases, can be observed among the subject laborers. The 
 Indian cultivators were found by Alexander and his 
 Greeks paying to the State one-sixth of the produce ; 
 and this proportion had as much of a pretended divine 
 sanction as the Brahminical laws could give it. When 
 the Mahometans became supreme in India, their harsher 
 doctrines as to the relative rights of the subject cultivator 
 are explained by Colonel Galloway.' 
 
 The simple relations here described, however, are con- 
 stantly liable to be disturbed and modified by the effects 
 not only of bad, but of good government. 
 
 In India, for instance, there appear in various parts of 
 the country occupiers so assessed as to have some interest 
 in the soil clearly exceeding the mere wages of their 
 labor. Still oftener are found the impoverished repre- 
 sentatives of such bodies, whose interest of this descrip- 
 tion the progressive demands of the State have deprived 
 of all value. 
 
 In settling our own assessments, claimants of this class 
 often give rise to much perplexity and to difficulties, 
 which cannot be hastily pushed on one side without 
 incurring danger of committing much injustice. 
 
 Our business, however, now is only with the great 
 body of occupiers under the monarchical governments of 
 the East, living as they ordinarily do on a portion of the 
 produce which constitutes the wages of their labor. 
 
 I need add nothing more in support of the proposi- 
 tions I have already laid down ; first, that the fund for 
 the maintenance of this branch of laborers — probably the 
 most numerous in the world — forms no part of the saved 
 
 ' Galloway on the Lair and Coiixfihifioii of India. 
 
 28
 
 434 MONEY KENTS. [lect. vi. 
 
 and accumulated capital of nations, but is a revenue pro- 
 duced by themselves from the soil ; and secondly, that 
 the produce of their land being taken as a given quan- 
 tity, it is the rent they pay which determines what shall 
 be left to them as wages. 
 
 THE LABORING AND OCCUPYING TENANTRY WHOSE 
 WAGES AEE DETERMINED BY THE RENT THEY PAY. 
 
 The rent of land may be paid in money, in produce, or 
 in services. 
 
 Payments in money are rare : they suppose an ad- 
 vance in the organization of society, which is found in 
 few spots on the globe. There must be both markets to 
 supply specie, and a tenantry capable of risking the vari- 
 ations of such markets, and able to contract on their own 
 responsibility for money rents, with a reasonable proba- 
 bility of their being able to perform such contracts. 
 
 In England, such money rents are possible and com- 
 mon. On the European continent they exist only in the 
 neighborhood of towns, or in some districts peculiarly 
 circumstanced. In Asia, only when enforced by the 
 State, to the great peril of the occupiers. In ancient 
 days, indeed, and under mild governments, an alterna- 
 tive of paying rents in produce, has invariably protected 
 the Asiatic peasantry. 
 
 Money rents are what the landlord naturally prefers. 
 They save him all the trouble and risk of markets and 
 cultivation ; and his revenue, certain in amount, reaches 
 him in the form in wliifh he can the most readilv ex-
 
 i.i:cT. VI.] SERF LABOR. 435 
 
 change it for such commodities as he wishes to con- 
 sume. 
 
 If then we do not find money rents established in a 
 country, it is invariably because there exist circumstances 
 which make the tenant unable to pay them with any 
 certainty or regularity. Such circumstances still main- 
 tain their influence over by far the greater part of the 
 cultivated surface of the globe, and the landlords have 
 been obliged to content themselves with revenues in the 
 forms we are about to sketch. The amount of these 
 rents — like the revenues paid to the State by hereditary 
 occupiers — determine, directly or indirectly, what quan- 
 tity of produce shall constitute the wages of the laboring 
 occupier. 
 
 SERFS. 
 
 The landlord may be able to entrust the tenant with 
 the task of cultivation, and rely on the receipt of a propor- 
 tion of the produce, or he may not be able so to trust him. 
 If he cannot trust him, only one expedient remains by 
 which he can, through a laboring peasantry, secure a 
 revenue from his estate. 
 
 He may hold a portion of his property in his own 
 hands, and deliver the remainder to a body of pea- 
 santry on the condition that they should not labor 
 wholly for themselves, but during some portion of their 
 time should labor on his reserved lands, his demesne, 
 and for his benefit. 
 
 In ancient and modern times there have existed an 
 indefinite variety of this sort of tenantry. The bar-
 
 436 WAGES OF SERF LABORERS. [lect. vi. 
 
 barian invaders of the empire brought some with them, 
 and found others in the Eoman provinces. 
 
 The more eastern portion of Eiu'ope, consisting of 
 countries which never were occupied by Eomans, still 
 continues to be cultivated by such laborers, and they 
 compose by far the largest part of the population of 
 those countries. 
 
 Their early history in Western Europe is interesting ; 
 we can trace large masses of them to a condition be- 
 tween freemen and slaves, holding land on conditions 
 not very onerous, but which made them ordinary instru- 
 ments in the cultivation of the estates of the crown and 
 nobility. 
 
 The progress of the feudal power abolished there the 
 remnants of freedom, which older systems had left to 
 them. 
 
 Further east, in those countries of Europe in which 
 true feudal relations never prevailed at all, other causes 
 have done the same work, and the serf there also has 
 become a slave. 
 
 I have elsewhere discussed at length the manner in 
 which this result has been worked out, and will only 
 repeat here that, from the east of Grermany to the east 
 of cultivated Russia, the wages of the great bulk of 
 the population — that is, of the laboring agriculturists — 
 are determined by what they can produce from the 
 ground, after fulfilling the conditions which have been 
 imposed upon them by the landowners on whose estates 
 they are to labor.
 
 LECT. VI.] PRODUCE RENTS. 437 
 
 LABORERS TAYIXO PRODUCE RENTS. 
 
 Another class of laborers also extracting their own 
 wages from the soil, the amounts of whose wages are 
 determined by the rents they pay, are the metayers to be 
 found in Continental Europe, and in some other parts of 
 the globe, I have sufficiently explained elsewhere their 
 origin and circumstances. 
 
 It is enough to repeat here that their wages consist of 
 a proportion of the produce of the land they occupy, and 
 that the produce being a given quantity, the amount 
 which they retain, or in other words, their wages, is 
 determined by the amount which they resign to the 
 landowner, or by the rent they pay. 
 
 There remains only one other class of peasant laborers 
 who extract their own wages from the soil, and these are 
 cottiers, or persons who, though they labor with their 
 own hands to produce their o^vn food, are yet able to 
 undertake the responsibility of paying to the owner of 
 the land they occupy, not the surplus iwoduce beyond 
 what they retain, but the frice of that produce, in other 
 words, to pay a money rent. 
 
 The capacity of paying such a rent is a proof that the 
 laboring cottier is surrounded by a state of society which 
 offers some advantages to distinguish it from those of his 
 class who pay labor or produce-rents. The money-rent, 
 however, brings also, directly and indii'ectly, many perils 
 with it. The expedients by which custom and prescrip- 
 tion protect the ruder and more backward forms of agri- 
 cultural society, are wanting to the cottier.
 
 438 CONSEQUENCES OF MINUTE [lect. vi. 
 
 THE WAGES OF LABORING PROPRIETORS OE LAND 
 CULTIVATED BY THEMSELVES. 
 
 So far we have seen the wages of the hiboring culti- 
 vators depend upon the conditions on which they hold 
 the land they occupy, or on the nature and amount of 
 the rent they pay. We must remember that there are 
 many industrious laborers who hold their land in full 
 property and pay no rent. Their wages consist of the 
 produce of the land they labor on, limited by its fertility, 
 the efficiency of their skill and industry, and by the size 
 of their allotment. 
 
 Of these limiting causes the most important in practice 
 is found to be the extent of their propert}^ If every 
 family had as much land as their labor could make avail- 
 able, the wages of this class would never be scanty ; but 
 no fertility in the soil, no amount of industry and skill 
 in the cultivators, can protect their race from the pres- 
 sure of want, if frequent subdivision of peasant properties 
 reduce their estates to a size so diminutive that it is 
 impossible they should yield a full subsistence. 
 
 This direct effect of minute subdivisions is obvious. 
 The same result may be produced indirectly. If the 
 laws of a country make it impossible to prevent frequent 
 and noxious subdivisions, except by a system of mort- 
 gages, the produce retained by the cultivators may be 
 reduced as it would be by high rents or excessive taxa- 
 tion, till the cultivators are miserable, and, if they form 
 a considerable portion of the population, till the State
 
 LJXT. VI. J SUBDIVISIONS OF LAND. 439 
 
 and society arc in danger. This seems to be the case in 
 France just now.^ 
 
 The cause wliich ordinarily produces excessive sub- 
 division is the progress of population, the multiplication 
 of the number of the proprietors and their families. 
 
 We have before remarked that a knowledge of the 
 causes which determine the amount of wages always 
 supposes two investigations to have been gone through : 
 one, of the circumstances which determine the amount 
 of wealth devoted to the maintenance of laborers ; and 
 a second, of the circumstances which determine the num- 
 bers of the laborers. The second investigation evidently 
 includes the whole subject of the population, 
 
 As the numbers, then, of the laboring population de- 
 termine the sub-divisions of properties, we shall not be 
 able to throw much light on the condition of these 
 laboring proprietors till we understand the causes which 
 rule the movements of population. We will dismiss for 
 the present, then, this class of laborers to return to them 
 hereafter. 
 
 In the meantime we may remark that these bodies 
 have largely increased of late years in size and import- 
 ance. They have been multiplied in the Old World by 
 political events and systems. They are largely increas- 
 ing in the New with the rapid increase of its young and 
 fruitful populations. We must remember, when we re- 
 tiu'n to them, that there is, perhaps, no division of society 
 more full of interest to the political economist and states- 
 man of the present day than this class of small laboring 
 proprietors. 
 
 ' These lectures were delivered shortly after the last Freuch Revolutidii.
 
 440 XOX-AGIUCULTURAL LADOEERS PAID OUT OF [lkct. vi. 
 
 REVENUES EXPENDED IN THE WAGES OF LABOE. 
 
 We have seen that the great source assigned by 
 Providence, for the maintenance of the human race, 
 is tlie earth, its spontaneous productions, and the food 
 which the cultivator extracts from it by his labor. 
 
 But mother-earth, once cultivated, not only gives 
 sustenance to the class laboring on the soil, but calls 
 into existence the means of forming other classes in 
 societies and communities, and of initiating, at least, 
 and carrying forward, to a certain extent, all the tasks 
 of civilization. 
 
 It is a law of nature that the land which one family 
 can cultivate, will, with rare exceptions, produce m.ore 
 than enough for the sustenance of that family, and the 
 continuance of their cultivation. 
 
 This surplus produce supports other classes of societies. 
 
 It may belong to the cultivators, as in the case of 
 laboring proprietors. 
 
 It may be handed over to individual landowners, as by 
 all classes of tenant-agriculturists, or it may be paid to 
 the State as by the class of hereditary occupiers. On 
 its extent must always depend the number of non-agri- 
 culturists in the cultivated countries of the world. 
 
 On the persons by which it is distributed, and their 
 habits and wants, depends the nature of the employments 
 of these non-agricultural classes, and the commodities 
 they produce when employed in productive industry. 
 
 This source of wages has a tendency to transfer its 
 functions into the hands of capitalists, or rather, perhaps,
 
 LECT. VI.] THE SURPLUS PRODUCE OF THE LA^'D. 441 
 
 to convert itself into a fund to satisfy the conditions on 
 which the capitalists may go on with the process of 
 continuously advancing the wages of the non-agricultural 
 laborer. The stages of this transition, and the continued 
 importance of these revenues, and of their expenditure, 
 form an important branch of our subject, and we shall 
 recur to them. At present, however, we are concerned 
 with such revenues in their earliest application, that is, 
 as they are expended in the direct support of labor. 
 
 Before capitalists appear as the advancers of wages, 
 there is, ordinarily, a long and Aveary interval, during 
 which the owners of revenue must apply it themselves, 
 in support of the workmen who produce the commodities 
 they desire, or go without them. 
 
 This state of things remains in Asia. It has passed 
 away gradually, but by no means perfectly, from by far 
 the greater part of Europe. 
 
 Let us examine one or two striking examples of the 
 extensive functions of this part of the labor fund in 
 ancient Europe before wq follow it to the present scats 
 of its activity and influence. 
 
 The kings of France, of the first and second races, 
 lived principally on the produce of their domains ; they 
 expended their revenues as they received them, in kind ; 
 and some picturesque and instructive accounts of a por- 
 tion of this expenditure are preserved : their different 
 palaces were, in fact, towns, of which the numerous 
 inhabitants, civil and military, consumed the rude wealth 
 of the monarch. Of the civilians, one great branch were 
 the handicraftsmen who supplied the demands of the 
 monarch and his following.
 
 442 REVENUES RECEIVED IN KIND. [i.kct. vi. 
 
 "The kings travelled with their court from one palace 
 to another to consume successively the provisions which 
 were accumulated there. The administration of so many 
 landed estates might be complicated ; they required, how- 
 ever, neither writing nor correspondence. The products 
 of the earth were received and emj)loyed in kind, and 
 when the barns were empty the accounts were closed." ^ 
 
 In the spacious courts of these palaces, handicraftsmen 
 carried on their occupations, while the monarchs looked 
 down on them and occasionally selected both men and 
 women for promotion. 
 
 The wages of such workmen were obviously derived 
 directly from the revenue of their great customer, and 
 not from an intermediate class of capitalists. There is 
 no reason to doubt that the palace-yard only represented, 
 on a larger scale, the establishments of the numerous 
 nobility who began, from the very foundation of the 
 Frankish monarchy, to derive revenues from the landed 
 estates granted to them, and to distribute them from 
 their residences. This mode of distributing such revenues 
 may be traced in other countries, and to a much later 
 period. 
 
 If we pass over to England, as late as the Wars of the 
 Eoscs, we find it calculated that the Earl of Warwick 
 alone fed daily, in his various castles, forty thousand 
 men ; and he was only one of a body of landed pro- 
 prietors whose income was spent in the same way. 
 Among the crowd of menials and military retainers, 
 there is no doubt that the artizans of the period came 
 in for a considerable share of this baronial expenditure. 
 
 ' Sisiniiiidi — i/Zv/'o/rr '!r^ FrKur'iis, i., 29.
 
 i.KCT. VI.] PROGRESS OF XON-AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. 443 
 
 But, from Europe, this direct dependence of the artizan 
 popuhition on the revenues and expenditure of those who 
 consume the commodities they produce, is a state of 
 things which has almost entirely passed away. Toler- 
 able, though generally imperfect, systems of laws and 
 government have given security and energy to the non- 
 agriculturists, sufficient to produce, very generally, ac- 
 cumulations of stock, and a body of capitalists, who 
 employ the majority of artizans, advance their main- 
 tenance, and take charge of finding, for the Avares pro- 
 duced, customers who will reimburse the advances of the 
 master caste, and pay them a Ixiir remuneration for their 
 trouble, expenses, and risks — a remuneration which con- 
 stitutes the profit of the capitalists, and which, we may 
 remark, forms ordinarily a very small part indeed of the 
 additional wealth produced by their agency and assistance. 
 
 The transition in Europe has been aided, no doubt, by 
 municipal laws, and by the legislation for, and by, guilds 
 and companies, which, under diff'erent forms, have in- 
 fluenced, very considerably, the fortunes and career of 
 European non-agricultural industry. 
 
 Even in Europe, however, the number of laborers 
 whose wages are directly advanced from the revenues of 
 other classes, and not from capital, is still very consider- 
 ably greater than a mere survey of English society would 
 lead us to estimate ; and in England itself, though the 
 body is comparatively small, it is positively far from 
 inconsiderable. 
 
 If we choose to take the army and navy and the 
 menial servants into account, the number of persons 
 who subsist on wages advanced from revenue docs not
 
 444 TllAXSFEE OF XOX-AGEICULTURISTS [lkct. vi. 
 
 fall far, if at all, short of the number of heads of families 
 employed iu agriculture. 
 
 But it is in Asia that we observe this particular fund 
 for the maintenance of non-agricultural laborers in full 
 and continued activity and predominance. 
 
 Various causes have occasioned this ; and though we 
 cannot, perhaps, very distinctly trace them all, the fact 
 itself admits of no dispute. 
 
 The early dependence of the artizans directly on the 
 revenues of consumers is a matter of necessity. They 
 cannot be supported by advances from accumulated stock 
 when neither capital nor capitalists exist for the pur- 
 pose; but the indefinite prolongation of this state of 
 things shews that some untoward circumstances impede 
 the progress of national industry. 
 
 The existence of the laboring agriculturist in the 
 character of sole occupier of the land, and the producer 
 of his own wages, is inconsistent, indeed, with the fullest 
 possible development of agricultural power, but not with 
 a considerable progress in skill and efficiency ; and, ac- 
 cordingly, we still find the agriculturists in this condition 
 in ninety -nine parts out of a hundred of the cultivated 
 surface of the globe. 
 
 But the advantages of transferring the non-agriculturists 
 to the pay of capitalists are so numerous and so strildng 
 in securing the continuity of their exertions, and know- 
 ledge, and power to aid them, that the postponement of 
 such a transfer is really a postponement of the progress 
 of nations in the consumption of non-agricultural wealth. 
 
 The first capitalist employers — those who first advance 
 the wages of labor from accumulated stock, and seek a
 
 LF.CT. VI.] TO THE PAY OF CAPITALISTS. 445 
 
 revenue in the shape of profits from such advance — have 
 been ordinarily a class distinct from the laborers them- 
 selves : a state of things may hereafter exist, and parts 
 of the world may be approaching to it, under which the 
 laborers and the owners of accumulated stock, may be 
 identical ; but in the progress of nations, which we are 
 now observing, this has never yet been the case, and to 
 trace and understand that progress, we must observe the 
 laborers gradually transferred from the hands of a body of 
 customers, who pay them out of their revenues, to those 
 of a body of employers, who pay them by advances of 
 capital out of the returns to which the owners aim at 
 realising a distinct revenue. This may not be as desir- 
 able a state of things as that in which laborers and capi- 
 talists are identified ; but we must still accept it as con- 
 stituting a stage in the march of industry, which has 
 hitherto marked the progress of advancing nations. At 
 that stage the people of Asia have not yet arrived. 
 
 We have an account of the Persian artizans in Char- 
 din, and of those of China in other authors. But of the 
 state of manners to which the dependence of the work- 
 men on the revenues of their customers has given birth 
 in China, you would, perhaps, get the most striking pic- 
 ture in the Chinese Exhibition, so long kept open by its 
 American proprietor in London. It is thronged with 
 figures of artizans with their small packs of tools, plying 
 for customers, and idle when none appear — painting 
 vividly to the eye the necessary absence, in their case, 
 of that continuity of labor which is one of tlie three 
 great elements of its productiveness, and indicating sufii- 
 cientlv, to any well-informed observer, the absence also
 
 446 AllTlZAXS IX INDIA. [i.ixt. vi. 
 
 of fixed capital and machinery, hardly less important 
 elements of the fruitfulness of industry. 
 
 In India, where the admixture of Europeans has not 
 changed the scene, a like spectacle may be seen in the 
 towns. The artizans in rural districts are, however, pro- 
 vided for there in a peculiar manner, made possible and 
 convenient by their institutions, and consecrated by their 
 early laws. Such handicraftsmen and other non-agri- 
 culturists as were actually necessary in a village were 
 maintained by an assignment of a portion of the joint 
 revenues of the villagers, and, throughout the country, 
 bands of hereditary workmen existed on this fund, whose 
 industry supplied the simple wants and tastes which the 
 cultivators did not provide for by their own hands. The 
 position and rights of these rural artizans soon became, 
 like all rights in the East, hereditary. The band found 
 its customers in the other villagers. The villagers were 
 stationary and abiding, and so were their handicrafts- 
 men, who were thus built into that edifice of enduring 
 construction, the Indian village, w^hich, however broken 
 up by time and foreign interference, continues, through 
 large portions of the peninsula, to be the substratum of 
 the Hindoo social system, and the cause and pledge of 
 its character and permanency. 
 
 The artizans of the towns were and are in a very dif- 
 ferent position. They received their wages from what 
 was substantially the same fund — surplus revenue from 
 land — but modified in its mode of distribution and its 
 distributors, so as to destroy their'sedentary permanence, 
 and produce frequent and usually disastrous migrations. 
 
 AVe must remember that such artizans are not confined
 
 LECT. VI.] THE FOLLOWING (JF AURANGZEB. 447 
 
 to any location by dependence on masses of fixed capital. 
 The cotton, and other manufacturers of Europe, will be 
 found fixed in districts in which water-power, or the 
 fuel which produces steam, are reasonably abundant, and 
 wherever, under any circumstances, considerable masses 
 of wealth have been converted into buildings and machi- 
 nery, laborers to work it will be found abiding in the 
 locality. 
 
 But the case is different when the sole dependence 
 of the laborers is on the direct receipt of part of the 
 revenues of the persons who consume the commodities 
 the artisans produce. 
 
 Such artizans must contrive to stick to their cus- 
 tomers. They are not confined to the neighborhood of 
 any fixed capital. 
 
 If their customers change their location for long — 
 nay, sometimes for very short — periods, the non-agricul- 
 tural laborers must follow them, or starve. 
 
 These circumstances give rise to some of the most 
 striking phenomena, which characterise the habits or the 
 history of Asiatic society. 
 
 The great Aurangzeb was in the habit of making 
 occasional excursions to Cashmir; aad Bernier, an eye- 
 witness, has told of the thronging crowd of artizans 
 which left Delhi to follow the monarch and his Omrahs, 
 in the absence of whose local expenditure at the capital 
 the workmen must have starved.^ He is attempting to 
 estimate the numbers which followed the monarch : "I 
 can say nothing certain, except that it is a prodigious, 
 
 1 See Bemicr, Voyages dans Irs Etats du Grand Mogol, vol. i., p. 300 ; voL ii., 
 p. 251.
 
 448 
 
 DELHI OX THE .>[ARCH. [lklt. 
 
 and, as it were, iucredible quantity of people. But, 
 then, you must recollect that it is all Delhi, the capital 
 town, that marches ; because the population, subsisting 
 wholly on the court and army, as I have said elsewhere, 
 is obliged to follow, especially when the journey is as 
 long as this one (to Oashmir), or the people must die of 
 hunger." 
 
 He describes very vividly, as they appeared to his 
 eyes, the poverty, misery, and want of all resources and 
 all security of this artizan class, quite sufficiently to 
 account for the non-appearance of capital or capitalist 
 employers to share their perils.' 
 
 When the same monarch, in his later years, entered 
 on the series of unfortunate campaigns in the Deccan, 
 which ended in his repulse and utter defeat, and so 
 sealed the ultimate ruin of his mighty empire, his camp 
 became, for twenty years, his home, and to it flocked 
 those whose subsistence depended on sharing the revenue 
 he expended there. The ministers of luxury, as Elphin- 
 stone calls them, amounted to ten times the number of 
 the fighting men, and the whole greatly exceeded a 
 million. - 
 
 But, in observing the phenomena which the existence 
 of this class of men gave rise to in Asia, and in India 
 more especially, it is necessary always to recollect, not 
 merely the fund or revenues from which the handicrafts- 
 men are fed, but the hands by which the far greater 
 part of that fund were always then distributed. The 
 surplus revenue from the soil, the only revenues except 
 
 ' See Bcrnier, Voyages dans les Etats du Grand Moyol, vol. i., p 304. 
 - Si'C Elphinstonc's History of India, vol. ii., p. 131, aiiil font note.
 
 LECT. VI.] DEl'(jJ'ULATiON OF INDIAN CITIES. .149 
 
 tlios3 of the peas;iiitiy of any considerable amount, were 
 distributed by the State and its officers. Tiic capital 
 was, necessarily, the principal centre of distribution ; 
 and the whole surface of India, ancient and modern, 
 bears testimony to the results of those changes of capital, 
 to which caprice, or war and change of dynasties, gave 
 rise. 
 
 From Samarcand, southwards to Beejapoor and Serin- 
 gapatam, we can trace the ruins of vanishing capitals, of 
 which the population left them suddenly, as soon as new 
 centres of distribution of the royal revenues, that is, of 
 the whole of the surplus revenues of the soil, were esta- 
 blished. 
 
 In other countries, towns which cease to be capitals 
 decay, but decay gradually and slowly. 
 
 In Asia the same necessity which obliged the artizans 
 of Delhi to follow Aurangzeb to Cashmir, depopulates 
 all but instantaneously the deserted capitals of the native 
 princes. Beejapoor affords as good an example as any. 
 It was the abode of a race of princes who divided 
 with several rivals the provinces of the Deccan.' Its 
 rulers were, for their means, magnificent builders. 
 It was taken by Aurangzeb in 1G86, tlie dynasty 
 was dethroned, and the town ceased at once to be the 
 centre of distribution for the surplus revenues of the 
 
 ' Meaning all India south of the Nerbudda and north of the Toombudra. 
 The exception of the countries south of the Toombudra is convenient, and perhaps 
 proper (see Wilks' Southern India), but it is not always attended to. Dukkun, I am 
 told, means, in Sanscrit, anything on the speaker's right hand. In referring to the 
 points of the compass, it means the south, because, when referring to them, the 
 speaker is always supposed to look towards the east. How far south, however, a 
 Hindoo means to travel when he speaks of the Dukkun as a district of India, is not 
 clear. 
 
 29
 
 450 THE STATE AS THE DISTRIBUTOR [lect. vi. 
 
 land of its provinces. The population departed at once ; 
 the town remained : the climate is favorable to the dura- 
 tion of its materials ; and mosque and minaret, palaces 
 and walls, in silence and solitude, still tell the tale of its 
 sudden desertion. Seringapatam, never so magnificent, 
 offers the same spectacle and the same lesson. 
 
 Ghazni is a village, Samarcand a vast heap of ruins, 
 the abode of wild animals, and of a few Mahommedan 
 Moollahs, who cliaunt the Koran over the tomb of 
 Timour, and anxiously ask the rare visitants who seek 
 the place if the mighty conqueror's descendants still 
 exist and reign. 
 
 Palibothra, Canoge, Mandoo, Goor, and many deserted 
 sites of cities, named and nameless, tell, by their ves- 
 tiges, of like changes, and indicate faintly the advance 
 and retreat of dynasties and races which once collected 
 round them the non-agricultural population of districts 
 or empires, who fed — as Bernier saw those of Delhi feed 
 — on the revenues distributed to them by the monarch 
 and his officers. 
 
 But besides the rapid agglomeration and dispersions 
 of large bodies of men, certain other phenomena in the 
 history and monuments of the East, indicate the long 
 existence of this class of artizans, the sources of their 
 subsistence, the rank and character of their emj^loyers, 
 and the influence of these circumstances on the mighty 
 results of their labors. 
 
 Bear in mind the two facts, that the body of such 
 workmen can exist only in the employment of the dis- 
 tributors of revenue, and that the great distributor in 
 Asia is the State. It has happened in times past that
 
 LKCT. VI.] OF REVENUE IX ASIA. 451 
 
 these Oriental States, after supplying the expenses of 
 their civil and military establishments, have found them- 
 selves in possession of a surplus which they could apply 
 to works of magnificence or utility, and in the construc- 
 tion of these their command over the hands and arms of 
 almost the entire non-agricultural population has pro- 
 duced stupendous monuments which still indicate their 
 power. On the Pyramids, inscriptions have been traced 
 Avhich are said to commemorate the quantity of lentils 
 and other vegetables consumed by the workmen during 
 their construction. The royal builder could have left no 
 surer proof of the foundation and nature of his greatness. 
 The teeming valley of the Nile, cultivated by industry, 
 skill, and abundant irrigation, produced food for a swarm- 
 ing non-agricultural population, and this food, belonging 
 to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded the means of 
 erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land. 
 The paintings and sculptures sufficiently testify that it 
 was sheer and almost unassisted labor which was em- 
 ployed in their construction, and without entering into 
 the question of the mechanical knowledge of the Egyp- 
 tians, we can see that in moving the colossal statues and 
 vast masses, of which the transport creates Avonder, 
 human labor almost alone was prodigally used.' 
 
 Monuments, not so numerous, but of equal vastness, 
 are to be traced in other Oriental countries ; such are 
 the topes and reservoirs of Ceylon, the Wall of China, 
 the numerous works of which the ruins cover the plains 
 of Assyria and Mesopotamia. 
 
 The number of the laborers, and the concentration of 
 
 ' See Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Eetyptians, vol. iii., p. 328.
 
 452 CAPITAL EMPLOYED TO [i.ect. vi. 
 
 their efforts sufficed. We see mighty coral reefs rising 
 from the depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, 
 yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and con- 
 temptible. The non-agricultural laborers of an Asiatic 
 monarchy have little but their individual bodily exer- 
 tions to bring to the task; but their number is their 
 strength, and the power of directing these masses gave 
 rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids and the 
 armies of gigantic statues, of which the remains astonish 
 and perplex us. It is that confinement of the revenues 
 which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes 
 such undertakings possible, and has accomplished the 
 marvels of which even the relics are the most striking 
 part of the inheritance that modern ages have received 
 from those long gone by. 
 
 We have seen under what circumstances the produce 
 they raise with their own hands from the earth support 
 the majority of the agricultural laborers, and how 
 revenues or incomes, by their direct expenditure, sup- 
 port a large proportion of its non-agricultural laborers. 
 
 But, before we part with these revenues, to treat of 
 capitalists as the paymasters of laborers, and of the pecu- 
 liar funds of their class, it may be useful to add a few 
 observations on the indirect and much more enduring 
 effects of the expenditure of such revenues, hi making 
 possible the maintenance of laborers and their continuous 
 employment, even after capitalists have appeared and 
 taken up their position as employers. 
 
 Picture to yourselves an European village in the 
 tenth century, of which all the inhabitant artizans sub- 
 sist on wages advanced to them, as independent work-
 
 LF.tT. VI.] ADVANCE WAGES. 453 
 
 men, by some neigliboring proprietor, or proprietors, who 
 purchase and consume the commodities they produce. 
 Then let a capitalist, who advances the wages of some 
 or all of them, appear, and, in due time, sell the com- 
 modities the workmen produce for him to the same pro- 
 prietors. 
 
 It is clear that the continuous expenditure of the pro- 
 prietors' revenue in such commodities is a condition, the 
 fulfilment of which is essential to the continuous opera- 
 tions of the capitalist. If there were no consumers ready 
 to expend revenue in the purchase of the commodities 
 his workmen produced, he must give up producing for 
 sale ; and, if he himself consumed the commodities so 
 produced, his capital would not be replaced : it must 
 soon be exhausted, and he must cease to advance wages 
 to his workmen. He has been but an agent to give the 
 laborers the benefit of the expenditure of the revenues 
 of the surrounding customers, in a new form and under 
 new cii'cum stances ; and the real source of the work- 
 man's subsistence, pushed out of sight by the inter- 
 ference and advances of the capitalist, loses none of its 
 vital importance. It still substantially secui'es food to 
 the laboring classes, and so constitutes the ultimate sup- 
 port of the framework of society. 
 
 We shall have, hereafter, to take more complicated 
 cases and comprehensive views of this truth, that, with 
 very slight exceptions, the existence of revenues in other 
 hands, co- extensive with the value of the goods produced 
 through capital employed, is essential to the continuous 
 existence of bodies of non- agricultural laborers. The 
 object of all production, however much or little aided
 
 454 CONSEQUENT AUGMENTATION [ucr. vi. 
 
 by capital, is consumption, and the possibility of con- 
 sumption rests upon the existence of such revenues, and 
 of owners ready to expend them. 
 
 The primary sources of the support of the population 
 of nations do not cease, therefore, to be essential sources, 
 even where the people seem to be severed from them by 
 the intervention of new employers, and of what is, ap- 
 parently, an additional fiind devoted to their maintenance. 
 
 CAPITAL, OR ACCUMULATED STOCK, AS A FUND FOE 
 THE MAINTENANCE OF LABOR. 
 
 So far we have traced the mass of human societies and 
 their laborers, while dependent on the two great primary 
 funds which Providence provided, when it fixed the pro- 
 ductive powers of the earth and its capacity of being 
 appropriated. Mankind has moved very slowly and im- 
 perfectly from direct dependence on these two primitive 
 funds. Their advantages and disadvantages still deter- 
 mine the position of a huge majority of mortal men. 
 
 Capital, or accumulated stock, after performing various 
 other functions in the production of wealth, only takes 
 up late that of advancing to the laborer his wages. 
 
 The mere hunter or fisher provides his weapons or 
 canoe ; the husbandman must have implements and seed ; 
 and, as soon as the separation of employments takes 
 place, dealers on a large or small scale assist the ex- 
 changes and consumption of nations, domestic or foreign, 
 by providing their stores of goods, or merchandize, 
 houses, roads, canals for irrigation ; and, still of tlu^
 
 LFXT. ri.] OF PRODUCTIVE POWER. -155 
 
 laborers, tlie agriculturist depends on the results of his 
 own toil to produce his food ; the artizan feeds on a 
 portion of the revenues of his employers, and the owner 
 of accumulated stock, as yet, advances the subsistence 
 or wages of no part, or an indefinitely small part of the 
 nation. 
 
 The capitalist at length advances to the task. To see 
 all the eifects on the community at large, and on the 
 laboring classes in especial, of this change, we will 
 observe it, in the first instance as complete and extend- 
 ing to the whole population, not forgetting that only 
 one large country presents the spectacle of such a 
 change completed, and that that country is our own. 
 
 We can afterwards, in practice, make allowances for 
 the incompleteness of the change elsewhere, and for the 
 mixed condition of other populations. 
 
 The first striking effect is an enormous increase in the 
 productive powers of the community ; and the second, an 
 entire change in the relations of the laborers to their 
 employers, and in their position in the body-politic. 
 
 The augmentation of productive power is obvious 
 enough. The power of the handicraftsmen is certainly 
 more than doubled by their industry becoming continuous 
 instead of desultory, when the capitalist secures the means 
 of their working uninterruptedly, instead of spending 
 their time, partly in plying for customers and partly 
 in changing jobs. Another mind, too, is introduced into 
 the tasks of industry, whose interest, and, therefore, con- 
 stant effort, it is, to divide or combine the tasks of in- 
 dustry in the most advantageous manner. But, more 
 than this, the guidance of industry is now in the hands of
 
 45C THE RELATIO.NS OF LABORERS AXD THEIR [lict. vi. 
 
 persons to whom is entrusted the task of gifting it with 
 all the productiveness which increased power can give 
 through improved tools and machines, and the use of 
 animal, and all other extra-human forces. To put shortly 
 this last cause of increased productive power. The force 
 employed in various tasks, by steam-engines in England, 
 is estimated to be that of six hundred millions of men ; 
 and, supposing the number of laboring persons to be four 
 millions, the power of the mass equals one hundred and 
 fifty times what it would be without those engines. 
 Additions from improved tools, machinery, and other 
 sources of force in wind, water, and animal powers, are 
 by far too large to be lost sight of. That the existence 
 of capitalists, as the employers of labor, has practically 
 led to that result, it is impossible to doubt. Whatever 
 other results follow, an enormous increase in the pro- 
 ductive powers of the English population is a patent 
 fact, and this is all I am asserting at present. 
 
