UC-NRLF 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 CUus 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 BY 
 
 FEANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, 
 it 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, 
 OXFORD. 
 
 or THI 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Of 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND. 
 
 MDCCCLI. 
 
-' 
 
 LONDON : 
 GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON, 
 
 ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THESE Lectures were recently delivered at the 
 Ladies' College in Bedford Square ; but some pas- 
 sages which were omitted as unsuitable to the 
 audience, or by reason of the limits of time, are 
 now restored. 
 
 The delivery was a sudden thought, determined 
 on and begun in a fortnight's time. The publishing 
 is also enforced by the desire to put the lectures 
 more fully into the possession of the audience. In 
 the midst of many occupations I cannot hope to 
 give to them any elaborate perfection of form ; and 
 I have thought it far better to leave them with all 
 the directness, abruptness, and dictatorial manner 
 appropriate to teaching. Moreover, the necessity 
 of composing exactly thirteen lectures of an hour 
 each, has in part cramped the arrangement. But in 
 apologizing for defects of form, I would not wish 
 to imply that the opinions or thoughts are hasty*. 
 Where I have controverted great authorities, it is 
 after long and deliberate thought ; and not with any 
 desire to undervalue those by whose labours we 
 profit. But the very eminence of great writers 
 makes their errors mischievous, if not disavowed. 
 
 * Those who heard the lectures may have a right to be informed, 
 that some errors of fact into which I had fallen concerning the 
 English gold currency are here corrected by the kindness of a friend. 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 The penultimate lecture is strictly Political and 
 not Economical ; but the craving for remedies, natu- 
 rally induced by the statement of existing Economic 
 evils, almost forces a lecturer beyond the field of 
 his own science : and, as I have expressed at the 
 end, modern Socialism seems to me to spread because 
 of the silence of all but Socialists concerning the 
 remedy. I should, however, feel great dissatisfaction 
 in printing the Twelfth Lecture, were I not able to 
 refer for fuller explanation to Mr. Toulmin Smith's 
 recent volume on Local Self- Government, the 
 most important political work, as to me appears, 
 which the 1 9th century has produced in England. 
 Of the immense importance of Local Liberties, and 
 their actual deficiencies among us, I became fully 
 convinced during six years' residence in Manchester ; 
 but it is only from Mr. Toulmin Smith's works that 
 I have learnt the immense resources of the COMMON 
 LAW of England, and that nothing but the arbitrary 
 encroachments of Parliament at this moment hinders 
 a vigorous local legislation and local government, 
 under the fullest local freedom which can be desired. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ... 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Rise of Private Property. It exists before Law, yet is confirmed 
 or modified by Law ; and sometimes is created. What 
 things may be Private Property. What is Capital. Profits 
 of Capital. Wages. Usury and Interest. Gold and Silver 
 Money. Primitive Banking. Depreciated or suddenly 
 Deficient Currency. Commercial Crisis . . . .28 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 On Distribution. Relation of Profits to Distribution, and to 
 Production. Use and absolute necessity of Middlemen. 
 Effect of Competition on Price (especially of Food), on 
 Wages, Profits and Interest 51 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 1. Laws of Price, p. 80. 2. Tendency to Equalization of 
 Reward for equal Service, p. 90. . 3. Gteneral Deduc- 
 tions, p. 94. 4. On Fixed and Circulating Capital . . 97 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 On Population and the Distribution of Employments . .104 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 History and Nature of Landed Property and of Rent . .124 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Page 
 The Laws of Rent and Tithe 148 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 On various Tenures of Land. On Foreign Commerce and 
 Emigration . 179 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 On Government Revenue 207 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 Money and its Representatives .... . 238 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 National Debt and Poor Laws 263 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 Public Remedies for our Pauperism 287 
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 The Economical Remedies for Pauperism .... 314 
 
LECTURES 
 
 OK 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 WE are accustomed to speak of mankind as living 
 under two different conditions, the savage and 
 the civilized; and although the latter phrase is 
 exceedingly vague, it has a real contrast to the 
 former, which we shall do well to examine. 
 
 The savage state derives all its peculiarities from 
 the isolation of man. In it, each man does every- 
 thing for himself. He procures his own food, 
 makes his own weapons and his own canoe, huilds 
 his own hut, and, if he he an agriculturist, tills his 
 own ground. His clothes, his tents and their fur- 
 niture are made hy him or hy the females of his 
 family. Great resource is displayed in all this, 
 and at intervals an extraordinary perseverance in 
 industry. Yet the lahour thus hestowed is com- 
 paratively unfruitful, so that the savage is poor 
 
2 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and exposed to the severest sufferings in occasional 
 famine or violence of the seasons. Nor is this the 
 worst; but, as no man can be exempted from the 
 same routine of labour, little cultivation of mind is 
 possible; the materials and the art of writing are 
 unknown, so that there is no transmission and be- 
 queathing of thought, and no accumulating of 
 knowledge. Man, like the animals, then attains 
 his own small measure of individual perfection, and 
 dies, leaving his child to run the same monotonous 
 race. There is little or no perceptible progress in 
 successive generations, while the state of individual 
 self-sufficiency continues. 
 
 Men begin to cease to be savages, and take the 
 first step towards civilization, when they devote 
 themselves to different special occupations, so as to 
 be in a social sense necessary to one another. The 
 members of a savage tribe do indeed need mutual 
 aid for defence against enemies, just as do grega- 
 rious animals against wild beasts ; and the only 
 political duties and virtues of the savage turn on 
 warlike necessities. Were it not for these, each 
 family might live apart in the wilderness, as in fact 
 they sometimes do. But when Division of Labour 
 arises, no family can live alone, and the village-life 
 becomes essential. The moral and intellectual 
 effects of this are not inconsiderable, but my imme- 
 diate business is with the economical ones. You 
 must all be aware how much more profitable labour 
 becomes, when it is duly organized. If ten Eng- 
 lishmen were wrecked on an empty land, they 
 
THE FAMILY AND THE WORLD. 3 
 
 would presently adopt some distribution of duties : 
 some would fish, and some would hunt, some 
 would prepare shelter, and one would cook : but, 
 for each to attempt everything, they would see to 
 be ruinous to all. A small number of persons thus 
 thrown together, all being known to all, each 
 being an object of personal interest to the rest, 
 may live together as a single family. Any one who 
 was idle would be observed, rebuked, stigmatized, 
 and, if necessary, excluded from the general ad- 
 vantages. No buying or selling would be needed, 
 all might live on common property ; and during the 
 pressure of severe danger, while every life was 
 valuable, perhaps no jealousies or private interests 
 would disturb the general harmony. 
 
 But the continuance of such a state is simply 
 impossible, nor can it be shown ever to have 
 existed historically except for a little while in 
 certain religious unions. Even there it is broken 
 up by marriage. Wife and children are not only 
 dearer to each man than are his associates and 
 equals ; they are more peculiarly his to care for. 
 Hence the man who is more industrious, more skil- 
 ful or stronger than others, desires to devote his 
 supernumerary efforts rather to the especial com- 
 forts of these so dear to him, than of the whole 
 community. This in fact is his duty as well as his 
 tendency. And when numbers multiply, so that he 
 cannot familiarly know more than a small part of 
 them, the distinction is of necessity made (which 
 indeed exists from the first) between the FAMILY 
 
4 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and the WORLD. Within the Family there is no 
 buying nor selling, hut all that is needed hy any 
 memher is freely received : so much the more, in 
 order to he able to exercise such love within, 
 liberality must be restricted without. Within the 
 Family mine and thine is not said, but all is ours. 
 But beyond the Family each has rights against the 
 other ; what is mine is not thine, and what is thine 
 is not mine. Towards the Family, then, Love is 
 the only rule ; but towards the World Justice takes 
 precedence of Love. Within the Family there is 
 Inequality, Eule and Obedience ; in the World, 
 men meet Equals and Kivals. Private Property is 
 indeed often given away in nascent communities to 
 those beyond the Family with wonderful generosity, 
 especially food ; for hospitality is a chief virtue 
 among such : still, it is felt as a gift : and from the 
 day that the raisers of food become a special class 
 in the society, it becomes ordinarily necessary to 
 purchase the food by offering in exchange for it 
 some useful commodity. This we call Barter, which 
 is the commencement of economic co-operation. 
 
 All voluntary exchange being beneficial to both 
 parties, the primitive barter gives no room for 
 quarrel or question. But when two persons desire 
 to buy the same thing, a new element enters. An 
 ingenious man has built an elegant canoe, and two 
 others at once propose to buy it. One offers him a 
 full dress of splendid feathers, and a bow and arrows ; 
 the other offers him a set of hides well- cured, and 
 several mats. He takes which he pleases. If no 
 
RISE OF MARKETS. 5 
 
 one else can make canoes, the maker of it has a 
 Monopoly, or sole power of selling; and, if the 
 others can offer things similar in kind, is virtually 
 selling it by Auction to whichever will bid most. 
 This cannot be blamed morally. For there is no 
 natural reason why he should sell to one more than 
 to the other, or why he should give it in exchange 
 for two mats rather than ten mats. If one of 
 them is willing to give ten, what can justify a 
 bystander in saying that ten is too much? 
 
 In result, however, his monopoly cannot last 
 long. If there be a general desire for canoes, which 
 makes many persons willing to give liberally for 
 them, others will be induced to employ themselves 
 in canoe-making ; and ere long will be able to offer 
 to purchasers canoes nearly or quite as good. It 
 is then no longer an Auction ; for while on the one 
 side there are persons who bid against one another 
 for canoes, on the other also are canoe-makers 
 bidding against one another for purchasers. And 
 this is called Competition, and every scene of com- 
 petition is called a Market. 
 