 But, secondly, when capitalists advance the wages of 
 the whole population, an entire change takes place in the 
 relations of the laborers and their employers, and in their 
 position in the body-politic. 
 
 The causes, nature, and extent of this change deserve 
 attentive consideration. 
 
 We are to speak of laboring proprietors hereafter. 
 When the lands of a country are appropriated, and the 
 agriculturists are dependent on the possession of portions 
 of them for subsistence, political systems are generated, 
 which inevitably secure the political and social sub- 
 ordination — we might almost say servitude — of the pea- 
 santry. Such has been the state of the Old World,
 
 LECT. VI.] EMrLOYEllS UNDERGO A CIIAxNGE. 457 
 
 whether the State partially retained or altogether dele- 
 gated its rights to the soil. 
 
 The hereditary occupiers of the East, in spite of their 
 modified claims, are, in fact, at the mercy of the 
 Sovereign ; any severe exercise of his acknowledged 
 rights mnst reduce them to poverty, and, i3ushed to 
 extremes, to ejection and starvation. All the causes 
 which attach them with passionate desperation to their 
 plots of ground, are so many causes of habits of obedience 
 to the supreme power, while it abstains from an extreme 
 abuse of its position and opportunities ; and we see here 
 the main cause of that subordination of the mass of the 
 people which makes it possible for even a foreign govern- 
 ment to rule a distant and yet obedient people. It is so 
 we rule in India, and may long continue to rule, provided 
 justice and moderate forbearance are our guides ; and it 
 is thus that, by rougher and less sensitive hands, the 
 sceptres of Asiatic monarchies are retained. 
 
 When the State has parted with the land, and has 
 interposed a class of landholders between itself and 
 the cultivators, the necessities of these last and the in- 
 fluence of the landholders has usually created a depend- 
 ence more nearly approaching to servitude, and forming 
 a yet coarser and more degrading bond of cohesion be- 
 tween the different orders of the State. Over the broad 
 expanse of Europe, systems prevailed even up to our 
 time, in which, as tenants of some description, the bulk 
 of the people were found inferior in political rights, 
 destitute of political influence, and what there was of 
 order, civilization, and refinement in the upper classes, 
 resting upon their subjection. The first formation of
 
 458 tup: XOX-AGRICULTURAL laborer no longer [lkct. VI. 
 
 ranks, the absence of struggles of the many against the 
 few, we can see that we owe to this source of subordina- 
 tion ; and as civilization must liaye a birth, this state of 
 things was, perhaps, what made that bu'th possible. Its 
 prolonged retention has been an unmixed evil, and the 
 existence of a peasantry constituting the bulk of the 
 people in a state of political degradation — to say nothing 
 of economical feebleness — has at last roused the Continent 
 to a sense of the necessity of changing them for something 
 better. The task of doing this is employing the leading 
 nations of Europe, and disturbing and embarrassing them 
 by its difficulty. 
 
 But, as at the commencement of the task of civiliza- 
 tion, we ordinarily find the agricultural laborer kept in 
 subjection by very rude ties ; so we find the non-agri- 
 cultural in a state of the most complete insignificance. 
 The individual workmen are dependent on the expendi- 
 ture of others ; but no class is in any degree dependent 
 on them for means (or comfort). 
 
 The owners of the revenues, who supply them with 
 food, have no interests which the handicraftsmen can 
 influence; their incomes, and the means of getting some- 
 thing for them, would remain, if the artizans vanished 
 from the land, and some inconvenience, no loss, would 
 be all that could ensue. 
 
 But the moment the laboring classes are transferred 
 to the employ of capitalists, their social and political 
 dependence on the owners of the land, and their in- 
 significance in the presence of their employers, cease at 
 once. 
 
 The capitalists seek a revenue from their stock wliich
 
 LEW. VI.] DEPENDENT ON THE OWNERS OF LAND. 459 
 
 can be realised only by the assistance of labor, and the 
 more that stock and the expected revenues are enlarged 
 the more regular and eager does their competition for 
 labor become. 
 
 On this competition the revenues and position of the 
 laborer rest. When the change is complete, competition 
 for labor exists not only between employers of the same 
 occupation, but of all occupations. Many circumstances 
 obstruct, no doubt, a perfect equality in the wages of 
 individual workmen ; but, on a broad scale, nothing can 
 prevent the whole sum paid as wages being dictated by 
 the wants and demand of the whole body of capitalists 
 made more pressing and eager by each successive ac- 
 cumulation of capital. 
 
 This competition is the workmen's real safeguard — he 
 interferes with it, ordinarily, much to his disadvantage. 
 
 As this competition depends on the accumulation of 
 capital, so that accumulation proceeds more rapidly, 
 always as the mass of capital employed increases rela- 
 tively to the numbers of the people. It is a delusion, 
 indeed, to confine our calculation of the possible progress 
 of accumulation to the resources of the capitalist alone. 
 There is no stage of society in which rent and wages do 
 not contribute something ; there are stages in which they 
 contribute more largely than profits to the progress of 
 accumulations ; ' but, other things being equal, it is 
 evident that the powers of accumulation from profits 
 increase as the mass of auxiliary capital increases. A 
 nation which has auxiliary capital equal to six times the 
 mass of its wages will accumulate fresh capital faster 
 
 ' See Lecture iii.
 
 460 
 
 AUXILIARY CAriTAL IN RELATION TO WAGES, [i.kct. ti. 
 
 than one wliich Las auxiliary capital equal to only three 
 times the mass of its wages ; and that, in spite of any 
 difference in the rate of profit which can last while a 
 free intercourse exists with other countries. As ac- 
 cumulation goes on, however, and the mass becomes 
 greater relativehj to the numbers of the laborers, there 
 must be a struggle and competition in the labor market 
 to invest some of the fresh capital in wages — its owners 
 cannot escape from this necessity. No fresh machinery 
 can be provided or managed except with the assistance 
 of labor. This struggle, dui'ing the relative advance of 
 auxiliary capital, is constantly supporting and bearing up 
 the rate of wages, and, abstracting from all other causes, 
 this progress secures the interest of the laborers, and 
 tends to carry their wages to the highest point which 
 the capitalist can pay, consistently with his making a 
 reasonable profit on his capital. 
 
 It is to be remembered, however, that this is only true 
 where the mass of capital is increasing faster than the 
 population. 
 
 If the capital increases only as fast as the population, 
 or slower than the population, other results follow. It 
 will be convenient to leave these results till we have 
 dealt with the somewhat complicated causes which de- 
 termine the movements of the population itself, when 
 aff'ected by variations in the rate of wages, 
 
 I have, perhaps, said enough on the first object aimed 
 at in these lectures. I meant to sketch an outline of 
 the sources of wages, and of the relations which the 
 prevalence of each source establishes between laborers 
 and the other classes of society ; — an outline which,
 
 i.E<T. VI.] liOOXOMICAJ. I'KOGRESS. 461 
 
 reserving many details, would enable us to see the dif- 
 ferent manner in which the causes which determine the 
 progress of population act upon each of these groups of 
 laborers. You have not forgotten, I hope, the broad 
 proposition that the rate of wages must always depend 
 upon the mimhers of the laborers, compared with the 
 amount of the funds devoted to their support. 
 
 Before we proceed to the causes which govern fluctua- 
 tions in their numbers, let us very briefly recapitulate 
 our progress. 
 
 We have seen, then, that Providence, in fixing the 
 productive powers of the earth we inhabit, has provided 
 the means, first, of the subsistence of the laboring cul- 
 tivators ; and, secondly, from the surplus produce of 
 their cultivation, of the existence of classes essential, 
 in the aggregate, to the formation of bodies of men in 
 social and political union, — artizans, artists, and men who 
 gain their bread by other means than that of manual 
 labor. 
 
 We have seen that, on the use of these two funds, 
 nations may be formed and advance on the road to 
 civilization, without the existence of any class devoting 
 the accumulated results of past labors to the advance of 
 the wages of the laboring classes. 
 
 Such a class appears at last in some communities, and 
 the guidance, more or less complete, of the industry of 
 nations passes to them. 
 
 With this change, all the ties, which before secured 
 the cohesion of the diff'erent parts of society, and their 
 subordination to each other, change too. 
 
 The landowners no longer command the fate and sub-
 
 462 MUTUAL Dp:rENDENCE OF CAPITALISTS & LABORERS, [lect. vi. 
 
 sistence of the agricultural laborers, always in such cir- 
 cumstances the great bulk of the population. 
 
 The artizans, before insulated, insignificant, and uu- 
 influential, become at once a body, by whom the revenues 
 of the owners of non-agricultural stock must be pro- 
 duced ; and the capitalists and workmen, now mutually 
 dependent on each other, form practically, in their new 
 combination, a fresh element, on which the wealth, 
 strength, and political combination of societies become 
 dependent.
 
 LKCT. VII.] PilOGllESS OF rOPULATlON. 46a 
 
 LECTUKE VII. 
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF POPULATION. 
 
 The lectures which precede this will have introduced 
 to us some of the physical conditions on which the 
 human race rests its power of progress. 
 
 The rate of progress astonishes us most, perhaps, by 
 its slowness. Four thousand years have passed away 
 since we can, in some degree, trace the internal move- 
 ments of nations ; and the most active agents of mighty 
 change have hardly appeared on the great stage of the 
 earth's surface, and began their task of enlarging and 
 carrying man's power over the world. In some spots, 
 however, we do see the masses of the population disen- 
 gaged from a direct dependence on the owners of land, 
 or on the revenues of those owners. We observe the 
 mass of manual laborers connected with a body of capi- 
 talists, and forming with them new and jointly more 
 independent elements in the social constitution ; and the 
 wealth and the agencies which, by forethought, absti- 
 nence, and knowledge, have been introduced among 
 them, beginning to mine the strength of nations and 
 their happiness. 
 
 In the long and varied career of nations many causes
 
 iG4 
 
 ECONOMICAL CHECKS TO THE [lect, 
 
 appear to modify and direct tlieir constitution and their 
 progress, — some arising out of tlieir peculiar circum- 
 stances, some innate in the nature of man and the earth. 
 Of these last, the influence is never exhausted, and 
 tracks human societies in their course from infancy to 
 tlieir culminating point. 
 
 Of these enduring attendants, the fluctuations in the 
 numbers of the people, consequent on the circumstances 
 of each, and on changes in those circumstances, are the 
 most constant, the most dominant, and therefore the 
 most important. This brings us to the subject of popu- 
 lation. I have separated the groups of manual laborers, 
 principally with a view to observe more accurately the 
 distinct action of the principles of population upon each, 
 and the manner and direction in which those principles 
 rule fluctuations in the numbers of each group. I shall 
 enter into the subject of population with a distinct view 
 to this object, and this will, to a convenient extent, limit 
 here our treatment of the subject. In all its phases and 
 bearings, it would be too indefinitely great for our pre- 
 sent time and opportunities. 
 
 There are one or two broad facts, which are at the 
 bottom of all the problems which the subject of popu- 
 lation presents. Let us view these distinctly. 
 
 First. The mere animal powers of increase of human 
 communities is quite sufficient to bring them in no very 
 long period of the life of nations to the limits of the 
 food they could procure to sustain life. 
 
 In other words, if all nations multiplied their num- 
 bers as fast as we can observe some multipljdng them, 
 the earth would long since have been so thronged, that
 
 1.ECT. vn.] INCREASE OF POPULATION. 465 
 
 its limited surface could no longer produce even bare 
 food for any increased number. 
 
 If man were an irrational animal, communities would 
 be unconsciously always multiplying their numbers till 
 food failed them ; that is, nations would always multiply 
 as much as their means of subsistence permitted. 
 
 But then, in the course of this inquiry, we must never 
 forget that man is not an irrational creature ; but that 
 societies of men have qualifications, powers, and tastes 
 which divide them broadly from the brutes, and in no 
 particular more widely than in the control which they 
 exercise over the increase of their own numbers. 
 
 The two elements of human nature which come most 
 prominently into action on this point are — first and 
 primarily, the knowledge and foresight which can dis- 
 cern coming evil and privation, if families increase too 
 rapidly ; and secondly, tastes and wants — sometimes few, 
 sometimes very numerous — which require something 
 beyond mere necessaries to satisfy them. The multiplica- 
 tion of these, with the progress of wealth and refine- 
 ment, multiplies the number of privations with which 
 foresight threatens the imprudent. 
 
 These tastes and wants which require something be- 
 yond mere necessaries to satisfy them, we will call 
 secondary wants. Those wants, the satisfaction of which 
 is necessary to a healthy existence, we will call primarij 
 wants. 
 
 Foresight acts upon the conduct of nations, sometimes 
 by showing in prospect the danger of not being able to 
 satisfy the one class, sometimes the other class, some- 
 times both classes, of these wants. 
 
 30
 
 466 INFLUENCE OF THE [iisct. vit. 
 
 But manual laborers constitute the mass of all na- 
 tions ; and, as the secondary wants of these laborers 
 multiply, foresight extends its influence more powerfully 
 and stringently to larger proportions of the community, 
 till at last the whole may be included. 
 
 This influence of the progress of secondary wants, and 
 the nature and foundations of its power in restraining 
 the progress of numbers are important enough to justify 
 us in dwelling upon and illustrating them more fully. 
 
 Let us observe, then, the practical working of that 
 influence, first among different ranks in the same nation. 
 "We shall then be prepared to compare its working among 
 the same ranks in different nations when they come be- 
 fore us. 
 
 Fii'st, then, among different ranks in the same nation. 
 If we observe the age of marriage and the frequency of 
 marriages among the different classes of people around 
 us, we shall see — at first, perhaps, with surprise — that 
 the classes which have apparently the least means, marry 
 both the earliest and the most constantly. So far from 
 the individuals or classes who have the most complete 
 command of food having any tendency to increase their 
 families rapidly up to the point when food will begin to 
 fail them, their dread of imprudence begins very far 
 before their needs approach any such limit, and we shall 
 see that secondary wants are, in fact, the most influen- 
 tial, in proportion as those who indulge them are elevated 
 far above such need. 
 
 The poorest class in England are, unless under extra- 
 ordinary circumstances, the agricultural laborers. Among 
 these, almost as soon as a youth can do a full day's
 
 i,ECT. VII.] PROGRESS OF SECONDARY WANTS. 467 
 
 work, he marries ; a reasonable probability of employ- 
 ment as a day-laborer, and the worst paid day -laborer in 
 the kingdom, is quite sufficient provision for him to settle 
 upon. Even this class, however — if the wages they 
 hope to obtain could not, besides food, command shelter 
 and clothing on the usual scale — would put some re- 
 straint on themselves. Though they have no great deal 
 to lose by imprudence, still even their foresight would 
 control the mere anmal tendency to increase. 
 
 But look a little above them to the small dealers or 
 retail tradesmen and those on a like level. They are 
 much less ready to marry on the prospect of mere food 
 and a bare subsistence. They have other tastes and 
 wants, the means of gratifying which are essential to 
 their contentment and happiness ; such as the better 
 furnished dwelling, the somewhat costlier wardrobe, the 
 more generous diet, the means of enabling themselves 
 and their families to associate with persons at least as far 
 removed as themselves from the lowest level. 
 
 Advance a step or two in the ranks of society, and the 
 effect of multiplied tastes and wants, in retarding the 
 period of marriages and diminishing their number, be- 
 comes yet more striking. The professions, for instance, 
 provide men with tastes more multiplied, and of a more 
 commanding degree of influence. The conditions on 
 which this class can enjoy, we might almost say, endure 
 life, are of a loftier kind. The society of educated men ; 
 contact with associates of minds and tastes removed from 
 the level of the mass, while that level remains as low as 
 it has hitherto been ; a style and habits of living, includ- 
 ing a variety of wants and demanding no inconsiderable
 
 468 THE MEANS OF MAINTENANCE DISTINGUISHED [lect. vii. 
 
 means, which are to be secured to their families, so that 
 the children of neither sex may be forced down into a 
 position beneath the prospects of snch enjoyments ; all 
 these become habitually and almost unconsciously mixed 
 up with their plans of life, so that a considerable post- 
 ponement of the age of marriage becomes a natural and, 
 taking any fair average number, an inevitable result. 
 Clergymen, barristers, physicians, as bodies, are cer- 
 tainly never found marrying at ages which produce 
 families limited only by the means of subsistence, mean- 
 ing by that, food and bare necessaries. 
 
 If we go even a few steps higher, the results of this 
 part of the constitution of human nature only become 
 more evident. How many members of noble or distin- 
 guished families, though having means which would 
 provide subsistence for regiments of children, refuse 
 themselves to marriage because they cannot ensure a 
 certain prominent position and social distinctions for 
 their families ! 
 
 I have said, perhaps, enough on this point to make 
 intelligible a distinction which we must bear very 
 steadily in mind, in order to escape illusions which have 
 infested the popular literature on the subject. All the 
 means that any rank of the community require to satisfy 
 the wants and tastes, the satisfaction of which they be- 
 lieve essential to their respectability or comfort, may be 
 called their means of maintenance. The means which 
 they require to support a bare healthy existence, may be 
 called their means of subsistence. 
 
 The means of maintenance^ therefore, will always in- 
 clude the moans of sidsistence. But the means of suh-
 
 LECT. VII.] FROM THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE. 469 
 
 sistenee may be very far, indeed, from including the 
 means of maintenance. 
 
 Again, the means of the subsistence of families are 
 limited and stationary in amount, or very nearly so ; 
 while the means of maintenance may vary, and become 
 enlarged indefinitely, with the different tastes and habits, 
 and means of different nations, or of different ranks in 
 the same nation. 
 
 Bearing this distinction in view, we shall be prepared 
 to grapple with one great vital error, which has gained 
 a very wide assent. 
 
 Nothing is more common than the assumption that 
 the human race has a constant tendency to increase up 
 to the means of subsistence, and this when subsistence is 
 obviously meant to include only food, and when the 
 assertion really is, that the human race has a constant 
 tendency to increase up to, and, indeed, beyond the point 
 at which the earth can produce food and subsistence for 
 its numbers. 
 
 This assumption has given prevalence, we know, to a 
 large body of practical doctrine, and to very influential 
 views as to the moral government of the universe. 
 
 But, before we dispose of these, we must come to some 
 understanding as to the meaning of this word tendency. 
 
 No doubt the sexual impulse creates a constant ten- 
 dency in the human race to increase till they approach 
 the limit at which the earth could support its popula- 
 tion ; and, supposing that limit attained, would not cease 
 to act, but would keep impelling them to increase be- 
 yond it. 
 
 But, before we contemplate mankind starting on such
 
 470 MOTIVES TO llESTRAINT ACCUMULATE [lect. vii. 
 
 a career, we must recollect that a tendency imparted by 
 one part of human nature may be by no means the tend- 
 ency imparted by the whole of human nature, with all its 
 impulses; but may be modified, balanced, or overbalanced, 
 by the aggregate impulses which act in an opposite direc- 
 tion. And here we must remark, that the sexual impulse 
 continues, at most, stationary. I say at most, for there 
 are not wanting facts and arguments to show that it 
 diminishes as the minds and imaginations of men are 
 directed to other objects ; let us, however, take it as 
 stationary. 
 
 But the impulses which lead to its control are not 
 stationary, — they go on increasing in number and joint 
 power as the objects of men's desires increase — as the 
 mass of what may be called their secondary wants in- 
 creases. 
 
 The man who has little to lose by prudence has little 
 to gain by self-control. When so circumstanced, love 
 will be pretty sure to prevail, and he will marry ; but if 
 an establishment, with all that is necessary to supply its 
 wants and enjoyments, is in his eye, — if, added to this, 
 there are social pleasures and social rank which he aims 
 at, then, the mere animal impulse remaining the same, 
 there will be a multiplication, in an opposite scale, of 
 motives to prudence and restraint, increasing with every 
 addition the weight and power which are opposed to that 
 animal impulse, and necessarily lessening, at each step, 
 what would be its unopposed control over human action. 
 
 We may remark that, in the progress of society, such 
 motives to restraint almost imperceptibly accumulate and 
 produce an effect on the habits of nations of which they
 
 J.ECT. VII.] AS SOCIETY PllOGRESSES. 471 
 
 are hardly conscious, but which are not the less constant 
 and unfailing. 
 
 It is not a deliberate course of investigation and 
 reasoning which prevents the young people of both sexes 
 of the higher and middle orders from marrying under 
 circumstances which would bring them and their chil- 
 dren to the limits of subsistence ; but the ideas and associ- 
 ations, the opinions and the tastes, which form the social 
 atmosphere in which they breathe and live, make the 
 imprudence which would produce such results a thing 
 altogether removed from their thoughts ; and the pro- 
 gress of the numbers of their class is effectually and 
 constantly controlled by this moral product of civilization 
 and refinement. 
 
 If you have followed me so far, you will see that we 
 have before us three distinct and equally important ob- 
 jects of inquiry. 
 
 First. Can like influences extend in practice to the 
 mass of the people, — that is, to those who live on the 
 wages of labor ? 
 
 Secondly. In the progress of nations, what have been 
 or are the circumstances, — on the one hand favorable ; on 
 the other, unfavorable, — to the establishment of a con- 
 trol over the increase of population, from an elevation of 
 the habits of the laboring classes ? 
 
 Thirdly. To what extent can the check to population 
 from the progress of refinement be produced and sus- 
 tained ? Can it only exist in sufficient power to moderate 
 the rate of increase ? or can it stop it altogether, or even 
 cause a diminution of numbers ? 
 
 The first two of these questions may be answered dis-
 
 472 A KlSbl, OR FALL, IX WAGES MAY ACCELERATE, [lect. vii. 
 
 tinctly and definitely. We shall probably only be able 
 to reach an aiDproximation to the solution of the third. 
 Let us begin, then, with the first. 
 
 Can elevation of luihits proceed to an extent ivhich will 
 control the tendency of a people to increase their numbers, 
 they having the means to do so. 
 
 The wages of manual laborers are the same thing as 
 the income or means of the great mass of the population ; 
 and variations in the wages of labor are to them the same 
 thing as variations in their means of maintenance, pro- 
 vided they are in or can be brought to a condition to 
 consume anything beyond the necessaries essential to 
 subsistence. 
 
 If, indeed, a population of laborers is on the minimum 
 of subsistence, if their means are barely sufiicient to sup- 
 port healthy life, — then every dimi7iution of their means 
 must act in one direction, it must increase mortality, 
 lessen their numbers, and make an increase of the 
 population impossible. 
 
 But, excepting in this extreme case, then it will be 
 clear, on a little reflection, that every fluctuation in the 
 means of the laboring classes may act upon the rate of 
 increase in either of two difl'erent and opposite directions. 
 
 That is, every increase of means or wages may accele- 
 rate the rate of increase of the population, or may retard 
 it ; and every decrease of means or wages may also either 
 accelerate the rate of increase, or may retard it. 
 
 As I find that these propositions have, to some per- 
 sons, something of a paradoxical complexion, I beg your 
 especial attention to them : that complexion will soon 
 vanish, and yon will probably see that a distinct and
 
 LECT. vii.] OR RETARD, THE INCREASE OF POPULATION. 473 
 
 steady perception of their truth will facilitate exceed- 
 ingly our further progress. 
 
 Let us begin, first, with an increase of means or wages. 
 It is obvious that the increase may be applied to raise 
 the scale of maintenance of the laboring classes, to satisfy 
 new wants, to elevate and refine their consumption, and 
 bring them one step, at least, nearer to the habits of the 
 class immediately above them. 
 
 When those habits, and that scale of maintenance, are 
 confirmed, the motives to control their animal passions 
 will have multiplied and acquired more weight. The 
 age of marriage in their class will be deferred, and there 
 will be fewer marriages ; there will be less danger of 
 their being reduced to the level of beings barely existing 
 and pressing on the means of subsistence. 
 
 But as an increase of the means of the laboring classes 
 may produce a change and elevation of habits, so an 
 increase of means to precisely the same amount may not 
 produce any change of habits or character. Communities 
 not increasing their numbers at the maximum rate pos- 
 sible, maij^ obviously, so use any increased command 
 over primary necessaries as to approach nearer to that 
 maximum rate. That is, their increased means put it 
 in their power to increase their numbers without chang- 
 ing their habits in other respects. This truth is too 
 obvious to need enlarging on, and, in fact, takes posses- 
 sion, ordinarily too exclusively, of the minds and atten- 
 tion of writers and the public.
 
 474 CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DETERMINE [lect. vii. 
 
 THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DETERMINE WHAT SHALL 
 BE THE EFFECT OF A RISE IN WAGES ON THE 
 PROGRESS OF NUMBERS. 
 
 If, then, fluctuations in the rate of wages may, under 
 diff'erent circumstances, produce different, and, indeed, 
 oi^posite effects, the importance of ascertaining what cir- 
 cumstances determine the effect to be produced, is clear 
 enough. 
 
 We will, in the first instance, then, examine the cir- 
 cumstances which determine what shall be the results of 
 a 7'ise in the wages of labor. While executing this task 
 we shall come in view of propositions from which most 
 of the circumstances which determine the results of a fall 
 will show themselves as corollaries. 
 
 Admitting that, on a rise of wages, movements of the 
 population are possible in more than one direction, we 
 can hardly expect, however, to master all the minute 
 circumstances which concui* in determining what that 
 direction shall be. We must be content if we can sketch 
 out those which are the most influential and the most 
 constant in their action. Special allowances will alwaj^s 
 require to be made in practice for partial or temporary 
 peculiarities. 
 
 We will begin with enumerating nine such influential 
 circumstances : — 
 
 1. The form in which wages are received. 
 
 2. The time which elapses between the commencement and 
 the completion of a change in the rate of wages.
 
 LECT. Ml] THE EFFECT OF A RISE IN WAGES. 475 
 
 3. The clearness or cheapness^ or what amounts to nearhj 
 the same thing ^ the easy or difficult access to comforts and 
 decencies. 
 
 4. The existence or non-existence of many classes ap- 
 proximating to., hut not confounded with., each other., and 
 all intermediate hetiveen the highest and lowest ranks of 
 society. 
 
 5. The absence J or presence^ amongst every class of the 
 people of civil liberty and the power of freely bettering their 
 condition. 
 
 6. The existence or absence of property belonging to the 
 laborers themselves. 
 
 7. The amount of influence exercised by parents over their 
 grown-up children. 
 
 8. Facilities of investing small savings. 
 
 9. The extent and nature of the education of the laboring 
 classes. 
 
 1. THE INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY THE FORM IN WHICH WAGES ARE 
 RECEIVED IN DETERMINING THE PROGRESS OF POPULATION DURING A 
 RISE OF WAGES. 
 
 If ODe laboring family receive an accession of income 
 in the shape of raw produce, and another in the shape 
 of money, it seems obvious that the receiver of the money 
 is more likely to add to his list of comforts than the 
 receiver of food. It is the most natui*al and easy course 
 for this last to increase his consumption of primary 
 necessaries. He has received a direct addition to his 
 means of subsistence. The receiver of money has in 
 his hands what may as easily be used to enlarge his 
 scale of maintenance.
 
 476 THE FORM OF WAGES, [lect. vii. 
 
 Shillings may readily be exchanged for tobacco, tea, 
 sugar, clothes, furniture. Measures of wheat and rye 
 may readily be eaten and consumed, but by no means so 
 readily exchanged for luxuries or comforts. 
 
 This fact is plain enough if we confine our view to a 
 few families ; it only wants a little deliberate attention 
 to see to what an enormous extent the same facts affect 
 the progress of the habits of whole nations, and, indeed, 
 of the human race. 
 
 Taking the broad surface of the earth, the receipt of 
 the revenues of the laboring classes in money is very 
 rare ; nine-tenths of them consist, as we have seen, of 
 peasant occupiers of land. They consume a portion of 
 the produce of their toil, and if the portion they obtain 
 is enlarged, an increased consumption of such produce is 
 the ordinary consequence, and the increase of population 
 is accelerated. 
 
 Over a comparatively small portion of the earth only 
 an increase comes in a form which makes a change in 
 the habits of the people more easy and more probable. 
 
 We must remember, however, that among the nations 
 where the body of the people receive their wages in the 
 shape of raw produce, some not unimportant differences 
 may be observed. 
 
 In some of them, the peasantry will be seen to have 
 great facilities for turning their raw produce, or a part 
 of it, into money if they choose. In others, and these 
 last constitute, unluckily, the majority, they find it difii- 
 cult, if not morally impossible, to do so. The difficulty 
 which exists over a great part of the globe in exchanging 
 raw produce for money is a remarkable fact which can-
 
 LECT. vn.] IXFLUENCE OF A SUDDEN RISE, 477 
 
 not be disputed. Its causes and consequences will meet 
 us elsewhere. I notice it now only as a fact. 
 
 The different facilities or difficulties with which such 
 exchanges are effected, obviously create wide differences 
 in the power of the mass of the people to get money into 
 their hands, and comforts and decencies which money 
 may procure. 
 
 In all cases, however, the receivers of wages in money 
 will have greater facilities for buying comforts and 
 luxuries than the receivers of wages in produce ; and, 
 in most cases, facilities largely and indefinitely greater.' 
 
 In whatever shape wages are received, if a change of 
 habits is to follow any rise, and not merely an increase 
 of numbers, the progress of the rise must be gradual, 
 and sufficient time must elapse to enable the population 
 both to acquire new tastes and wants, and the habit of 
 considering a command of the means of gratifying them 
 essential to comfort and respectability. A sudden in- 
 crease of means will ordinarily be used only to gratify 
 more fully tastes and wants already familiar. 
 
 The neglect of these facts has led to incautious ex- 
 pressions, and some to very erroneous doctrines, even in 
 the writings of the great father of these investigations, 
 Malthus. The changes in the incomes of the laboring 
 classes which he had in his eyes while treating of the 
 influence of rises of wages on population were, it so 
 
 1 The repeal of the English corn-laws seems to have increased the facilities of 
 the Danish peasants to dispose of their surplus produce and acquire money in a very 
 striking manner. — Laing' s Travels.
 
 478 AND OF A GRADUAL INCREASE, [i.f.ct. vir. 
 
 happened, sudden changes ; and he generalized too rapidly 
 from the almost instantaneous impulse which he saw 
 given to the progress of numbers by such changes. 
 
 Some foreign writers — Sussmilch in particular — had 
 detected the fact that, after great plagues or epidemics, 
 or disastrous wars, the gap made in the population was 
 very quickly filled up. It was true and obvious, that 
 the cause was the greater means which came thus sud- 
 denly into the hands of the remaining mass of the people, 
 expended, naturally, in the more plentiful satisfaction of 
 wants with which they were already familiar — that is, in 
 the use of their comparative riches as means of subsistence. 
 
 But, instead of being effected in one year or in ten 
 years, let us assume a like rise in the wages of labor to 
 take place, slowly and gradually, in the course of a cen- 
 tury. Is it certain, or even probable, that like results 
 would follow ? There would be a chance, at least, that 
 the knowledge of fresh comforts would slowly expand ; 
 that the idea of a sufficient maintenance would include, 
 by degrees, more and more objects ; and that the end of 
 the term might find the laborers in the same position as 
 the classes immediately above them were a century be- 
 fore. We have already dwelt sufficiently on the manner 
 in which such a change in position and habits would 
 strengthen the influence of foresight, and cherish pru- 
 dence and self-control among the people. 
 
 To understand better, however, the probability or im- 
 probability of such a change being produced, we must, 
 as I before proposed, consider the effects of the form of 
 wages, and the time consumed in changes, jointly as 
 well as separately.
 
 LECT. VII.] PRODUCE-WAGES. 479 
 
 There can be no doubt that, where wages are received 
 in the shape of raw produce, that circumstance modifies 
 very considerably any effects which the slow progress of 
 change might produce, if the form of money prevailed. 
 An increase of wages paid in produce requires a very 
 peculiar position of the community to lead to any other 
 result than a more rapid increase of numbers. If the 
 people do not receive their income in the form of money, 
 they must almost invariably be able to turn it into money 
 before it can cause different habits, or sustain a different 
 system of consumption. 
 
 But, an increase of produce- wages, is not necessarily, 
 nor easily, nor therefore frequently, accompanied by a 
 corresponding increase in markets, or means of disposing 
 of raw produce, and acquiring other commodities, a taste 
 for which might change the habits and character of the 
 population. The slowness of the advance which, under 
 more favorable circumstances, might have had great in- 
 fluence in effecting a change and elevation of habits, 
 loses its power by the unfavorable (unfavorable for this 
 purpose, at least) form in which wages are received. 
 
 To feel the wide importance of these facts, it is only 
 necessary to remember that nine-tenths of the laboring 
 population of the globe receive their wages in the shape 
 of raw produce and primary necessaries, 
 
 3. THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEARNESS OR CHEAPNESS OF, AND OF THE EASY 
 OR DIFFICULT ACCESS TO, COMMODITIES SUBSERVIENT TO HABITS OF CON- 
 SUMPTION ABOVE THOSE WHICH RELATE TO MERE SUBSISTENCE. 
 
 To create new habits of consumption among a popula- 
 tion put in possession of increasing means, three things 
 must concur.
 
 480 PRICE OF COMMODITIES. [lect. vii. 
 
 First. The people must acquire a knowledge of, and 
 a familiarity with, a new list of commodities suited to 
 their tastes. 
 
 Secondly. They must be presented to them at such a 
 reasonable price as to be within the roach of the succes- 
 sive additions to their means. 
 
 Thirdly. There must be no insuperable physical or 
 moral obstacles, such as distances, roads, fiscal or other 
 regulations, which throw difficulties in the way of their 
 attaining them. 
 
 First, then, if we observe various nations of the earth, 
 and compare them with our own, we shall find a very 
 remarkable difference in their knotvledge of, or familiarity 
 with, comforts and luxuries suited to the means of the 
 laboring classes. 
 
 In many nations of the continent, the various articles 
 consumed or used by the people seem to have undergone 
 little or no change since the remotest ages of classical 
 antiquity. The plough described by Hesiod may still be 
 seen in use in Asia Minor. In the dresses of the Dacian 
 captives on the column of Trajan, the traveller recog- 
 nizes the garb of the actual inhabitants of that province ; 
 and, over wide regions, the similarity between the 
 utensils, dresses, and ornaments of the inhabitants, and 
 those of their ancestors more than two thousand years 
 ago, offers a spectacle which at once interests and sur- 
 prises the modern scholar and antiquary. 
 
 Various causes contribute to establish this permanency 
 and stagnation of habits. 
 
 The body of the population consists, ordinarily, of 
 laboring and occupying peasants ; systems of cultivation
 
 i.KCT. VII.] ACCESSIBILITY OF COMFORTS AM) LUXURIES. 481 
 
 imperfectly developed, afford long intervals of leisure. 
 As the peasant produces liis own food, so, in these inter- 
 vals, he also produces most of the other primary neces- 
 saries which he consumes, — his dress, his implements, 
 his furniture, even his buildings : for there is in his 
 class little division of occupations. The fashions and 
 habits of such a people do not change ; they are handed 
 down from parents to children ; there is nothing to alter 
 or disturb them. 
 
 Turn from this scene, and observe an English village, 
 even in a remote agricultural district. Enter the coun- 
 try shop. You will find it filled with a varied assort- 
 ment of commodities, domestic and foreign, calculated to 
 entice the wishes of the lower classes, and inflame their 
 tastes for some of a really multitudinous number of 
 comforts or humble luxuries. Textile fabrics of every 
 variety of form, texture, and color, such as their fathers 
 and mothers knew not ; specimens of metallic imple- 
 ments and ornaments, equally abundant and new ; cera- 
 mic productions of all kinds, from earthenware to por- 
 celain ; foreign articles of food, or condiments ; tea, 
 coffee, tobacco, spices, fruit ; no man, woman, or child, 
 who has sixpence to dispose of, can fail to be tempted. 
 The cottages become, in time, the repositories of these 
 things, and witnesses of the changing habits and multi- 
 plying tastes of the people. These shops are, in truth, 
 not unimportant aids in the civilization of those classes 
 whose elevation in the social scale is morally and politi- 
 cally the most important. Between the contents of tho 
 English cottage and those of the rude huts of the most 
 backward portion of the population of the globe, there 
 
 31
 
 482 CAUSES OF THE Oil K.Vl'NKSS, DEARNESS, [lect. vii. 
 
 are, of course, intermediate cases, too numerous even to 
 be sketched in detail. 
 
 Clieiipncss of Comforts. 
 
 But besides a fiimiliarity with commodities suited to 
 a some"\^'hat refined consumption, it is essential that a 
 laboring population, whose habits are mounting upwards, 
 should have those commodities presented at a price so 
 moderate as to warrant a reasonable expectation that 
 they will tempt the laborers to a gradually increasing 
 consumption of them. 
 
 Now, of the cheapness of such commodities the main 
 causes will always be the transfer of the non-agricultural 
 producer into the pay and management of capitalists, 
 and an increase in the masses of auxiliary capital em- 
 ployed. 
 
 "We have already seen liow these cii'cumstances 
 augment the continuity, the skill, and the power with 
 which labor is exerted; how they therefore augment 
 its productiveness, and so lower the exchangeable 
 value of the commodities produced. It is worthy of 
 remark that the poorer classes are ordinarily those who 
 profit the earliest and the most by tliis progress of 
 tlie productive powers of non-agricultural labor. He 
 would be a bold man who would venture to limit the 
 future progress of machinery in imitating the delicacy of 
 human manipulation ; but machinery does not begin 
 with this. Its natural progress is onwards from rather 
 coarser tasks. A demand for commodities suited to the 
 consumption of tlie mass, and such a wide market as
 
 i-EC-f. vii.] AND ABSENCE OF lIL'MliJ.E COMFOETS. 4B3 
 
 their demaud creates, are all but essential at the com- 
 mencement of the career of machinery as an aid to the 
 productive powers of man. But, once moving onwards, 
 the application of invention and skill to produce novel- 
 ties, the division of occupations and labor, and the inter- 
 vention of mighty extra human forces, produce gigantic 
 effects : the sacrifices become from day to day more 
 minute, which the poor have to make to surround them- 
 selves with increasing comforts and decencies ; and the 
 hope becomes more firm and reasonable that they are 
 advancing to the position of the class or classes once 
 above them ; that so prudence and foresight will have 
 wider and wider lists of enjoyments to point out when 
 warning them against reducing themselves and families 
 to a bare subsistence ; that the animal impulse will thus 
 be more and more controlled, as we see it is among their 
 betters. Thus the influence of this fact on the progress 
 of population will become greater, and the effects of the 
 mere animal power of increase will be less and less a 
 cause of perpetual fear and dread as to the necessary fate 
 and fortunes of the laboring mass of manlvind. 
 
 Causes of the Ordinanj Dearness or Absence of Humlle Comforts. 
 
 If we observe by far the greater part of the globe, we 
 shall find it presenting a picture very different from that 
 of England which we have just been sketching. The 
 mass of the people is not familiar with those comforts 
 and luxuries which satisfy here, in England, a long list 
 of secondary wants. Capital, machineiy, manufactui'es, 
 have not yet combined to supply them cheaply. It mU
 
 484 ENGLISH AM) FREM'II MANUFACTURES. [lect. vii. 
 
 be interesting and useful to trace the causes of tliis dif- 
 ference. 
 
 In the first place, then, there is little demand, in most 
 nations, for such commodities. After securing a very 
 bare subsistence, the people liave no means of elevating 
 and enlarging tlieir maintenance. They are too poor. 
 The bulk of the laboring classes are occupiers of land. 
 The causes of their poverty are obvious, — they either 
 occupy the land on conditions so hard that tlieir position 
 is miserable, or in such small portions that their minute 
 size produces the same indigence : they have only a very 
 minute demand for tlie productions of non-agricultural 
 industry ; and, without a wide domestic demand, that 
 industry will no more flourish than a tree without roots. 
 There is something instructive, but almost ludicrous, 
 in the efforts made by different nations, at different 
 times, to supply this want of a wide home market^ 
 or, in other words, of reasonable prosperity in their 
 people, and to see them striving to become rich by 
 manufactures in the midst of an impoverished, and too 
 often oppressed, population. For some generations after 
 she had ceased to export her wool, cloth was the prin- 
 cipal manufacture of England. Tlie French envied us^ 
 not unnaturall}^, and determined to rival us. There was 
 no obstacle in doing so that they saw or comprehended. 
 They enlisted foreign manufacturers, established them at 
 Abbeville and elsewhere, and lavished on them money^ 
 honors, titles, exemptions from taxes (the taille and salt- 
 tax, for instance), and all kinds of encouragement, and 
 succeeded so far as to produce cloths of beautiful texture, 
 equalling, indeed surpassing, those of England ; but
 
 LiiCT. VII.] ECONOMICAL KKROllS OF THE EKENCH. 485 
 
 they made low sales — tlic operation did not pay : they 
 won, indeed, reputation as manufacturers of fine cloths, 
 but it was a barren and burthensome reputation. Eng- 
 land preserved her superiority in quantity of production. 
 
 Kow, had the French Government, instead of all their 
 lavish expenditure, only so far reformed the fiscal sys- 
 tem and social economy of France, as to enable each 
 peasant's family to consume one more clotli garment, 
 there would have been no need of all this lavish expen- 
 diture and costly energy. French ingenuity and skill 
 would have found, in the well-being of the mass of the 
 population, a permanent encouragement, which would 
 have superseded the profitless and necessarily vain efforts 
 of the Crown. 
 
 In other articles, too, Europe exhibits the same spec- 
 tacle of Governments thinking it enough to produce 
 commodities, and overlooking the want of means among 
 their subjects to establish markets for them, and so sus- 
 tain the manufacture. The making of porcelain is a 
 favorite occupation, and France and Germany present 
 various regal and national establishments, in which the 
 art is carried almost to perfection. To select one, go 
 to Sevres, established and maintained by the French 
 Government. There are few sights more fascinating 
 than its wonders and treasures. The attractive purity 
 of the articles, the rich display and yet tasteful and 
 sober combination of colors, the artistical beauty of the 
 landsciapes and of the figures produced, exhibit this 
 * branch of human industry as one of the fine arts, and 
 one, too, very prodigal of its enchantments. 
 
 This is enough to command llie respect, I had almost
 
 486 SEVRES AND THE POTTERIES. [lect. vii. 
 
 said the affections, of the spectator. But, alas ! for any 
 useful economical results, or for any wholesome influence 
 on the manners and habits of the mass of the population. 
 The manufactory does not pay : no demand from Avithout 
 exists sufficient to support its expenditure ; its treasures, 
 when not given aAvay, accumulate as lumber ; tliey shed 
 but scanty light and grace in the habitations of even the 
 better classes of the French people : in their cottages, 
 none at all. 
 
 Now, turn to England, and to the district called by 
 the humble name of the Potteries. You have before you, 
 not one, but a city, or rather region, of manufactories 
 of earthenware and china. They receive no royal or 
 Government support. The whole population combines 
 to repay and support their industry. No home so 
 humble, that does not contain some cheap but agreeable 
 specimen of the marvels of the art; and, widely and 
 plentifully dispersed through the land, they help, with 
 a multitude of other decent comforts, to elevate the de- 
 sires of the body of the people above the lowest level of 
 mere animal wants, and add something to that mass of 
 quiet and humble enjoyments, the possession of which 
 makes the reduction of their families to a bare subsist- 
 ence — to the mere possession of food and primary neces- 
 saries — a misfortune to be dreaded. 
 
 We have seen the influence of such feelings on the 
 progress of population among the easier and higher 
 classes ; it is the same in kind among the lowest, as 
 they move upwards in means and habits. 
 
 I will dwell here no longer on that well-being of the 
 muss — that modes! abundance — which is the essential
 
 LECT. VII.] THE EXCLUSION OF FOREIGN COMMODITIES : 487 
 
 foundation of their consumption, of the elevation of 
 habits which follows, and of all the consequences of that 
 elevation. 
 
 There are other obstacles, besides the want of general 
 ease, usually tlie creation of society itself, which, during 
 such an increase of the means of the mass — such a rise 
 of wages as would make a beneficial change possible — 
 are too generally interposed to prevent it. 
 
 Of these, some have arisen from enmity to foreign, 
 some from overfondling domestic, industry. 
 
 It has been, and is, the ordinary policy of governments 
 to exclude industriously all foreign commodities which 
 their people might be disposed to consume, and to con- 
 fine them forcibly to the use of those, though worse and 
 dearer, which they can produce themselves. The whole 
 of the results of this policy will be best treated of when 
 we arrive at the subject of the exchange of commodities ; 
 but we cannot turn aside now from its peculiar effects on 
 the habits of the population, and, through those habits, 
 on their numbers and on the rate of wages. 
 
 Germany and France exhibit the bad effects of such 
 systems at this moment more prominently than England ; 
 Germany, perhaps, more especially. An earnest effort 
 has been made there to better the condition of the labor- 
 ing peasantry, by far the largest part of the population ; 
 and there is no doubt that their means have been in- 
 creased. There is just as little doubt that, if these in- 
 creased means are used merely to let loose the animal 
 powers of increase, the population, after a few genera- 
 tions, will be as ill-off as ever. If, on the contrary, 
 their bettered means are used to satisfy new wants, and
 
 488 A HINDRAJ^CE TO THE GROWTH [lect. vii. 
 
 SO to acquire new tastes, the population may enlarge 
 their feelings of a decent and comfortable maintenance, 
 and restrain, accordingly, tlie multiplication of their 
 numbers, in order to secure that desired maintenance. 
 
 Cheapness is the main instrument of familiarity with 
 humble comforts. To obtain the cheapest commodities, 
 and to let them circulate as widely and freely as possible, 
 is then the obvious policy of governments. But this is 
 exactly the contrary of what the German governments 
 are doing, and there is nothing at all peculiar to them in 
 their feelings or their measures. Nor is there anything 
 remarkable in the heartiness and earnestness with which 
 their i)eople sympathise with and second them. 
 
 The English manufactured articles are, on the whole, 
 the cheapest in the world. To exclude them from the 
 consumption of the German people is there accounted 
 patriotism ; to advocate permission for the introduction 
 of them, a sort of treason to the country ; and talkers 
 and would-be reasoners let their passions get inflamed, 
 till they are all but frenzied on the subject. 
 
 We must not be too contemptuous: we have passed 
 through the same delusions, which, perhaps, have some 
 places of refuge among us still. Eeferring you to the 
 Fourth Book of Adam Smith, for the more general econo- 
 mical results of such a system, I only remark to you now 
 that the immediate eifcct is to banish from the cottages 
 of Germany the commodities most likely to elevate the 
 habits and multiply the enjoyments of the laboring mass. 
 
 A second result, less immediate, but not at all less 
 sure, is to dwarf that home demand for coarse manu- 
 factures, Avhich a familiarity with tliem woidd jdmost
 
 LECT. vii.] OF DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. 489 
 
 inevitably luive created, and so to stifle or narrow tliat 
 wide market for the products of uou-agriciiltural occupa- 
 tions which would inevitably spring up, and as inevitably 
 be gradually supplied by domestic industry, if its growth 
 had only fair play. 
 
 So far, the driving awaj' of comforts and commodities, 
 subservient to the wants of the people, proceeded from a 
 desire to exclude articles produced abroad. The over- 
 fondling and over-nursing the home producers of such 
 commodities has had a very similar effect. 
 
 In the progress of European industry, there was a 
 period when everything which could be exported was 
 deemed to deserve and require some special government 
 assistance. In rude ages, the producers of different 
 countries were little known to each other. If a bale of 
 goods — of cloth, for instance — was offered in a distant 
 land, little confidence could, perhaps, be expected to be 
 placed, by foreigners, in the representations by the sellers 
 of the texture, size, or quality of the commodity. A 
 public certificate, warranting these, would have some- 
 thing of the same effect as the stamp on money has in 
 certifying the value and weight of the coin. 
 
 Hence, on English cloth, for instance, marks and seals 
 affixed by public officers served as certificates of this 
 description. So far, at a certain period, all was well ; 
 and foreign trade received, perhaps, some assistance from 
 the practice. But, not satisfied with interfering for such 
 a purpose, the habit of interference, once introduced, was 
 extended to all the details of home productions. France, 
 it mu:<t, perhaps, be admitted, was at first only an imita- 
 tor of England in these matters. Tlie general success
 
 490 MEDDLING OF GOVERNMENTS WITH TRADE ; [lect. vii- 
 
 of the English trade inspired an emulation which was 
 guided by very imperfect and erroneous views of the 
 causes of that success, and the interference of the govern- 
 ment was counted on as an aid very far beyond its worth. 
 However, once introduced, the appetite for meddling 
 appears, in France, to have been quite unappeasable. 
 The three folios of Savary's Dictionary of Commerce 
 give an amusing account of many of the details of the 
 whole system ; but those who have any curiosity to 
 see it in its full growth, and all its efforts and contriv- 
 ances, may consult four thick quarto volumes, published 
 at Paris in 1730, and containing ''A collection of general 
 and special regulations concerning the manufactures and 
 fabrics of the kingdom." Colbert alone, somewhat un- 
 justly, was considered to embody, in his own person, the 
 whole soul of this regulating system, which the Italians 
 called, after his name, Colbertism. It was fiercely at- 
 tacked by the nascent political economy of Europe ; but 
 our business is not now with all its results. There is 
 one which bears directly on our present subject. In a 
 country which has no domestic manufactures, the first 
 step, certainly, towards familiarizing the people with 
 them is to admit the best and cheapest that can be j^ro- 
 cured from abroad. The next, as certainly, is to remove 
 all obstacles which obstruct the production of commo- 
 dities at home suited to the new and growing wants of 
 the people. In our age, the cry of the poor tormented 
 French manufacturers, ''Pray, let us alone !" is, perhaps, 
 applicable to both foreign and domestic trade. It is 
 singidarly and emphatically so to the last. The tastes 
 of their neighbours and domestic customers, the articles
 
 i.ECT. VII.] ITS INJURIOUS EFFECTS. 491 
 
 suited to their means and wants, force themselves on 
 the manufacturers of a country ; and to oblige them to 
 neglect these, while they are listening to the behests of 
 the government as to all the minutest details of their 
 productions and all their plans of business is, in fact, to 
 paralyse the home demand, and to make as remote as it 
 can be made that bountiful provision for the increasing 
 wants of the bulk of the population, which we have seen 
 is at once the object and the support of the manufactur- 
 ing industry of England. 
 
 Other obstacles to the spread of Comforts. 
 
 In some countries — in the young giant, America, for 
 instance — the physical conditions of the people, and of 
 the country which they inhabit, present serious obstacles 
 to the establishment of a familiarity with multiplied com- 
 forts. Markets are distant ; exchanges are rare. In 
 such countries, if the plenty of the laboring classes comes 
 to them in the shape of raw produce, the chances are 
 many that the ease of their circumstances vv^ill lead to a 
 rapid increase of their numbers, and not to an accumula- 
 tion of their demands for commodities subservient to 
 secondary wants. It is well, perhaps, that it should be 
 so ; it is well that mighty unoccupied regions should 
 teem rapidly with human beings, yet even they have a 
 future, more or less remote, during their progress to 
 which it is most important that they should acquire 
 habits wliich, when they have filled their vast homes, 
 will find them, not living on a bare animal subsistence^ 
 and multiplying like animals, but with minds elevated.
 
 492 THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD. [lelt. vii. 
 
 and habits wliich control the further progress of their 
 numbers, and place them in a position their best wishers 
 may look forward to without apprehension. 
 
 For my own part, I think well of the future of America. 
 The strong religious and intellectual turn of the body of 
 the population, if mixed at present with some of the 
 coarseness and inexperience of a young people, Avill, in 
 time, soften and elevate the nation and re-act whole- 
 somely on its habits ; but a word more on this point 
 hereafter. We have reserved, it will be remembered, 
 societies of laboring proprietors for future discussion, 
 
 "We have seen that the familiarity of the people with 
 comforts and decencies, depends, first and mainly, on the 
 well-being of the mass of the population ; and that the 
 depressed state of the population throughout the greater 
 part of the Old World is the long-enduring obstacle to 
 the progress of such habits. This applies to our own 
 empire : it is not true of England itself, but it is un- 
 fortunately too true of India ; and the great body of the 
 people there will long require the fostering care of a 
 paternal government before their increased means, and a 
 corresponding change of habits, can start and speed them 
 on a career of social elevation. 
 
 The extreme dej)ression of the people once removed, 
 and wages rising, all that can cause familiarity with 
 humble comforts must combine, if the use of them is to 
 spread : an absence of the foolish jealousy which would 
 exclude the best and cheapest, because foreign, from the 
 knowledge of the people ; a, careful abstinence from any 
 legislation which impedes the adaptation of the products 
 of home industry to tbo growing wants of the home
 
 i.Kcr. vn.] NUMBERS OF INTERMEDIATL: CLASSES. 493 
 
 population ; an unceasing effort to level all physical and 
 moral obstacles, which prevent a free progress upwards. 
 
 4. NUMBERS OF INTEUMEDIATE CLASSES. 
 
 We have arrived in sight of another cause which 
 powerfully affects the progress of change and elevation 
 in the habits of the mass of the people, when they have 
 the means of such change in their possession — that is, 
 when their Avages rise. 
 
 Among the most striking differences which distinguish 
 the social framework of English society from that of 
 other nations is the relative abundance in this country 
 of the numbers of classes which exist between the highest 
 and the lowest ranks ; intermediate classes is, perhaps, 
 the best name for them — middle classes they are usually 
 called, but the phrase exhibits very imperfectly the fact 
 I am pointing at and am going to dwell on. The num- 
 bers and well-being of these intermediate classes depend 
 very much, as we have seen, on the augmentation of the 
 mass of the national capital, and on the sub-division of 
 its functions. 
 
 Where the people are employed as peasant laborers, 
 these intermediate classes are few ; in some instances, 
 where the nation exports much of its surplus raw pro- 
 duce, as in the case of Poland, (hay almost disappear. 
 Travellers report that they find hardly any Polish ranks 
 except the peasants and landowners. Domestic exchanges 
 are few ; petty dealers, for the most part Jews, conduct 
 them. The produce which remains after the peasants 
 and landholders are fed is mostly exported, and the
 
 494 THEIR INFLUENCE UPON THE HABITS [lect. vii- 
 
 returns are made in luxuries imported from abroad, and 
 consumed all but exclusively by the higher orders. 
 
 In such a country a wide and practically an impassable 
 gulf separates the habits of the higher classes from those 
 of the lower. The Polish peasant sees no habits between 
 his own and those of his masters, and the habits of these 
 are as much out of the peasant's approach as those of a 
 superior race of beings. Let an increase of means, a rise 
 of wages, take place among this jDopulation, and there is 
 no humble luxury, nothing contributory to small decen- 
 cies and comforts which the peasant has been in the 
 habit of observing in the hands of a class immediately 
 above him, and only a little above him; nothing he 
 has envied, hoped for, and seen, only just out of his 
 reach. 
 
 In England, a very different scene presents itself: 
 besides the lowest laboring class, the country swarms 
 with others, some touching the lower, and the rest rising 
 upwards by minute and scarcely separated gradations 
 to the highest, — small itinerant dealers, shopkeepers, 
 farmers, producers of every kind of non-agricultural 
 product, from the country carpenter and handicraftsmen 
 of varied descriptions, to the mighty manufacturer and 
 the princely merchant, and a throng of professional men, 
 mixed up with all these, administering to the needs, 
 real or fanciful, of the population : these all form a long 
 chain, connected throughout its length by indefinitely 
 small links, and conveying by a sure and gradual, but 
 not very slow communication, some of the feelings and 
 habits of the highest, successively downwards, to the 
 very lowest ranks.
 
 LKci. VII.] AND TASTES OF THK LOWER CLASSES. 495 
 
 Observe, in some ducal mansion, the furniture of the 
 rooms, the dress of the family. Be sure, that whatever 
 there may be of elegant, commodious, or becoming, there, 
 will be found, in a season or two, imitated pretty closely 
 by all the less elevated members of the higher ranks ; 
 the middle classes will not be slow to put themselves in 
 possession of the novelties, or something like them ; and 
 the classes below, but in contact with, the middle, will 
 receive the general impulse, and transmit it still down- 
 wards. 
 
 The dress which is that of the duchess to-day, in less 
 than ten years will be found reflected in that of her 
 housemaids, having adorned, in its downward progress, 
 the families of merchant and squire, and clergyman, 
 doctor, and tradesman. 
 
 Evidences of the rapid change will be found in every 
 cottage of this country, and heard from the lips of every 
 old recounter of what he remembers of the state of all 
 the ranks of society when he was young. 
 
 It is otherwise, no doubt, in coimtries where tliere 
 is no such chain of ranks. The implements, the dress, 
 the furnitui'e of the lowest class, retain a sameness we 
 have already spoken of, and exhibit no change in a 
 thousand years, to say nothing of a hundred, or ten. 
 
 'No^Y, in the more advanced country, what temptations 
 does this existence of intermediate classes hold out to 
 changes of habits ; and when a rise of wages takes place, 
 and his means are increased, the laborer has seen in the 
 house of his neighbor, the higgler, the blacksmith, or 
 the small shopkeeper, articles of dress more becoming, 
 of furniture more commodious, than his own, yet not so
 
 496 DIVISIONS OF THE LABORING CLASS. [lp.ct. vn. 
 
 much SO but tliat tliey are all but within his reach ; 
 increase his means slightly, and they become quite so. 
 Carry your observations upwards, and you will observe 
 each class, in its turn, making the same advance. 
 
 But the influence of this fact on the habits of the 
 laboring classes, during an advance of wages, becomes 
 necessarily greater as the comforts and decencies extend 
 in what may be called the upper divisions of his own 
 class. Abroad, you can observe but rarely any great 
 distinction between the habits of different divisions of 
 the laboring class : here, the links which connect the 
 higher with the lower class of even manual laborers are 
 very numerous. Passing from the agricultural day- 
 laborer to the workmen in villages and towns, and 
 then to the scenes of manufacturing industry, — the 
 manual laborers highly skilled, or even moderately 
 skilled, are employed in multiplied occupations, all of 
 which ensure scales of wages which exceed those of the 
 farm-laborer. These together constitute a body double 
 in size that of the agricultural laborers, and exercise 
 considerable influence on their hopes and habits ; and 
 this quite independently of the numerous ranks of persons 
 altogether above the stage of laborers. 
 
 A singular instance was related to me in our own hall 
 not many years ago, of the results of a thriving people, 
 having no higher class in their sight, whose habits and 
 enjoyments they might imitate as their means increased. 
 Mr. A. Clendiniiing w\as a receiver of several large 
 Irish rentals. Among the estates he had to manage, 
 one, at least, was in a very remote part of the west of 
 Ireland. There was a portion of its wild population
 
 LECT. VII.] AN UNIMPROVING PEASANTEY. 497 
 
 which he was able to put in the way of acquiring means 
 which the average mass of the cottier population did not 
 possess. A tract of tolerable mountain pasture existed 
 just behind the cabins of these people, and its remoteness 
 and limited extent made it most convenient to attach it 
 to their cabins and plots of potato ground. This enabled 
 them to keep cattle, especially cows, in some plenty, and 
 so placed them in possession of means much above those 
 of their class. Mr. Clendinning, after several years' 
 observation, was surprised, and, as it appeared to me, 
 somewhat vexed, at the stagnation and unchanged com- 
 plexion of their habits. Their consumption was exactly 
 the same in kind as that of theii* poorer neighbours ; no 
 marked improvement in their cabins, no change in their 
 food, dress, or plenishing : they enjoyed their abundance, 
 but progress upward in the scale of society they made 
 none ; their wants were not enlarged or varied ; they 
 had not advanced in that path which leads men at last 
 to a position at which they perceive that many objects, 
 much endeared to them, are to be lost by imprudence, 
 and can only be secured by adopting habits which would 
 prevent their being run down like their neighbours to 
 the bare level of subsistence. 
 
 The bearing of this story on the subject we are engaged 
 on is very direct. Had there existed in the neighbour- 
 hood of these thriving cottiers a resident landlord, a 
 village, and a few handicraft tradesmen, the habits of 
 these would have enticed their neighbours to imitation, 
 and some of the results would have followed which we 
 have traced to the existence of numerous intermediate 
 classes in England. 
 
 32
 
 498 FUNCTIONS OF AUXILIARY CAPITAL. [lect. vii. 
 
 The cause of the great increase of the relative numbers 
 of these intermediate classes in England is obvious ; it is 
 a great increase of productive power and national means 
 to be traced, as is always the case, to an increased rela- 
 tive amount of auxiliary capital ; how that increases the 
 productive powers and the means of a people, we have 
 already shown. It is not difficult to see how it also 
 leads to that multiplication of intermediate classes which 
 we have been speaking of. As it is introduced into a 
 greater number of occupations, a greater number of 
 people share in its profits. I have before explained that 
 the introduction of fresh masses can only take place on 
 condition of such an increase of the productive powers of 
 labor as will supply those profits, I have also shown 
 you that the increase of productive power will ordinarily 
 be in excess of what is necessary for that purpose, and 
 that the greater cheapness of the commodities produced 
 is all but the invariable result. The introduction of 
 more auxiliary capital, relatively to the numbers of the 
 people, therefore increases first the means and wealth of 
 the nation, and then multiplies indefinitely the mass of 
 persons who use portions of that capital, and whose posi- 
 tion and habits of consumption, coming in near contact 
 with the eyes of the mere laborers, inspires the last with 
 that knowledge of, and desire for, decencies and com- 
 forts almost within their reach, which induces them 
 readily, indeed almost eagerly, to apply any increase of 
 means, that is, higher wages, to the acquisition of these 
 new objects of consumption.
 
 LKCT. vii.J ABSENCE OR PRESENCE OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 499 
 
 5. THE ABSENCE OR PRESENCE, AMONGST EVERY CLASS OF THE PEOPLE, OF 
 CIVIL LIBERTY AND THE POWER OF BETTERING THEIR CONDITION. 
 
 Amongst the obstacles which human societies create to 
 the elevation of the great body of the people, we meet 
 with some of the most formidable in unjust legislation 
 and mischievous institutions. 
 
 If the dread of lowering their condition acts in one 
 direction, as an obstacle to a people increasing their 
 numbers, so as to reduce themselves to a mere subsist- 
 ence, the want of all hope of bettering it acts in another 
 direction, as their means are increasing, and tends to 
 lower their estimate of the maintenance they may rea- 
 sonably aim at, and so prevents their rising in the social 
 scale. 
 
 Political and social arrangements over a great part 
 of the earth act powerfully in this direction. 
 
 The three great branches under which we may observe 
 the operation of human laws and conventional habits in 
 keeping down the position of the body of the people 
 are — 
 
 Fii-st. Differences of race and customs founded on it. 
 
 Second. Differences of ranks perpetuated and enforced 
 by habits. 
 
 Third. Laws which impede changes in the occupations 
 of families. 
 
 If we look to the East, we shall first be struck by the 
 separation of the people into several divisions by reli- 
 gious sanctions or the institution of castes, I have in 
 other lectures pointed out to you that there is a high 
 probability, at least, that this division into castes was
 
 500 THE INSTITUTION OF CASTES. [lect. vii. 
 
 founded on a division of occupations, made inevitable by 
 the physical geography of the countries in which they 
 originated. I have shown you what modifications these 
 original divisions underwent when the people were trans- 
 ferred by conquest or emigration to regions differently 
 circumstanced ; but it is not my purpose to do more here 
 at present than to point out that castes once prevailed in 
 Asia, India, and Egypt, that they exist extensively in 
 India now, and that wherever they prevail they breathe, 
 as it were, a spell upon the people and their habits 
 which prevents change, and consequently prevents the 
 elevation of the mass. 
 
 But interposing less vigorously than the religious 
 sanction of castes, but in the same direction, we may 
 observe a variety of wide-spread institutions, producing 
 like effects. In ancient Greece a large proportion of 
 the cultivators consisted obviously of a race ruled by 
 stranger, though probably kindred, tribes, and occupying 
 a social and economical position which effectually pre- 
 vented their rise. Over the rest of the world we can 
 frequently trace differences in blood and race, which have 
 introduced themselves into social institutions, and divide 
 the uj^per from the lower classes by an impassable bar- 
 rier, and tend to keep the last in a hopeless state of 
 degradation. Among these, the distinction between 
 noble and ignoble portions of the population throughout 
 continental Europe is not the least remarkable.^ 
 
 The exclusive privileges of the continental nobles, 
 
 ' The distinction once prevailed here, but indications of its former existence are 
 rare, and the successive steps by which it declined, and was at last effaced, are only 
 to be gAcKsed at.
 
 LEtT. VII.] TRADE GUILDS. 501 
 
 there can be no doubt, tended to paralyse and degrade 
 the ignoble, or, as it is ordinarily called, the rokirier 
 portion of the population, through all its ranks, even to 
 the lowest; but the class of manual laborers, in any 
 effort to advance, were more directly and immediately 
 met by obstacles of a different kind, apparently more 
 limited in their action, but still exercising, for a long- 
 series of years, a very broad and mischievous influence 
 over most of the surface of Europe. 
 
 Europe owes to the Eomans, doubtless, the guilds and 
 companies which took exclusive charge of the production 
 of various commodities in towns and cities ; but the bar- 
 barian conquerors followed up this policy with great 
 earnestness, if not with great wisdom. 
 
 To encourage their industry, and assist in perfecting 
 theii- skill, was thought good national policy; and, un- 
 luckily, the best way of encouraging them was assumed 
 to be the letting them make bye-laws for the regulation 
 of their own crafts. 
 
 It might have been expected that a set of selfish regu- 
 lations would be made, and constant efforts to confine to 
 the connections of the actual handicraftsmen the appren- 
 ticeships through which alone the privilege of exercising 
 their occupations could be obtained. The nature of these 
 corporate rights and bye-laws, and some of their results, 
 will be found sufficiently explained by Adam Smith, in 
 the tenth chapter of his book, which applies, however, 
 principally to England. 
 
 The extent to which they manacled the non-agricul- 
 tural industry of France is very well shown in a lively 
 and instructive paper in the Ephemerides clu Gitoyen^ a
 
 502 A CHINESE FABLE, ILLUSTllATIVE OF [lf.ct. vii. 
 
 periodical publication of the French economists, pub- 
 lished while they were struggling for influence. 
 
 It must be recollected that, at the time this was pub- 
 lished, twenty out of twenty-five millions of French 
 people were maintained on or from the land, and by far 
 the greater part of them as laboring occupiers. If their 
 families increased beyond the numbers required for cul- 
 tivation, the obvious mode of bettering their condition 
 was to find some occupation for them in the towns ; and 
 the cruelty and injustice of repulsing them, and substan- 
 tially forbidding them to labor and live, are obvious 
 enough ; but it was not very safe then, in France, to 
 point out that either the laws or the Government were 
 the cause of the mischiefs or misery to be observed in 
 that country. The two first and two ablest precursors of 
 the economists. Marshal Yauban and Bois-Guilbert, fell 
 victims to their rash, though well-meant, plain speaking 
 on such points. The writer in the Ephemerides is obliged, 
 then, to be satisfied with telling a tale of things which 
 had happened in Cochin-China, and leaving his readers 
 to apply the fable.^ 
 
 Chinki, then, a Cochin- Chinese husbandman, after 
 being ruined in his vocation by fiscal and other oppres- 
 sion, which is described in detail, takes his son, Naru, 
 and his daughter, Dinka, two out of his numerous family, 
 and travels to the capital to see if he can put them 
 apprentices to some trade, which may snatch them from 
 the misery which pursued them in the bosom of the 
 
 ' See Chwlci, a Cocliin-Chinese History, which may be useful to other countries. 
 Ephemerides du Citoyen. vols. xi. and xii. of the collected papers foi- 1768, and vols, 
 i. and ii. of those for 1769. And, after all, the tract was published in London, 
 thoujih it is significantly stated that it may be had at Paris.
 
 LECT. VII.] A STATE OF THINGS IN FRANCE. 503 
 
 noble employment of agriculture. Two-thirds of the 
 whole tract is occupied in the description of the insuper- 
 able difficulties which he found in all occupations, oppos- 
 ing and frustrating his efforts. He addressed himself 
 first to a tailor, then in succession to a baker, a pastry- 
 cook, and a shoemaker ; and found everywhere reiterated, 
 with a tiresome monotony, objections to receive his son, 
 founded on his being a foreigner — that is, not a native 
 of the capital ; or, because not the son of a master, born 
 either before his father became a master artizan, or 
 afterwards, for there was a difference between these ; or, 
 because the limited number of each master's apprentices 
 was complete. He became acquainted with the fact that 
 the town swarmed with officers and juries, whose occu- 
 pation was to carry out the jurisdiction and police of 
 innumerable companies, who had power to enforce this 
 multitude of regulations before tribunals of their own. 
 Attending one of these, he learnt, from the cause going 
 on, that to make a whip legally there must concur seven 
 separate master tradesmen — that is, the maitres-tour- 
 neurs, tabletiers, corroi/eurs^ cordiers^ doreurs, peintres^ and 
 vernisseurs ; and that, when all their privileged labors 
 were finished, the tradesmen who dealt in whips had 
 assured to him alone the exclusive privilege of putting 
 the results of their labors together and selling the whip. 
 Having acquired a variety of learning of the same kind, 
 poor Chinki gave up the placing of his boy in despair, 
 and set about trying what he could do for his girl.' He 
 hoped that women would experience some favor, and 
 that he should find the employments which suited them 
 
 1 Vols. i. ami ii., 17C9, p. 138.
 
 504 TRADE CUSTOMS IN GERMANY ARE OBSTACLES [lect. vii. 
 
 less tormented by regulations. He was deceived. Dinka 
 was repulsed from the milliners and embroideresses ; she 
 could not be employed in painting fans, or making rib- 
 bons or artificial flowers ; the right even of selling 
 natural flowers in the street could only be purchased 
 at a high price. The unlucky father was about to quit 
 the town, when an old woman, who sold pies and cakes, 
 remarked the interesting figure of Dinka, and thought 
 she would make a profitable assistant. Even this miser- 
 able trade, however, was subject to exclusive privileges, 
 which the old woman promised to obtain for Dinka after 
 a term of service. The poor father consented, and was 
 even persuaded to let his new patroness get a footboy's 
 place for his son Naru. Thus repulsed by laws and 
 regulations from all respectable employments, the writer 
 traces poor Dinka and Naru through corruption and 
 degradation to infamous deaths. 
 