 In passing I may answer the question, How 
 does a buyer differ from a seller ? He who gives 
 mats for a canoe, buys a canoe and sells mats. 
 Why then should he be called buyer more than 
 seller, or seller more than buyer ? The reply de- 
 pends not on the exchange, but on the previous 
 state of mind. He who comes into the market 
 saying, "I want: have you? "is a buyer: but he 
 who comes saying, " Do you want ? I have ;" is a 
 
6 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 seller. Both characters may be joined in one man, 
 hut are not necessarily. He who has a perishable 
 article, is eager to part with it, even if he just then 
 wants nothing in particular. He desires to exchange 
 it for anything more durable : he then is a seller. 
 He who wants immediately and urgently some one 
 article, and has one or more durable things to offer 
 for it, he is a buyer. 
 
 Here we meet for the first time the beautiful 
 providential arrangement which binds human life 
 together. Nothing is more urgently needed than 
 food : hence he who comes into the market to pur- 
 chase food would be unduly put into the power of 
 the food-raisers, only that food is a very perishable 
 commodity. Hence those who possess it are prac- 
 tically as eager to sell, as those who are hungry to 
 buy. Butchers, bakers, farmers, graziers, though 
 seemingly able to starve the community, are not on 
 that account socially powerful, or able to take ad- 
 vantage of other people's want. Small and highly 
 peopled countries, which import a large fraction of 
 their food, as Holland, Malta, and the Channel 
 Islands, for long periods of time are found to enjoy 
 as cheap a market as those who raise food for 
 themselves, and one decidedly steadier. 
 
 It will now appear that the first fundamental 
 phenomenon economically distinguishing more civi- 
 lized from savage life, is the periodical or per- 
 petual existence of a market. Without the market 
 there could be no generally established division of 
 labour, and in fact there must generally be speedy 
 
EXCHANGES INEVITABLE. 7 
 
 starvation to a part : without the market, men 
 must relapse into isolated and unprofitable lahour, 
 unless Families could be made of sufficient magni- 
 tude to embrace all economical advantages, and 
 willing to renounce all traffic beyond the limits of 
 the Family. The last point, however, is an un- 
 imaginable absurdity. Even great nations are 
 glad to make exchanges of produce and manufac- 
 tures, and find a vast economy in it. Though we 
 have iron, timber, hemp and hides at home, we 
 receive such things from Norway, Sweden and 
 Russia. Between us and Germany the exchange of 
 manufactures has been peculiarly complicated, each 
 nation seeming to give what it also receives. If 
 even great countries could not renounce traffic with- 
 out vast loss, it is obviously absurd to imagine that 
 Families, consisting (say) of 1000 persons each, 
 could, without wilful and wanton waste, use all their 
 produce on themselves and receive nothing from 
 without. There must always be a buying and 
 selling of at least Family with Family ; and such 
 buying and selling must go on in the public market 
 of the world, and essentially implies Competition, 
 without which there can be no such thing as Price. 
 I call your most special attention to this point. 
 No Market without Competition. To condemn 
 Competition is to condemn Buying and Selling. 
 Benevolent persons in every age, on seeing the sad 
 phenomena of misplaced labour, and of conse- 
 quent poverty, have been apt to murmur against 
 the whole economic structure of society. Miscal- 
 
8 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 dilations, smaller or greater, will and must be made. 
 If those who work at a certain trade (say, at Hats) 
 make more of their article than the community finds 
 it convenient to buy, a part remains unsold, or, in 
 order to attract buyers, is sold cheaper than was 
 calculated; thus the Hatmakers are losers. And 
 nothing but loss can possibly teach them that 
 they are overproducing. Take the case of new 
 shops. When new rows of dwelling houses are 
 erected, a certain number of new shops are opened 
 on speculation. If they succeed, more are opened ; 
 and so on, until they begin to fail. In all trade a 
 partial loss is thus at last inevitable, and ought to 
 be counted on, and covered by general profits. 
 Now in the best- ordered system, the market is ex- 
 tremely sensitive. Where there is a public ex- 
 change, and all the smaller trafficking blends into 
 one, the decline of half per cent, in prices may 
 warn the manufacturer that production is becoming 
 excessive, and he perhaps instantly checks his pro- 
 ceeding, before any serious loss is incurred. But 
 many causes often induce a contrary result. Igno- 
 rance and poverty can neither change nor suspend 
 their trade. Great manufacturers are often forced 
 to go on producing, because they will lose still 
 more by letting their machinery stand idle ; and for 
 many reasons a market will get from time to time 
 painfully glutted. Prices fall suddenly; rich men 
 become bankrupt, honest workers are left without 
 employ, and are hereby sometimes exposed even to 
 starvation. The evils and hardship of this ought 
 
COMPETITION NECESSARY TO MARKETS. 9 
 
 never to be made light of; and let me assure you 
 that I (for one) look with no complacency on the ex- 
 isting state of the mass of English workers. But 
 be it remembered, it is a complicated and immense 
 problem to feed 20 million mouths. In a savage 
 state, Great Britain would perhaps have only half a 
 million. To interfere artificially with the great 
 agencies by which this vast population feeds itself 
 is a most delicate and dangerous affair ; in which 
 the purest philanthropy, unless guided by true and 
 positive science, would be ruinous. If any one 
 propose measures for elevating our working class, 
 by all means let us acknowledge that his object is 
 excellent, and the attempt anything but superfluous. 
 But if he accompany his plan with invective against 
 Competition as in itself an evil thing, then, what- 
 ever his benevolence, I cannot refrain from charac- 
 terizing his scheme as ignorant and dangerous. 
 
 I do not speak at random. Printed papers have 
 been put into my hands, which advocate the esta- 
 blishment of Christian villages in which common 
 property is to be the rule. To recommend these, Com- 
 petition is denounced as an essentially unchristian 
 principle; (of course that means a base and evil 
 principle;) and to this statement the names of three 
 English bishops are annexed. The same tone of 
 address prevails in all those who are endeavouring 
 to promote what they call Christian Socialism. 
 
 The danger to the uneducated, arising from this, 
 is, that they are incited to rancour against their 
 own equals who dare to compete with them, and 
 
 B 3 
 
10 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to accept work which they want to keep for them- 
 selves. The only competition which they see, is, 
 that to which they are themselves exposed; that 
 capitalists also have to stand competition, escapes 
 them. Selfish violence against their rivals is thus 
 held up as a venial, if irregular, punishment of 
 guilt. 
 
 To bystanders, on the other hand, this Socialistic 
 scheme is dangerous, because it furnishes idle minds 
 with a ready-made creed, and saves them the effort of 
 thought. In every break up of old beliefs any new 
 system that can start with enthusiasm has a good 
 prospect of adherents. If discontented with Old 
 Physic, we easily become Homoeopaths or Hydro- 
 paths; not so much because we have proof that either 
 new system is true, but because we find the old 
 one unsatisfactory. The same cause gave currency 
 to Astrology and Egyptian Keligion in old Kome, 
 and afterwards to Mohammedism in the East, and, 
 in modern times, to Fourierism in France, to Mor- 
 monism in America. The Socialists appear to me 
 to be so empty of proof, as scarcely to deserve 
 scientific reply; but their strength lies in the ten- 
 dency of men to accept any new system which 
 pretends to obviate felt grievances. 
 
 Their errors I would classify as moral, political, 
 and economical. Moral: 1st, in speaking as though 
 my duties were equal towards all mankind; which is 
 untrue. To have any but a very secondary care for 
 those who are unconnected with me in the relations 
 of life, would be a hurtful Quixotism. 2nd, in 
 
ERRORS OF SOCIALISM. 11 
 
 wonderfully undervaluing the difficulty of subduing 
 a ruinous selfishness in a community that lived on 
 common property. Political: in imagining that 
 such a community, if men were allowed to choose 
 their own occupations, would not presently break in 
 pieces from their rival preferences; or that if it 
 were subjected to the despotism of a single mind, it 
 could fail to degenerate into apathetic stupidity. But 
 my peculiar business is with the Economic error, 
 which consists in blindness to the fact, that there 
 can be no such thing as Price except through the 
 influence of Competition; and that if they mean to 
 allow exchanges between Community and Commu- 
 nity, they ought to abandon this declamation against 
 Competition. 
 
 Consider once more the circumstances of exchange. 
 
 If human labour were so uninventive, that the 
 best organized industry were absorbed on mere 
 necessaries, food, clothing and shelter; there would 
 be room for the argument, that, wherever was a 
 superfluity of these things, all who needed might 
 be allowed to help themselves freely. This is the 
 state of brute animals, and approximately of 
 savages. But when, through the ingenuity which 
 God has given us, our labour becomes tenfold and 
 twentyfold in efficiency, when, in consequence, a 
 large part of a nation must either be idle, or pro- 
 duce luxuries, (I mean here, things not necessary,) 
 it is absurd to argue in the same way. For instance, 
 if Velvet is produced, how is it to be exchanged 
 with Potatoes ? Is it not egregious nonsense, and 
 
12 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 almost a desecrating of right sentiment, to say, 
 "the Law of Love shall rule: let them take as 
 much velvet as they need ; and let us have as many 
 potatoes as we need ? " The reply is, first, that no 
 one needs velvet; next, that it is not the Law of 
 Love to let each help himself; for while supply is 
 limited, one may so do it as to deprive others. To 
 discuss and discover how much a man needs, is an 
 infinite question. 
 
 The only feasible mode, is that of a Poor Law, 
 which, under certain circumstances, doles out a 
 definite supply to each. And this breaks down of 
 itself, unless the persons thus relieved are a small 
 fraction of the whole. The many must support 
 themselves by free exchange. The truth is really 
 plain, but needs to be enforced, that Competition, 
 though (like all the laws of Nature) often severe, is 
 yet a beneficial, as well as a necessary process. If I 
 desire to get my garden dug, and am about to pay 
 a man 4s. for his day's work, merely because I have 
 been accustomed to pay that sum, but before I have 
 agreed with him, another man offers to do the same 
 work for 3s. Qd., the presumption is that the latter 
 is in greater need, and that (unless I am in some 
 previous moral relation to the former, which ought to 
 be respected) I shall do a more humane act by employ- 
 ing the one at 3s. 6d., than the other at 4s. I do not 
 now treat of the prudential question. The cheapest 
 priced work is not always truly the cheapest. I 
 merely say, that if it le really the cheaper, and if 
 we be in no nearer moral relation to one than to the 
 
PRICE NOT INHERENT IN ARTICLES. 13 
 
 other of the parties, my humanity, quite as much 
 as my parsimony, will dictate my receiving the 
 cheaper hargain. 
 
 However, in theory, might we not lay down that 
 the time occupied in producing an article measures 
 its value ? Then if one man can hunt, shoot, and 
 bring hack a bag of game in the same time that 
 another can carve a walking-stick, the stick and the 
 bag of game ought to be of equal value in the market. 
 But it is obvious, that no one can know how long 
 another takes or ought to take about his work, 
 except by aid of competition. When fowlers bring 
 strings of dead birds into the market, their com- 
 petition lowers the price so as to put a fine on the 
 unskilful or idle; and again, so as to punish them 
 all, if they kill more birds than are wanted. Surely 
 this is a most wholesome principle. It forces all to 
 sell at or nearly at the price of him who can afford 
 to sell cheapest; which is to the universal benefit of 
 buyers. And as they sell only in order to buy, 
 they reap the benefit of competition in their turn, 
 when they come forward as buyers. 
 
 It might seem needless to say, (were not Party 
 Spirit so rife,) that the desire to buy cheap and sell 
 dear is not the sole motive of human action: as 
 well suppose Fire to be the only element, or love of 
 property the only passion. If some are avaricious, 
 and live only for gain, this is surely no reason for 
 saying that the desire of Property is an evil thing. 
 We are to be liberal and generous in due place; but 
 in order so to be, we must have something to give 
 
14: POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 away; and if we are to husband our resources, we 
 cannot be wholly indifferent to the price which we 
 get for the commodities which we sell. In the 
 market of the world, Justice, and not Charity, re- 
 gulates our dealings; and it is just to receive what 
 another is willing to give. Charity (or Mercy to- 
 wards the distressed) has also her own appointed 
 place even in the sphere of Politics ; but it is not 
 a transaction of the market, nor does it concern 
 Political Economy, any more than the mutual 
 liberalities of a family circle. 
 
 I have thus far endeavoured to show, that the 
 civilized state is one in which markets are per- 
 petual; that markets essentially imply Competition, 
 and that Competition has been most erroneously and 
 causelessly vituperated. I proceed to trace in sketch 
 the natural history of economic progress. 
 
 Intelligence first develops itself in Towns, and 
 the industry of the country lags behind, being 
 generally retarded by serfdom and ignorance. I 
 reserve for a future lecture the consideration of 
 landed Property; but I may say, that in many 
 countries of the Ancient World, society resolved 
 itself into four main divisions, 1, civilians and lite- 
 rary men, all called priests ; 2, warriors ; 3, mer- 
 chants and artisans; 4, peasants. This is often 
 regarded as peculiarly Oriental. In Europe, the 
 Druidical system of old times, and the Eoman 
 Catholic of the Middle Ages, had no hereditary 
 Priesthood; but the Priests were adopted out of the 
 other classes. Neither from the warriors nor from 
 
CASTES, GUILDS, AND CLANS. 15 
 
 the peasants could any economic improvements 
 spring, which almost always came from the mer- 
 chants and artisans, aided by the intelligence of the 
 Priests. In early times these classes show a pow- 
 erful tendency to the hereditary transmission of 
 their art or occupation, so that Castes are presently 
 generated. When skill is improving, each father is 
 disposed to impart his skill to his own sons. Espe- 
 cially when books scarcely exist and all teaching 
 must be by word and hand, every workshop is a 
 school, and every workman is a teacher of appren- 
 tices. The natural tendency in every father to 
 transmit his trade to his son, was then sometimes 
 made compulsory, especially in the most populous 
 communities. This I think may be probably attri- 
 buted to the jealousies of trade-unions. When a 
 father found it hard to get work in his own trade 
 for all his sons, he was angry with men of the same 
 trade who taught the craft to any but their sons. 
 An outcry from their fellows arose against all who 
 thus glutted the market, as they viewed it; and the 
 trade-union would probably forbid its members to 
 take apprentices except from the families of those 
 already in the trade. This would be meant as 
 "Protection" to themselves. But since other trades 
 would imitate the example, the rule was built up on 
 all sides that each man must follow his father's 
 business, since he found himself shut out from all 
 other business. In the end, none were the better. 
 The tailors had wished to keep the tailoring trade 
 for their own children ; but in consequence, no tailor 
 
16 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 could bring up his son as a shoemaker or hatter : 
 which was virtually to enact that each trade must 
 expand in the very same proportion as the entire 
 population. If the numbers of the trade increased 
 in a faster ratio than this, they were made miserable ; 
 if in a slower, the public got bad or deficient goods. 
 It seems incredible that Castes (as a system com- 
 pulsorily hereditary) were ever imagined originally 
 by a speculative mind : they arose of themselves, 
 out of the colliding forces of society, and were 
 afterwards sanctioned by law and made obligatory 
 by religion. While I think it certain that these 
 restrictions were economically hurtful, they never- 
 theless rose out of unions which were morally be- 
 neficial, and they contributed to the intimacy of 
 those unions. Intermarriages took place to a great 
 extent between families of the same trade, though 
 it is not probable that that was compulsory: thus 
 they looked on one another as kinsmen. Indeed, 
 among the Greeks and Romans, the primitive popu- 
 lation was broken up into clans, all the members of 
 which regarded one another as akin, and celebrated 
 their relationship by special religious meetings. But 
 this was a political, not a commercial development, 
 and was so much the more valuable, because the 
 members were not of one trade. In the Middle 
 Ages of Europe, the chartered towns had an orga- 
 nization depending on guilds or commercial com- 
 panies, which taught their art to apprentices only 
 under special conditions. We have full reason to 
 believe, that skill was on the whole as much 
 
LOSS OF OUR MORAL UNIONS. 17 
 
 advanced by this system, as by tbe severer one of 
 Caste. 
 
 Every trade-union or Company, while it is 
 moderately well conducted, and holds the rich as 
 well as the poor, serves many important purposes. 
 A prominent evil, in that stage which we have ob- 
 tained, is, the isolation of families from all powerful 
 support, when unforeseen and undeserved distress 
 comes on. A union of different trades, as in a 
 Greek or Koman clan, is far better than of one 
 trade ; because it often happens that one trade 
 alone is peculiarly exposed to commercial suffering : 
 then the others are able to help it. A union con- 
 sisting of only the poor members of one trade, has 
 little economical use ; as of working weavers, with- 
 out the capitalists who employ them. JBut an 
 English guild in old days took in the rich mer- 
 chants as well as poor shopkeepers, and not only 
 kept up good feeling between richer and poorer, 
 but rescued the poorest from the danger of perish- 
 ing unseen and unknown. Still, it could not exist 
 without large internal power over its own members. 
 The rest of the community ill bore the conditions 
 on which alone it allowed apprenticeship ; thus the 
 demand for more freedom undermined these commu- 
 nities, and reduced them to comparative insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The freedom which we have attained has great 
 Economic advantages, but so many Moral disad- 
 vantages as might make one hesitate in choosing it, 
 if any alternative were open to us. What is it that 
 
18 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 often makes the population of an old country- 
 village pleasant to us ? It is, because every man 
 has a character to lose. All have been known to 
 all from youth. There may be a few persons bad 
 beyond cure; yet even towards them long know- 
 ledge produces a kindly feeling, which keeps them 
 from the worst extremes. At any rate, no one can 
 fall into evil courses, nor into distress, without its 
 being known and observed ; and common men are 
 more virtuous, when strong public opinion watches 
 them. Such is the state of a community which 
 grows entirely from ivithin and rather slowly. But 
 a modern town is largely peopled by immigrants, 
 unknown to one another and to the old inhabitants. 
 Just as a country loses patriotism and organic 
 union, when new settlers come in from different 
 quarters so rapidly as to outnumber the natives ; so 
 to sustain the true corporate spirit of a modem 
 rapidly- formed town is hardly possible. Men come 
 to it, not to live there, not because they were born 
 there, not because they love the place, but, to 
 get money there ; hence they have seldom the same 
 attachment to the people, whom in fact they do not 
 know. Such considerations belong not to Political 
 Economy, but to Politics; yet they are not the less 
 important : and if Economists discard them as not 
 forming part of their science, they ought to remem- 
 ber far more than they do that their science does not 
 include the whole of Politics, and is not the sole 
 guide of the Statesman. 
 