 This, no doubt, is a picture of Paris ; but all the towns 
 of France presented similar obstacles to the admission of 
 the families of four-fifths of the people to non-agricultural 
 employments. It was the same in other parts of the 
 continent. In Germany, the regulations have not yet 
 been swept away. You have probably, many of you, 
 met with young German workmen in the character of 
 beggars. To remove for a little while their competition 
 Avith the older hands, these youths, after completing their 
 apprenticeships, are compelled to wander for a time at a 
 distance from the place in which they are to settle, and 
 are endowed with the privilege of begging on their 
 travels. Colonies of Germans carried with them, in 
 other ages, the knowledge of handicrafts and the ruder
 
 LECT. VII.] TO THE ELEVATION OF THE MASSES. 505 
 
 non-agricultural productions into the wilder countries 
 — to the north and cast — and, with many benefits, they 
 introduced this cherished system of jealousy and exclu- 
 sion among their companies and guilds. In Ilungary, 
 where artizans, till lately, and probably now, bear a 
 mischievously small proportion to the whole population, 
 these restrictive regulations were even caricatured. Dr. 
 Bright, while travelling in that countr}^, met a gipsy 
 chief in a fLintastic coat, which excited his surprise ; and 
 found, on enquiry, that it was a chef d^ceuvre^ or master- 
 piece, exacted from some apprentice tailor before his craft 
 would admit him to work as a journeyman. It was too 
 fine and extravagant for the use of any sober citizen, and 
 so the gipsy had got it a bargain, and wore it proudly. 
 
 Taking the broad surface of Europe, then, we must 
 count for one important cause which contributed not a 
 little for many centuries — and still contributes something 
 — to keep down the hopes, and so the habits, of the 
 labouring classes, those laws and regulations which i"m- 
 peded the entrance of the whole agricultural class into 
 any other occupation than their own. 
 
 I have said nearly all I mean to say here, on the fifth 
 of the causes I enumerated as affecting the habits of the 
 people during an increase of their means, namely, the 
 absence or the presence, amongst every class, of civil 
 liberty, and the power of bettering their condition. 
 
 You will remember that these are interfered with in 
 human societies by laws, regulations, and habits, which 
 act on a very large scale. The dark and giant systems 
 which make religion itself both the instrument and the 
 guardian of the unresisted degradation of the body of the
 
 506 INFLUENCE OF THE POSSESSION OF PROPERTY [lect. vii. 
 
 people, by a superstitious regard to caste, as in the East ; 
 the evil distinction which conquest and differences of 
 race introduced into Greece, and have introduced else- 
 where; the vital differences of rank and privileges, as 
 between noble and ignoble, which overran Europe during 
 the Dark and Middle Ages, and which have not yet died 
 away ; the obstacles to the progress of the people up- 
 wards, created by selfish or impolitic laws and regula- 
 tions, — all produce the same effect : they discourage the 
 self-respect, the hopes, the reasonable ambition of the 
 bulk of the people, and enter largely into the causes 
 which prevent that elevation of their habits which con- 
 trols, in other and superior classes, the progress of 
 population. This is the sole effect connected with our 
 especial investigation just now. The more general 
 economical effects of each belong to other places. 
 
 6 AND 7. THE POSSESSION OF PROPERTY BY THE LABORING CLASSES, AND THE 
 INFLUENCE OF PARENTS OVER THEIR ADULT CHILDREN. 
 
 I take these two together, because, though the posses- 
 sion of property acts in more ways than one upon the 
 habits and progress of laboring populations, it affects that 
 progress very much through the power it almost in- 
 variably gives to parents over the prospects, actions, and 
 comforts of their adult offspring. All descriptions of 
 property have some effects of this kind, although dif- 
 ferent descriptions of it act in different ways, and to a 
 different extent. All that is essentially necessary is 
 that the parental home should exhibit decencies and 
 comforts which the young feel they must resign if they 
 marry without any reasonable hope of enjoying the like.
 
 LECT. VII.] UPON THE PROGRESS OF LABORING POPULATIONS. 507 
 
 Their reluctance will bear, of course, some proportion to 
 the extent of the sacrifices they fear. Any privation of 
 accustomed enjoyments, any declension of respectability 
 which can be pointed to as the consequence of impru- 
 dence, gives weight and force to the warnings and advice 
 of the parents, and the advice of age is always on the side 
 of prudence. 
 
 We have seen that the first steps human communities 
 take for themselves are the appropriation of the soil, and 
 the conditions imposed on its cultivators. The necessity 
 for cultivation, and, therefore, the existence of a race of 
 cultivators, come from the Providence which framed the 
 earth and man. The determination of their position and 
 relative rights is a task which devolves on the communi- 
 ties themselves. Thus, first steps taken are ordinarily 
 faulty, and the faultiness becomes more grievously dis- 
 astrous, because the consequences are ordinarily very 
 enduring, and may, indeed, be seen afilicting the popula- 
 tions of a large part of the globe up to our own day. 
 
 We have already observed the surface of the Old 
 World as it is divided amongst peasant cultivators, the 
 hereditary occupiers of the East, the various classes of 
 laboring tenantry in the West : and we have seen that, 
 when once reduced to a low level, recovery is of extreme 
 difficulty, and very rarely effected. 
 
 But, among all the disadvantages of their condition, 
 there is one advantage of some importance to themselves 
 — of yet more importance to those who have to rule 
 them ; they are not what the French called ProUtaires ; 
 they are not property-less. They all have property in 
 some shape or other, — either in land or in stock ; that
 
 508 VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF INDIA. [lect. vii. 
 
 is, they have complete or sometimes imperfect rights to 
 them. 
 
 The moral and political effects of this circumstance can 
 hardly be over-rated, nor the broad distinctions it esta- 
 blishes between them and the paid workmen, whom we 
 may observe elsewhere — as in England for instance — 
 endowed with much larger revenues. 
 
 Of all kinds of property, that which consists of modified 
 rights to the possession, or even temporary occupation, 
 of land, is the most important in the history of nations. 
 This you will have abundant opportunities of observing 
 in the distant scene of your future duties and exertions 
 in India. When the laboring classes, there or elsewhere, 
 subsist on the produce of land which they cultivate them- 
 selves, the occupation of such land is, ordinarily, to them, 
 as we have seen, a necessary condition of existence ; and, 
 as the attempting to deprive them of it, by direct or in- 
 direct means, drives them to despair, and makes them 
 unmanageable, so the government which respects and 
 cherishes their humble rights, and avoids making them 
 nugatory by fiscal oppression, has done nearly all that is 
 requisite to secure the steady and willing obedience of 
 the people. Many of the most able administrators of 
 Indian affairs, or Avriters on them, have vied with each 
 other in describing the effects of the village communities 
 of India on the feelings and habits of the people. But 
 the main feature of these villages is the property of the 
 people in that soil on which they depend for sustenance. 
 Security for theii- possession of this bounds their views 
 of prosperity and peace ; and the government which has 
 skill enough, and honesty and wisdom enough, to set
 
 LECT. VII.] MARRIAGES AMONG THE LABORING CLASSES. 509 
 
 their minds at ease as to their rights in their allotments 
 and produce, may rule without any fear that its sway 
 will be disturbed by attachment to other masters, either 
 domestic or foreign. Even the rude peasant tenantry 
 have, under all their forms and in their varied divisions, 
 some right to the occupation of land ; and the two dif- 
 ferent prospects of succeeding to an allotment, and living 
 like theii" parents, or of being thrown on a perilous world, 
 where there is no demand for their labor, are always be- 
 fore the young people. These circumstances act power- 
 fully upon the habits of the population as to marriage, 
 so powerfully, indeed, as to, in many instances, outweigh 
 the disadvantageous influences which too often beset such 
 a peasant. It is diflicult to describe the very moderate 
 rate of increase of the French population to any other 
 cause. In such countries it is often interesting to observe 
 of what gravity and importance a marriage is to families 
 and the community. Long courtships, observance of 
 prescriptive services and ceremonies between the be- 
 trothed, followed after a time by marriages which are 
 indeed gala days and draw out a host of joyous exhibi- 
 tions, interwoven with the habits and customs of the 
 people ; all these show that the beginning of house- 
 keeping, and the establishment of another family, is 
 regarded as what it really is, an era in the lives of the 
 adolescent population of great and serious importance.^ 
 
 This is, indeed, a sad contrast to the precipitancy and 
 carelessness with which the lower classes in England are 
 often seen to marry. Once at a marriageable age, and 
 
 ^ The Literary Gazette had, some years ago, a series of articles on these marriage 
 customs of the continental peasants. They were interesting and insstructive.
 
 510 ONE CONSEQUENCE OF MONEY-WAGES. [lect. vii. 
 
 capable of doing a day's work, there is nothing to pre- 
 vent their marrying and being as well off as their parents ; 
 their plenishing amounts to nothing — a bed and the 
 clothes they stand in are all their necessary stock. If 
 they cannot procure a house, a lodging serves their turn ; 
 and I have known them demand that lodging in the 
 poor-house on their very bridal night, as their legal right. 
 Their parents have little influence over their actions, 
 for they have little to lose by leaving the parental roof, 
 and little to gain by remaining there. This is one con- 
 sequence of the form in which they receive their wages. 
 Their annual revenues, their means of consumption, are, 
 in truth, much greater than that of their fellow-laborers 
 on the continent of Europe, but the money-wages they 
 receive to-night they may expend to-morrow ; there is 
 nothing in their circumstances which forces them into 
 the position of owners of property. It is not their habit 
 to occupy land, and they have none of the rights and 
 none of the feelings which attach the continental laborers 
 to homes established on the land, and which they fear to 
 abandon as they fear to abandon life. Their acquisition 
 of property must be a voluntary effort, to be purchased — 
 if they choose to purchase it — by acts of self-denial and 
 self-dictated privations, which they may throw off at their 
 pleasure. "Wise legislation encourages such habits, or 
 takes care not to oppose them. Unhappily, in England, 
 where this race of laborers living on wages received in 
 the form of money is the most universal, a very unwise 
 legislation has tended violently to destroy any inclination 
 which might arise to the acquisition of property by the 
 mass, and has greatly inflamed all such disadvantages as
 
 LECT. VII.] FACILITIES OF INVESTMENT. 511 
 
 the form of money-wages brinpjs with it — but brings 
 with it, it must still be confessed, in the midst of many 
 cow^^er-balancing (we are hardly in a position to say over- 
 balancing) advantages. 
 
 8. FACILITIES OF INVESTMENT FOR THE SAVINGS OF THE LABORING CLASSES. 
 
 We have seen that auxiliary capital, as it increases its 
 mass relatively to the numbers of the people, provides 
 the means for more persons to enter on employments 
 which raise them somewhat above the station of mere 
 manual laborers, and to ascend a few of the numerous 
 links which connect them with the highest ranks of 
 society. Hence a constant motive to save, a kind of 
 pressure towards saving habits. Still, the poorer classes 
 want further the stimulus given by opportunities of in- 
 vesting at once their small savings. This is naturally 
 their most immediate object, and stands midway between 
 their actual saving and their ultimate use of their savings. 
 
 Over by far the greater part of the world the lowest 
 classes cannot invest their savings profitably, — they can 
 only bury or hoard them. The cultivating peasant cer- 
 tainly would often be able to invest the fruits of his 
 economy in improving his cultivation, but he has rarely 
 the means of saving at all, and, yet more, any certainty 
 of enjoying the fruits of his saving, in security. He 
 may hoard a little, but he does not invest. The economy 
 and accumulations of the laboring classes are to be found 
 almost entirely among those who receive money wages. 
 When these once begin to accumulate, their numbers 
 make their accumulations of considerable national im- 
 portance, though the successive mite is but small.
 
 512 SAYINGS OF THE LABORING CLASSES. [lect. vii. 
 
 It is in such cases that the greatest possible facility 
 for easy, safe, and popular investments for the savings of 
 the poor become a very serious object, for the sake, both 
 of the poor themselves and of the prosperity and political 
 quiet of the community. 
 
 In England, the savings' banks in 1850 had deposits 
 amounting to more than twenty-seven millions ; as long 
 ago as 1830, these deposits amounted to thirteen millions 
 and a half, and, in the interval, the drafts of depositors 
 were, of course, perpetually withdrawing sums, a con- 
 siderable portion of which found their way into active 
 employment as cajoital. Friendly and benefit societies 
 exist, of which the income is five millions, all but £20,000. 
 Nor do these sums include nearly all the savings of the 
 poorer classes in England. Insurance ofiices and private 
 investments, principally in loans to relations and friends, 
 absorb another large, though indefinite, mass. 
 
 So important, indeed, are the savings from wages 
 alone in England, that, supposing the population to go 
 on at the present rate, it is clear that by the time it next 
 doubles, the savings of the poorer classes themselves will 
 have provided a capital equal to the whole amount of 
 additional wages required. This will not be enough for 
 the requirements of the industry of the nation; for to 
 keep that up to its present power and productiveness, an 
 enormous mass of auxiliary capital must also have been 
 accumulated from other sources. But the facts given are 
 enough to show the folly of leaving out savings from 
 wages altogether, while calculating the progress of na- 
 tional capital. 
 
 Important as these savings from wages are in a mere
 
 LECT. VII.] SOCIAL RESULTS OF ACCUMULATION. 513 
 
 economical point of view, thej^ are indefinitely more im- 
 portant when taken in conjunction with their social and 
 political results. 
 
 Each of these accumulators has given a pledge of his 
 fidelity to the cause of property and order, and has given 
 proof, too, that he has other and higher objects in his 
 mind than the enjoyment of a bare subsistence on the 
 level of a half-famished animal. 
 
 It will be observed that this question of investment, 
 though distinct from questions of property generally, and 
 of parental influence derived from property, is much con- 
 nected with them. I repeat that property of every kind 
 enables the parents to surround their children at home 
 with comforts and respectability, which they must forfeit 
 if they rush into the marriage state, dependent solely on 
 their manual labor, and having propertyless homes. IS'ow, 
 when the laborers are occupiers of land, it is in their 
 allotments of land, or their rights in them, and in humble 
 stock connected with theii* cultivation, that the property 
 of the lower classes is invested ; and without a prospect 
 of succeeding on some terms to such allotments and their 
 garniture, young people cannot marry without the cer- 
 tainty of degradation and suffering. The influence of 
 property, and some parental influence grounded on it, is 
 thus forced upon them by their position, and it is a matter 
 in which they have no choice. 
 
 The investing money by the poor for the purpose of 
 securing either interest or profit belongs to a very dif- 
 ferent state of things. To effect this requires voluntary 
 efforts ; there must be abstinence and self-denial, — and 
 these will not become prevalent, unless there exist some 
 
 33
 
 514 EDUCATION OF THE LABORING CLASSES. [lect. vii. 
 
 facility of immediate enjoyment and perfect security of 
 investment ; nor will they prevail much unless there is a 
 reasonable belief among the laborers that they may better 
 their own condition, or that of theii* families. 
 
 Wherever money-wages prevail, therefore, if it be the 
 object of governments to elevate the condition of the 
 people, facilities for making such investments, and em- 
 ploying them, should be a sort of religious object with 
 the legislature ; and if from ignorance, blundering, or 
 mischance, it is found overlooking the importance of 
 habits of accumulation among the people, or creating or 
 preserving obstacles to the extension of such habits, there 
 can hardly be a more sorrowful example of misgovern- 
 ment. We must enter on this subject more in detail, I 
 fear, when we institute our intended comparison between 
 the condition of the laboring classes in England and else- 
 where. 
 
 9. THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF THE EDUCATION OF THE LABORING CLASSES. 
 
 It is obvious that the question of education enters 
 largely into all views of the causes which promote fore- 
 sight and self-respect among the people. It would, how- 
 ever, have been an arrangement full of peril to the pro- 
 gress of human society if the education of the masses had 
 been an indispensable foundation for the prevalence of 
 such habits as control the animal power of increase. 
 
 Education comes late in the progress of nations; in 
 very few indeed has the education of the masses been 
 effected up to our own days. 
 
 In the long ages which have elapsed since we can trace 
 the progress of nations, if their power of increase as
 
 LECT. vn.] INFLUExNX'E OF EDUCATION. 515 
 
 animals had been controlled by nothing but the general 
 spread of education, it would, in point of fact, not have 
 been controlled at all, and men would have been con- 
 stantly approaching the scantiest subsistence which would 
 support life. 
 
 But by the happy and benevolent arrangements of 
 Providence, causes are at work, during the whole course 
 of civilization, beginning at its lowest stages, which tend, 
 independently of education, to elevate men's standard of 
 the maintenance they will be content with, and to raise 
 it gradually above the level of a bare animal subsistence. 
 
 There is no stage of this progress, however, at which a 
 sound popular education, if it could be obtained, would 
 not strengthen all the beneficial influences at work in 
 society. An education arranged on sound principles — 
 necessarily imparts habits of comparative thoughtfulness 
 and self-respect; these lead men, naturally, to aim at 
 acquiring all that can surround them with decencies and 
 respectability. It leads them to observe, to value, and 
 to use all rational means for the advancement of them- 
 selves and their children. The use of that freedom of 
 bettering their condition, which is founded on the gradual 
 perfection of systems of civil liberty, the value and use 
 of property, the sacredness of the ties which connect 
 children with their parents and establish domestic sub- 
 ordination — all these exert an influence on the moral 
 and social character of nations, which is enlightened and 
 strengthened as the mental powers, and habits of thought 
 and observation, grow stronger by training. But, prac- 
 tically, the education of the masses rarely begins till a 
 very advanced stage in national progress has been reached,
 
 516 THE LABORER IN LEADING STRINGS. [lect. vii. 
 
 and, as that stage is our own, it becomes useful to observe 
 in how peculiar a manner, when nations once reach it, all 
 the wholesome results of education become magnified and 
 all but essential. 
 
 If we observe with some attention the progress of 
 nations, we shall see that laws very like those which 
 decide the moral responsibilities of individual men, go- 
 vern, too, those of nations, and, above all, of different 
 ranks and classes of nations. 
 
 While the laboring classes are in a rude and depressed 
 state, their fate is much out of their own hands, and the 
 ties which connect and bind them up with the frame of 
 society are imposed upon them, and decide much of their 
 conduct and fortunes without their own knowledge or 
 consciousness. The young peasant marries when he has 
 a fair chance of obtaining a plot of ground on which he 
 may exist : what that chance shall be depends on the 
 will, that is, on the interest, of the landowner. 
 
 Now, there is one broad principle which unobtrusively, 
 but not less certainly, determines the system of conduct 
 the landowner, be he prince or noble, will adopt. 
 
 It is advantageous to him that there should be as many 
 laborers on his estate as will produce from it the largest 
 surplus profit for his own use. Every living soul beyond 
 that lessens, by his consumption, the revenue which the 
 landowner could obtain ; and the landowners are un- 
 favorable to the drain the existence of such unprofitable 
 laborers establishes. 
 
 Sometimes positive rules, sometimes indirect regula- 
 tions, oppose the increase of the population beyond that 
 point.
 
 LECT. VII.] THE LABORER EMAXCIPATED. 517 
 
 Permission to marry was for many ages legally given, 
 or refused, by the landowners of Western Europe ; and 
 given or refused mainly with a view to this fact of the 
 probable productive power of more labor. 
 
 The monarchs who ruled the soil of Asia were anxious 
 to encourage cultivators and cultivation up to the point 
 at which their labors secured revenue to the crown — 
 beyond that they were indifferent, if not hostile. 
 
 But the laborer dependent on money wages is emanci- 
 pated from these manacles, and the obligation is imposed 
 upon him of acting for himself; he must weigh the 
 chances of a fluctuating or regular demand for his labor ; 
 he must ascertain and calculate his own ability to avoid 
 future want. He has no guide in society likely to 
 lighten the task of self government to his class. His 
 subordination to law, his respect for public and private 
 property, must spring from his own convictions. He is 
 emancipated from the leading-strings, very useful in more 
 infant stages of society ; he must walk independently in 
 a path of his own, and confront many perils and diffi- 
 culties by his own clearness of view and prudence. He 
 is in a loftier position : he has with it higher responsi- 
 bilities which he cannot shake off. How can we over- 
 estimate the value of a sound education to him ? 
 
 THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HETERMIJ^E THE EFFECTS 
 ON THE PROGEESS OF rOPULATION OF FALLS IN 
 THE WAGES OF LABOK. 
 
 "We have gone through an examination of some of the 
 principal circumstances which determine what shall be
 
 518 EFFECTS OF FALLS IN WAGES. [lect. vii. 
 
 the effects on the progress of population of any rise of 
 wages. 
 
 I stated that most of the effects of a fall of wages would 
 be seen as plain deductions from the propositions esta- 
 blished in this preliminary enquiry. 
 
 Before I advert, however, to the effects, during a fall, 
 of the seven last of the nine circumstances enumerated, 
 there are some influences of the two first — form and time 
 — which are peculiar, and require especial notice. 
 
 Either a rise or a fall of wages, we have seen, may 
 affect the means of maintenance of the people, or their 
 means of subsistence. 
 
 A fall in wages may lead to a diminution of comforts 
 or decencies, or it may lead to a change in the quantity 
 or quality of their food. I am going to speak now of a 
 fall which acts upon the quantity or quality of food or 
 necessaries. 
 
 It is here that the time consumed during the change 
 exercises a peculiar influence, founded on the physical 
 formation and constitution of man as an animal. 
 
 Sudden changes in habits destroy human health and 
 produce immediate, or, at best, shortly postponed mor- 
 tality ; when gradual changes of the same kind and to 
 the same extent produce no injurious effects whatever. 
 
 Take, first, an English workman of the higher class. 
 He has meat at least once every day. Secondly, an 
 English agricultural laborer : he has three meals of 
 wheaten bread, meat seldom or never. Thirdly, an Irish 
 cottier in his better days, when he had a sufliciency of 
 potatoes. 
 
 Take the Englishmen down suddenly from their better
 
 LECT. VII,] GRADUAL AND SUDDEN FALLS. 519 
 
 diet and put them on the potatoes. There is no question 
 but that their health will sink at once ; and that among 
 a whole population so treated, the common ailments to 
 which mankind are exposed would be endowed with 
 increased destructiveness, and the rate of mortality be at 
 once fearfully increased. 
 
 Let this change, however, be spread over a consider- 
 able space of time, and individuals will grow accustomed 
 to it; let it only very gi*adually affect two or three 
 generations, and the people will be found healthy and 
 apparently strong. Of course we must avoid following 
 this fact to extravagant consequences. There is a state 
 of destitution which, after the most gradual preparation, 
 must produce mortality and a thinning of numbers. 
 
 What I wish to impress on you is this, that, if in the 
 same or nearly the same climate you see different popula- 
 tions subsisting and increasing on very different scales of 
 diet and primary necessaries, those best off may during a 
 gradual fall of wages descend to the position of those 
 worse off without any effect on their numbers or rate of 
 increase, while a sudden fall to the same extent would at 
 once act upon the rate of mortality, and decrease their 
 numbers or diminish their rate of increase. 
 
 But I have not yet fully stated the case. It is well 
 known that during the time the Irish were sinking fast 
 to their lowest condition and smallest means, they were 
 multiplying their numbers faster than the better fed and 
 richer population of England. 
 
 If we suppose that richer population to be started on a 
 downward progress towards the Irish, it is obviously 
 possible, therefore, that the richer people, the better paid
 
 520 CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH DETERMINE THE [lect. vii. 
 
 population, may be found accelerating their rate of in- 
 crease in the progress of their descent. 
 
 But if you see that this is possible, then recollecting 
 some of our former lectures, you "will see that it is also 
 probable. For it is probable that their scale of mainten- 
 ance, their decencies and comforts, will diminish as they 
 become poorer ; and then, till they arrive at the limits of 
 subsistence, as the objects which they fear to lose be- 
 come fewer, they will grow more reckless. It is, indeed, 
 a notorious fact, that the lowest and poorest of the Irish 
 were the most reckless even amongst Irishmen in this 
 respect. 
 
 It becomes important, while bearing these facts in 
 mind, to remember also that the form in which wages 
 are received affects potentially the liability of large masses 
 of population to very sudden changes, both in the amount 
 or quality of the food they consume. 
 
 While their wages come to them in the form of pro- 
 duce raised from themselves, there are rarely any stores 
 to supply them, if the vicissitudes of the seasons produce 
 a scarcity ; and the tales of suffering and death from 
 scarcity and famine in such populations are fearful. The 
 diminution of their means comes at once, and the sudden- 
 ness of the change exaggerates all its malignant influence. 
 
 For instances, we may refer to Ireland on the introduc- 
 tion of the potato disease ; to India, in the cases of sudden 
 failures of the crops ; and to portions of Germany. 
 
 The most powerful and, indeed, appalling description 
 of the effects of famine under such circumstances is that 
 of Galiani, when speaking of what he had witnessed in 
 Naples.
 
 LECT. vii.] RESULTS OF FALLS IN WAGES. 521 
 
 We have, perhaps, said enough on the peculiar influence 
 of Tme and Form in determining the results of a fall in 
 wages. 
 
 Seven other circumstances were enumerated as the chief 
 among those which guide the results of a rise. A refer- 
 ence to what has been said of their action during that 
 process will sufficiently indicate their tendencies and 
 influence during a fall. 
 
 Where comforts and decencies are cheap, and the use 
 of them familiar to the people, they will be surrendered 
 with a reluctance Avhich may affect the number of mar- 
 riages and the age of marriage. 
 
 When the laboring classes find themselves in contact 
 with others but slightly elevated above them, they will 
 not willingly agree to have the contact broken, and to 
 sink suddenly below their neighbours. 
 
 Let us figure to ourselves a people with thoroughly 
 well-educated working classes, manacled by no legal 
 or social disadvantages, accustomed to look forward to 
 the attainment of a station and means above then- actual 
 level, founding their notions of respectability partly on 
 the possession of property, and accustomed to be guided 
 by parental counsels. It requires, surely, no long or 
 formal argument to show that, if such a people were 
 assailed by the misfortune of a falling rate of wages, 
 there would be a struggle to avert or stay the descent. 
 The result would probably be a gradual diminution of the 
 rate of increase, that is, if the people had been increasing. 
 The ultimate result might be a reaction on the rate of 
 the wages and their restoration to their former pros- 
 perity, provided, of course, that the productive powers of
 
 522 THE WAGES OF LABORING PROPRIETORS DEPEND [lect. vu. 
 
 the industry of the nation made such a restoration 
 possible. 
 
 Take, next, the case of a nation in which the people 
 had been blessed by none of these sustaining causes, in 
 which the mass of the population were degraded as a 
 social class, separated, by an apparently impassable gulf, 
 from the ranks immediately above them, and careless of 
 decencies and comforts. 
 
 The struggle of such a people against the misfortune 
 of a falling rate of wages would be of a very different 
 kind. They would have few elevating habits or oppor- 
 tunities to cling to or prize : till they got to the limits of 
 subsistence, there would be little to retard their fall ; 
 they would increase, not more slowly, but faster than 
 they did before that fall began, and till they had sunk 
 to the lowest limits of subsistence, no diminution of their 
 numbers would be likely to restore their rate of wages 
 wholly or partially. 
 
 LABORING CULTIVATORS WHO ARE THE PROPRIETORS OF THE LAND THEY 
 
 OCCUPY. 
 
 You will recollect, I hope, that, when speaking of the 
 funds devoted to the maintenance of labor, I postponed 
 speaking of the class of occupying and cultivating labor- 
 ing proprietors till we had seen something of the causes 
 which determine the progress of population. The pros- 
 perity or misery, the high or low wages of such cultivat- 
 ing proprietors, depend on that progi^ess as compared 
 with the amount of land they are able to occupy. Not 
 wholly, of course, because some soils are more fertile 
 than others ; but whenever a family of laboring jiroprie-
 
 LECT. VII.] UPON THE AMOUNT OF LAND THEY OCCUPY. 523 
 
 tors have the possession of as much soil as they can cul- 
 tivate, we may assume that they are in possession of 
 abundant wages. It is not till their numbers increase 
 and a sub- division of the soil takes place, consequent on 
 that increase, that their diminishing allotments yield a 
 diminished return to their labor, and they may be re- 
 duced while clinging to those allotments to scantier 
 wages than those of any other class of workmen known 
 to us. 
 
 We can observe this almost exclusively in the Old 
 "World. In the New, scarcity of land has not shown 
 itself, nor its consequences. 
 
 In Europe, the first of these divisions of laboring pro- 
 prietors — namely, that which has land enough to employ 
 fully the labor of a family, is rare indeed. The two 
 second, those who have less than enough to employ the 
 labor of a family, and those who have so little as to pro- 
 duce a very bare subsistence, are too common. 
 
 In France, both before and since the revolution, in 
 Germany, in parts of the Tyrol, and in Switzerland, we 
 can observe now, and indeed during some ages of their 
 progress, the condition of these small laboring proprie- 
 tors, while multiplying their numbers and subdividing 
 their land till properties become too small fully to em- 
 ploy the labor of a family. 
 
 In some cases they may be seen struggling to stay 
 their fall at an early period of the descent. In others 
 they submit passively to the successive subdivisions of 
 their estates till they reach the level of a bare subsist- 
 ence. Our previous investigations will, perhaps, have 
 sufficiently indicated under what circumstances their
 
 524 OTHER INFLUENCES WHICH CHECK A FALL. [lect. vii. 
 
 struggle against further descent is likely to be success- 
 ful, and under what circumstances a fall to the lowest 
 point is all but inevitable. 
 
 If the unfortunate peasants live in a country in which 
 comforts and decencies have been common in every cot- 
 tage ; — if they have been surrounded by classes some- 
 what above them in means, yet in close approximation 
 to them, and leading them to prize some elevation of 
 habits not far out of their reach ; — if civil liberty and 
 equality have accustomed them to aim at a higher sta- 
 tion, and if they have been educated so as to observe 
 and value their opportunities, and dread degradation ; 
 we may expect that they will avoid imprudent early 
 marriages, that the population will exhibit much of half 
 unconscious restraint, and that forethought, and the 
 hope of bettering their condition, will strengthen the 
 motives to that restraint, and increase its influence on 
 the retarded progress of numbers. 
 
 I wish I could say that these favorable influences were 
 common among the laboring proprietors, who have not 
 access to unlimited tracts of soil — those of Europe, for 
 instance ; but the fact is, that they are very rarely in the 
 possession of superfluities, ease, comforts, and decencies, 
 of means of advancement in the world, of the example of 
 intermediate classes, and of the self-respect and aims at 
 bettering their condition, through which these circum- 
 stances act on the progress of numbers. The causes of 
 this state of things arc, some of them, self-evident ; 
 others we shall have to explain presently, when we con- 
 trast the fortunes of the English laboring population with 
 those of the laborers of the rest of the world.
 
 i-KCT. va.] THE EARLY GREEK COLONIES IN SICILY AND ITALY. 525 
 
 LABORING CULTIVATING PROPRIETORS WHO HAVE ACCESS TO AN INDEFINITE 
 QUANTITY OF FRESH LAND. 
 
 When sucli cultivators are barbarians, their progress 
 is impeded by feuds and wars, and imperfect civil insti- 
 tutions, the progress and results of which it would be 
 vain to attempt to trace. A far more interesting spec- 
 tacle is to see a civilised people spreading themselves as 
 cultivators over rich and unbounded regions. We can 
 observe two instances — one imperfectly, and in a very 
 remote age : one more deliberately and perfectly, for it 
 exists before our eyes. 
 
 Leaving Cuma out of the question, it was about 735 
 years before Christ that the Greeks began to colonise 
 Sicily and that southern portion of Italy which, after 
 their marvellous progress had proceeded to a certain 
 point, was called Magna Grsecia. 
 
 In some respects their fortunes resembled those of the 
 people of the ISTorth American States, in others they dif- 
 fered from them. A description of them and of their terri- 
 tories will be found in the third volume of Grote's History 
 of Greece. In their rapid increase — in the magical 
 rapidity with which they created immense masses of 
 wealth — they resembled the Americans ; they differed 
 from the free states of America in their vicious social 
 institutions. The laboring population was degraded : 
 a portion of it was only partially free ; another portion 
 was wholly deprived of civil rights. The first portion 
 consisted of serfs paying a tribute in produce ; the 
 second, of those slaves employed by richer individuals, 
 in cultivation. The first class, serfs paying produce-
 
 526 MAGNA GR.ECIA CONTRASTED WITH [lect. vii. 
 
 rents — and so far like metayers^ but attached to the soil 
 and not counted as citizens — was very common in Greece, 
 and in the countries which the Grecian tribes conquered. 
 Their existence affords, ordinarily, indication of a series of 
 political changes which history has not recorded. Slaves, 
 properly so called, are always to be found as an import- 
 ant part of the property of rich Greek citizens. That 
 wealth was startling which was produced from the virgin 
 soil of southern Italy by the skilled cultivators who dis- 
 placed the pastoral tribes first met with there. Sybaris 
 was only one of many towns scattered over Magna 
 Grsecia — the leading one, for a time, no doubt — yet 
 Sybaris could muster — two hundred years after its foun- 
 dation — three hundred thousand fighting men, for de- 
 fence or attack; and a single rich citizen carried about 
 with him a hundred cooks — slaves, doubtless — as part of 
 his domestic establishment. But the wealth of a com- 
 munity so constituted was fugitive ; the State had no 
 resource in the patriotism or goodwill of the mass of its 
 citizens, and one disastrous battle — with a neighbor 
 much resembling itself, Crotona — was enough to de- 
 molish its power, and leave only its name and proverbial 
 luxury, for the instruction of mankind. Too many dis- 
 turbing causes were evidently at work here to make 
 profitable any attempt to extract safe general views as to 
 the probable progress of other nations, starting with skill 
 and industry, and sj)reading themselves over indefinite 
 regions of fertile soil. 
 
 "We have a different scene to observe when we turn to 
 the progress and condition of the people of the United 
 States of America. I do not speak of the Slave States ;
 
 LECT. VII.] THE NORTH AMERICAN PROVINCES. 527 
 
 I have already told you that we shall devote one or more 
 lectures to a review of populations of slaves. When free 
 States, like the North American provinces, start on their 
 career, what is to be wished for them is, that after an 
 interval — which will be long or short in proportion to 
 the size of the uncultivated territory to which they have 
 access — their rate of increase should be so moderated as 
 to preserve a high rate of maintenance. All the influ- 
 ences which we have seen at work in more limited dis- 
 tricts may play their part here — freedom, a zest for 
 comforts and decencies pervading all ranks, easy and 
 cheap access to them, free and equal political and social 
 institutions and habits, property in the mass, parental 
 influence, and education. 
 