 It has indeed been much contested, what are the 
 
LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE. 19 
 
 limits of Economical Science. The narrowest defi- 
 nition of it is that of Archbishop Whately, who 
 regards it as the Theory of Exchanges, and desires 
 to substitute for it the name Catallactics. The 
 widest is that of those who virtually would make it 
 synonymous with Politics ; but this is done by those 
 only who are ignorant of and prejudiced against 
 our science, which they try to swamp and swallow 
 up, by diverting the mind to other subjects. Be- 
 tween these two extremes lies the view of the great 
 founder of sound Economical Science, Adam Smith. 
 He called it, the theory of National Wealth. It 
 does not study mere Exchanges ; it also includes 
 the doctrine of Property and the effects of Taxation, 
 Poor Laws, and National Debt. Hitherto, the value 
 of the Science has been great in dispelling false and 
 injurious theories, but very small in originating 
 positive benefit; and for this it has been scoffed at; 
 but very unjustly. The same may be said of 
 Physic and of Politics. Physicians are themselves 
 ready to allow how unsatisfactory are the practical 
 results of their art in curing disease; yet their 
 science is of great value in repressing false pre- 
 tenders and mischievous treatment. Were there 
 no educated physicians among us, we should be 
 deluged with Astrology, Charms, and Magic. The 
 science of Politics has hitherto had still less per- 
 ceptible effect; but it saves most educated minds 
 from wild and false expectations, and gives sobriety 
 to their efforts. In Political Economy the danger 
 of quackery is immense ; as the history of opinion 
 
20 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 shows : and those who have not studied systemati- 
 cally the works of men who have devoted them- 
 selves to the science, are (here as in other branches 
 of human knowledge) apt to trust their own 
 theories, and to name all others mere theorists. 
 
 I cannot better conclude this lecture, than by a 
 sketch of the false theories which have been suc- 
 cessfully dispelled. 
 
 Hitherto I have refrained from naming the word 
 money. Even to children who know the fable of 
 king Midas, it may seem too plain to need enforce- 
 ment that Gold and Silver are not alone or peculiarly 
 wealth. As useful commodities they are wealth, 
 as much as, but not more than, copper and lead. 
 Coined Money is of great convenience, since in it 
 the prices of all things can be measured. We 
 have not to study how many casks of wine are 
 worth so many bales of wool, and again, how much 
 wool is worth so much cloth ; but each is computed 
 in Money, and then the comparison between any 
 two is easy. Thus money is not wealth, but is the 
 common measure of the worth of articles. Never- 
 theless, as it is by means of money that we prac- 
 tically purchase, the vulgar or childish idea of a rich 
 man is that of one who has a vast sum of gold locked 
 up somewhere. Just so, the Asiatics imagine that 
 England must possess gold mines, because we are 
 so rich : and mercantile speculators three centuries 
 ago fell into this childish conception that Gold and 
 Silver was the truest kind of wealth. Hence they 
 inferred that the way to enrich a nation was to 
 
THE OLD MERCANTILE THEORY. 21 
 
 enact laws that should as far as possible draw the 
 precious metals in, and hinder their going out. 
 Now in selling, we receive money ; in buying, we 
 spend it ; so that the aim was to be, to sell as much 
 as possible, and buy as little as possible, so that a 
 balance of gold and silver might every year be due 
 to the country. Accordingly the entrance of 
 foreign goods was to be either prohibited or at least 
 discouraged by heavy duties upon them, and the 
 exportation of native products or manufactures was 
 to be encouraged by giving every facility, and 
 sometimes even by paying bounties to the exporting 
 merchants out of the public purse. 
 
 If such a system could have been consistently 
 acted on, by one and only one nation, as England, 
 the end of it must have been to accumulate into 
 England a vast and perpetually increasing quantity 
 of gold and silver, and to drain us of all useful and 
 pleasant things besides. The country would be 
 living like a miser in a garret, with vast hoards 
 which he has not the heart to use, slaving himself 
 to no purpose, and barely consuming enough to 
 sustain life. When the time comes for spending, 
 then no doubt his treasures will be of use : but 
 when will that be ? If a nation is liable to the 
 sudden attack of war, there may be an advantage 
 (political rather than economical) in keeping a trea- 
 sure of several millions in hard metal against such 
 a contingency : but the sum then is limited ; 
 whereas in the Mercantile Theory no limit, was set. 
 The money was coveted to possess, and not to use. 
 
22 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 If this theory had any truth, the richest countries 
 would be those which possessed mines of the pre- 
 cious metals ; and their proper policy would he, to 
 dig up the ore, to smelt it, to give it its greatest 
 purity and beauty, and then lock it up in fort- 
 resses and forbid the exporting of a single ounce : 
 after which the nation would be wealthy ! 
 
 Monstrous as is this philosophy, it was so 
 adopted into public policy, and most eminently by 
 England, that it has taken 60 or 70 years to 
 extirpate its enactments among ourselves. Its evils 
 are still alive here, and yet more all over Europe ; 
 and, under other names, outcries are still raised for 
 its restoration. 
 
 But it will be clear to you, that a system so 
 selfish in its aim must always be defeated. If it 
 were true that Gold and Silver were the only wealth, 
 and if England endeavoured by artificial law to 
 retain for herself all the Gold and Silver of the 
 world, of course France and Germany and Spain 
 would retaliate. If we excluded their products, 
 they would exclude ours. If we said to them, 
 " We will sell to you, but we will not buy of you," 
 they would assuredly reply to the very same effect : 
 thus all commerce would be stopped, unless one 
 could overreach the other : and if the mining coun- 
 tries were wise enough, they would (it seems) im- 
 poverish all the rest by withholding the precious 
 metal. To dwell further on these absurdities is 
 needless ; but it is well to insist that, a century 
 ago, these were held as an indubitable creed by 
 
MODERN " PROTECTION." 23 
 
 nearly all statesmen, and that two generations had 
 to die and a third to arise, before the truths declared 
 by Adam Smith could gain any wide currency ; so 
 inveterate is error, when it has found its way into 
 public enactments. 
 
 You must consider how a law practically acted, 
 which, in order to increase the Gold and Silver in 
 the country, excluded certain foreign products. It 
 gave a far greater development to the trades which 
 produce the corresponding native products. Thus, 
 if foreign wool is taxed and foreign manufactured 
 silk excluded, the effect is to promote the demand 
 for English wool and English silks, provided that 
 the increasing population and wealth of the country 
 enable them to consume them largely and pay 
 liberally. The English sellers are in that case 
 made more numerous than they would have been, 
 but they are not individually the richer for it. (The 
 full proof of the last point I cannot here give ; but 
 it is sufficient to say that, as a fact, the Spitalfields 
 silkweavers were no better off, but rather worse 
 than other trades, before they were exposed to 
 foreign competition ; and so were the English 
 farmers.) The law, therefore, which was intended 
 to increase the Gold in the country, though it could 
 little effect that, did something else which it did not 
 intend, viz. it raised up a class of persons liable 
 to loss or ruin, if now exposed to competition with 
 the foreigner. They were accordingly said to be 
 protected : and because it was a hardship to them 
 to have to bear a new competition, a more recent 
 
24 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 theory arose, which forgot all about Gold and Silver, 
 but pretended that the fostering of certain native 
 products, especially corn by refusing the foreign 
 articles was in itself a legitimate object with the 
 State. 
 
 This new theory was partly Political, partly 
 Economical. Politically ; it was said to be dan- 
 gerous to depend on the foreigner for supplies of 
 corn ; for perhaps he might starve us, if war broke 
 out, or might severely humble us under threat of 
 starvation. The replies to this are decisive. 1. 
 During the great war against Napoleon we had 
 many years of deficient harvests, and though he 
 was often master of the whole Continent, he never 
 could hinder our getting as much corn as we chose. 
 2. Malta and Holland, which always import largely, 
 have, in spite of war, had steadier markets than 
 other countries. 3. We should never depend on 
 one country only for supplies of corn, but of course 
 on many : IF these were all to combine against us, 
 no doubt it would be a severe struggle ; so it would, 
 with or without corn laws. 4. A country which 
 sells corn, is as truly liable to ruin by losing its 
 market, as a country that buys is liable to starva- 
 tion. What are English farmers clamouring for, 
 but for the advantage of selling to English towns- 
 men ? Are we to suppose that Polish, Eussian, 
 Spanish, American farmers, if once habituated to 
 supply the English market, would not be equally 
 resolute not to lose their good customers? Our 
 Henry VIII., in a despotic freak, declared war 
 
SCARCITY PRICES OF FOOD. 25 
 
 against the Low Countries* ; but he was forced to 
 make peace by the revolt of his agricultural sub- 
 jects, who were frantic at the prospect of losing 
 their best customers, the Dutch. Thus, free trade 
 was so far from exposing the Dutch to being starved 
 by the English despot, that it actually forced him 
 to keep the peace towards them. After fifty years 
 of really free trade in Europe, international war 
 would be as difficult to bring about, as Civil War is 
 at present: and already, the Peace Interests of 
 England have strengthened immensely. 
 
 But next, for the economic side of Protection. It 
 was said, that native workers have a natural right 
 to be shielded by law from the competition of 
 foreigners. If foreign provisions had been totally 
 excluded, it would have been more consistent : but 
 when famine set in, all restrictions were broken 
 down. It was too flagrantly absurd to say, that 
 Englishmen must starve, because English farmers 
 had not been able to produce enough to feed them. 
 