 All that thwarts and blights any of these is in opposi- 
 tion to that progress and to that final character and posi- 
 tion of the people which, as they advance in their career, 
 will be essential to the continuance of wealth and re- 
 spectability in the mass. 
 
 The productive power of skilled labor upon rich and 
 virgin soil ensures to the whole people a fair beginning. 
 It ensures also a considerable surplusage of raw produce. 
 This will be their first commercial stock, if they addict 
 themselves to commerce. They may use it, however, in 
 two ways : they may exchange it with nations who have 
 made greater progress in non-agricultural production, 
 and so ensure a cheap abundance of luxuries and com- 
 forts ; or they may insist on being non-agricultural pro- 
 ducers themselves, and divert a portion of their labor 
 from the cultivation of the soil to create or sustain a 
 non-agricultural industry.
 
 528 LABORING PROPRIETORS WHERE THE SUPPLY OF [i.ect. vii- 
 
 This is not the time to examine the national profit or 
 national loss, to which each of these systems leads. That 
 question belongs to the subject of the exchange of com- 
 modities. We are now concerned with the effects of 
 each system on the progress and habits of the popula- 
 tion. And here I need only refer you to lectures re- 
 cently delivered. Whatever increases the dearness or 
 impedes the circulation of comforts and luxuries is an 
 obstacle to the spread of the use of them by all ranks of 
 the population, more especially the lowest. Such ob- 
 stacles weaken, as we have seen, a people's chance that a 
 high rate of maintenance will be sustained ; and allow a 
 freer action to that downward progress towards a bare 
 subsistence which is constantly threatening nations dur- 
 ing the progress of their numbers. There is no pledge, 
 however, more decisive and influential for peace, for 
 order, and a high moral and intellectual character among 
 nations, than the creation of an elevated rate of main- 
 tenance extending to all classes. 
 
 You will have remembered the reasons, probably, 
 which have induced me to divide laboring proprietors 
 into two classes : those which exist in countries in which 
 the supply of land is limited ; and those which exist in 
 countries in which the supply of land is practically inde- 
 finite. When the first of these classes is found pressing 
 upon the resources of the soil, their position is ordinarily 
 a hard and perilous one ; non-cultivators have in them 
 no resource except the expenditure of the State, and that 
 fund is not only limited, but, from its nature, can rarely, 
 if ever, expand with an increasing population without 
 exhausting more and more the resoiu'ces of the culti-
 
 LHCT. VII.] LAND IS LIMITED, AND WHERE IT IS INDEFINITE. :y20 
 
 vators themselves. In Germany the helplessness of such 
 a population is showing itself daily more distinctly. To 
 what else is to be traced the emigration which is mixing 
 so large a German element in the American population — 
 nearly one quarter, it is said ? and to w^hat else is owing 
 the scenes of distress we read of when crops fall short, 
 and that discontent which has changed honest Germans 
 into some of the rashest and most implacable Eed-repub- 
 licans. 
 
 In France, the same want of resources for increasing 
 numbers is shown in a somewhat different way; the 
 heavy mortgages which preserve the peasantry from the 
 necessity of subdividing their small estates, reduce their 
 revenues to a pitiable state of tenuity, and their distress 
 forms one of the most dangerous elements among the 
 many elements of political peril which exist in that 
 country. 
 
 The state, then, of small proprietors among people who 
 from rude beginnings have fought their way to imper- 
 fect civilization, ceases to be attractive or safe from the 
 moment the subdivision of the land becomes inconveni- 
 ently great. It is far different with a population of pro- 
 prietors, consisting of a free and civilized people let loose 
 to unlock the riches of indefinite regions. They have, 
 probably, of all human societies, the best chance of a 
 happy career. A foundation for the ease of all classes is 
 their first possession — the earth rewards such laboring 
 cultivators plentifully ; they may constitute, while laud 
 continues plentiful, the great majority of the population, 
 and into theii* hands comes the surplus produce which 
 remains when mere subsistence has been provided for. 
 
 34
 
 530 MODERN LABORING CULTIVATORS HAVE THE [lect. vii. 
 
 That surplus produce is tlaus vi^holly devoted to the satis- 
 faction of the tastes and comforts of the bulk of the 
 people. The exchange of that produce supports the com- 
 merce of their country, if they derive their comforts from 
 commerce, and maintains any non-agricultural population 
 that may arise, and may apply itself to such branches 
 of industry as the wants of the cultivators make neces- 
 sary. Such cultivators are rapidly overspreading the 
 Avorld ; they carry with them the knowledge, the tastes, 
 the habits, the civilization, in short, of 4,000 years. 
 Those whose goodwill and good wishes extend to the 
 whole human race may well rejoice in the prospect that 
 vast and hitherto solitary regions of the earth will be 
 peopled by nations who have not still to acquire the 
 elements of civilization, but who, understanding the ne- 
 cessity of civil government and subordination, can hold 
 together without the harsh assistance of rude forms 
 of government, and thus escape the perilous institu- 
 tions which, once imposed perhaps from necessity, have 
 still stayed so many nations in their progress to wealth 
 and enjoyment, and driven down their degraded popula- 
 tions to the level of hare subsistence. 
 
 But this progress ever depends much on themselves : 
 vicious and selfish institutions — slavery, for instance — 
 or badly constituted governments, or oppressive or un- 
 skilful fiscal systems, may mar all these fair prospects. 
 
 In their case Providence has provided abundantly the 
 means of happiness and prosperity, and their chances are 
 most promising ; but even they cannot escape the law 
 which makes human communities ever the framers of so 
 much of their own fortunes ; and ignorance or gross
 
 i.ECr. VII.] ADVANTAGE OF AX INHERITED CIVILIZATION. 581 
 
 political or social blunders have no iinpnnity with them. 
 If, in their progress, habits of respectability and comfort, 
 and a high rate of maintenance fail to be established' 
 and maintained, the time will come when the unchecked 
 powers of population will trench on their resources, and 
 they too may be found as degraded and miserable as 
 communities which started in their career under much 
 less favorable circumstances. 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF \ RETARDED RATE OF INCREASE OX MORALS AND HAPPINESS. 
 
 "We have seen the funds on which the laboring popu- 
 lation of the globe subsist, their origin, growth, and 
 spread. "We have seen the causes which mitigate the 
 influence of the capacity of the human race to multiply 
 its numbers. 
 
 It need hardly be pointed out that if those mitigating 
 causes do not come into effect, the animal power of in- 
 crease must, after a time, outstrip the greatest possible 
 increase of the funds for the support of populations, and 
 must end in their being first reduced to a bare sub- 
 sistence, and afterwards exposed to much suflering by 
 the still unchecked appearance of numbers. 
 
 "We have seen the principal restraining cause to be an 
 advance in the scale of maintenance, and how that ad- 
 vanced scale acts as such restraining cause ; and have 
 passed in review, in some detail, the circumstances which 
 arise in the progress of society favorable or unfavorable 
 to its retarding influence. 
 
 Other questions demand our attention now. First, we 
 
 ' Nothing is so likely to cause this as foolish fiscal systems, whidi make comforts 
 and decencies dear, and so make thorn difiieult of access to the people.
 
 532 EFFECTS OF A RETARDED RATE OF INCREASE [lect. vii. 
 
 wish to acquire some acquaintance with the effect, good 
 and bad, on the morals and happiness of nations, which 
 attend a struggle between the animal capacity of com- 
 munities to multiply their numbers, and the growing 
 influences of the wants and habits which lead to a rate 
 of increase short of that capacity. When we have got 
 this we will compare the condition of England with 
 that of other countries, as to the various circum- 
 stances of which we have been reviewing the operation 
 during the progress of numbers ; and then, leaving the 
 social and moral part of the subject of population, we 
 will proceed to inquire how the knowledge we have 
 acquired throws light upon the fiscal system of nations, 
 and determines the elements and sources of their taxa- 
 tion, and more particularly on what determines the dif- 
 ferent incidence under different circumstances of all taxes 
 laid directly upon the wages of labor, or indirectly upon 
 articles consumed by the laboring population, from which 
 last description of taxes, pray remember the great mass 
 of our own revenue is derived at the present moment. 
 
 We will attempt to unfold, first, the effects, good or 
 bad, on the morals and happiness of nations which attend 
 a struggle between the animal capacity of communities 
 to multiply their numbers, and the growing influence of 
 those wants and habits Avhich establish a rate of increase 
 short of that capacity. We may begin with the good 
 effects. This is the most desirable order, for more than 
 one reason. Those good effects have been very much 
 overlooked. As a whole, they could not, indeed, en- 
 tirely escape observation ; but their details, and the 
 especial influence of those details, have undergone, it
 
 LECT. VII.] ON THE MOEALS AND lIAPriNESS OF NATIONS. 533 
 
 seems to me, no such analysis as is necessary to bring 
 their action on the progress of manners, morals, and 
 literature, and on the ordinary business of life, distinctly 
 into sight. We must endeavor to remedy, however, 
 partially, this defect. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands, we have seen, that one of 
 the tendencies of human beings impels them constantly 
 towards an increase of their numbers ; and it is admitted, 
 too, that if that tendency gains the mastery over all 
 others, then communities of men must always be found 
 after some generations, subsisting on a meagre allowance 
 of primary necessaries, and suffering from a constant 
 attempt to increase beyond the means of acquiring that 
 allowance. 
 
 If this result does not follow from the animal impulse 
 and power to increase, if nations are found in which 
 the mass of the population is in the possession of more 
 than primary necessaries, and not increasing their num- 
 bers at a rate which is pushing them towards that con- 
 dition; then some struggle must be going on between 
 the animal impulse to increase, and other tendencies, 
 natural and social, which to a greater or less extent 
 control it. Now, what are the results of that struggle 
 on the character, habits, and happiness of individuals, 
 and of nations ? 
 
 Whenever moral causes combat a mere animal impulse, 
 a struggle is set up between the different parts of our 
 nature, in the course of which some of the most elevated 
 feelings and characteristics of the earthly monarch of 
 the creation arc ordinarily generated. The first faculty 
 which we generally see lighted up and developed when
 
 534 llESTRAINED AFFECTIONS liETWEEN TilE SEXES [lect. vii. 
 
 a passion betweeu the sexes begins, and must be re- 
 strained, is the imagination ; and this once fairly in 
 action, may be said to be the harbinger and minister of 
 a long career of refinement and civilization. The earliest 
 poetry consists mainly of the effusions of love in an already 
 somewhat chastened and purified state ; and as some of 
 the earliest effusions of poetry may be traced to restrained 
 affections between the sexes, I need hardly add that the 
 same feelings pervade and irradiate literature during all 
 tlie splendour of its maturer existence. 
 
 Imagination once at work, nations, during their pro- 
 gress, owe more to its pervading influence than they are 
 always careful to note and be thankful for. It summons 
 the absent, the distant, and the past, to the task of sub- 
 jecting the lower and instinctive parts of human nature 
 to the aid of the intellectual and higher. Men and 
 nations, when their thoughts and actions are directed 
 by its sway, cease at once to be mere animals, and, 
 thenceforth, communities have a lofty and holy element 
 at work to speed the purification and elevation of their 
 character. 
 
 The refined and softened manners, — all the gentle and 
 yet animating influences which give to the character of 
 the softer sex a sway and influence over the thoughts 
 and demeanor of their ruder partners, would be lost the 
 moment the value of woman as the object of devotion 
 and attachment, heightened by difliculties, were blotted 
 out of the recollections of society, and an intercourse as 
 unrestrained as that of the brute creation introduced. 
 
 Survey attentively the varied prospect of the busy 
 world before and around you, and see how much of the
 
 LFCT. vii.] MINISTER TO KEFINExMEXT AND CIVILIZATION. 635 
 
 self-respect, of the diguitied avoidance of evil fame, how 
 much more of the uncompromising energy of all ranks 
 would vanish, if the hope of an union — deferred, but 
 ever present to the mind — as the pledge of future happi- 
 ness, were obliterated from the prospects of life. The 
 professional man tasks his talents and guards his reputa- 
 tion till a mature period of his existence, that some 
 valued object may at last share a home in which her 
 presence is to reward, as it incited his efforts, — a home 
 to be filled with pledges to society, of which the in- 
 estimable value to the parents is enhanced and mainly 
 grounded on their respect and affection for each other. 
 The energies of inferior classes of society, all pushing 
 forwards to an establishment — how would these be 
 maimed if all hope and care for a home, for a family, 
 for the possession of a loved object — not to be won with- 
 out toil, good character, and prudence — were given up, 
 and the sex, as mere objects of animal enjoyment, were 
 abandoned freely to their unchecked desires? Society 
 must then lose some of its most elevating and refined 
 feelings ; the inspiring light of imagination be well nigh 
 quenched ; and softened manners severed from their 
 living soui'ce. The extent of the loss would defy the 
 calculations of the moralist and philosopher. 
 
 Descending to what may appear more homely con- 
 sequences — take away from the middle classes their 
 notions of the comforts and decencies which should 
 make a home sufficiently respectable to receive the fu- 
 ture mothers of their families, and you remove the mo- 
 tive which makes them energetic in business, honest, 
 prudent, trustworthy ; and surely you have deprived
 
 53G UNDESIRABLE THAT PROSPEROUS POPULATIONS [lect. vii. 
 
 "society of a treasure-house of aims and motives, the most 
 valuable of all those which give life, and purpose, and 
 exertion, and animation to the efforts of whole classes of 
 the community. An extinguished sun and darkened 
 creation afford the only images which can adequately 
 represent such a state of things. 
 
 But the question at once occurs, how far can this 
 species of restraint be carried ? Can it stop the progress 
 of population altogether ? If not, is it any warrant against 
 a slow secular increase which must at last bring down 
 the human ]-ace to the enjoyment of a mere subsistence ? 
 
 There seems no reason why abstinence, founded on 
 plenty and on multiplied enjoyments, should not bring 
 the progress of numbers to a stand-still. There are some 
 of the better classes of nations who are confessedly sta- 
 tionary, if not retrograde in their numbers. May not 
 all classes of a prosperous nation be found in this enjoy- 
 ing position ? that is, possessed of decencies and comforts 
 in sufficient abundance to form efficient motives to re- 
 straint, and a sufficient guarantee against haste or im- 
 prudence, which would lead to their forfeiture. 
 
 But we must not forget here that the positive answer to 
 this question has no great practical interest. It is rarely 
 desirable that prosperous populations should be stationary 
 in their numbers. It is most desirable, no doubt, that 
 the productive powers of the industry of a people should 
 establish and preserve among them a high rate of main- 
 tenance ; but, if the funds for maintaining the population 
 are increasing, it is ordinarily very desirable that the 
 numbers of the people should increase too. During the 
 last half century the numbers of the English people have
 
 LECT. VII.] SHOULD BE STATIONARY IN THEIR NUMBERS. 537 
 
 about doubled. The funds produced for their mainten-' 
 ance liave more than doubled ; for, on the whole, the 
 scale of their maintenance has risen, and they consume 
 better food, use better clothing, and, with exceptional 
 districts, have improved their habitations. Now, no good 
 would have been gained, and some evils have arisen, if 
 the population had been stationary. The people of 
 America have been increasing still more rapidly, and yet, 
 with the unjDCopled world before them, who could wish 
 them to have been stationary in their numbers. What 
 is to be desired for, is — a high, and if possible, as im- 
 proving, rate of maintenance for the population ; and, this 
 secured, an increase of the people bearing some propor- 
 tion to the increase of their resources. 
 
 If a time should arrive when the numbers of the hu- 
 man race, or of any particular family of it, cannot be 
 increased without lessening the rate of their mainten- 
 ance, then will be the moment to be anxious that habits 
 of prosperity and multiplied enjoyments, and consequent 
 caution as to marriage, should bring the increase of the 
 people to a stand-still. I see no grounds for wishing 
 such a stationary state to be common amongst civilized 
 nations of great producing powers. 
 
 
 A 
 
 ^ 
 V
 
 AN 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, 
 
 FEBRUARY 27, 1833. ,
 
 AN 
 
 INTEODUCTOEY LECTUEE 
 
 ON 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Mr. Peincipal and Gentlemen, 
 
 As the beginning of my duties here, I have to 
 lay before you some views of the objects, methods, 
 and uses belonging to the branch of human knowledge 
 intrusted to my care. I shall, probably, in what I 
 have now to say, confine myself principally to the 
 first of these topics, the objects of political economy : 
 the kind and extent of the knowledge to which it in- 
 troduces us. These once distinctly seen, the methods 
 by which such knowledge must be attained, and the 
 uses to which it may be applied, will want no long 
 explanation. 
 
 I have another reason for thus at once directing 
 your attention, in an especial manner, to this part of 
 the subject before me. It is a point on which con- 
 siderable error prevails. Too many persons look upon 
 political economy as a study connected exclusively with 
 trade arfd finance. Such views of the subject are very
 
 542 OBJECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 imperfect. They lead to many errors ; and to errors 
 wliicli are the more to be regretted, because they have 
 had considerable influence in staying the progress of 
 knowledge, by narrowing the field of view of many 
 who have cultivated the subject as original inquirers; 
 and damping the curiosity of many who have been 
 repelled from it by mistaken and inadequate notions 
 of its objects. 
 
 Let us see together then, gentlemen, if you please, 
 what the branch of knowledge before us may be ex- 
 pected to teach, if we follow it up fairly and fully. 
 
 Political economy has for its subject matter the wealth 
 of nations. Knowledge on such a subject is, of course, 
 desirable only so far as it may enable us to understand 
 circumstances which affect the happiness and well- 
 being of ourselves or our fellow-men. We have to 
 consider public wealth, therefore, in all the points of 
 view in which it can affect the interests and happi- 
 ness of mankind ; and to observe men, under all the 
 points of view in which, either as individuals or com- 
 munities, they can affect, or be affected by, the pro- 
 gress of public w^ealth. When first glanced at, the 
 subject no doubt seems vast and vague ; but let us 
 approach, and steadily contemplate it for a moment, 
 and we shall see it breaking into masses and divisions 
 of a sufficiently manageable form and size. 
 
 To assist us here, we must begin by placing some 
 limit to our researches. That limit will necessarily 
 be arbitrary ; but fixing such a limit with discretion, 
 we cannot reasonably be found fault with on that score. 
 
 Wealth, in its proper and popular acceptation, in-
 
 THE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 643 
 
 eludes many objects which refuse themselves to scien- 
 tific aiTangement and analysis, of the kind we want 
 to institute. While discussing public wealth, there- 
 fore, we will, if you please, confine ourselves to the 
 portion of that wealth which consists of such mate- 
 rial objects as are appropriated by man before they are 
 consumed. That this limitation may not be the source 
 of cavil or delusion, you will be good enough to bear 
 in mind that it is, and is meant to be, purely arbi- 
 trary : that, in establishing it, I profess to convey no 
 knowledge, except the knowledge of what I mean here- 
 after to treat of, and what to exclude. There may, 
 for aught I know, be persons capable of giviug a sci- 
 entific form and character to such knowledge as they 
 can obtain about portions of wealth, which this limi- 
 tation excludes from my researches. Assuredly I should 
 find no fault with such an undertaking, whatever I 
 may think of its promise : all I w ish at present to do 
 is, to give warning that I have no intention of era- 
 barking in it myself. 
 
 Our knowledge as to public wealth (in the restricted 
 sense in which I shall hereafter use the term) may 
 be primarily divided into two great branches. First, 
 the laws which regulate the production of wealth ; and 
 secondly, the laws which regulate its distribution. 
 Under one or the other of these, the various subdivi- 
 sions of the subject may be conveniently placed. 
 
 My present aim then is to show what are the kinds 
 of knowledge to which an acquaintance with these 
 branches of political economy necessarily introduces us. 
 I hope, while doing this, to convince you that the
 
 544 USES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 mistake is a gross one, which supposes that our sub- 
 ject can be useful only to the financier or politician, 
 while they are regulating trade, or to those interested 
 in such regulations. I expect you will agree with me 
 in deciding that, fairly treated, it comprehends instruc- 
 tion essential, first, to the scholar, who would trace 
 the deep-seated causes of long chains of events in the 
 history of nations ; next, to the philosopher, when 
 attempting to observe the connection which subsists 
 between the physical constitution of the world and the 
 moral government and character of the inhabitants of 
 our earth ; then, to the statesman, whose task requires 
 him to understand and measure the relative strength, 
 energies, and resources, either of other countries or of 
 the different divisions of the empire he may help to 
 govern ; and, finally, to every member of a free State 
 who has active duties to perform, whatever be his sta- 
 tion or province. And I expect to show you, too, 
 that the instruction which our subject thus conveys 
 to all these persons is not such as they may, or may 
 not, profit by at their pleasure, but such as they must 
 master and use, or remain in a state of ignorance, 
 unworthy of the scholar and philosopher, and fatal to 
 the usefulness and safety of the statesman and the 
 citizen. 
 
 But before I attempt to give a rapid sketch of the 
 objects revealed by the whole subject, it may be con- 
 venient to point out how it has happened that the 
 doctrines connected with trade, and more especially with 
 foreign trade, occupied for many ages a disproportionate 
 share of the attention of those who professed to be
 
 EARLY ERRORS ABOUT NATIONAL WEALTH. 545 
 
 treating of public wealth. This order of inquiry would 
 be a bad one, were it my purpose to begin now a 
 scientific development of the whole subject ; but it will 
 be found, perhaps, to answer very well the purpose of 
 leading us gradually into sight of the objects which 
 should really be uppermost in the minds of those who 
 approach political economy as an essential branch of a 
 liberal and comprehensive education. 
 
 The errors and wanderings of our forefathers which 
 I am about to exhibit, are indeed mainly remarkable 
 for having long kept almost wholly out of sight the 
 proper objects of our peculiar study ; that is, you will 
 remember, the laws which regulate the production and 
 distribution of wealth. Bullion, we know, was long 
 thought by all the European nations to be the only 
 species of wealth which really deserved the name. 
 Countries which could not produce gold and silver 
 profitably from their mines, could only procure them 
 by foreign trade : to manage foreign trade, so as to 
 keep gold and silver constantly flowing in, and then 
 to keep them fast, were therefore supposed to be the 
 only arts by which nations could be enriched ; and thus 
 men's minds, whenever they talked or thought about 
 an increase of the nation's wealth, were turned, not to 
 production, but to trade. 
 
 To draw, then, to this "noble realm" at least its 
 fair share of the world's stock of gold and silver, two 
 systems prevailed at different periods of our story ; 
 but although these systems had this common object, 
 they differed much in their means, their working and 
 effects, and ought never to be confounded ; although 
 
 ■36
 
 546 COMMERCE AS A MEANS OF ATTRACTIIsG BULLION 
 
 they are confounded very generally, under the name 
 of the mercantile system, which only made its ap- 
 pearance late, and did not last for a century. The 
 older system prevailed, probably from the Conquest, 
 certainly from the reign of Edward I. to that of Henry 
 VII. ; and it is the more interesting because, while it 
 domineered over, and indeed well nigh strangled, the 
 infant commerce of England, it was after all, I suspect, 
 but a transcript of the laws and regulations of several 
 of the continental nations. Its various parts may be 
 accurately traced in our statute-book and ancient docu- 
 ments ; but, as a systematic whole, it has, I think, 
 escaped the notice of our historians : which is to be 
 lamented, for it offers much instruction, some of which 
 would not be at all out of place at the present day. 
 Our remote forefathers, gentlemen, were not great ab- 
 stract reasoners, nor very patient investigators of pheno- 
 mena ; but they had very decided notions about political 
 economy, for all that. A study of their system would, 
 perhaps, be the best remedy for the errors of those 
 who have been misled into believing that the absence 
 of systematic thinkers, and talkers, and books, upon 
 such topics, is a sort of safeguard against the spirit 
 of system, and the best guarantee against the rule of 
 theory. Our earlier ancestors, then, had this in common 
 with the supporters of the system of " the balance 
 of trade," which afterwards became dominant under 
 Charles II. : they believed that to supply the nation 
 with gold and silver was the main duty of those charged 
 with the interests of the commonwealth; and they as- 
 sumed that this was to be done through their manage-
 
 THE BALANCE OF BARGAIN SYSTEM. 547 
 
 ment of foreign commerce : but they were by no means 
 satisfied with indirectly influencing the general trade, 
 and the domestic consumption of the country, so as on 
 the whole to produce a favorable ultimate balance ; 
 which was what the authors and supporters of the 
 mercantile system aimed at. The politicians of the 
 older day went vigorously to work in a much more 
 direct and straightforward manner. They laid it down = 
 as their principle that every individual bargain in 
 foreign trade ought, if possible, to be made to help 
 theii' purpose, of attracting some portion of bullion or 
 foreign coin; and when this could not be contrived, 
 then they assumed it to be their office to see that every 
 such bargain was so effectually watched and controlled 
 as to ensure its not leading, directly or indirectly, to 
 the exportation of money. Their system may be called, 
 therefore, if we wish to give it a name, the balance of 
 hargain system. To carry its principles into effect its 
 supporters devised a comprehensive body of strong mea- 
 sures, by which they confined our commerce to particular 
 spots, fettered navigation, and contrived to be present 
 at every bargain made by our merchants abroad : they, 
 and they alone, negotiated, and on their own terms, 
 every bill of exchange ; and when merchant strangers 
 landed here in England, they immediately put them 
 under watch and ward, and superintended and controlled 
 both their persons and every single transaction in their 
 dealings. And they did all this, and much more than / 
 this, by the aid of a code of penal enactments, ferocious, 
 bloody and unsparing ; which they considered it a point 
 of public virtue not to relax, and to which the interests.
 
 548 ADVANCE OF SOUNDER VIEWS. 
 
 property and lives of both natives and aliens were daily 
 sacrificed ; with the full approbation of the Legislature, 
 and forward assent of the nation. 
 
 About the time of Henry YII., however, parts of 
 the system became unmanageable ; and during the reign 
 of his son (although still in legal existence) it had be- 
 come clogged, helpless, and utterly unable to work, be- 
 cause changes had taken place in our domestic position, 
 and in the commercial habits of England and of Europe, 
 to which the ancient regulations could not, by any zeal, 
 or any efforts, be adapted. 
 
 Gentlemen, this was the subject of sore lamentation 
 during the whole of the long reign of Elizabeth, and 
 most of that of the first James. Our vernacular litera- 
 ture, then beginning to be popular and strong, helped 
 to swell the wailing cry of the people for the restoration 
 of the iron bulwarks, with which the care of their an- 
 cestors had fenced in the wealth of the realm : in the 
 absence of which they were constantly haunted by a 
 fear that the riches of the country were insensibly 
 escaping, and that ruin was at hand. 
 
 But, if the press lent its young strength to support 
 an error, it soon entered on its better province, and 
 suggested wiser things. Before James died, new and 
 sounder views may be discerned advancing towards 
 ascendancy. And when the civil wars were over, and 
 Charles II. was restored, we find the expedients of the 
 old system formally examined, weighed, and found 
 wanting, in the posthumous work (then first published) 
 of a leading merchant ; who had himself, under James, 
 advocated the restoration of some of the most violent
 
 THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM. 549 
 
 and obnoxious of the old regulations. From the pub- 
 lication of that work, the reign of the "mercantile 
 system," the system of " the balance of trade," may 
 be dated ; ' and at its first instalment it was far from 
 illiberal. Its aim, indeed, was still to draw in gold and 
 silver, as the only mode of enriching the country ; but 
 the leading principle of the new system was, that indi- 
 vidual transactions (even in bullion) were to be left 
 free ; that all attempts to control them were futile or 
 mischievous, and that national wealth, meaning our 
 stock of the precious metals, was to be secured and 
 increased, only by so acting on the general course of 
 the foreign trade, and on the internal consumption of 
 the country, as indirectly to secure a favorable balance. 
 The aim itself we now know to be unwise, but all the 
 harsher features of the system were added during its 
 subsequent working. . , 
 
 You perceive then, gentlemen, that for near six cen- I 
 turies of our history, however different the means 
 adopted, still the so managing foreign trade as to 
 make it add to the national stock of gold and silver, 
 was the only recognised mode of adding to the wealth 
 of a people who possessed no mines ; and you will not 
 wonder that for this long time at least, political economy 
 and commercial legislation seemed one and the same 
 thing. 
 
 About the middle of the last century, however, a 
 change came over the minds of men : it was perceived 
 
 ' When here, or elsewhere, I speak of the date of a system of opinions, I mean 
 the date of its establishment as the guide of public nicasuros, not of it^ first ap- 
 pearance in our literature.
 
 aSO CONTINUED PROGRESS OF OPINION. 
 
 and acknowledged here and abroad, that a nation's 
 wealth was not identical with its stock of precious 
 metals ; and that to increase the commodities which 
 gold and silver are employed to purchase, is at least 
 as effective a method of making a people rich, as to 
 increase gold and silver themselves.^ Now, then, at 
 least it might be expected, that the attention of all 
 thinkers on such matters would be mainly directed to 
 the productive powers of nations, to the fruitfulness of 
 their land and labor, and to the obstacles or aids, which 
 iinpede or increase that fruitfulness. Still, however, it 
 happened that commercial transactions attracted more 
 than their share of attention. About them a conflict 
 qs to practical measures immediately began. The 
 English economical writers, in particular, were earnest 
 to effect, as the very first result of their new views, 
 important alterations in the mercantile system of their 
 country. Doubts, fears, private interests, public preju- 
 dices, raised and animated a host of opponents, and 
 a war of opinions began. Gentlemen, you well know 
 that that war has not yet ended; that strong opinions 
 as to the expediency of great alterations in our com- 
 mercial regulations and policy, and bitter apprehensions 
 of the tendency of those alterations, still attract much 
 anxious and agitated interest ; and that political economy 
 is still looked upon by many in no other light than as 
 the source of the danger or the good, which they dread 
 
 ' It has been mentioned to me, by a gentleman who heard this lecture, and 
 whose opinions I respect, that I ought here to have done justice to the pre-eminent 
 merits of Adam Smith. I should have done so with pleasure ; but it would have 
 been repeating myself. It is a task which I cheerfully performed as well as I could, 
 in the Preface to my work On fhe I)isfrih<tion of Wecdth.
 
 PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 551 
 
 or hope for, from the establishment of free trade, or the 
 maintenance of old regulations. On such discussions, 
 I have no purpose now to enter. They will come in 
 their place ; and then it will not be difficult to show 
 in what manner, and to what extent, the knowledge 
 conveyed by this part of our subject may mingle with 
 and assist the practical views of the statesman, without 
 converting him into either an unfeeling innovator, or 
 a giddy theorist. 
 
 My aim so far has only been to show how it has hap- ( 
 pened that, while professing to treat of the production 
 and distribution of the wealth of nations, the attention 
 of thinkers and of the public has been so exclusively 
 fixed on commerce and on the processes by which one 
 kind of wealth is bartered for another. What I wish / 
 next to do is to point out to you that it is not with such 
 things alone that our subject is conversant, that there 
 remain for those who would efficiently investigate the 
 laws which regulate the production and distribution of 
 wealth, other and wider fields of research : the explain- 
 ing which is an animating and useful task, connecting 
 itself throughout with human aims and feelings of the 
 loftiest character; a task which educated persons in a 
 commonwealth of freemen cannot neglect without lessen- 
 ing the usefulness of their exertions and their character. 
 
 Of the two leading divisions of political economy, 
 Production and Distribution^ it will be convenient, for 
 our present pm^pose, to consider distribution in the first 
 instance. Production must, of course, practically pre- 
 cede distribution : but, although some wealth must be
 
 552 CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH REGULATE 
 
 produced before any can be distributed, yet the forms 
 and modes of distributing the produce of their lands 
 and labor, adopted in the early stages of a people's pro- 
 gress, exercise an influence over the character and habits 
 of communities which can be traced for ages ; which in 
 many cases is never effaced : and this influence must be 
 understood, and allowed for, before we can adequately 
 explain existing differences in the productive powers 
 and operations of different nations. It might seem, at 
 first, that it would be difficult to trace and class the 
 various modes of distributing their revenues, which 
 different nations may be led to adopt. It is not so, 
 however ; caprice and variety have in this instance 
 their empire bounded, by the condition of man on 
 earth, by his wants as an animal, by the modes in 
 which alone those wants can be supplied. The first 
 wants of mankind are food and raiment ; but these can 
 only be obtained from the earth ; and, after a certain 
 time, by labor bestowed upon the earth. Here the con- 
 stitution of the globe we inhabit begins to act upon 
 men as members of society, and to establish foundations 
 for the distribution of their wealth and for their social 
 institutions. For it has been so ordained that the earth 
 in ordinary circumstances, yields to the labors of the 
 eultivator more than is sufficient for his subsistence and 
 that of his family. How, then, is the surplus food to be 
 consumed ? It must be by another description of per- 
 sons : hence arises a separation of society into classes ; 
 and the mode in which the distribution of this surplus 
 takes place, the nature of the class which consumes it, 
 is the first and most influential cause of the future
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRODUCE. 553 
 
 character and habits of the community. This is no 
 time for pursuing that early distribution hypothetically 
 into all its possible forms ; there is one, great, promi- 
 nent, and comprehensive, a survey of which will teach 
 us to trace the next steps in the generation of nine- 
 tenths of the political communities of the earth, includ- 
 ing our own. 
 
 Labor, continuously bestowed upon the soil, supposes 
 property in the soil to be established ; and, among rude 
 nations, this requires some powerful hand to sanction 
 and maintain it. From this and other causes, which we 
 cannot now stay our course to analyse, property in the 
 soil almost universally rests, at one time of a people's 
 career, either in the general government, or in persons 
 deriving their interest from it. Into the hands of these 
 owners most, if not all, of the surplus produce of the 
 cultivator is paid as a rent, a tribute for the privilege 
 of cultivating the spot from which the peasant raises 
 his own subsistence. Here, then, we have two distinct 
 classes, standing in a certain relation to each other. 
 One of the main ties has made its appearance, which 
 practically bind together different ranks in all the re- 
 gions of the world. But the existence of this second 
 class, the landowners, or the landowner, for there may 
 be but one, calls at once a third class into existence. 
 Eents must substantially consist of raw produce, the pro- 
 prietor can consume but a part ; the remainder can be 
 used only in supporting human beings ; directly or indi- 
 rectly, therefore, his revenue must maintain another 
 division of the people ; and thus we have at once 
 menials, retainers, and artisans consuming their portion
 
 554 ENDURING INFLUENCE OF EARLY MODES 
 
 of the surplus produce of the land, and forming a new 
 element in tlie social structure : their place in which 
 is determined by their dependence on the source of their 
 maintenance. 
 
 Here let us pause ; we have already before us the pri- 
 mary distribution, which has served, in the great ma- 
 jority of instances, to establish the first rude frame-work 
 of political society. We see wealth, and the mode of 
 its distribution, assuming an active influence in creating 
 the ties which bind the body politic together, and deter- 
 mine, by their form and complication, its character, and 
 often its resources. The influence of this early confor- 
 mation of nations fades away slowly. It may be traced 
 always for ages in their history. It rarely disappears 
 before them. If we turn to the Asiatic monarchies, we 
 see the surplus from the soil finding its way, from the 
 dawn of history, into the hands of the sovereign, or his 
 officers ; and a great part of it distributed by them 
 among the non-agricultural population. The condition 
 and the relations of the cultivators, the artisans, the 
 Government and its officers, have continued the same 
 for ages, during which theu' monotonous likeness fatigues 
 observation. While the primary distribution of their 
 revenues continues the same, their social features cannot 
 much change. In the east of Europe, Eussia, Hungary, 
 Poland, other relations subsist between the bondsmen, 
 who are the cultivators, and the nobility who are there 
 the proprietors ; and also between that nobility and the 
 non-agricultural classes. These relations present to us 
 another state of society, which for centuries has im- 
 pressed with an iron hand the character of States and
 
 OF DISTRIBUTING THE PRODUCE OF LABOR. 555 
 
 people. It is yielding, slowly and obstinately, to the 
 united efforts of the monarchs and the nobles ; and we 
 may predict that, till different forms and modes of dis- 
 tributing the national revenue have superseded the old 
 ones, all hope of rapid change in the character of their 
 population, or in the power and resources of the com- 
 munity, will prove delusive. 
 
 Even when we travel westward and observe the more 
 advanced European nations, there is not one of which 
 the habits, institutions, and economical constitution, does 
 not still present features in which we can distinctly trace 
 the effects of that early conformation of which we are 
 S23eaking, that is, the social conformation which results 
 from the peculiar mode of distributing the produce of 
 their land and labor, established in the early period of 
 the existence of agricultural nations. 
 
 But we see changes constantly affecting this economical 
 
 conformation, and the institutions and forms of society 
 
 it gives birth to. In many instances these changes are 
 
 slow and almost insensible ; in others they are more 
 
 active. It is time to turn to their sources, and to the 
 
 — 1 
 causes which regulate their progress. The great agent 
 
 in all these changes, in the configuration of society, the 
 
 moving power from which they proceed is capital ; and 
 
 with the sources and functions of this powerful agent 
 
 political economy brings us acquainted, when unfolding 
 
 the knowledge contained in the other great division of 
 
 our subject — the causes which regulate the production of 
 
 wealth. 
 
 But here, gentlemen, I must detain your attention for 
 
 an instant on a word. By capital, then, let me beg you
 
 55G INFLUENCE UF CAPITAL L\ MODIFYLNG 
 
 to remember that I mean " accumulated wealth employed 
 \^th a view to profit," ami only such wealth. The word 
 is sometimes used in a much wider sense ; with what 
 propriety I shall not now discuss. Let me assure you, 
 however, that in tracing the economical progress, or in 
 analysing the respective productive powers of different 
 nations, you will find the distinct division of wealth here 
 pointed out, acting a most important part in modifying 
 the ties which connect the different classes of the com- 
 munity, and in determining their productive power. 
 Under some name or other, therefore, it will be essential, 
 both to the distinctness of your views and the compre- 
 hensiveness of your knowledge, that you should keep 
 this portion of a nation's wealth separate in your minds. 
 You will be good enough to recollect, then, that I use 
 the word capital for this purpose. 
 • In looking at the different nations of the world, we 
 find them assisting the industry of their actual popu- 
 lation by very different quantities of such accumulated 
 1 wealth. Thus the capital of England, in proportion to 
 its population, is at least double that of France; the 
 capital of France much greater than that of Spain, and 
 so on as we descend in the scale of nations. One conse- 
 quence of this difference is, that we see capital perform- 
 ing in some countries functions which are performed by 
 revenue in others. It assumes no function for the first 
 time without causing some change in the productive 
 operations of a community, and in the relations between 
 its different classes ; but I wish you to observe with me 
 now only the change effected when capital assumes the 
 function of advancing the wages of the laboring classes.
 
 THE TIES WHICH CONNECT DIFFERENT CLASSES. 557 
 
 In Asia, and in part of Europe (it was formerly the 1 
 case throughout Europe), the non-agricultural classes 
 are almost wholly maintained from the incomes of the 
 other classes, principally from the incomes of the land- 
 holders. If you want the labor of an artizan, you pro- 
 vide him with materials ; he comes to your house, you 
 feed and pay him his wages. After a time the capitalist 
 steps in ; he provides the materials, he advances the 
 wages of the workman, he becomes his employer, and 
 he is the owner of the article produced, which he ex- 
 changes for your money. Xow this change cannot take 
 place without some alteration in the management and 
 productiveness of labor; but when the change has be- 
 come general, another and a most important change has 
 also taken place, and that is, a change in the ties which 
 connect the different classes of society. An intermediate 
 class appears between the landowners and a portion of 
 the non-agriculturists, upon which intermediate class, 
 those non-agriculturists are dependent for employment 
 and subsistence. The ties which formerly bound the 
 community together are worn out and fall to pieces ; 
 other bonds, other principles of cohesion connect its 
 different classes; new economical relations spring into 
 being, fresh and potent political elements mingle in the 
 national system, and the tracing the gradual introduc- 
 tion and the effects of these is one of the most important 
 tasks of political economy, when unfolding the causes 
 which regulate the production or the distribution of the 
 revenues of the different people of the earth. 
 
 After surveying the different steps and stages of the 
 changes I have been speaking of, we shall see at once
 
 558 FUNCTIONS WHICH CAPITAL HAS ASSUMED IN ENGLAND. 
 
 that England is much in advance of other nations. I 
 I do not by this phrase mean to take it for granted, that 
 her position is better than theirs, but only to point out 
 that, in arriving at our present position, we have passed 
 through and gone beyond those at which we see other 
 nations stationary, or through which we see them mov- 
 ing. Here capital has assumed all the functions of 
 which it is capable, in aiding a production, or facilitating 
 exchange. Not only is the great body of non-agricultu- 
 rists almost wholly in the pay of capitalists, but even 
 the laboring cultivators of the soil (which is a rare case) 
 are their servants too. The numbers and divisions of 
 the intermediate class which subsists on the profits of 
 stock have multiplied beyond all precedent; and this 
 complete dependence of the laborers on capitalists for 
 employment, and the powers and influence of these inter- 
 mediate classes, have produced new social materials and 
 political elements, on a scale wliich the world has never 
 before known. There are persons among us, and of no 
 mean rank in the intellectual world, who, gazing upon 
 this spectacle, are unwilling to quit it ; who think that 
 English political economists may allowably consider the 
 state of things about them, if not as a picture of the 
 condition of the world, yet as a pattern towards which 
 the institutions and economical habits of other nations 
 are approaching with a quicker or slower motion ; who 
 believe that while we study our own economical ele- 
 ments and conformation, and those only, if we do not 
 get a knowledge of the phenomena which the rest of 
 the people of the earth present to the philosopher as his 
 materials, we shall at least get a knowledge of a state of
 
 SLOWNESS OF ECONOMICAL PROGKPiSS ELSEWHERE. 559 
 
 things, which will one day be theirs and is destined to 
 be universal. 
 
 Gentlemen, I cannot join in these views. Our in- 
 quiries and reasonings about the future progress and 
 condition of communities of men must, if they are to 
 have any practical character, be confined to the advance 
 and fortunes of nations, during periods somewhat like 
 those which the history of the past and our knowledge 
 of men's natures teach us are likely to bound the 
 duration of empires, and people, and states of civiliz- 
 ation. During such periods I see no great chance of the 
 world collectively being anything different from what it 
 has been and is. The approach to a state of society like 
 our own, where it can be perceived, is, in many in- 
 stances, extremely slow ; in others it would be rash to 
 affirm that there is any such approach at all. Over 
 many of the people of the earth some spell seems to 
 have been breathed, which fixes them in their condition, 
 and forbids the forward progress which has led us so far 
 away from them. While some are thus stationary, and 
 others changing their economical elements by gradations 
 so minute, that it must take ages before any distinct 
 change becomes prominent ; the actual condition of the 
 world during those coming ages is surely an object of 
 great interest to the citizen of the w^orld, the statesman, 
 and the philosopher. The future of all other people 
 will, however, at some time, be like our present. Be it 
 so : the prophecy is bold ; but still the interest we have 
 in the future, however great, can be but a subordinate 
 interest after all. The past is our own to be schooled 
 by, the present to act in ; and the economical researches
 
 560 ECONOMICAL STRUCTURE OF NATIONS. 
 
 wliich explain the story of the past, and make visible 
 the actual condition of our own and other nations, are 
 full to us of the instruction which it is most our busi- 
 ness to prize and use. 
 
 We must study, therefore, the economy of nations in 
 the past and present story of the world at large ; and to 
 conduct that study efficiently, we must make ourselves 
 thoroughly acquainted with what I shall now proceed to 
 call "the economical structure of nations ;" because, after 
 the views I have laid before you, I hope to be under- 
 stood when I say that, by the economical structure *of 
 nations, I mean those relations between the different- 
 classes which are established in the first instance by the 
 institution of property in the soil, and by the distribu- 
 tion of its surplus produce; afterwards modified and 
 changed (to a greater or less extent) by the introduction 
 of capitalists, as agents in producing and exchanging 
 wealth, and in feeding and employing the laboring 
 population. 
 
 An accurate knowledge of that structure can alone 
 give us the key to the past fortunes of the different 
 people of the earth, by displaying their economical ana- 
 tomy, and showing thus, the most deeply-seated sources 
 of their strength, the elements of their institutions, and 
 causes of their habits and character. It is thus we 
 must learn the circumstances which divide them into 
 classes, establish or change the ties which connect those 
 classes, and the value and influence of each, as com- 
 ponent parts of a state or agents in producing its 
 wealth. 
 
 "We see then, I hope, that the laws which regulate
 
 I IMPURTAXCE OF ECONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE. 561 
 
 the Production and Distribution of Wealth thus viewed, 
 have abundance of human interest and philosophical 
 dignity. We view wealth no longer as a mass of dead ( 
 matter: nor do we treat its principal divisions, rent 
 wages, or profits, merely as data in arithmetical calcula- 
 tions ; but tracing the shifting forms of society, as far as 
 they are influenced by changing habits of production, or 
 modes of distribution, we survey a nation's riches always 
 in close connexion with the progress and fortunes of the 
 human race ; with alterations in the political elements of 
 nations, and in the capacities and opportunities of all 
 orders of the people for improvement, independence, and 
 happiness. 
 
 There is no part of ancient or of modern story on which 
 a comprehensive knowledge of differences and changes 
 in the economical structure of nations will not throw 
 some clear and steady light. It is from such knowledge [ 
 we must learn to understand the secret wonders of 
 ancient Egypt, the power of her monarchs, the magnifi- 
 cence of her monuments ; the military strength with 
 which Greece repulsed the easily renewed myriads of the 
 great king : the young might, the long feebleness of 
 Eome ; the fitful strength of the feudal states ; the more 
 steady power of the modern nations of Europe; their 
 separate character; the moral and political capacities 
 and story of the different orders of men under all these 
 forms of dominion. And so far is it from being true, 
 that such knowledge is alien to the proper pursuits of 
 the political economist, that it is impossible for him fully 
 to follow up and explain the causes which determine the 
 amount of wealth produced, and the modes of its distri-
 
 562 MR. MALTHUS. 
 
 bution in different states of human society, without 
 attaining and using such linowledge. 
 
 But we must devote a few words to two of the most 
 important subdivisions of political economy, population 
 and finance ; and when I turn to population, it is my 
 first duty, and it is a pleasing one, to remind you that 
 we have still living among us, in the full vigor of his 
 faculties, the distinguished philosopher, to whom we 
 owe all our really scientific knowledge on this subject. 
 You will perceive, of course, that I allude to Mr. 
 Malthus ; and I am the more forward to perform this 
 duty, because it may be my lot sometimes to offer what 
 I think corrections of the views of that really eminent 
 man; to supply some omissions; to express, occasionally, 
 differences or shades of difference in our conclusions ; 
 perhaps now and then to combat a few of his positions 
 altogether. I shall do this with the freedom due to 
 truth, and with the deference I feel to be due to him ; 
 but knowing that such a task may occasionally await 
 me, I seize this early opportunity of declaring my sense 
 of grateful obligation for the knowledge I have reaped 
 from his writings. My testimony to his ability or rank, 
 as a philosophical writer, would be presumptuous. On 
 these points the world has decided, and has decided 
 justly; but it may not be out of place to remind you 
 of this fact (which sometimes haste, and sometimes 
 prompt but erring feeling, has obscured from the view 
 of too many), that, when the works of Mr. Malthus are 
 well understood and thoroughly weighed, there is seen 
 to prevail in them, as their constant and unfailing cha- 
 racteristic, a spirit of pure benevolence, of unceasing
 
 ECONOMICAL PROBLEMS. 563 
 
 love for his fellow-men ; a desire, which will not be re- 
 pulsed or wearied by calumny or perverseness, to promote 
 all such measures as may best conduce to the happiness 
 and elevation of the mass of our countiymen and of 
 manldnd. 
 
 On this branch of our subject it has been established, 
 then, that men have an animal power of increase, which, 
 fully exerted, must soon people the earth up to the 
 utmost limit of its capacity to yield food ; and that the 
 effects of this power may press hard upon the efforts of 
 a people to provide subsistence, long before the pro- 
 ductiveness of the earth which they till has reached its 
 term. It is an obvious fact that, in every existing 
 human community, many causes do and must combine, 
 fii'st, to control the instincts of men and to repress the 
 full exertion of their powers of increase ; and next 
 (should that power be over-exerted), to reduce their 
 numbers to the level of the subsistence they can obtain. 
 This once seen, an explanation of the causes which so 
 act, a knowledge of the circumstances which strengthen 
 either the desirable or the noxious means of repression, 
 leads at once to economical and moral views of great 
 interest and importance. 
 
 We are presented, first, with a multitude of econo- 
 mical problems. The circumstances which determine 
 the rate of increase of a people, affect, permanently 
 and essentially, the state of the great bulk of the popu- 
 lation of most of the countries of the earth. But here 
 we find ourselves approaching a yet more serious task. 
 Political economy in this department groups and ex- 
 plains phenomena, which are essential guides in some
 
 j54 POrULATION. 
 
 of the most important researches of the natural philoso- 
 pher, and the natural theologian. It is our business 
 here to trace the manner in which the physical consti- 
 tution of man, combined with that of the earth which 
 he inhabits, acts on the happiness and moral character 
 of individuals and of nations. Scanning thus the adap- 
 tation of the material laws of the universe to our nature, 
 and so their action on the fortunes of the human race, 
 we catch necessarily important views of that machinery, 
 through which is carried on the moral government of 
 the rational inhabitants of the earth, in their individual 
 and social capacities, by Him who made the earth and 
 them. 
 
 But we have further to regard this subject of poj^u- 
 lation, minutely and anxiously, in combination with 
 sound and comprehensive views of that economical 
 structure of nations, the nature of which I have 
 already endeavoured to explain to you. In following 
 up the circumstances which determine the distribution 
 of the revenues of a people, and the position and rela- 
 tions of the productive classes among them, we shall 
 find ourselves in sight of the peculiar economical causes 
 which act upon the habits, and so influence the rate of 
 increase, of peasant cultivators, artisans, menials, agri- 
 cultural day-laborers (as we see them existing here), 
 and other classes ; and, having traced the position of 
 each of these in the different communities of which 
 they respectively form important jDortions, we shall find 
 many political causes springing out of their economical 
 position, but exercising their own peculiar influence over 
 tlie habits of the people, through their civil rights, their
 
 FINANCE. 565 
 
 capacities, duties, aims and feelings as members of the 
 State. We shall then rise to the observation of certain 
 moral and intellectual peculiarities, closely and indis- 
 solubly connected, however, with these economical and 
 political circumstances, and dependent on them ; which 
 moral and intellectual peculiarities make up the tale, the 
 complement, of the causes which jointly determine the 
 different habits of nations under different forms of eco- 
 nomical structure. 
 
 It is only by thus unthreading the tangled chain, by 
 which men, through the minute and multiplied pecu- 
 liarities of their position, are wedded to their habits, or 
 stimulated to improvement and elevation, or goaded to 
 debasement, — that we can decide or reason upon the 
 practical results of the principle of population in any 
 country of the earth. 
 
 The next subdivision of political economy, to which 
 I must briefly direct your attention, is finance ; and 
 there is no branch of our subject which, properly fol- 
 lowed up, is more abundant in instruction, sheds a 
 clearer light upon the past history of the world, or 
 exhibits more distinctly the causes of the different 
 political strength of existing nations. But, gentlemen, 
 once again, we must thoroughly master the economical 
 structure of different nations, before we can understand • 
 the systems of taxation which can be made productive 
 in each. 
 
 Since this subject first attracted the attention of mo- 
 dern writers, many strenuous and extremely ingenious 
 attempts have been made to prove that some portions — 
 different portions by different writers — of the revenues
 
 -,66 THEORIES OF TAXATION. 
 
 of a country must necessarily slip away from, and at last 
 escape, all taxation ; and that all public burthens, in the 
 long run, must rest upon some one distinct and limited 
 part of the national income. All discussions on finance, 
 in the hands of these reasoners, only tended to show 
 the way and steps by which taxes, apparently imposed 
 upon one set of individuals, were shaken off and shifted, 
 till they rested at last upon that limited class of revenues, 
 which was honored with the burthensome privilege of 
 being alone productive to the State. Some formidable 
 plans have been generated by this class of speculators, 
 for at once placing all the public burthens on these 
 devoted shoulders, as the cheapest system of finance, 
 which would avoid the accumulated expenses incurred 
 during all the shifting and changing we have been 
 speaking of. The burthen-bearers have, however, never 
 been very grateful for the proposed distinction. They 
 have altogether declined to take the public taxes openly 
 and directly on their backs. And it has, no doubt, been 
 extremely lucky for the State, as well as for themselves, 
 that they have been so magnanimously steady in refus- 
 ing the proffered honor and advantage. 
 
 The speculations and plans of the French economists 
 were mainly of this kind. The idea was, however, first 
 started in England, and it has occasionally been taken 
 up again here, with variations of course. The name and 
 character of some writers, past and present, of this class, 
 will prevent my speaking lightly of them or of their 
 systems ; but I cannot now stop to examine them at 
 length : and I must for the present dogmatize a little, 
 and declare that all these notions about untaxable classes
 
 IMrORTANCE OF THE LABORING CLASSES. 567 
 
 of men, or revenues, are utterly delusive. Taxes are 
 not always paid by those on whom they are imposed ; 
 their ultimate incidence (to use a convenient phrase) 
 is not always the same as their apparent incidence ; but 
 still there is no one class of society, whatever be its 
 condition or employment, which cannot be made to bear 
 its share of the public burthens. The exact share which 
 each class does bear, in proportion to the gross income 
 of the class, differs widely with changes in the state 
 of society — in the economical structure of nations ; and 
 the determining the financial fruitfulness of different 
 classes in the different stages of a nation's progress, is 
 a problem of the most important kind. Its results are 
 instructive in a moral and political, not less than in 
 an economical point of view. 
 
 On these results, however, I cannot dwell at any 
 length. The great lesson is the importance, in all 
 stages, of the bulk of the nation, of what are called 
 the inferior classes. We may take for examples Russia 
 and England. It is not too much to say, that (with- 
 out adverting to the progress of the higher and inter- 
 mediate classes) if the laboring classes of the Russian 
 empire could be put on a level with the average body 
 of English laborers, if their consumption could be made 
 as great and similar, then the financial resources, the 
 annual public revenue of Russia, and her political 
 strength and influence, would be increased much more 
 than they would be hj the conquest of another em- 
 pire as large and populous as her o^^n, and in the 
 same condition, though such an empire would form a 
 considerable portion of the world.
 
 568 THEIR PROSPERITY INCREASES THE PUBLIC REVENUES. 
 
 We have a case nearer home, not very pleasant to 
 contemplate. Let ns turn to Ireland, and, while we 
 pronounce the gunpowder name, dismiss for a moment, 
 if we can, political feelings from our minds. There 
 are economical points of view in which all parties may 
 surely contemplate the state of Ireland with profit. It 
 may be shown, that could her peasant population be 
 placed in such a position, that their consumption equalled 
 that of an equal number of English laborers, the direct 
 addition to our public revenue would be greater than 
 the whole sum which that revenue receives from all 
 our colonies and foreign possessions put together ; though 
 these almost girdle the globe, and contain more than 
 one hundred millions of inhabitants. There is no coun- 
 try in Europe to which an analysis of the condition 
 of its population would not show like results ; we may 
 hope that one day such calculations will be familiar 
 to all nations. They will be the most eloquent of 
 monitors to peace and good government. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have pointed out to you some objects 
 of leading interest, with which we become familiar, 
 while gaining a knowledge of the laws that regulate 
 the production and distribution of wealth. I have been 
 able to do this of course but briefly and imperfectly; 
 and my time warns me that I must now say a few 
 words as to the methods by which that knowledge 
 must be arrived at. They shall be but few, for I 
 could not dwell long upon this point, without becoming, 
 what I much dislike being here, somewhat polemical. 
 
 If we wish to make ourselves acquainted with the 
 economy and arrangements by which the different na-
 
 INDUCTION APPLIED TO ECONOMICAL INVESTIGATION. 569 
 
 tions of the earth produce or distribute their revenues, 
 I really know but of one way to attain our object, 
 and that is to look and see. We must get compre- 
 hensive views of facts, that we may arrive at prin- 
 ciples which are truly comprehensive. If we take a 
 different method, if we snatch at general principles, 
 and content ourselves with confined observations, two 
 things will happen to us. First, what we call general 
 principles will often be found to have no generality ; 
 we shall set out with declaring propositions to be uni- 
 versally true, which, at every step of our further pro- 
 gress, we shall be obliged to confess are frequently 
 false : and, secondly, we shall miss a great mass of 
 useful knowledge, which those who advance to prin- 
 ciples by a comprehensive examination of facts, neces- 
 sarily meet with on theii' road. If we want to under- 
 stand the subjects of wages or rent for instance, and 
 take the trouble to observe how the various nations 
 of the earth employ and pay their laborers or distri- 
 bute to the landowners their share of the produce of 
 the soil, we shall necessarily gain much information 
 in our progress. We shall see what causes determine 
 the condition of the bulk of the people of the many 
 nations of the earth ; the varied ties which connect 
 them with their superiors ; the distinct political ele- 
 ments which arise out of this mutual connection : and 
 all this surely is knowledge well worth gaining, inde- 
 pendently of the ultimate reward of our researches, — 
 the grasping those simple and commanding truths, which 
 really apply to wages and rents under all their shapes 
 and varieties.
 
 570 TWO SOURCES OF ECONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE : 
 
 And, gentlemen, if we will not take this trouble ; 
 if we will be closet philosophers, take a peep out of 
 our little window, and fashion a world of our own after 
 the pattern of what we see thence, however ingenious 
 and clever we may be, we run a great risk of being 
 sadly mistaken, and are sure to remain extremely igno- 
 rant. 
 
 Supposing, however, that we determine to know as 
 much as we can of the world as it has been, and of 
 the world as it is, before we lay down general laws 
 as to the economical habits and fortunes of mankind 
 or of classes of men : there are open to us two sources 
 of knowledge, — history and statistics, the story of the 
 past, and a detail of the present condition of the na- 
 tions of the earth. From these alone the teacher of 
 political economy can draw the information and the 
 knowledge which it is his duty to arrange, that he 
 may present them to the student. Each source has 
 its defects, and each its peculiar powers of diffusing 
 light, which would be sought in vain from the other. 
 In observing the long trains of events recorded by 
 history, we detect the immediate and remote effects 
 of the economical structures we are analysing. But 
 history has suffered to drop from her pages, perhaps 
 has never recorded, much of the information which 
 would now be most precious to us. For many whole 
 classes of facts, necessary to illustrate principles of which 
 the importance has only lately become known, we should 
 toil through her pages in vain. Yet this defect does 
 not always exist when we think it does. The com- 
 piler and the student are sometimes more to blame
 
 ri 
 
 HISTORY AND STATISTICS. 571 
 
 than the original historian. The labors of Niebuhr, 
 Savigny, Heeren, Miiller, liave proved that there is 
 much knowledge, most important to our subject, in 
 historical records, which has faded from the minds of 
 men, and must be laboriously recovered from the re- 
 cesses of neglected literature, like lost and sunken 
 riches from the secret depths of the ocean. Our own 
 scholars and antiquaries will not, we may hope, be 
 backward in imitating them ; and the historical docu- 
 ments, both of our own and foreign countries, contain, 
 we may well believe, large and unknown stores of 
 economical instruction, — many a heap of unsunned trea- 
 sure to reward their researches. 
 
 Statistics, unlike history, presents all the facts essen- 
 tial to our reasonings in inexhaustible detail and abun- 
 dance ; but leaves us to speculate upon causes, and 
 to guess at effects as we can. It is not pleasant to 
 reflect how little has been done in England to system- 
 atize statistical inquiries, or to preserve and spread the 
 information which statistics can give us. In this respect, 
 as in many others, the cultivators of physical science 
 have set a brilliant and useful example. There is hardly 
 a department in their province which has not the ad- 
 vantage of being pursued by societies of men animated 
 by a common object, and collecting and recording facts 
 under the guidance of philosophical views. We may 
 hope surely, that mankind and their concerns will soon 
 attract interest enough to receive similar attention ; and 
 that a statistical society will be added to the number 
 of those which are advancing the scientific knowledge 
 of England.
 
 572 INFLUENCE OF PAST EVENTS UPON 
 
 Gentlemen, before I conclude, let me slightly notice 
 one or two remarks, which may probably occur to some 
 of those who hear me. 
 
 While speaking of the causes which determine the 
 economical position of the different nations of the world, 
 I have pointed to men as affected by the unexpended 
 influence of circumstances which have occurred far back 
 m story. While tracing changes in the economical 
 structure of nations, we see large divisions of mankind, 
 of which the character and habits are fashioned and 
 fixed by the position in which they have been placed 
 by past events. We observe amidst the progress of 
 change, the manner in which the economical structure 
 of one age affects the education, the habits, the cha- 
 racter, the powers of the next ; and while generation 
 succeeds generation, we see nations slowly developing 
 the institutions which mark their actual character. 
 There is something in this spectacle which is distaste- 
 ful to the impatience of young minds: they dislike 
 to feel their individual helplessness and insignificance ; 
 they struggle against a conviction that they, and those 
 around them, have been placed where they are, and 
 are still carried on, by a current of events too power- 
 ful for their mastery ; they would fain make their 
 powers felt ; they would write with their fingers on 
 the forehead of the age ; and give an impulse of their 
 own to the mighty tide of human affairs. There is 
 something in these feelings too generous to be rebuked ; 
 something which it is painful to find arrayed against 
 our subject. Let me then remind these young patriots, 
 that if political economists are the last persons who
 
 THE PRESENT CHARACTER AND HAHITS OF MANKIND. 573 
 
 will pretend to teach them how to liberate themselves 
 and others from the influence which the past exercises 
 over the present, yet we can find full scope for their 
 most generous views and aims. 
 
 In tracing the manner in which their economical 
 position influences the station and character of the 
 various classes of mankind, the most cheering portion 
 of our task is the observation of the steps and means 
 by which the populous mass of human beings may be 
 and is, dui^ing the progress of civilization, gradually and 
 safely brought to share in the intellectual elevation, in 
 all the civil rights and duties, which, before civilization 
 has diffused her influence, are confined (where they 
 exist at all) to limited numbers, — to a superior caste 
 in society. -^ 
 
 We can trace the bondman, the serf, and all the most 
 degraded vassals of harsh power, gradually changing 
 their economical position, and Avhile the sources and 
 modes of gaining their subsistence alter, enlarging at 
 the same time their rights, and approaching nearer to 
 the level of the higher classes of society. We display 
 too this progress, always in connexion with a truth, 
 not less beautiful as a moral, than valuable as a political 
 lesson ; namely, that with increased civil privileges and 
 capacities, increased intellectual and moral elevation 
 must go hand in hand ; or the progress of improvement 
 must be stayed, and advances in it rendered nugatory 
 or worse. 
 
 The fact, that in the political progress of nations 
 there is an inseparable connexion between increased 
 freedom and increased responsibilities ; that freedom, in
 
 574 CONNECTION BETWEEN POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 short, is a blessing which, from the very constitution 
 of men and of society, none can long enjoy who do not 
 deserve it, — is a truth which, vaguely seen by others, 
 shines out in all its evidence and detail to the political 
 economist, who, tracing changes in the modes of pro- 
 ducing and distributing wealth, observes step by step 
 the alterations which take place in the connections, 
 mutual dependence, and all the cementing influences 
 that hold together those human materials of which States 
 are composed. We observe, first, the coarse and harsh 
 bonds which preserve subordination and connection 
 among rude nations; then the more delicate ties, the 
 more refined relations, the gentler influences, which, 
 as these coarser bonds disappear, succeed to their office, 
 form new principles of cohesion, and become agents 
 through which are still upholden order and justice, the 
 essential foundation of permanent constitutional liberty ; 
 a blessing which, as it escapes the weak, will not long 
 remain the heritage of the violent and bad. Lessons 
 like these, in which political economy is fruitful, may, 
 we hope, restore to it the good-will of some who are 
 too much inclined to look upon us suspiciously and from 
 a distance, as persons who can have no sympathy with 
 any of the nobler aims of men or nations. 
 
 I can foresee other objections to some of the views 
 I have laid before you. Some persons may perhaps be 
 startled and offended by the connection I have pointed 
 out between political economy and the political elements 
 out of which governments are formed, and by which 
 they must be maintained. Gentlemen, this feeling is 
 to some extent excusable : because it has been the
 
 AND CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION. 575 
 
 boast, sometimes the ignorant, sometimes the timid and 
 fearful boast, of many political economists here and 
 abroad, that their subject has no connection with such 
 matters. The causes of this shrinking and ill-placed 
 timidity it would not be difficult to point out, had we 
 time to enter upon the literary history of our subject; 
 but though we have no time for that, the question itself 
 is easily disposed of. A teacher of political economy 
 has fii'st to examine the phenomena presented by the 
 condition of different nations, that he may ground his 
 principles securely. This is the analytical or investigat- 
 ing portion of his labor. Then he must be prepared 
 to show how these principles may be used to account 
 for the exact condition of any particular class in any 
 given nation. This is part of the practical application 
 of his subject to human affairs. If he neglects either 
 branch of his labor, he performs his offi.ce imperfectly. 
 Now these processes necessarily bring him into sight 
 of the mutual relations and influences of different orders 
 of men as determined by different modes of producing 
 and distributing public wealth. No one can deny the 
 importance to the statesman of such knowledge. No 
 one can deny that it forms a part of political economy, 
 who is not prepared also to deny that political economy 
 is the study which teaches the laws that regulate the 
 distribution and production of wealth. Our subject is 
 thus brought into immediate contact with the philosophy 
 of legislation; but still the line which distinguishes 
 them is sufficiently obvious. However decided our 
 convictions as individuals may be, yet as political 
 economists, we do not decide upon, we do not even
 
 576 USES OF THE SCIENCE TO STATESMEN. 
 
 discuss, the merits of particular constitutions or forms 
 of government considered abstractedly; but we show 
 the lawgiver what materials he will find in nations 
 having different economical structure, for framing, 
 maintaining, and keeping in action any particular form 
 of government ; what are the data from which he must 
 reckon, — what are the instruments on which he can 
 rely, — when he is creating systems, and laying down 
 rules and regulations which must be put in action by 
 human agents exercising political authority and in- 
 fluence over each other. It is not our province to j)raise 
 or blame this or that form of government, or code of 
 laws ; but to show in what cases the establishment of 
 each is or is not possible ; why institutions and laws 
 which endure and flourish under one state of economical 
 conformation, wither and die away when transplanted 
 where society does not present the proper materials to 
 give them life and support. Our subject then is, to 
 a great extent, the mother science on which the 
 philosophy of constitutional legislation rests ; as does in 
 a great measure the philosophy of jurisprudence. The 
 lawgiver who would frame codes and institutions without 
 such knowledge as we present, may be an eloquent 
 dreamer, but can never be a practical statesman. 
 
 There are still, however, some who have a dislike 
 to all such topics, whether connected with political 
 economy or not, who think that there is much false and 
 dangerous political philosophy current in the world ; and 
 that therefore all such discussions are more or less 
 perilous. Gentlemen, we may be allowed to smile at, 
 these fears. If imperfect knowledge and light show us
 
 IMPORTANCE OF SEEKING FOR TRUTH. 577 
 
 the world and our fellow men, and their institutions, 
 in false and distorted shapes ; the remedy is, not to shut 
 out the day, but to get better philosophy and more 
 light — that light which proceeds from knowledge, and 
 which, in an institution like this, it is at once our duty 
 and our pride to labor to diffuse. 
 
 Gentlemen, we shall never forget in this place, I 
 hope, the eloquent words of that father of our church 
 who first invoked a blessing upon our undertaking : he 
 told us that it was "the design of those who founded 
 this college to erect the shrines of science and of litera- 
 ture within the precincts of the sanctuary ;" and I trust 
 we, humble instruments for effecting such high purposes, 
 shall ever be the more strenuous and the more fearless 
 in our efforts, from feeling that such light as man 
 laboriously earns by the exercise of the faculties which 
 God has given him, directed towards such knowledge 
 as he has been made capable of attaining, is indeed light 
 from heaven ; and that everj^ ray which illuminates the 
 inquiring mind in its progress towards truth, carries 
 with it evidence of the presence and power of the 
 Deity. 
 
 While we are animated by such feelings and such 
 aims, it would be a most idle fear which should suppose 
 that the train of research I have been sketching must 
 needs connect itself with the party wrangles and 
 animosities of the day. Assuredly, Gentlemen, we 
 shall teach no politics here. It would be a want of 
 discretion, indeed of honesty, to beguile young minds, 
 yet immature in knowledge and in strength, into hastily 
 forming opinions now, which it will be a solemn part of 
 
 37
 
 578 RESUME OF THE USES 
 
 their duties in future life to endeavour to form justly 
 and rightly. The last thing we should wish to see 
 them do, is to assume in their young days the livery of 
 any political sect. But there are public duties common 
 to men of all parties, which it is our province to train 
 our pupils to approach, in a fit state of preparation. 
 We must not, I trust we cannot, forget that, among 
 the foremost of the earthly blessings we enjoy, is that 
 of being members of a community of freemen. It is 
 a privilege that brings with it duties as well as advan- 
 tages. No Englishman, and emphatically no English- 
 man of the educated classes, can fulfil the obligations 
 of his station, without having frequently to propose, 
 to deliberate upon, or to judge of, measures intimately 
 connected with our subject, and not less intimately with 
 the happiness and welfare of his countrymen. 
 
 Now it is to enable him to perform these high duties 
 with knowledge and forethought, carefully, honestly, 
 and manfully, that we have undertaken here to in- 
 vestigate and teach all those branches of human know- 
 ledge which may help to throw light upon his path, 
 and so contribute towards that which one of the greatest 
 of our great men has described as "a complete and 
 generous education," the education which fits a man to 
 perform "justly, skilfully, and magnanimously," all the 
 offices, both public and private, which his country can 
 demand from him. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have attempted to point out to you 
 some of the objects, the methods, and uses of political 
 economy ; to show that it yields knowledge which 
 throws a distinct light of its own upon the past history
 
 %} AND OBJECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 579 
 
 of nations, upon their actual condition, their relative 
 strength, resources, and capacities for political institu- 
 tions ; upon many subjects, indeed, on which neither the 
 scholar, the philosopher, nor the statesman, can remain 
 even in partial ignorance with impunity. Such a sketch 
 is necessarily imperfect ; but the hour warns me that 
 my task for the present has ended.
 