 The milder theory amounted to this that Eng- 
 lishmen must be half starved, for the convenience 
 of English farmers or landlords. I speak seriously. 
 Only by a stinted supply is it possible to force 
 prices up, which was the thing aimed at. The 
 events of the last three years ought to silence all 
 objectors. The quantities of foreign food poured 
 
 * This was in the year 1528. I delivered the words in the text 
 from memory, and have not been able to find my original source of 
 knowledge. But the notices in the Pictorial History of England, 
 book vi. pp. 779, 780, substantially confirm my statement. 
 
 OF TMt 
 
 DIVERSITY I 
 
 V.J?4/ lriftJ\K S 
 
26 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 in is prodigious, the tilled acreage of England does 
 not diminish, the cattle of England greatly in- 
 creases, yet all is consumed. The population has 
 had but a trifling increase, the increase of consump- 
 tion is immense ; it is clear, then, that hundreds of 
 thousands were previously underfed. I must repeat: 
 the aim of the old law was to raise price, that 
 could only he done hy diminishing supply, so that 
 unless the people had heen half-starved, the law 
 must have failed : and fail accordingly it did, when 
 several good harvests came together. Thus, under 
 it, the towns and the rural population were doomed 
 alternately to suffer misery. Protection has heen 
 clearly shown to mean, a thieving from one man 
 to give another the half, and waste the other half 
 on the way. 
 
 The Commercial Theory of Gold and Silver 
 Wealth, and the theory of Protection, have thus been 
 successively exploded from English legislation ; but, 
 in attaining our present freedom, we have lost all our 
 old unions. Guilds are of little efficacy. The new 
 trade-unions, being only of the poor workers, and of 
 those of the same or kindred trades, have not much 
 value as a cement of society. Municipalities and 
 Counties have fallen in proportionate weight : Cen- 
 tralization has increased ; population shifts more 
 rapidly ; contracts are made for shorter times ; the 
 union not only of buyer and seller, but of master 
 and servant, is a less permanent, and therefore a less 
 moral one. We have attained a high power of pro- 
 ducing wealth, but at the expense of moral rela- 
 
DISORGANIZATION OF ENGLAND. 27 
 
 tionships. Nay, more than ever we seem to have be- 
 come resolved into two great classes, Patrician and 
 Plebeian, separated generally by Education, some- 
 times only by Wealth. A large fraction of the na- 
 tion lives from hand to mouth, and feels little 
 alliance to its economic superiors. I think it im- 
 possible for any one to contemplate these facts with 
 a fresh eye, and not to feel grieved and humbled 
 that our vast resources have produced no better 
 result. It is not the largeness of our population 
 that is to be blamed; our disease is Moral, not 
 Economical ; for, comparing the production of 
 Great Britain with her numbers, we are the 
 wealthiest realm the world ever saw, except per- 
 haps that of the United States. 
 
 Such phenomena give rise to sorrow, alarm, and 
 projects for improvement in philanthropic and san- 
 guine minds. Most justly. But our philanthropy 
 will only do mischief, if it be not guided by a sound 
 understanding of the Economic Forces of society. In 
 hope of clearing your minds to a just discernment 
 of these things, I mean to treat in my future lec- 
 tures concisely of all the main subjects of Economy. 
 Although I have so distinctly renounced Socialism, 
 I shall not think it my place so much to combat 
 it, as to furnish you with the means of examining 
 either that or any other proposed industrial scheme. 
 
 c 2 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 Rise of Private Property. It exists before Law, yet is confirmed or 
 
 modified by Law; and sometimes is created What things may be 
 
 Private Property. What is Capital. Profits of Capital. Wages. 
 Usury and Interest. Gold and Silver Money. Primitive 
 Banking. Depreciated or suddenly Deficient Currency. Commer- 
 cial Crises. 
 
 IN my former Lecture I followed Adam Smith in 
 defining Political Economy to be the theory of 
 National Wealth ; hut hy the word National you must 
 not understand exclusively the wealth of the State 
 as distinguished from that of the wealth of the 
 individuals of the nation. Our science includes 
 both. I therefore almost think that it would be 
 better to drop the word National, and call it simply 
 the theory of Wealth : but I believe no definition 
 will really suffice to fix our outline properly. Kindred 
 sciences generally so run into one another, that unless 
 each trespasses a little, it leaves its own ground ill- 
 cultivated. Good sense must restrict such tres- 
 passes within moderate limits, but definition cannot. 
 In semi-barbarism, it may so happen that indivi- 
 dual Property scarcely exists. Among the ancient 
 Germans hospitality was carried to such a pitch, 
 that any one came at pleasure to live on the stores of 
 another; and when those were consumed, the host 
 conducted his guest to some new abode, where they 
 could both live at the board of some richer man. In 
 
RISE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 29 
 
 such a state of things, no one will labour for wealth. 
 All are contented with little ; or if more be coveted, 
 it is coveted to feed large bands of retainers. He 
 who by wealth and generosity can make himself a 
 central object to fifty or a hundred comrades, be- 
 comes a chieftain ; and as he looks to their swords 
 for support, he highly values every brave man 
 among them. Such a condition of things agrees 
 better with the pastoral, than with the agricultural 
 life : and at the time to which I refer, the Germans 
 lived much more by their flocks and herds than by 
 tilling the soil. A very similar relation of Chief to 
 Comrades still exists in parts of South Africa. In 
 Tartary, peihaps, as certainly among the Arab tribes, 
 it is modified by the long traditional veneration for 
 certain families. But when property is so little 
 valued, men do not willingly undertake the toil of 
 cultivating the earth ; and crops are more exposed 
 to the attack of an enemy, than herds which can be 
 driven away. No great industry can be called out, 
 until private property is an idea more definitely 
 formed and more sacredly respected. Until then, 
 the principal wealth of a country is that which (as it 
 were) grows of itself, flocks and herds; which 
 simply need a moderate amount of guarding ; and 
 even that wealth is not turned to its full advantage, 
 since the manufactures are undeveloped, which 
 would convert wool, hair, horn, hides, bone, into 
 their most beautiful and costly forms. 
 
 Private property, however, is recognized from the 
 beginning, in matters of luxury and ornament which 
 
30 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 an individual has elaborated. Thus, if a man with 
 a piece of sharp stone fashions the handle of a 
 hattle-axe into a handsome form; or if he dresses 
 up a splendid plume to adorn his head; he has a 
 sense of its being peculiarly and exclusively his 
 own, and will feel wronged if it be taken away from 
 him. In turn he is capable of feeling sympathy 
 with another as a wronged man, who is similarly 
 deprived. You will thus see that the idea and 
 sense of Private Property is not arbitrarily created 
 by Law, but is earlier than all Statute Law, and 
 inheres in a primitive social morality. But, although 
 Law does not originate and invent private property, 
 it confirms or regulates the idea, and sometimes so 
 adds to its force, that it may be said to create some 
 kinds of right. This I must briefly explain. 
 
 There is a stage of human advancement, in which 
 not only are Captives of war looked upon as the 
 absolute property of their captors, but Parents as 
 the absolute owners of their Offspring ; nay, in 
 which a Wife is a mere chattel, whom her husband 
 may dispose of at pleasure. Yet an innocent wife, if 
 cruelly treated, is avenged by her kinsmen ; and thus 
 some rights are reserved for married women. When 
 Law begins to form itself out of the chaos of 
 Custom, the rights of the head of each family are 
 farther defined and limited. First, a young man 
 able to bear arms is claimed as belonging to the 
 State and not to the Parent. Hence, though infanti- 
 cide is perhaps not yet censured, an adult son is freed 
 from the excessive power of the father. Next, where 
 
LIMITATION OF PRIVATE RIGHTS. 31 
 
 population is valued as essential to the strength of a 
 tribe, (as among the old Germans and modern 
 North American Indians,) even newborn children 
 are claimed as public property, and a parent who 
 slays them is stigmatized as unjust as well as un- 
 natural. Upon this, at a later stage, follow enact- 
 ments concerning Slaves. If men are treated like 
 cattle, their demoralization makes them dangerous 
 to the State; and Law interferes to secure for the 
 slave some rights against his owner. In a still 
 later progress, it is recognized that men are in no 
 sense fit to be the chattels of other men; and a 
 slavedealer not only has what he calls his " pro- 
 perty" taken from him, but is even liable to a 
 criminal prosecution as much as one who has slain 
 his infant child. All these are examples of Law 
 stepping in to diminish, regulate, or annihilate that 
 right of private property, which existed, or was 
 thought to exist, before Law. Civilized Law, how- 
 ever, is only the embodying and enunciating of a 
 more mature and comprehensive morality than the 
 savage mind was capable of conceiving. For it 
 does not regard the rights of one man only, but the 
 rights of all ; and it cannot admit as a right in one, 
 that which is discerned as a wrong in another. Yet 
 the slaveholder who is despoiled, naturally thinks 
 himself an injured person, if the enactment comes 
 on him suddenly, however long may have been the 
 previous preparation for it. 
 
 In these remarks I am desiring to illustrate the 
 statement, that Law sometimes, on moral grounds, 
 
32 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by considering the counter rights of other parties, 
 lessens or annihilates the previously imagined 
 rights of whole classes of men. On the other 
 hand, it sometimes artificially creates new rights. 
 This is most strikingly seen in the matter of Testa- 
 ments and of Corporate Property. By nature, what- 
 ever property a man possesses, is his to keep or his 
 to give away; and therefore by his last will he may 
 give it to whomsoever he pleases; and if the State, 
 in order to avoid the evil of each man arming for 
 the defence of his own, has taken on itself to defend 
 Property from the attack of violence, then it must 
 equally defend the rights of the Legatee or Heir, as 
 the rights of the Testator while he lived. But that 
 is no reason in itself, why the State should enforce 
 the Testator's desire to continue lord of his pro- 
 perty even after he is dead. If he chooses to give 
 it away and make another owner of it, as com- 
 pletely owner of it as he was himself, this is within 
 his natural power and right. But he has no natural 
 power or right to give it away under limitations : 
 to say, " this property shall belong to my wife, only 
 so long as she does not marry again; this shall 
 belong to my son, on condition that he does not 
 change his religion; these rents shall be paid to a 
 certain religious house, as long as it continues to 
 observe the statutes and recognize the creed which 
 I now dictate to it: and in order to enforce this my 
 will, I forbid the selling and using of this pro- 
 perty: only the yearly fruits, rents, produce of it 
 shall be enjoyed and used; I therefore vest the 
 
WHAT THINGS MAY BE PRIVATE PROPERTY. 33 
 
 nominal ownership in certain Trustees, who shall 
 secure the beneficial use of it to those others whom 
 I have named." Now I say, that it is for the State 
 to judge, whether it is or is not expedient to take on 
 itself to enforce the observance of such Wills. The 
 Courts of Law, in some civilized countries, would 
 refuse to lend their aid in extending a man's power 
 over property for one hour beyond his death; and 
 all must see the necessity of some limitation of 
 time, as regards Property in Land. On Land I 
 shall afterwards speak. It suffices now to say, that 
 Artificial Enactment (guided by an opinion of Ex- 
 pediency) alone decides whether a man shall or shall 
 not have any other power of disposal by Testament, 
 than that of unconditional gift. Nearly the same 
 remarks apply to Corporate Property. 
 
 Is there, however, any class of things in which 
 private property may be regarded as unconditional ? 
 There is : namely, those things which, first, can 
 possess no rights themselves that need to be de- 
 fended against the owner ; secondly, that either are 
 not essential to human life or exist in an abundance 
 practically unlimited, so that one man by his abso- 
 lute possession does not wrong others ; thirdly, 
 they must have been won by the owrer in some 
 peculiar and exclusive way, so that no one else can 
 claim joint or prior ownership. All these points 
 must be illustrated by example. 
 
 First, even brute animals must be regarded as 
 having some rights. Cruelty to them is everywhere 
 reprobated as immoral, and, under certain circum- 
 
 c 3 
 
34 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 stances, is punishable among ourselves. Thus, in 
 political strictness, it is only inanimate things which 
 can become absolute property. Still, since a man is 
 recognized as having a right over the lives of the 
 brute animals which are his property, this, in the 
 Economist's view, need not be distinguished from 
 unconditional controul. 
 
 Secondly, where natural forests abound, every 
 man may take as much timber as he pleases: he 
 deprives no one else. The same may be said of 
 Fish and of Game. Nay, water, although eminently 
 necessary to human life, is ordinarily so abundant 
 that every one may take, use, and waste as much as 
 he pleases. While the supply is unlimited, he may 
 gratify his luxury or his fancy with it to any extent. 
 He may make fishponds or lakes for sport, and he 
 wrongs no one. He may construct wheels and 
 troughs to convey water from a river, and irrigate 
 wide estates; yet, if the river fail not, no one can 
 complain. But observe the contrast, as soon as the 
 natural supply shows symptoms of failure : others 
 then begin to be alarmed, lest their portion become 
 deficient. In a crowded town municipal Law makes 
 regulations concerning the public streams : it ought 
 to forbid their defilement; and does so in the best 
 ordered communities. It will farther prescribe rules 
 for the use, and forbid the abuse, of so precious an 
 element ; which, in more extreme cases, is distinctly 
 claimed as public property. In the case of a town 
 beleaguered by an enemy, who cuts off the streams ; 
 if then any persons have wells in their courtyards, 
 
CAN NECESSARIES BE PRIVATE PROPERTY? 35 
 
 which continue to yield water as before, such wells 
 would be at once claimed by the public authorities. 
 Some indemnity or compensation might be awarded 
 to the owners on specific grounds, as, the expense 
 which had been incurred in digging and building 
 the well : but a claim of property in the water would 
 be set aside as absurd; if, for instance, a well- 
 owner demanded a right to sell the water at what- 
 ever famine-price he could get. This is an in- 
 structive illustration, how an article, which had 
 been private property as long as the supply was un- 
 limited, ceases to be private as soon as it becomes 
 stinted, if it be at the same time necessary to the 
 life or comfort of the community. 
 
 Thirdly, if one man have planted trees and 
 fenced them against the cattle, and another cuts 
 down some of them as timber and saws them into 
 planks, it is evident that we should wrong the 
 former, if we recognized the absolute right of the 
 latter in the article : but the right of the latter is 
 good, against all other persons than the planter of 
 the trees or his representatives. But to follow 
 such considerations farther, would belong to Juris- 
 prudence, not to Political Economy. 
 
 If thus we have gained a distinct idea of things in 
 which an absolute right of Private Property must be 
 recognized, we shall see the necessity of ordinarily 
 treating all inanimate movables and tame animals 
 in this light. Not but that, it being granted that 
 ornamental dress and furniture, stores of materials, 
 precious metals and stones, are Private Property, 
 
36 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the question arises, Shall a store of food be so re- 
 garded ? Or, granting that a velvet cloak is pri- 
 vate, shall llankets be so also ? On the one hand 
 it may be said, Food and Blankets are necessary to 
 life, and they are limited in quantity, therefore they 
 cannot.be Private Property. On the other hand, if 
 they have been caused to exist by the industry of 
 an individual, to disown his peculiar right in them 
 is manifestly unjust. It is, as manifestly, inexpe- 
 dient ; for it will discourage others from producing 
 them in future. Here indeed we may distinguish 
 between ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. 
 Under the pressure of foreign war or of unprece- 
 dented and unforeseen calamity, it may be justi- 
 fiable to seize on private stores in order to prevent 
 public starvation ; in which case, of course, a reason- 
 able and liberal compensation must be awarded to 
 the owners. Nor would such a phenomenon deter 
 future production; for, being quite exceptive and 
 unlikely to recur, the producers would not anticipate 
 its recurrence. Nevertheless, it will hereafter appear, 
 when I speak of the price of food, that even in the 
 extreme cases of famine such interference of the 
 Government with the market is of very doubtful good. 
 Except, however, in extreme and very rare emer- 
 gencies, (if even these need to be excepted,) we see 
 that Food and Clothing, although necessary to 
 human life, must be recognized as absolute private 
 property, when they have been earned or caused to 
 exist by private industry: and since Food and 
 Clothing do not drop down from heaven for us, but 
 
PROFITS OF CAPITAL. 37 
 
 always need industry to fetch or to apply them, wo 
 may shortly say, that " in all movables, the Law 
 recognizes an absolute right of private property." 
 
 Stores of such Property, when applied to aid 
 farther production, are technically termed Capital. 
 Without some store, an agricultural nation cannot 
 exist. A pastoral tribe may live on milk and 
 flesh, produced from day to day; but when harvests 
 come but once a year, a store of yearly food must 
 be laid by, to last till the next harvest. With the 
 advance of art, tools are invented and improved : 
 the spade, the plough, the cartwheel, the winnowing 
 shovel, the flail. Stores of timber, hides, wool, 
 copper, and iron, are laid up : all these things, as 
 well as hoards of food, are Capital; so too, in fact, 
 are flocks and herds. Economists, however, are 
 used to imagine a man's entire wealth divided into 
 two parts: one destined to immediate personal 
 enjoyment, the other, reserved to increase his future 
 wealth; and they confine the name of Capital to the 
 latter. According to this mode of expression, the 
 food which is needed to keep a man alive as an in- 
 strument of production is Capital; but the food 
 given to a minstrel who amuses him is not Capital. 
 The latter is simply consumed, the former is con- 
 sumed in reproduction. 
 
 It has appeared that Morality, and the public 
 Law which enunciates Moral rights, sanction the 
 recognition of these stores as Private Property. We 
 must consider farther what comes of this. An in- 
 genious man (let us say) has invented a Plough. 
 
38 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 His neighbours see that it saves labour, and beg 
 the loan of it. The owner is willing to lend, if 
 hire be paid on it, and his terms are accepted. If 
 this is found permanently advantageous to both 
 parties, he makes more ploughs, charges for the use 
 of them, and keeps them in repair. After deduct- 
 ing for the trouble of repair, the recompense which 
 remains is the Profit on his Capital, that is, on the 
 Ploughs. 
 
 Or again, a man who sees the new efficiency of 
 labour with a plough, is struck with the absurdity 
 of working with a wooden spade or a hoe; and offers 
 to work with the plough for the benefit of the owner, 
 for a stipulated remuneration, which is then called 
 Wages. Often it happens, that, from having no 
 store of food to last till the next harvest, a man is 
 glad thus to offer his services to another. He is 
 then fed from day to day, and receives other advan- 
 tages that are agreed upon, but claims no part of 
 the crop, which all belongs absolutely to him who 
 pays the Wages. So, if it be, not a harvest, but 
 some process of manufacture; say, the tanning of 
 leather. He who has Capital, which there means 
 the Materials for Tanning, with food or whatever 
 will purchase food, pays Wages to men willing to 
 assist his work, but expects the Leather that results 
 to be regarded as absolutely his own. 
 