 DETACHED 
 
 NOTES AND REMARKS, 
 
 EXTRACTED FROM A MS. NOTE-BOOK.
 
 DETACHED NOTES AND EEMARKS. 
 
 ON PHOFITS. 
 
 The new theory of profits, as it is called, depends 
 entirely on the supposition that the rate of profits is 
 regulated by the proportion which the produce of the last 
 land cultivated bears to the labor necessary to cultivate 
 it. Now this, of course, supposes profits always to be 
 equal in all occupations. But profits can be equalized 
 only by the competition of capital ; and the free compe- 
 tition of capital is not common, but the rarest thing in 
 the world. 
 
 In some countries competition is prevented by the 
 degraded state of some employments. In many coun- 
 tries, though the profits on the worst lands (includ- 
 ing what is paid over as rents), is great, yet capital 
 will not flow to the cultivation of uncultivated land, 
 on account of the laws of landed property, and the 
 degraded condition of the cultivators. In Asia, 
 capital dares not shew itself openly, for fear of being 
 pillaged ; and it cannot, consequently, flow to agricul- 
 ture, where it would be sure to be seen. These effects 
 become causes in their turn. The agriculturists, on their'
 
 584 EFFECTS OF INCREASED PEODUCTIVENESS 
 
 part, save but little capital, and are too ignorant and too 
 oppressed to transfer it to other employments. Hence 
 capital, as such, is always scarce with them. In these 
 countries agricultural profits may be loiu^ and trading 
 profits high. The vicious system in vogue may prevent 
 the supply of corn keeping up with a moderate demand 
 for it, while the scarcity of other capital makes wages 
 low, and keeps other commodities at such a high price 
 that the farmer, out of his miserable jDrofits, is obliged 
 to pay very high ones to the merchant. In such coun- 
 tries we shall find little trading capital, and high profits 
 on it, — the cultivators poor, and the landlords taking a 
 large j^ortion of the produce, although not themselves 
 rich. The laborers, too, if there be any distinct from 
 the farmers, are generally worse off than their masters* 
 
 ON THE EFFECTS OF INCUEASED PRODUCTIVENESS 
 ON WAGES AND PROFITS. 
 
 The worst land cultivated maintains the laborers better 
 than the best did formerly, even in corn. It pays 10 per 
 cent, profit, or near it, besides an enormous sum in rates 
 and taxes. 
 
 But if the productive power of labor, when applied to 
 land, has not diminished, or very slightly so, the pro- 
 ductive power of labor in almost every other occupation 
 has been greatly increased. This is the natural course 
 of things in the progress of arts and civilization. 
 
 It is not true, therefore, that in the progress of society 
 wages and profits go on diminishing while rents are 
 swelled by their loss ; but it is true that wages and pro- 
 
 !
 
 Ox\ WAGES AND PROFITS. 585 
 
 fits have a constant tendency to increase as well as rents, 
 and this general increase in the productive power of 
 labor is felt beneficially by all classes. 
 
 Since the whole produce of the labor of a community 
 is divided among the laborers and capitalists, not accord- 
 ing to the productive power of their individual but of 
 their joint labor, it evidently becomes a matter of indif- 
 ference to an individual or to a class that the produce of 
 their own labor is diminishing, provided the average pro- 
 ductive power of labor increases to the same extent. If 
 six men produce twelve gallons of corn, and six men's labor 
 produces twelve pair of stockings, twelve gallons of corn 
 will exchange for twelve pair of stockings ; and supposing 
 each producer to exchange half and keep half his produce, 
 each will have one gallon of corn and one pair of stock- 
 ings. If, as society advances, nine men's labor must be 
 employed to produce twelve gallons of corn, while three 
 men's labor can produce the twelve pair of stockings, the 
 value of corn will be to stockings as nine to three. Three 
 gallons of corn will be worth nine pair of stockings ; and 
 exchanging theii* produce, eacli laborer will have, as 
 before, one gallon of corn and one pair of stockings. 
 Although the productive power of the land will have 
 decreased, the productive power of manufacturing labor 
 will have doubled, and the sum total of wages and profits 
 will remain exactly the same. It will be evident, from 
 the same calculations, that if the productive power of the 
 manufacturer has more than doubled, while the produc- 
 tive power of agricultural labor has decreased one-third ; 
 or if the latter has decreased less than a third, while the 
 former has doubled, then, in spite of the decreasing
 
 o86 EFFECTS OF IXCKEASED I'KODUCTIVEXESS 
 
 fertility of the land, wages and profits may have in- 
 creased, and increased very considerably. If, when the 
 labor of nine men became necessary to produce the twelve 
 gallons of corn, the labor of three men became able to 
 jiroduce twenty-four pair of stockings, the value of the 
 twelve gallons of corn will be three times that of 
 the twenty-four pair of stockings, or seventy-two pair. 
 Suppose the nine men to retain each a gallon, and ex- 
 change the three others with the manufacturers, each will 
 then have one gallon of corn and two pair of stockings. 
 
 In pursuing this calculation we may observe a circum- 
 stance which may help us to ascertain whether the pro- 
 ductive power of labor applied to the land has or has not 
 dimijiished ; or to what extent it has diminished. If the 
 consumption of the laborers remains the same, then upon 
 every diminution in the productive power of labor ap- 
 plied to laud, a greater proportion of the laborers of a 
 community must be employed in cultivating the land. 
 If twelve gallons of corn can be produced by six men, 
 and those twelve gallons will suffice twelve men, six 
 men may be employed in manufactures, and the popu- 
 lation will be equally divided between the two sets of 
 producers. But if the labor of nine men be necessary 
 to produce the twelve gallons of corn, which will still 
 suffice only twelve men, then only three men can be em- 
 ployed in manufactures. Three quarters of the popula- 
 tion must be employed in agriculture, while only one 
 quarter can be employed in manufactures. The principle 
 is plain, that as the productive power of labor employed 
 on the land diminishes, the relative number of laborers, 
 compared with the population they support, must increase.
 
 ON WAGES AND PIWFITS. 587 V 
 
 Now, has this been the case in our own country , where 
 the productive power of labor applied to land is assumed 
 to have been diminished the most ? 
 
 The last population returns show there are employed 
 in agriculture, 978,656 families; in trade and manufac- 
 tures, 1,350,295; and in other situations, 612,488. 
 The population employed in agriculture is as nearly as 
 possible one-third of the whole number. That this shows 
 an increase, and not a diminution, in the productive 
 power of agricultural labor is evident from the fact that 
 the agriculturists have been producing the maintenance 
 of an increasing number of persons in addition to their 
 own. One man employed upon the land now produces 
 necessaries for his own family and the families of two 
 other persons, IS'o other country in Europe exhibits a 
 productiveness in agricultural labor at all to be compared 
 to this. The proportion in France makes tlie nearest 
 approach to our own. All the other great nations of 
 Eui'ope support, by their agricultural labor, a smaller 
 additional class. 
 
 Of the increase of the non-agriculturists in England 
 itself, we have no very accurate measure. They appear, 
 in 1377, to have amounted scarcely to more than one- 
 fifth of the cultivators ; but their numbers have gone on 
 steadily increasing. Since 1811 the agricultural popu- 
 lation has increased at the rate of about 9| per cent., 
 and the remaining population at the rate of 19 per 
 cent. ; while the English laborer consumes as much corn 
 now as he ever did, and more than the laborer of any 
 other country in Europe consumes. The productive 
 power of the whole agricultural labor of tlio country,
 
 588 EFFECTS OF INCREASED PRUDUCTIVENESS. 
 
 then, instead of diminishing, has gone on increasing, is 
 greater than that of agricultural labor in any other 
 country in Europe, and is actually increasing at this 
 moment. It may perhaps be thought that, although the 
 productive power of agricultural labor has in the aggre- 
 gate increased, yet there has been a diminution in the 
 productiveness of that portion of it which alone regulates 
 profits, — namely, that employed with the least returns. 
 But, if the quantity of corn assigned as wages and the 
 rate of profits depend, as is contended, on this portion of 
 agricultural labor, then, if such corn-wages and profits 
 have not diminished, that labor has not become less pro- 
 ductive. But neither corn- wages nor profits have dimi- 
 nished. It is not easy to ascertain accurately the real 
 wages of labor from the prices of corn and money-wages 
 handed down to us ; but Sir Frederick Eden has col- 
 lected a full store of such materials as remain, and Mr. 
 Malthus, on an attentive examination of these, thinks 
 that a peck of wheat a day is rather above than below 
 the average price of labor as far back as we can trace it. 
 Wheat is now 72^. the quarter, which is 9^. the bushel, 
 or 2^. od. the peck. The average wages of farm labor 
 are 2c?. a day, without counting the additional sum dis- 
 tributed among the body of laborers in the shape and 
 name of parochial allowances. The rate of wages is not 
 below the average which has usually prevailed in Eng- 
 land, as far as we can trace them. The profits on lands 
 farmed, it is yet more difficult to compare with those of 
 remote ages. The rate of interest, which is some guide 
 to the rate of profits in modern times, is no guide in a 
 ruder state of society. I doubt whether, before the
 
 MALTHUS AND RICARDO ON RENT. 589 
 
 restoration of Charles the Second, the current rate of 
 interest in England had much to do with the usual rate 
 of j)rofit. This we know, however, that since that time 
 the rate of interest has not decreased, and we may fairly 
 presume that profits are not lower than they were under 
 the reign of George the First and George the Second. 
 
 MALTHUS AND RICAUPO ON RENT. 
 
 Eicardo's first and glaring error is his talking, or 
 approving others in talking, of rent as forming no addi- 
 tion to the national wealth, but being a transfer of value 
 advantageous only to the landlords, and proportionably 
 injurious to the consumer. 
 
 Now, according to his own theory, the price of corn 
 is always a natural or necessary price ; and if that price 
 is injurious to society, it is injurious by those general 
 laws of nature which, applied to the particular circum- 
 stances of any society (the barrenness of their lands, density 
 of their population, etc.), make such price natural and 
 necessary. That high price would have equally existed, 
 and been as injurious to the consumer, if none of it had 
 gone to rent, but it had all gone to the actual cultivator. 
 The argument that Eicardo adopts amounts to this : — 
 the price of corn is necessary, that is, the consumer 
 cannot have it at a less price ; but while the cultivator, 
 John Doe, retains it all, society cannot complain of it 
 justly : when, however, Eichard Eoe pays over part of 
 it to Thomas Nokes, his landlord, it immediately becomes 
 injurious to the consumer. And this error, or rather,
 
 590 MALTHUS AND RICAEDO ON RENT. 
 
 perhaps, mis-statement, is the more to be lamented, as it 
 falls in with certain vulgar errors and views, by appeal- 
 ing to which, bad, or, at least, weak men have endea- 
 vored to influence the populace against property in land 
 and landlords, 
 
 Kext, Malthus and Eicardo differ as to the following 
 proposition : — Malthus says, " The first and main cause 
 of rent is that quality of the earth by which it can be 
 made to yield a greater portion of the necessaries of life 
 than is required for the maintenance of the persons em- 
 ployed upon the land." In discussing this, Eicardo says 
 that Malthus has here stated it as a general principle that, 
 under all circumstances, rent will rise with the increase 
 of fertility of the land, and will fall with its diminished 
 fertility. jN'ow, Malthus has said no such thing ; and 
 Eicardo, after Avasting his ink in refuting what was never 
 advanced, seems to have entirely overlooked the main 
 inference that Malthus drew from the above proposition, 
 which is, that a degree of fertility sufficient to do more 
 than pay the wages of the laboring cultivators is a neces- 
 sary condition of the existence of rent ; and that such 
 fertility, be it more or less, is also the limit of rent. 
 These propositions are almost self-evident ; and they 
 have only been confused by talking of the price of the 
 produce exceeding the cost of production. 
 
 REMAEKS ON MALTHUS, PEINCIPLES OF POLITICAL 
 
 ECONOMY.— (2ifD Edition, Page 76.) 
 
 "It is not correct," he says, " to consider as Smith 
 has done, profits as a deduction from the produce of
 
 VALUE OF COMMODITIES. 591 
 
 labor." True, neither for similar reasons is it correct to 
 consider the rent of land as a species of capital contribut- 
 ing to production. It appears to me that if he admits 
 that there is any land which pays no rent, as by his 
 phraseology he seems to do, then he only embarrasses 
 the subject by introducing rent as an element of the 
 necessary price of commodities. 
 
 (Page 83.) 
 
 It is clear that the different definitions of value given 
 by Malthus and Eicardo cease to be important, if we 
 admit, with Eicardo, that, in speaking of commodities 
 and of their exchangeable value, we are to mean only 
 such commodities as can be increased in quantity by the 
 exertion of human industry, and on the production of 
 which competition operates without restraint. If we admit 
 this, then, increased demand leads so immediately to in- 
 creased supply that they may, for most of the purposes of 
 argument, be considered simultaneous, and the difference 
 between the intensity of demand and supply being put 
 out of sight, the cost of production will then determine 
 both their market and their necessary price, which, in 
 such a state of things, will be the same as their value in 
 exchange. But the truth is that, in regard to raw pro- 
 duce, the most important of commodities, it is not always 
 to be increased at pleasure by the exertion of human in- 
 dustry. Competition does not operate on its production 
 without restraint. It may be multiplied, as Eicardo 
 says, but it cannot be multiplied without difficulties, 
 which it may take time to overcome, and which can only
 
 592 CONDITION OF THE LABORING CLASSES. 
 
 be overcome at last with expense. Until these diffi- 
 culties are overcome, the supply does not keep pace with 
 the demand. 
 
 ON WHAT DETEHMIjSTES THE CONDITIOX OF THE 
 LABORING CLASSES. 
 
 Macculloch says, " There is plainly but one way of 
 really improving the condition of the laboring class, and 
 that is by increasing the ratio of capital to population." 
 There is another way, viz., by increasing the productive 
 power of labor. Where wages rise because capital in- 
 creases relatively to population, they rise at the expense 
 of profits ; when thej^ rise from an increase in the pro- 
 ductive power of labor, they rise with profits. 
 
 Macculloch and Eicardo, who think the productive 
 power of labor is always diminishing, speak consistently 
 in denying that wages can rise except at the expense of 
 profits. Their great error is dwelling on proportionate 
 wages and profits, of which the relative position is a 
 matter of comparative indifi'erence ; and their neglecting 
 and forgetting the variations in real wages and real 
 profits (to use a new phrase), which are what is really 
 important to the philosopher and statesman. 
 
 ON MALTHUS ON POPULATION. 
 
 There is much to be supplied, and something to be 
 amended in Malthus' views and language ; but as the 
 founder, not the finisher, of an important branch of 
 knowledge, we owe him thanks and reverence.
 
 REMARKS OX ADAM SMITH. 593 
 
 Columbus saw but little of the new world, his dis- 
 covery of which was to exercise such wide dominioii over 
 the fortunes and habits of the old. Yet his name is 
 stamped in the annals of mankind, fixing upon it an 
 interest which no subsequent discoverers share, how- 
 ever accurately they have surveyed its unknown coasts, 
 or corrected our imperfect notions of its form and bear- 
 ings. 
 
 It is just so with that new and vast branch of know- 
 ledge which Malthus has revealed to us. Its influence 
 on the habits and happiness of nations has fastened itself 
 upon us, and all subsequent progress in enlarging or 
 correcting his views, will only throw more light on the 
 name and services of him who first effectually dispelled 
 our ignorance of its influence. 
 
 THE ECONOMISTS. 
 
 That consumption is the measure of reproduction is a 
 maxim of the economists, which would be strictly true, 
 if they had said, consumption at the natural 'price of com- 
 modities is the measure of reproduction. Consumption 
 at a less price is not the measure of reproduction. 
 
 REMARKS 01^ ADAM SMITH. 
 (" Wealth of Nations," Vol. ir., Page 6. — Bucn. Edit.) 
 
 Smith avoids Eicardo's errors about wages, and admits 
 that taxes may be paid out of them ; and he remarks, 
 too, that, in the payment of taxes, the greatness of the 
 numbers of the contributors may make up for the small- 
 ness of their contribution. 
 
 38
 
 594 MALTHUS' OETECTIONS TO 
 
 (Vol. II., Page 82.) 
 
 He has an argument to prove that in some slight 
 degree money laid out in gewgaws increases the stock of 
 natural wealth more than money laid out on servants, 
 etc. ; quite the reverse of Eicardo's late doctrine. 
 
 (Vol. II., Page 8.) 
 
 He shows that the fund destined for the maintenance 
 of productive labor is not only much greater in rich than 
 in poor countries, but bears a much greater j)roportion 
 to that which is immediately destined for contributing a 
 revenue, either as rent or profit. How much, therefore, 
 must the relative strength of this country be underrated 
 by those who deny that wages pay taxes. 
 
 (Vol. II., Page 48.) 
 
 Were it not for manufactures, the surplus produce 
 would be of no value in exchange, and could add nothing 
 to the wealth of society. He gives precisely the same 
 reasons as the economists, and no others, for the utility 
 of commerce. 
 
 ON MALTHUS' CRITICISM OF JONES ON RENT. 
 
 If I understand Malthus' objections to my doctrine of 
 rent, he is committing an error, of the nature of which 
 he seemed aware, while treating of population, and which 
 he has taken some pains to point out. To suppose an 
 extreme case, and reason as to what is to happen when 
 it arrives, is a childish amusement. To examine what 
 takes place while we are approaching that position (never
 
 JONES' DOCTRINE OF RENT. 595 
 
 perhaps to be attained), is an important and useful task. 
 In population, men ran to the extreme point, and began 
 to talk of what would take place when the earth was 
 fully peopled, and were unwilling to think about what 
 was happening while men were approaching that state. 
 Malthus showed that this was the interesting problem, 
 that his object was to ascertain the relative increase of 
 numbers and food while the earth was replenishing. 
 XoAv so as to rent, what will happen when the skill and 
 power of man have reached their maximum, is an idle 
 and useless inquiry ; what happens every day, when til- 
 lage is spreading and capital increasing, is practically 
 interesting and important. 
 
 While the skill of man is developing itself and run- 
 ning a race with the decreasing natural powers of the 
 soil, Eicardo and others have declared that, at every 
 step, man must be foiled, and this by a law of nature ; 
 and that rents must rise from reduced returns and a 
 transfer of wealth already existing, and could only rise 
 from that cause. I have shown that man may overcome 
 the difficulty, that there is no law of nature to prevent 
 his doing so, that rents may and do rise from the conse- 
 quences of hiJ, success, not of his failure, — from a crea- 
 tion of new wealth and not a transfer of old. I have 
 shown that this struggle has been carried on successfully 
 in the country in which the soil has been most forced, 
 and that, from considerations connected with the powers 
 and nature of auxiliary capital, the struggle may go on 
 with like results for ages longer. 
 
 Now Malthus says I have not proved my point. What 
 point? I never denied there was a limit to man's skill
 
 596 PROGRESS OF POPULATION AND FOOD. 
 
 and power, and a point at which rents would rise from 
 the consequences of man's failure. On the contrary, I 
 admitted it, and showed how the rise would take place. 
 I tried to throw light on the progress of rents and the 
 fortunes of society before that point was reached, and I 
 showed it had not been reached j^et. I leave others to 
 speculate about what is to result when it is reached. 
 As to the new colonies, I did not consider their future 
 progress connected with farmers' rents, because I have 
 no reason to believe they will prevail there at all. 
 
 In regard to population, I do not consider it true that 
 it has a tendency to increase as the power of command- 
 ing healthful subsistence increases ; that is, in any 
 rational sense of the word tendency. While the earth is 
 replenishing, men increase more slowly as their com- 
 mand over the means of subsistence becomes greater, 
 and are quite as likely to come to a stand still from that 
 cause as really to fill the earth up to its powers. It is 
 useless to speculate on extreme cases. In regard to heat 
 and cold, the collision of comets, geological phenomena, 
 the exhaustion of coal-fields, who dwells on the last ex- 
 treme results and neglects the present progress. We 
 live in the midst of the action of forces and causes which 
 may, and perhaps will, destroy the earth, yet their 
 mutual action is regulated, and the final event suspended 
 by Providence ; and so of moral and physical forces in 
 political economy. Malthus says, look to the interme- 
 diate progress of population and food. I say so, too, and 
 assert that the command over food increases as popula- 
 tion increases in well -governed and prosperous States, — 
 that this is a fact.
 
 CAriTAL AND REVENUE DiaTINGUISllED. 597 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN CAPITAL AND llEVENUE. 
 
 Any phraseology which tends to confound capital and 
 revenue, two things which the word capital was invented 
 to distinguish, must obstruct the progress of investigation. 
 The gradual manner in which accumulated stock assumes 
 the various functions which we see it exercise among 
 ourselves is one of the most remarkable phenomena in 
 the history of human society. It is the source of the 
 most important changes which occur in the progress of 
 wealth. The divisions and direction of labor are almost 
 wholly dependent upon it, and so likewise are the re- 
 lations which connect the different grades of society, the 
 extent and influence of the intermediate classes, and 
 consequently the elements of political power and the 
 foundations of political institutions. 
 
 To confound this fund with revenue must necessarily 
 embarrass and mislead. The changes occasioned by the 
 gradual substitution of the one for the other can only be 
 imperfectly understood unless the distinction between 
 them be kept steadily in view. The defining everything 
 to be capital which can be made to support labor, one of 
 the functions which revenue and capital each perform, 
 but with strikingly different effects, is one of the most 
 unlucky instances of tampering with language which the 
 history of political economy affords. 
 
 The phraseology which confounds them has two glaring 
 defects. It tends to present as a homogeneous mass a 
 general fund which really consists of many very different
 
 598 ON DEFINITIONS. 
 
 parts ; and it tends also to confound the whole with one 
 of its parts, which leads to positive error. 
 
 The origin of the confusion is easily traced. Perceiv- 
 ing that capital in certain cases performed the function 
 of advancing the wages of the laborer, it has been con- 
 cluded that whatever performed that function must be 
 capital too. An accident has been mistaken for an essen- 
 tial characteristic. 
 
 ON DEFINITIONS.' 
 
 I have been reproached with giving no regular defini- 
 tion of rent. The omission was not accidental. To be- 
 gin, or indeed to end, an enquiry into the nature of any 
 subject, a circumstance existing before us, by a definition, 
 is to shew how little Ave know how to set about our task 
 — how little of the inductive spirit is within us. 
 
 A definition is necessary to the pure mathematician, 
 to whom it presents the subject matter of his reasoning ; 
 to the moral philosopher, who is talking about abstract 
 terms and qualities, w^hich are creatures of mind, about 
 which no two persons could be sure they were speaking 
 when they are not strictly defined by Avords ; and to the 
 Aristotelian logician, wliose art fails him if he is not 
 enabled by means of a definition to get at the major of a 
 syllogism in the first mood and figure. 
 
 But when we wish to establish general facts or prin- 
 ciples relating to things as they actually exist, if we 
 begin by a definition, it is to suppose our task finished 
 before it is begun ; and as man's art can rarely exhaust 
 
 ' A portion of this was put in a note in italics in tlic book on Eent.
 
 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING RENTS. 599 
 
 the subtlety or guess at tlic extent of nature, therefore 
 to end with a definition is seldom a much wiser attempt 
 than to begin with one. 
 
 I have pointed out the origin of payments made to the 
 owners of the soil. I have tracked their progress. If 
 any reader during this enquiry is puzzled to know what 
 we are observing or speaking of together, assuredly he 
 had better lay aside the book (and if he would allow me 
 to take a friendly liberty with him, I would add), and 
 the subject. 
 
 We may sometimes distinctly mark the portion of a 
 subject we mean to grapple with by the help of defini- 
 tions ; for this purpose, and with due warnings and pre- 
 cautions, I have used a definition of ivealth. I could not, 
 without folly, haA^e begun with one of rent. I doubt if 
 I could properly have attempted to conclude with it; 
 and if I could have done it I would not. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, rent were defined to be the pay- 
 ment made to the landlord for the original powers of the soil : 
 the fact is, that when outlay is so mixed up with, the 
 land that it cannot be again moved, the return to that 
 capital is influenced by the laws which govern rent and 
 not those which govern profits ; and to separate the pay- 
 ment made for such a spot of land into rent and profits 
 is only perplexing the subject by a definition, not making 
 it more easy. 
 
 Men have too often on this, as on many other subjects, 
 instead of using definitions to assist their reasonings, 
 treated them as the foundation of their conclusions ; and 
 there cannot well be a greater mistake. But I will not 
 enter on a dissertation into the use and abuse of defini-
 
 600 LABORING PROPEIETORS IN GEEECE. 
 
 tions. It would be a long ono. It is obvious that, in 
 inquiring into principles and laws relating to things as 
 they exist in the world, words may be used to indicate 
 the subject of research but not to supersede them. 
 
 In Aristotelian logic a general conclusion is assumed 
 as the foundation of syllogistic reasoning. But when a 
 general affirmation is made, a definition may reasonably 
 be required by those who wish to know what it is meant 
 to comprehend. But in that case the definition should 
 be understood as limiting the subject. It will bear no 
 negative conclusions : for instance, what is not true of 
 rent defined may be true of rent in nature. But where 
 syllogistic reasoning is out of the question, and we are 
 travelling towards and not from general conclusions, 
 words are to be used to indicate, not to limit our subject, 
 and, of course, are not meant to be used as the founda- 
 tion of the general propositions we are searching for, or, 
 through them, of deductive reasoning. Limited pro- 
 positions may be got from them with truth, but if we 
 use them as general, we err almost necessarily. 
 
 LABOEING PROPRIETOES IN GEEECE. 
 
 Long as the literature of Greece has been before us, it 
 is but lately tliat it has been made to shed much light 
 upon its economical condition. For this we must, in 
 gratitude, though not without regret, own that we are 
 mainly indebted to the labors of foreign scholars. It 
 appears that in the condition of the various orders of 
 people in their leading States, and in their relation to 
 each other, there were remarkable and important pecu-
 
 THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS, AGRICULTURISTS. 601 
 
 liarities. It is not true, perhaps, that no analogy can be 
 traced between the economical constitution of Grecian 
 society and that of some modern nations ; but, after 
 making full allowance for those analogies, there still 
 remain striking differences, which contributed essentially 
 to give a peculiar coloring to their laws, manners, habits, 
 morals, and opinions. 
 
 Greece, like most of the nations of the earth, was 
 agricultural. The earth was the great source of its 
 wealth. It was in cultivation that by far the largest 
 portion of its industry was employed. But the earth 
 was cultivated under circumstances, and its produce 
 divided upon a plan and on conditions, to which there 
 is nothing very similar in modern times. The most 
 eminent of the Grecian States were inhabited, during 
 the period of their history which is the most familiar to 
 us, by nations who had seized on the territories they 
 occupied as conquerors. The fact of their conquest was 
 known to them, as it is to us sometimes, by traditions 
 they have recorded, and which barely assume the form 
 of authentic history ; and sometimes the story of it is to 
 be collected from mythical legends, which offer but too 
 tempting a subject to the adventurous ingenuity of 
 ancient patriots and modern interpreters. Occasionally, 
 as in the case of the Athenians, we collect from the 
 institutions and conditions of a people boasting them- 
 selves to be aboriginal, the proofs of former and for- 
 gotten conquests, which give the lie to their pretensions. 
 
 There is one fact, however, which appears to be com- 
 mon to all the communities of the invaded and subjected 
 nations. They were already agricultural, and so far
 
 602 THE EARLY INVADERS OF GREECE. 
 
 accustomed to habits of patient industry, that it was 
 safe to entrust to them the subsistence of the conquerors. 
 This circumstance distinguished the conquest and the 
 institutions which grew out of it from those in which 
 the conquered people are in a less advanced state. There 
 the adoption of labor rents, similar to those which exist 
 in serf countries, are the only means b}^ which the 
 superiors can safely use the industry of a subject people. 
 If their own eyes did not see, and their own arms en- 
 force the works of husbandry, the ignorance or laziness 
 of the vanquished race would, if alone entrusted with 
 the work of cultivation, leave their conquerors to starve. 
 This opportunity of consuming the fruits of the soil, 
 which they had won without assisting in producing 
 them, was apparently seized upon universally by the 
 early invaders of Greece. Their power and will to live 
 without labor, and even without the superintendence of 
 labor, supplied a foundation and gave a character to all 
 their political institutions. Had the districts they took 
 possession of been wide, individual chieftains would have 
 acquired a solitary and independent greatness, which 
 would have baffled in the end any schemes of common 
 education. While their territory was confined, their 
 numbers appear to have been so small, compared with 
 the conquered party, as to make it expedient that they 
 should not abandon their military organi2;ation, and their 
 habits were such as to make united councils a form 
 of government wliich could only be carried on by many 
 hands. On the one hand, therefore, there existed a 
 body of conquerors w^ho were brought into constant con- 
 tact by the narrowness of the territory they occupied,
 
 CONDITION OF THE CONQUERED CLASSES. 603 
 
 and the necessities of their position, which compelled 
 them to maintain their predominance by mutual effort ; 
 and, on the other hand, a conquered people, the tillers of 
 the soil, from which their masters derived the means of 
 an idle existence. These constituted the first great divi- 
 sion of society. The second was marked out by great 
 differences in the position of the conquered classes. One 
 portion of them was ordinarily tributary to the State, on 
 joint account with whom theii' lands were held. Another 
 portion belonged to individuals whose estates they culti- 
 vated upon certain fixed conditions. In either case their 
 rents were paid in produce. The political condition of 
 the State husbandmen was equivocal. They were free- 
 men, but not citizens. There was a tinge of subjection 
 and degradation, not amounting to absolute slavery, from 
 which they sometimes won their way by wealth and 
 numbers to a communion of rights, and became merged 
 in the mass of citizens, properly so called, in the course 
 of time. It was enumerated among their privileges, that 
 they could not be put to death without trial, or sold 
 beyond the borders of their country. But although they 
 were in a certain sense slaves, yet their persons and in 
 some instances their property, were inviolate, and they 
 occupied the soil on conditions, in some cases, so easy as 
 to leave them by much the largest share of the rent or 
 beneficial interest, insomuch that they were said to have 
 been in some cases richer than their masters. 
 
 When this form of society broke up, as it did rapidly, 
 in all but the Darian States, a species of laboring pro- 
 prietor may sometimes be discerned. But before we 
 speak of these, we may indulge in a few remarks on the
 
 604 PECULIARITIES OF GRECIAN SOCIETY : 
 
 peculiar composition of the master castes, the proprietors 
 who did not labor or direct labor, and on the effect 
 of that composition on the political philosophy of the 
 Grecian States and their forms of government, specula- 
 tive as well as practical. Certain peculiarities marked 
 the Grecian society whenever it remained in this frame. 
 First, there was the complete leisure of a numerous 
 body of proprietors sharing the produce of lands, of 
 which they had no right (to say nothing of their 
 inclination) either to take possession or to interfere 
 with the cultivation. Secondly, the number of 
 these proprietors was too great to admit of very 
 large estates, even where the law did not prohibit 
 them, and this shut them out as individuals from an 
 aristocratic influence, which might overawe or inter- 
 rupt the common weal, and force them into the 
 position of an armed militia. Thirdly, The pre- 
 judices growing out of this state of things led them 
 to consider the master caste as alone representing, 
 or indeed constituting, the State. From these peculi- 
 arities we may see what a field was offered for specula- 
 tive legislation. Where men's social duties have great 
 demands upon their time, and where the chances of suc- 
 cess or failure, of competence or poverty, depend on men's 
 daily exertions, the lawgiver must adapt his regulations 
 to their habits and their means, or his law will be power- 
 less. Where all ranks participate in the character of 
 citizens and in the care of the State, some eye must be 
 had to the interests and rights and habits of the poor as 
 well as of the rich. Where an aristocracy possessing great 
 influence and power prevails, the lawgiver must be wary
 
 TTTEIR INFLUENCE ON LEOTST-ATION. 605 
 
 of thwarting their independence or caprice. But with a 
 large body of citizens, free from occupation, with the 
 lower classes in a state of indefinite, but substan- 
 tial, degradation, which made it lawful to consider 
 them as possessing no political rights or privileges, 
 and with an aristocracy numerous and dominant, but 
 not individually powerful, all obstacles were removed 
 to the exercise of the lawgiver's talent and love of 
 speculation. 
 
 Eead Aristotle or Plato with these considerations be- 
 fore you, and their utter neglect of all but the citizen 
 soldiers, their harsh and unhesitating oppression of the 
 productive classes and their wild attempts to control 
 the modes of life, and to determine the education, the 
 morals, and the domestic habits of their citizens, 
 will then be explained. Presenting such materials 
 for lawgivers to act upon and dispose of, each 
 State, to say nothing of those under the govern- 
 ment of Solon and Lycurgus, anxious to preserve 
 its polity, and keep out the claims of the pro- 
 ductive classes, resorted often to a fresh division of 
 lands, and to new laws of inheritance, and struggled 
 and contrived to ward off the necessity of dividing their 
 power with those whom they considered to be of a dif- 
 ferent race and inferior in blood. What with the desire 
 of preserving the superiority of their caste, and the fear 
 perpetually forced npon them by circumstances that it 
 was escaping them, they were willing to listen to any 
 contrivances and behests which promised, by force of 
 regulations and laws, to preserve their military and poli- 
 tical supremacy. Hence the boldness with which their
 
 606 CHIEF, AND SUBORDINATE, PROPRIETORS : 
 
 speculative lawgivers interfered with the whole social 
 life and habits of the citizens, which they made the ex- 
 clusive object of their care. 
 
 Authors of modern date have imitated their building 
 without having the same materials to work upon. Hence 
 their schemes appear to us Utopian dreams, while those 
 of their archetypes among the Greeks were really, from 
 their peculiar state of society, often practicable, however 
 strange and fantastic. 
 