 One mode of Contract is better than another ; 
 but the Contract is a matter of private concern, and 
 whatever it may be, it must be recognized by the 
 Law. Of course it might be so made, that the 
 
WAGES. 39 
 
 workman should receive no weekly Wages, but a 
 fixed payment at the end of the season, or a fixed 
 proportion of the total produce or of the clear gain ; 
 or he may be paid partly in Wages, and partly by a 
 share in the Profits. The moral differences of this 
 or that method will be afterwards considered : at 
 present I am only explaining the meaning of Profits 
 and Wages, and showing that each is morally 
 justified. 
 
 Examining this in detail, we see, that if any one 
 advances Wages to workmen, he has a right to 
 expect that he will at the end of the period regain 
 more than he lent. If he does not, he has risked 
 his Capital for nothing but the pleasure of doing 
 good. This may be to him a sufficient reward, but 
 the community cannot demand that it shall be 
 thought by him sufficient, without quite annihilating 
 his right of Property. If, because I possess be- 
 yond what I need this year for my own family, 100 
 barrels of flour, or the means of purchasing this 
 quantity ; I am therefore bound to pay them away 
 to labourers as wages, and at the close of the 
 season must receive back only 100 barrels, and dis- 
 tribute to the labourers any surplus that may 
 remain from the fruit of their work'; it will follow 
 that I am equally bound to repeat the process next 
 season, and so on continually, at least, if mean- 
 while I have from other sources the means of feeding 
 myself. But to say that I am bound, year after 
 year, to part company with my property for no ad- 
 vantage to myself, is to say that I have no greater 
 
40 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 right in it than other men. At least the only dif- 
 ference in it is this, they consume it when they 
 want it, and leave me to take the chance of finding 
 it replaced ; I also consume it when I want it, hut 
 need not lahour to replace it. Profits are to each 
 man the reward of Abstinence. Where, hy arti- 
 ficial law or by natural causes, no Profits can he 
 reaped, all personal motive for abstinence is re- 
 moved ; and unless men could be actuated by a far 
 higher morality than has yet been attained in any 
 nation, either hoarding or immediate indulgence will 
 withdraw all Capital from the market. 
 
 In Turkey, where to be notoriously rich exposes 
 a man to excessive taxation, and sometimes to 
 danger of his life, property is either concealed or 
 simply wasted. A gentleman, who had resided five 
 years in Jerusalem, told me that he had seen a whole 
 plantation of olive trees with the fruit dropping on 
 the ground ungathered. He remonstrated with the 
 owner on this waste, but received the reply : lf My 
 friend, I have enough to feed my family with : if I 
 have much more, I shall be an object of cupidity to 
 the powerful, and my life will be less safe." Nearly 
 the same result would follow, if Law or Public 
 Opinion forbade Profits. By making superfluous 
 property almost valueless to the owner, it would 
 prodigiously enhance the tendency to immediate 
 enjoyment; it would repress frugality, promote 
 universal poverty, and prevent the poorest from 
 finding resources in richer men. 
 
 Nor would the highest morality in any case 
 
MORAL OF PROFITS. 41 
 
 forbid Profits. He who temporarily abstains from 
 using and enjoying what is his own, and meanwhile 
 lets others enjoy it instead, deserves a reward in 
 kind. He may afterwards choose to give away his 
 Profits, but they must be his own, or he cannot 
 have the pleasure of giving away. For labourers 
 to come to ask that he who spends his property on 
 them for the contingency of recovering it shall 
 derive no material advantage himself, shall en- 
 counter the risk for the pure pleasure of doing them 
 a service, is too unreasonable to occur in real life. 
 It is only a dream of closet-theorists. Practically, 
 the total gains of every permanent trade are divided 
 into at least two parts, of which one belongs to the 
 Capitalist, and more than replaces his Capital ; the 
 other part, whether paid all in Wages or partly as 
 Wages, partly as a share of Profits, goes to the 
 workman who contributes no capital. In what 
 proportion the division is made between Capitalist 
 and Workman, depends on circumstances to be after- 
 wards brought forward. 
 
 Suppose now a state of things in which Capital 
 is steadily receiving Profits, and you will see a new 
 possibility. Some Capitalist becomes weary of the 
 duties of superintending labourers. He takes a 
 partner in his business, throws on him the burden 
 of duty, and practically retires from active service. 
 He becomes what is called a sleeping partner him- 
 self. He can no longer expect the same ratio of 
 Profits as before, but a new arrangement is made. 
 Either a fixed salary is assigned to the managing 
 
42 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 partner, which is to be paid before any division of 
 Profits is made, or a smaller ratio of Profit is 
 allowed to the Capital of the sleeping partner than 
 to the Capital of the other; or lastly, a fixed per- 
 centage of profit is allowed to the Capital of the 
 former, and the whole residue belongs to the latter. 
 This fixed percentage is then called Interest and 
 not Profits. It occurs equally, if a man finds he 
 could advantageously employ more Capital than he 
 has got; and therefore borrows of some one else. 
 If he can get 10 per cent, profits on the increased 
 principal with little additional trouble, he will 
 gladly pay 5 or it may be 6 per cent, to the lender. 
 And the lender will often prefer to get 5 per cent, 
 without the trouble of superintending, than 10 per 
 cent, with the trouble; especially as he might lose 
 the whole, if he have no habits of business. 
 
 Interest in its origin is called Usury, and the 
 history of it must be here briefly given. In a poor 
 nation, debts are seldom incurred by the wealthier 
 for the sake of increasing wealth, but only by the 
 poor through distress. A little farmer in India has 
 a bullock die at a critical . season, and is in danger 
 of losing his year's crop if he does not instantly 
 replace it. So urgent is the need, that he is willing 
 to give enormous interest; say 40 per cent, per 
 annum, which means, 10 per cent, at the end of 3 
 months, at which period he hopes to repay it. A 
 richer man is found, willing to lend; but as there 
 is no class of wealthy money-lenders, he has few 
 competitors in this market, and he takes whatever 
 
USURY AND INTEREST. 43 
 
 high interest the other is found willing to pay. 
 Such a dealer is generally hated, and stigmatized as 
 a Usurer, because his gains come out of other 
 people's necessities. Yet it is clear that he is in 
 some sense a benefactor ; why else do they seek 
 to him ? and he undergoes much risk, and has 
 great trouble in recovering his debts. His average 
 gains are probably still large, but that is the fault 
 of those who stigmatize him. By so doing, they 
 drive away his competitors, and confine his trade to 
 those who are willing to defy public opinion. Thus 
 he gains an additional payment, not only for his 
 trouble and risk, but for the hatred which he en- 
 counters. 
 
 All this however is further modified by the intro- 
 duction of Money, of which I must now speak 
 more particularly. Gold and Silver, by reason of 
 their rarity, have a high exchangeable value. They 
 are remarkably durable, gold being wholly unaffected 
 by the atmosphere, and silver being easily shielded 
 from it. Moreover, if the yearly produce of mines 
 vary, still it is always small in comparison with the 
 mass of gold and silver in the market of the whole 
 world ; and for these articles all the world is one 
 market : hence their current value is less liable 
 to sudden changes*. These qualities have always 
 made them admirable instruments of barter. The 
 stamp put on them assures us of their purity and 
 nearly of their weight, and saves much trouble. To 
 
 * The increased demand for gold during a great war, makes gold 
 vary more than silver. 
 
44 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 attain these objects, Governments in most places 
 issue coin. Thenceforward, nearly all commercial 
 transactions go on by means of money, and the 
 quantity used in an early stage of progress is 
 enormously great in comparison to the amount 
 of commerce. For, as yet, bankers and credit 
 do not exist. Every trader finds that, in order 
 to make economic bargains, he ought to have a 
 large sum of gold or silver in hand. Hence in the 
 earliest times of history the elaborate travelling of 
 the Greeks to the Ural Mountains, and the voyages 
 of the Phoenicians to Spain and of the Hebrews to 
 southern Arabia, for these much coveted metals. 
 Gold was also accumulated in sacred treasures, 
 partly locked in temple-coffers, partly in the form 
 of holy vessels and decorations : but all of it could 
 be turned again to service, and often was, in war- 
 like necessities, and then it became diffused through 
 the community and was not again easily parted 
 with, by the merchants. 
 
 The great premium attached to the possession of 
 Gold and Silver, by the power it gives of selecting 
 advantageous moments of purchasing, gradually 
 gave rise to the trade of the Banker. The primi- 
 tive Banker is a lender of his own money; but 
 differs from the old Usurer in this respect, that he 
 lends to the rich and seldom or never to the poor. 
 Hence he lends with less risk, and can afford to do 
 it on cheaper terms; and-for both reasons, he avoids 
 the popular odium which attended the Usurer. 
 Thus wealthy and honourable men publicly pro- 
 
PRIMITIVE BANKING. 45 
 
 fessed the Banker's trade, and their competition 
 gave to the borrower the best terms which the state 
 of the market made possible. Ordinarily the bor- 
 rower could give security so good that the Banker 
 underwent no risk. Let me put a case. A wealthy 
 trader possesses ships and houses and masses of 
 goods now on sale in a foreign country : and at 
 this very moment he wants an additional 1000 to 
 complete a very advantageous purchase. To force 
 an instantaneous sale of his property would involve 
 far more loss, than the transaction could bring 
 gain ; but instead of selling, he pledges some part 
 of it to a Banker, and obtains the loan he desires. 
 In a few months, or perhaps weeks, he repays it 
 with interest, both parties having found their ad- 
 vantage in it. As soon as such transactions can 
 be counted on as possible, it is no longer neces- 
 sary for every trader to keep so large a hoard 
 of gold and silver. Each is able to enlarge his 
 business, where he was before impeded solely by 
 want of this circulating medium. Thus the trans- 
 actions of the community expand in a greater ratio 
 than its gold and silver currency. 
 