 To return, however, from this digression to our more 
 immediate subject, viz., that portion of the wealth of 
 Greece annually distributed as the wages of laboring 
 proprietors. It is evidently not among the master caste 
 that such proprietors were to be found. There remain 
 the subordinate occupiers. Among these a part of the 
 wealth produced certainly was divided as the reward of 
 their toil. But here a difficulty occurs as to the use of 
 language, which it may be as well to grapple with at 
 once, as it may occur again in a much wider field of 
 investigation, and if not got rid of, may impede us in 
 our effort to observe and understand thiugs. The mas- 
 ters of the State were clearly the lords paramount, — the 
 chief proprietors of the soil. In what sense can the 
 subordinate occupiers be treated as laboring proprietors, 
 or proprietors at all, and in what sense are they properly 
 tenants ? It is essential to enter into this question, in 
 order to understand many rude states of society, which 
 will come before us, modern as well as ancient, some of 
 which are, as it happens, much connected with England, 
 and in which the difficulty of deciding this very ques- 
 tion has involved our past government in serious error,
 
 THEIR RELATIVE POSITION EXPLAIXED. fi07 
 
 and our actual administratiou in great doubts and diffi- 
 culties. In modern Europe we have, in later ages, been 
 accustomed to see the right to the possession of land, 
 and the right to a beneficial interest in it in the same 
 hands ; ^ and to speak of a person being the proprietor of 
 a spot, to the possession of which another person has an 
 undoubted right, and a right he can sell or transmit to 
 his heirs, sounds strange to us, because it refers to a 
 state of things not contemplated in our vocabulary. And 
 yet this state of mixed right, to which it is so diffi- 
 cult to apply modern European terms with precision, 
 existed rudely in ancient days and exists rudely in 
 remote countries now. In some cases, a right to here- 
 ditary possession is wholly unaccompanied by a right 
 to any beneficial interest whatever. The occupiers are 
 mere laborers, or laborers and capitalists, getting wages 
 and profits. In other cases, the subordinate proprietor 
 has a right to hereditary possession, which leaves him 
 some beneficial interest, and he enjoys a portion of the 
 rent. There are again other cases in which they difi'er ; 
 in some of which the right to hereditary possession, 
 recognized by law and usage, is efficient in practice ; 
 while in others, although recognized by law, there arc 
 no practical means of causing it to be respected. The 
 population of the greater part of Asia have long ceased 
 to have any beneficial interest in the soil, of which they 
 are the hereditary occupants : and the absolute govern- 
 ments, renewed by frequent conquests, combined with 
 the genius and habits of the people, deprive them of 
 
 1 By a beneficial interest is meant a right to any revenue it may produce after 
 maintaining the laborers, replacing the stock, and paying all the necessary expenses 
 of cultivation.
 
 G08 HEREDITARY OCCUriERS. 
 
 all power to resist the arbitrary invasion of their heredi- 
 tary rights. 
 
 In Greece it was the object of the Government to 
 sustain rather than invade the hereditary rights of the 
 subordinate occupiers, and a considerable part of the 
 beneficial interest in the soil was left in their hands. 
 Although therefore their right was subordinate to that 
 of the State, they assumed a character nearer to that 
 of the landholder. In no case, however, were the rights 
 of the sovereign or of the subordinate proprietor such 
 as to allow of the European terms, which denote abso- 
 lute property, being applied to their respective interests, 
 without misleading those who receive them in their 
 usual acceptation. In such cases, the remedy for am- 
 biguity and disputatious dissertation is obvious. We can 
 easily adopt a phraseology which simply expresses the 
 fact as to their respective interests, and involves no 
 exaggerated or distorted views founded on the phrase- 
 ology of other nations diiferently circumstanced. We 
 may for instance call the State or the sovereign the 
 lord paramount, and the subordinate cultivator the here- 
 ditary occupier. What is the precise extent of the in- 
 terests of each, and what theii- relative positions, will 
 be a matter of inquiry : which shall be called the pro- 
 prietor, is a mere verbal difficulty. These hereditary 
 occupiers, however, existed in Greece. They were left, 
 as has been stated, in possession of a portion of the 
 beneficial interest in the soil, and they were ordinarily 
 undisturbed in the possession of it. For our present 
 purposes, they will be most naturally ranked among 
 (he laboring proprietors of the earth, although, in so
 
 EXPOllTATIOX OF I5ULLI0N. 609 
 
 treating them, wo must never lose sight of their peculiar 
 position. There would be no positive error in consider- 
 ing them as a peculiar species of tenantry. They are 
 an ambiguous race, not homogeneous with either the 
 tenantry or proprietors with whom we are familiar. 
 Greece was an agricultural nation, and these hereditary 
 occupiers cultivated so much of it, that of the laboring 
 community they formed a large portion. In the dis- 
 tribution of the wealth of that part which was applied 
 to the support and reward of the living agents who 
 produced it, a large portion fell into, or rather remained, 
 in their hands. 
 
 FRAGMENT ON CURRENCY. 
 
 Whenever bullion is leaving the country, the proxi- 
 mate cause may be assumed to be the same, — namely, an 
 unfavorable state of the exchanges. But the cause of 
 that unfavorable state is not always the same ; and the 
 difference is important when the public policy as to 
 the amount of currency is under consideration. 
 
 The first cause I shall name, of an unfavorable rate 
 of exchange, is an increase in the amount of paper 
 and coin beyond the amount to which the currency 
 would be limited, if bullion and coin alone were used 
 as money Avithout paper. 
 
 This was the cause of the exportation of our gold 
 under the Bank Eestriction Act ; and it is tolerably 
 well understood by all who have thought at all on 
 the subject. 
 
 The indications of the actual existence of this cause, 
 
 39
 
 610 AN EXCESS OF CURKENCY TO BE | 
 
 fis well as the remedies for the evils which it inflicts, 
 are different from the indications supplied by the second 
 cause, which I shall presently advert to, and likewise 
 from the remedies suited to meet the actions and the 
 evils arising from that second cause. 
 
 The proper remedy for an excess of currency is obvi- 
 ously a contraction of currency. The indication of that 
 excess is a general rise of prices, that is, of prices esti- 
 mated in the currency of the country, and not to be 
 traced to any real advance in the cost of production. 
 To observe this rise and to trace it to its cause is not 
 a matter of any real difficulty. It requires, however, 
 a moderate degree of pains and caution which cannot 
 be dispensed with. It is clear that such a rise will 
 be general. It will apply to all commodities and to 
 labor of all kinds. All may not rise quite simultane- 
 ously ; but all will gradually and almost simultaneously 
 advance together.' 
 
 Practical men, having their eyes fixed on the move- 
 ment, can hardly mistake it or be misled by partial 
 advances, to be traced to the cost of producing or to 
 the mode of exchanging particular portions of a nation's 
 productions. 
 
 I have said that such a rise of prices resulting from 
 an excess of paper issue, is only to be met by a con- 
 traction of the circulation. Whether with a convertible 
 paper such an excess of issue is permanently possible, 
 is a question which I am not prepared to answer de- 
 cidedly. I much doubt if it is. To provide, however, 
 
 1 It has been observed that labor is always the last thing to rise or fall on such 
 occasions. — Ed. '
 
 REMEDIED BY A CONTRACTION OF CURRENCY. 611 
 
 against it, if it be even possible, is clearly good policy, 
 and therefore the duty of all Governments who are not 
 blind to the consequences of that unjust alteration in 
 the distribution of the wealth of a country which neces- 
 sarily follows alterations in the real value of its cur- 
 rency, its denomination and estimated value in reference 
 to existing contracts remaining the same. 
 
 It was to prevent such a fall in the real value of 
 the circulating medium, that the Bill of 1844 was in- 
 troduced ; and that it effected this object may be ad- 
 mitted. Any measure which provided that no more 
 than a given proportion of the ordinary amount of the 
 circulating medium of the country should consist of 
 paper issued on credit, and that the whole of the re- 
 mainder should consist of gold, or of paper issued in 
 exchange for bullion, would be a perfectly sufficient 
 protection.^ 
 
 But the Bill of 1844 did something more than this; 
 for, in order to limit the amount of money which should 
 circulate in the ordinary condition of the country, it 
 provided that on no occasion, however extraordinary, 
 should any expansion of that circulating currency take 
 place other than an expansion founded on an import 
 of gold into the Bank. 
 
 It is under the steady carrying out of this principle, 
 that a portion of the late difficulties of the mercantile 
 world is pretty generally, and, I believe, with truth, 
 attributed ; and to understand this, we must examine 
 somewhat more nearly the manner in which the vast 
 
 ' The reader will bear in mind that, by the Bill of 1844, the paper issued on 
 credit is not a given 2>ropor lion, but 'a fixed qwntiity under all circumstances. — Ed.
 
 612 SETTLEME2>TS OX A BALANCE OF CEEDIT. 
 
 bulk of commodities produced in England are exchanged 
 and distributed to their ultimate consumers. 
 
 The transactions of the English clearing house 
 amounted in the year 1839 to upwards of 900 millions. 
 Of these transactions, G per cent, only, or 54 millions, 
 required payments in money ; and of them it may 
 safely be assumed that 50 millions were paid in notes, 
 and not more than 4 millions in gold. But the use 
 of these 54 millions indicated transactions to the full 
 extent of 900 millions, the great bulk of which 
 was settled on credit without the use of bank notes 
 or coin. 
 
 But settlements on a balance of credit are not con- 
 fined to the clearing house, of which the transactions 
 do not probably equal more than half of those of the 
 whole kingdom. Including balances of book debts and 
 drafts on country bankers, the amount of balanced 
 credits which perform the office of a circulating medium 
 may pretty safely be estimated at 2,000 millions; but 
 take it at 1,500 millions. The amount of coin and 
 bank notes does not exceed 60 millions,' or l-250th 
 
 ' This estimate is certainly too low. In the year 18-42, when the light coin was 
 called in, upwards of eleven millions found their way back into the Mint for re-coinage ; 
 and this Avas supposed to be not quite one- fourth part of the quantity at that time in 
 circulation, exchisive of what was in the hands of the Bank. At the present period 
 (1858) tlie amount of coin circulating throughout the United Kingdom is estimated, 
 by the best authorities, at sixty-five millions, while the entire note circulation 
 amounts, according to the latest returns, to forty millions, making a total of one 
 hundi-od and five millions. 
 
 On the other hand, the vast extension of the banking system has prodigiously 
 increased the proportion of payments effected by banking credits and off-sets among 
 the bankers themselves, so that the amount of coin and paper now afloat, although 
 much larger than that mentioned in the text, nevertheless bears a much smaller pro- 
 portion to the total mass of pecuniary transactions which it serves to liquidate, than 
 at any former period of our history. The annual amount of money transactions, in 
 London alone, that are settled at the Clearing House, without the intervention of 
 either coin or paper (the balances among the bankers themselves being paid by 
 checks on the Bank or England) is upwards of 1,900 millions. This important fact 
 tends to strengthen rather than invalidate the author's argument. ^ — Ed.
 
 PECULIARITIES OF CIRCULATING CREDIT. 013 
 
 part of the whole ; and this 250tli part is just as effec- 
 tual as a medium of circulation, as coin or bank paper 
 would have been for the entire amount. 
 
 Now this circulating credit has some peculiarities 
 which must be carefully noted in considering the sub- 
 ject of legislation on currency. It is subject to sud- 
 den and large variations in its amount, and to varia- 
 tions in its rate of circulation, not less important than, 
 and producing effects identical with, those arising out 
 of the variations in its amount. Those variations, 
 again, depend upon other variations, in the temper 
 and feeling of the people, in the confidence, or the 
 doubtfulness, with which they look forward to the 
 cii'culating credit of the country performing its great 
 office of balancing transactions and doing the work 
 of money. 
 
 A reduction is sometimes thus made in the circu- 
 lating credit of the country, which produces effects 
 out of all proportion to the perceptible variations in 
 the amount of the currency; and which are not at 
 all the less formidable, because unfortunately we have 
 not learnt, nor, so far as I know, tried to learn, tlie 
 extent of the influence of the one over the other ; or 
 the exact quantity of spasmodic contraction in this cir- 
 culating credit, which a contraction of the currency will 
 expose us to. 
 
 The mode in which such panics begin is ordinarily 
 an increasing difficulty in procuring discounts. This 
 will be easily understood. Legally to liquidate a debt, 
 every person must have the means of commanding a 
 certain portion of the circulating medium Avhicli is a
 
 614 BILLS OF EXCHANGE. 
 
 legal teuder. If lie is confident that the bill of ex- 
 change which is offered him in payment for his goods 
 will procure him money when he wants it, the bill of 
 exchange is as good to him as money, and he sells 
 his goods and passes the bill on to his creditors ; but 
 when there is a very great doubt if the bill of exchange 
 will enable him to command what is a legal tender, 
 if he wants it, he will not part with his goods for a 
 fresh bill, nor will his creditors accept those he already 
 possesses in discharge of their demands. And then a 
 panic begins. The number of bills of exchange in 
 circulation diminish, and those actually circulating cir- 
 culate much more slowly.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 AccuMULATiox, HmitccI by the extent of 
 the sources of capital, 53 ; its causes, 
 361 ; circumstances favorable to it, 60, 
 70, 231, 374 ; obstacles to it, 54, 383 ; 
 may be too rapid, 59 ; conditions es- 
 sential to its increase, 61 ; is a conse- 
 quence, not a cause, of social improve- 
 ment, 230 ; outstrips the increase of 
 population, 232. 
 
 Agricultural Industry — cause of its 
 early efficiency in England, 222. 
 
 Asia, the chief seat of absolute monarchy, 
 121. 
 
 AuRAXGZEB — the vast horde of workmen 
 and followers maintained by him, 447. 
 
 B. 
 
 Balance of Trade, the system of, in- 
 troduced by Thomas Mun, 327. 
 
 Bengal — new system introduced there of 
 letting land, 285. 
 
 Burleigh, Lord, refuses to use a pa- 
 tent he held for the office of Royal 
 Exchanger, 323. 
 
 C. 
 
 iX!)apital — of what it consists, 22, 34, 
 192, 359 ; increases with civilization, 
 29 ; limits productive power, 33 ; de- 
 
 Sends not on the nature of the commo- 
 ities used, but on the purposes to 
 which they are applied, 35 ; restric- 
 tion of the term to what has been 
 previously accumulated, 36 ; its sources, 
 37, 225, 362 ; in early times chiefly 
 derived from wages, 39, 363 ; may be 
 increased indefinitely, 52 ; in England 
 supposed to have doubled the value of 
 the land, 41 ; causes which discourage 
 its gi'owth, 54, 383 ; conditions favor- 
 able to its increase, 60, 70, 231, 374 ; 
 
 is of two kinds, the one maintaining, 
 the other aiding, labor, 63, 192, 398 ; 
 the first kind the last resorted to in 
 the progress of wealth, 66 ; the latter 
 the most durable, 65 ; the applica- 
 tion of it unlimited, 69, 398 ; condi- 
 tions of its increase, 70 ; is the effect, 
 not the cause, of social improvement, 
 230 ; increases more rapidly than 
 population, 232 ; its application to the 
 payment of wages, the last use made 
 of it, 393, 454; maintains most la- 
 borers in England and fewest in Asia, 
 416 ; must be replaced by the con- 
 sumer's revenue, 453 ; greatly auo-- 
 ments the productive power of the 
 community, 455 ; changes the rela- 
 tions of the laborers to their employers, 
 455 ; is the great agent of production, 
 555 ; its definition, 355, 393, 556 ; its 
 essential distinction from revenue, 597. 
 
 Capitalists — their forming a distinct 
 body a great cause of the increase of 
 wealth, 66, 455 ; do not exist in Asia, 
 85. 
 
 Catallactics— why an incorrect name 
 for an inquiry concerning wealth, 196. 
 
 CiviL Liberty essential to the develop- 
 ment of the national industry, 234, 
 265 ; its influence in promoting" volun- 
 tary restraint, 249 ; its importance in 
 bettering the condition of the people 
 499. r f , 
 
 Coin — its value fixed by royal preroo-a- 
 tive, 305 ; debasement of, in the reio-n 
 of Henry Yin., 318; and in that "of 
 Elizabeth, 325. 
 
 Colonization not the effect of want of 
 food, 259. 
 
 CoRNWALLis, Lord, his conversion of 
 Zemindars into landlords, 283. 
 
 Cottiers, certain tenants paying money 
 rents, 208 ; chiefly confined to Ireland, 
 their advantages and disadvantages, 
 210. *
 
 016 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 CuKUEXCY — its important connection 
 with the circulating credit of our 
 country, 613. 
 
 D. 
 
 Deaths fewer in England than elsc- 
 wliere in proportion to the population, 
 2o2. 
 
 Definitions, in the mixed sciences, may 
 be used to indicate the subject, but 
 not to serve as the basis of reasoning, 
 698. 
 
 Deriv.^tive Incomes a great source of 
 accumulation, 372. 
 
 Distribution of Wealth determines 
 the social and political relations of 
 society, 75. 
 
 Dupin's, Monsieur, error in his com- 
 parisons of French with English labor, 
 352. 
 
 E. 
 
 Economists — remark on their doctrine 
 regai-ding consumption, 593. 
 
 Education — beneficial influence of ex- 
 tending it to the lower classes of 
 society, 514. 
 
 Exchangf,s not the main subject of 
 Political Economy, 196. 
 
 F. 
 
 Feudal System checked in France by 
 the introduction of metayers, 206 ; in 
 England, an obstacle to accumulation, 
 379. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galiani, the first writer who showed 
 that wealth did not consist in money, 
 333. ^ 
 
 Germany — its nobles not taxable by the 
 Crown, 217; its capital not increased 
 by the establisliment of its Linen 
 Society, and wliy, 231 ; error of its 
 Government in excluding from con- 
 sumption the cheap manufactures of 
 England, 488; system of restriction 
 still prevalent tliere, 504. 
 
 Godwin— the refutation of his " Toliti- 
 cd Justice," the original object of 
 Malthus' "Essay on Population," 244. 
 
 Governments — effects of their being free 
 or despotic on the condition of the 
 laborer, 234, 265. 
 
 Greece cultivated by proprietors, aided 
 by slaves, 203 ; the metayer system 
 subsequently introduced there, 204 ; 
 contrast between it and North Ame- 
 rica, 525. 
 
 Greshams, the — their improved com- 
 mercial policy, 319. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hereditary Occupiers, constitute the 
 great mass of laborers in Asia, 83 ; 
 cannot be aff'ected by indirect taxa- 
 tion, 83 ; may, notwithstanding, be 
 powerful, luxurious, and warlike, 84 ; 
 their surplus produce belongs to the 
 State, 84 ; origin of hereditary right, 
 86 ; that form of tenure includes the 
 Asiatic ryots, 211 ; their characteris- 
 tics, 430. 
 
 Hindu Village System, description of, 
 214 ; its preservation with reforms in 
 Bombay, 290. 
 
 Hired Larorers maintained out of the 
 capital of their employers, 14. 
 
 History, a great source of economical 
 knowledge, 570. 
 
 I. 
 
 India — trade with it began to be im- 
 portant in the reign of Elizabeth, 327 ; 
 oppressive eflfects of the attempt to 
 raise a revenue there payable in money, 
 
 282. 
 
 A. 
 
 ABORERs divisible into three classes, 
 Unhired Laborers, Paid Dependants, 
 and Hired Laborers, 1 3 ; this division 
 founded on the nature of the funds 
 supplying their wages, 15; the classi- 
 fication purely an economical one, 1 8 ; 
 those that are maintained by capital 
 comparatively few, 65 ; the great 
 body of laborers produce their owai 
 wages, 80 ; some maintained by the 
 revenues of others, and some by 
 the capital of their employers, 80 ; 
 the social and economical position of 
 these three sets of laborers different, 
 81 ; their tenures of land various, 
 81 ; originally not owners of the 
 soil, 82 ; interest of the State to keep
 
 INDEX. 
 
 617 
 
 them attached to the soil, 8-5 ; the 
 eoiulitiou of the great mass totally dif- 
 ferent from that which ])revails among 
 us, 87 ; those maintained hy the re- 
 venues of othei-s form an important 
 class, 88 ; it includes the non-agricul- 
 turists of Asia, 89 ; transfer of that 
 class in our own country to capitalists, 
 90 ; unhired cultivators form the mass 
 of laborers, 117; such have existed 
 for ages, 117; are either propi'ietors, 
 
 ' tenants, or cultivators with a right of 
 succession, 118; general prevalence 
 of unhired cultivators, 120; condi- 
 tions which determine their wages, 
 124; differ from those which prevail 
 among us, 125; unhired laborers un- 
 popular in Europe, 129 ; the mass of 
 laborers not maintained by capital, 392. 
 ^Labor, the universal instrument of 
 wealth, but not its original source, 6 ; 
 wealth dependant on its efficiency, 7, 
 344 ; such efficiency determined by its 
 continuity, the skill employed, and the 
 mechanical power aiding it, 9, 347 ; 
 difference of, in Asia and England, 1 1 ; 
 division of labor only one of the results 
 of the use of capital, 29 ; is not, as 
 represented by Smith, the exclusive 
 cause of increased power of production, 
 32 ; the same labor capable of absorb- 
 ing more capital, Gl ; the efficiency 
 greatly increased by the superintend- 
 ence of capitalists, 67. 
 i^ABOu Fund, the, consists of three dis- 
 tinct parts, 80, 114, 415, 420; neces- 
 sity of distinguishing between tiiem, 
 16, 116; proportion between each, 416. 
 
 Labor Rents — their origin, 198. 
 
 Land Tax, the chief soui-ce of Anglo- 
 Indian revenue, 272. 
 
 Land — its appropriation by communities 
 instinctive, 119 ; the chief source of 
 public revenue at an early period of 
 civilization, 273. 
 
 Louis XIV., his jealousy of the wealth 
 of England, 267. 
 
 M. 
 
 Machinery, the great pillar of non- 
 agricultural wealth, 266. 
 ^Ialthus, the father of his special branch 
 of inquiry, 2 ; his classification of checks 
 to population defective, 95, 153 ; his 
 definition of moral restraint too nar- 
 row, 96 ; incorrectness of his principle, 
 that food increases in an arithmetical, 
 and population in a geometrical ratio, 
 
 97, 150, 240 ; tlie conclusions of his 
 essay, notwithstanding, true and im- 
 portant, 152; advantage of using the 
 term voluntary restraint instead of 
 moral restraint, as used by him, 155, 
 241 ; an inquiry into causes of in- 
 creased deaths and diminished births a 
 preferable mode of investigating the 
 subject, 162; his principle, that popu- 
 lation must eventually drain the re- 
 sources of the earth, eri'oneous, 255 ; 
 his definition of wealth adopted, 4 ; 
 also that of capital, 359, 393 ; his view 
 of rent mistaken by Ricardo, 589 ; his 
 correction of Smith's error regarding 
 profits, 590 ; his merit as the founder 
 of a new and important branch of 
 knowledge, 592 ; his difference with 
 the author on the subject of rent, 594. 
 
 Marriages, abstinence from, early in 
 life, productive of mixed effects, 157, 
 262 ; fewer in England than else- 
 where in proportion to the population, 
 252. 
 
 Mechanical Advantage not to be con- 
 founded with pure force, 24, 350 ; the 
 distinction between them essential in 
 comparing together the results of labor 
 in different countries, 352. 
 
 Merchant Adventurers — their esta- 
 blishment in the reign of Henry III., 
 314. 
 
 Metayers — their reappearance in France 
 and America, 130; their gradual 
 change into proprietors, 131 ; prevail 
 in the western division of Europe, 203 ; 
 ultimately established throughout the 
 Roman empire, 206. 
 
 Middle Classes — their influence in 
 England (from their number and 
 variety, better designated as interme- 
 diate classes) in improving the habits 
 and tastes of those below them, 493 ; 
 unfavorable effect of the want of such 
 classes in Ireland, 497. 
 
 Mills, of wind or water, the only me- 
 chanical forces in use among poor na- 
 tions, 28. 
 
 Misery not always attended with suffer- 
 ing, 110, 159 ; is not in all cases the re- 
 sult of privations affecting longevity, 
 111; as a clicck to population must be 
 interpreted in a wide sense, 159. 
 
 Monarchies — those in Asia absolute, 
 121 ; are dependent for their revenues 
 upon the soil, 121; disastrous effects 
 of their exactions, 123. 
 
 Money, the accumulation of, formerly 
 considered as the only mode of in- 
 creasing wealth, 545. 
 
 40
 
 618 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Moral Rf.straint interpreted by Mai - 
 thus iu too narrow a sense, 241 ; 
 reasons which led him to this confined 
 vicwofthesuhject, 96, 243. 
 
 MoKTALiTY, rate of, less in England 
 than on the continent, 161. 
 
 Mux, Thomas — his balance of trade sys- 
 tem, 321 ; account of his writings, 
 327 ; liis convicticm that bullion alone 
 constituted wealth, 332. 
 
 MuNRO, Sir Thomas — his establishment 
 in Madras of the ryotwary system, 
 287. 
 
 N. 
 
 National Education, advantage of, in 
 restraining maiTiage, 251. 
 
 Non-Agricultvrists — those in Asia, 
 arti/.ans and handicraftsmen, 1 1 ; sup- 
 ported by the surjdus produce of the 
 land, 136, 440; originally maintained 
 bv revenue, 136; the gradual transfer 
 of those who are producers to capital- 
 ists, 138, 444 ; results of that transfer, 
 458. 
 
 P. 
 
 Paib Dependents maintained out of 
 the revenue or income of their em- 
 ployers, 14. 
 
 Peasant Proprietors exist in France 
 and Germany, but more extensively in 
 the new world, 217. 
 
 PuARAOu — his revenue of one-tenth of 
 the produce raised by Joseph to one- 
 fifth, 212. 
 \ Political Economy has been too exclu- 
 sively limited to the form of society 
 existing in Great Britain, 1 ; materiul 
 wealth its subject matter, 187, 542 ; 
 the knowledge of it to be acquired by 
 the same methods as physical science, 
 182 ; embraces the consideration of 
 social organization, 406 ; its two lead- 
 ing divisions, production and distribu- 
 tion, 551 ; its connection with legisla- 
 tion, 574. 
 
 Precious INIetals, long considered to be 
 the only wealtli in the world, 293 ; 
 their exportation prohibited, 308 ; sub- 
 seciuently allowed as a means of eventu- 
 ally increasing the store, 321. 
 
 Priesthoods — their protection of the 
 people from the ojjprossion of their 
 rulers, 121. 
 
 Proiu'ck Rents — conditions which give 
 rise to them, 4.^7. 
 
 vpRODUOTioN not fuUy completed until 
 the objects produced reach the con- 
 sumer, 192, 391. 
 
 Productive Industry is limited by 
 capital, 33 ; determined by three causes, 
 viz., its continuity, the skill employed, 
 the power that aids it, 189 ; is aifected 
 by the form of wages, 221 ; prodigious 
 increase of, consequent upon the inter- 
 vention of capitalists advancing wages, 
 455. 
 
 Popular Rights extended by economi- 
 cal improvements, 236. 
 
 Population increases more rapidly in 
 some cases than in others, 94 ; is re- 
 tarded by checks which diminish 
 births or increase deaths, 94 ; Mal- 
 thus' classification of these checks de- 
 fective, 95, 153; some habits that in- 
 crease mortality not vicious ; 95, 112 ; 
 various neutral causes act as checks, 
 96, 100 ; voluntary restraint the most 
 influential, 97 ; the increase of popu- 
 lation diminishes the rate of its pro- 
 gress, 97 ; does not outstrip the sup- 
 plies of food, 98, 255 ; its increase 
 limited by the subsistence required by 
 each class to meet all its wants, 99 ; 
 may or may not be afieeted by changes 
 in tlie rate of real wages, 169, 248, 
 472 ; enumeration of the circumstances 
 aifecting the rate of increase of num- 
 bers when wages rise, 474 ; considera- 
 tion of the influence on that rate of a 
 fall in wages, 517 ; different eff"ects of 
 a gradual or sudden fall, 519 ; a re- 
 tarded rate of increase favorable to 
 happiness, 531. 
 
 Potteries in England, the success of 
 their establisliment owing to the cheap- . 
 ness of what they produce, 486. 
 
 Productiveness of Labor may, on the 
 whole, be increased, notwithstanding 
 its decrease in some particular branches, 
 584. 
 
 Profits not the sole source of accumula- 
 tions, 45 ; must not be confounded 
 with additional produce, 46 ; contri- 
 bute to capital in proportion to their 
 mass, not in propoi-tion to their rate, 
 51, 229, 369; at an early period of 
 society are confounded with rents until 
 dissevered by the intervention of capi- 
 tal, 274 ; how far taxable, 276 ; the 
 rate of, has declined in England as 
 capital has increased, 370 ; the mo- 
 dern theory founded on the error of 
 su])posing its rate to be equal in all 
 occupations, 583 ; error of considering 
 tbcm as a deduction from wages, 590.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 619 
 
 R. 
 
 Raw PiioDUCE — peculiarity regarding its 
 division, 75. 
 .>^ENT has greatly contributed to im- 
 provements on the land, 41, 275; 
 error of supposing it to be the only 
 taxable income, 2G9 ; consists of sux'- 
 plus profits only where capital is mo- 
 bile, 274, 424 ; is an early source of 
 capital, 3()G ; is not an element of the 
 necessary price of commodities, 591. 
 ,^EVENUE — distinction between it and 
 capital, 35 ; its primary division into 
 wages, rent, and profits, 37, 78 ; un- 
 equal contribution of each kind to 
 capital, 38 ; its continuous expendi- 
 ture essential to the replacement of the 
 capital tliat is employed in production, 
 453 ; necessity of carefully distin- 
 guishing it from capital, 597. 
 ^^icARDo — his error in considering rent 
 merely as a transfer, instead of a crea- 
 tion of wealth, 589 ; his misconcep- 
 tion of Malthus' doctrine on i-ent, 590 ; 
 his definition of value correct only on 
 the supposition of natural and market 
 prices being always the same, 591 ; 
 his error in confounding proimrtionats 
 with real wages, 592. 
 
 Russia — division of its population, 
 42. 
 
 RvoTS may be included among heredi- 
 tary occupiers, 211 ; protected by the 
 Hindu village system, 215 ; their poli- 
 tical degradation the result of their 
 hard conditions of tenure, 219; their 
 resistance to the Zeraindary system, 
 284. 
 
 Ryotwary System — its establishment 
 at Madras by Sir T. IMunro, 287 ; its 
 failure and abandonment, 289 ; re- 
 introduced with modifications, 290. 
 
 Savings' Banks — facilities alforded by 
 them for accumulating capital, 39, 
 364 ; result of tbeir establishment in 
 England, 512. 
 
 S. 
 
 Statistics, importance of, in regard to 
 economical knowkdge, 571. 
 
 Secuuity oi- PuorEKTY essential to ac- 
 cumulation, 54. 
 
 Seres, a form of peasant tenantry, their 
 condition and position in society, 198, 
 435 ; condition of Crown serfs in Rus- 
 sia, 42; attempts in tliat country to 
 abolish serfdom, 131. 
 
 Si-.VRES — its celebrated porcelain manu- 
 facture an economical failure, 48.5. 
 
 Smitii, Adam — bis error in representing 
 profits as a deduction from wages, .590 ; 
 his admission that wages contribute to 
 the payment of ta.xes, 593 ; that the 
 fund for the maintenance of labor is 
 larger in rich than in poor countries, 
 not only ahsolutelji but relativchj^ 594 ; 
 agrees with the Economists, that manu- 
 factures give value to the surplus pro- 
 duce, 594. 
 
 Solomon — his power and magnificence, 
 122, 271 ; the Jews heavily taxed by 
 him, 212. 
 
 Staplf, Commodities — what were con- 
 sidered such, 299 ; prohibition of their 
 exportation, 301. 
 
 Surplus Produce limits the non- agri- 
 cultural population, and determines 
 their occupation, 76 ; has been origi- 
 nally appropriated by the monarch or 
 the State, 121. 
 
 T. 
 
 Taille — its oppressiveness in France 
 and abolition by the Revolution, 130; 
 causes the failure of a woollen manu- 
 facture at Abbeville, 2GS, 484 ; is 
 condemned by Vauban and Du Rois, 
 269 ; was an obstacle to accumulation, 
 380. 
 
 Taxes, such as are indirect not possible 
 in purely agricultural communities, 83 ; 
 do not fall exclusively on those who 
 pay them, 143; frequently shift their 
 incidence, 269 ; when indirect, a proof 
 of the increase of wealth, 278 ; in 
 England, are largely contributed to by 
 wages, 280. 
 
 Turkey — feebleness of its Government 
 an obstacle to accimiulation, 56. 
 
 U. 
 
 Unhired Cultivators are maintained 
 by self- produced wages, 13 ; consti- 
 tute the mass of laborers, 117 ; condi- 
 tions which determine their wages, 218. 
 
 Value— its definition by Ricardo cor- 
 rect only on the supposition that 
 natural and market prices are always 
 the same, 591.
 
 620 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Vaub/VN — his condemnation of the taille, 
 269, 502. 
 
 Vice, as a cheek to population, must be 
 taken in a wide sense, 161. 
 
 Voluntary Restraixt — advantage of 
 substituting- this phrase for that of 
 moral restraint, 100, 155, 211 ; is the 
 most influential check to population, 
 97 ; elevates and purifies the charac- 
 ter, 105 ; is not confined exclusively 
 to the upper classes, 109, 165 ; has a 
 virtucms tendency, 243; increases as 
 society progresses, 471 ; its ultimate 
 tendency to produce an equality of 
 births and deaths, 175. 
 
 W. 
 
 v^AGES in early times contribute most to 
 the formation of capital, 39 ; in some 
 stages of society are associated with 
 rent, 78, 87, 127 ; consist of the re- 
 ward of personal exertion, 79 ; their 
 amount determined by the number of 
 laborers compared with the fund des- 
 tined for their maintenance, 79, 238, 
 420 ; those of the great body of agri- 
 cultui'ists sclf-pi'oduccd, 81, 394, 416 ; 
 the increase of, not always followed 
 by an increase of population, 144 ; the 
 fall of, not a necessary consequence of 
 the fall of provisions, 145, 247 ; may 
 be increased by remission of taxes on 
 articles consumed by the laborer, 149 ; 
 changes in the rate of,- may or may 
 not affect population, 169 ; fluctua- 
 tions of, governed by various causes, 
 170 ; error of regarding them as a 
 
 fixed quantity, 247, 2G9 ; circum- 
 stances which influence their effect on 
 population, 248, 474 ; how affected by 
 taxes, 277 ; are not advanced out of 
 capital, except in the latest stage of 
 civilization, 392 ; are themselves the 
 origiiial source of capital, 363. 
 
 Walpgle, Sir Robert— his attempt to 
 extend the excise to a larger number 
 of commodities unsuccessful, 279. 
 vJiV"ANTS divided into primary and second- 
 ary, 101, 163, 465 ; the former limited, 
 the latter unlimited, 102, 245 ; in- 
 crease of these last as men rise in 
 society, 104,164; secondary wants are 
 motives to prudence, 164 ; their pro- 
 
 ^ffress, 467. 
 w-Wealth, in political economy, confined 
 to material objects, 4, 187, 342 ; why 
 so limited, 5, 342 ; earth and the ele- 
 ments its primary sources, 6, 189, 
 343 ; depends upon the efficiency of 
 labor, 7, 189, 344; its progress favor- 
 able to civil liberty, 60 ; its distribu- 
 tion determines the political and social 
 relatiofts of society, 75 ; in Asia chiefly 
 distributed through the State, 450 ; 
 has increased rapidly in England, not- 
 withstanding a declining rate of profit, 
 370 ; cause of such increase explained, 
 371 ; is the proper subject matter of 
 political economy, 542. 
 
 AViNDMiLLs first set up in the Nether- 
 lands, 356. 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zemindary System — its establishment 
 in Bengal by Lord Cornwallis, 283. 
 
 SIKIMIKN AUSriN, I'KINTKU, IIKItTFOUll,
 
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