 The later Banker differs from the earlier, in two 
 respects ; first, that he receives deposits, and lends 
 other people's money as well as his own. What- 
 ever the dangers of this engine, it is evidently one 
 of great power. But secondly, our system of 
 paper money, bills, and transferences, of which 
 I shall afterward speak, yet further amplify and 
 facilitate commercial transactions. Moreover, all 
 our banks stand in close relation to some London 
 
46 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 banks, and these, again, form an organic whole 
 with the Bank of England and the Mint. 
 
 Among ourselves a simple self- regulating process 
 determines how much gold bullion shall be turned 
 into the currency. Some would at any rate be coined 
 by the Government for Government use ; but if 
 no more were coined, a great deficiency might be 
 felt; for who shall say, that exactly what the 
 Government happens to spend shall be enough for 
 the public convenience ? And yet how is the 
 Government to know how much more to coin ? or 
 after coining, how is it to put the money in circula- 
 tion? for it surely must not be given away for 
 nothing. The principle on which we proceed is, 
 virtually this. Any merchant or banker who wants 
 gold coin, buys gold of the bullionmerchant, and 
 demands of the Mint a number of sovereigns ex- 
 actly equal to the value of the pure bullion. That 
 is, he will get 5000 sovereigns for pure gold worth 
 5000 ; or indeed for a mass of standard gold of the 
 very same price. Thus the Mint makes a present 
 of the workmanship, and, if required, also of the 
 alloy. If the banker were to melt up his sovereigns, 
 and send the mass to be recoined, he would lose 
 nothing but the use of his money during the delay ; 
 and this is amply sufficient to hinder it. 
 
 In practice, however, the Mint will not coin for 
 an individual less than 1 0,000 's worth; and to 
 compensate for this, the Bank of England engages 
 to give its notes (which are immediately convertible 
 into sovereigns) for gold bullion, at such a rate as 
 exactly amounts to the same thing as though the 
 
DEPRECIATED CURRENCY. 47 
 
 Mint were willing to coin 10 sovereigns at a time 
 for any one. In the result, the Bank is the prin- 
 cipal agent in setting the Mint to work ; yet the 
 Bank is operated on by the community. 
 
 When a government currency has become steady 
 and abundant, all contracts are made in it. Thus, 
 among ourselves, a builder engages to finish a house 
 for the sum of 1500 sovereigns; a merchant bor- 
 rows 1000 sovereigns, and engages to pay back 
 1050 at the year's end: and so on. Where the 
 currency is unfairly tampered with, the good sense 
 of men of business teaches them how to evade it. 
 In Turkey no contracts of any magnitude, or which 
 are to last for several years, are made in Turkish 
 piastres, but in dollars (Spanish or Austrian) or in 
 sequins (Venetian, Dutch, Eussian). If in the 
 interval between the making and finishing of a con- 
 tract the value of the currency changes, then one 
 party or other sustains an unfair loss. When a 
 trader has borrowed 100, but before the time of 
 payment comes, the government has fraudulently or 
 forcibly issued a debased coinage; the sum which 
 he repays is not 100 of the same pounds as were 
 lent, but 100 pounds of inferior metal, which will 
 not purchase so much. Thus every creditor is de- 
 frauded, and every debtor unfairly benefited, by a 
 government which acts so profligately. Sad to say, 
 nearly all governments have at one time or other so 
 acted. The opposite case, of a suddenly deficient 
 currency, is one which no government can hinder : 
 either war or commercial panic or great losses, from 
 
48 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 famine or from unwise speculations, may cause it. I 
 will briefly name some ancient and modern examples. 
 When Caesar rebelled against his country and 
 invaded Italy, the senate and the great mass of the 
 aristocracy gave way before him and withdrew into 
 Greece. As none of them knew how long they 
 would be absent from their Italian possessions, all 
 took with them the largest possible sum of gold and 
 silver which they could command, and Italy was 
 emptied of the precious metals. In consequence, 
 even wealthy debtors were unable to pay their debts. 
 They may have had lands, flocks and herds, houses, 
 furniture ; but none of these things would serve in pay- 
 ment, until turned into money; and since the bankers 
 had been drained, they could not borrow of them to 
 pay their old debt; and when many at once tried to 
 sell, all property became depreciated and wide- 
 spread ruin followed. Ca3sar at last relieved and 
 stopped the mischief, by enacting that creditors 
 should accept payment, not in money, but in other 
 property, if offered them; and that the property 
 should be valued at the price which it fetched before 
 the war broke out. This was an equitable and suc- 
 cessful act of power; but it was a pity that it did 
 not come weeks or months earlier. A very similar 
 tale is told by Tacitus in the reign of Tiberius. 
 The old Roman laws had restricted lending on 
 interest : senators especially were forbidden to be- 
 come moneylenders : yet the absurdity of the law 
 had led to its almost universal violation. Informers 
 suddenly discovered that this might bring them a 
 
COMMERCIAL CRISES. 49 
 
 harvest of gain ; and prosecutions commenced. The 
 Senate was alarmed; and the Emperor, able man as 
 he was, committed the egregious error of annexing, 
 as a condition of his decreeing impunity for the 
 past, that all should immediately call in their 
 debts. In so sudden a demand for an infinity of 
 payments beyond what was usual, debtors found it 
 impossible to get money: severe loss, and bank- 
 ruptcy began to follow on an alarming scale, until 
 the Emperor appointed commissioners to lend public 
 money to all who could give good security; by 
 which he palliated and checked the enormous mis- 
 chief which he had caused. 
 
 In modern England similar results arise from 
 time to time, generally through error of speculation. 
 The most recent of these crises, but not the most 
 violent or the most widely spread, arose from three 
 causes at once loss of the potato crop, with a gene- 
 rally defective corn harvest, miscalculation of the 
 supplies that might be drawn from America,' and 
 enormous overspending in railways. To carry on 
 the vast increase of business occasioned by the rail- 
 ways, a large increase of the currency was needed; 
 the scarcity, and consequent high price, of pro- 
 visions made the want greater still; yet at this very 
 time vast sums of gold were sent abroad to pay for 
 foreign food; and, the country being drained of its 
 money, debtors were distressed exactly as in the 
 former cases. But with us, the history of such a 
 time is complicated by the use of Paper Money; 
 
 D 
 
50 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and the end cannot be fully explained till I come to 
 that subject. 
 
 Let me now concisely sum up the results we have 
 attained ; that Private Property in movables must 
 be recognized absolutely: that this cannot be, 
 without admitting a full right of unlimited con- 
 sumption of what is one's own, or of parting with it 
 on what terms one pleases : that as the reward of 
 Abstinence, Profit on Capital is morally right and 
 desirable : that where there is Profit, there is also 
 room for interest on Loans : that Profit and Interest 
 must be allowed to settle themselves by the Compe- 
 tition of the market, whether the Profit be in the 
 form of hire for the use of a thing, or a surplus gained 
 after replacing Capital which has been in part spent 
 on the Wages of labourers : that Interest is as 
 legitimate as Profit, on the very same grounds. I 
 have also explained the vast utility of Gold and 
 Silver in facilitating commercial transactions, the 
 aid further given by Bankers in economizing Gold 
 and Silver by lending it on good security, and the 
 severe distress resulting to debtors, (and through 
 them to a large fraction of the community,) when 
 there is a sudden diminution in the money of a 
 country, or a sudden demand for a greatly-increased 
 quantity. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 ON Distribution. Relation of Profits to Distribution, and to Pro- 
 duction. Use and absolute necessity of Middlemen. Effect of 
 Competition on Price (especially of Food), on Wages, Profits and 
 Interest. 
 
 USEFUL Commodities are not always Wealth. 
 Water is most useful; but where it is abundant 
 and at hand, it has no exchangeable value; and 
 human population could hardly exist, unless it were 
 everywhere extremely cheap. To the idea of Wealth 
 (in any emphatic sense) it is essential that the 
 articles so named should be easily marketable and 
 should exchange for a great deal. 
 
 Hence if anywhere Nature were so profuse as to 
 give food of herself, as from the Breadfruit Tree 
 growing spontaneously, such food might become as 
 valueless as Water with us. And wherever either 
 food or any other useful or elegant article is pro- 
 duced with little effort, in quantities far beyond the 
 need or desire of the immediate neighbours, it 
 becomes low-priced in the extreme, unless it can be 
 sent away to those who need or desire it more. To 
 find out who these are, is called, opening a new 
 market ; and its tendency is, to confer a new value 
 on the articles. 
 
 To make the objects of our natural desire avail- 
 able to our enjoyment, two things are needed, 
 
 D 2 
 
52 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 first, that they be produced ; secondly, that they be 
 distributed. The second process is as essential as 
 the first. Wheat flourishing on the fields, or even 
 stored in the granaries, of Podolia, Hungary, or 
 Ohio, is as useless to a hungry Englishman as if it 
 had never heen produced, unless there he at least a 
 prospect of its carriage hither, or of its supplying 
 those who send away their own wheat to us. The 
 expense of distribution may easily exceed that of 
 production, as, I presume, must happen with the 
 breadfruit, if eaten in Moscow, or French wine 
 drunk in Oxford. Although it is so manifest that 
 distribution must involve large effort and cost, 
 and that it is quite as essential as production, 
 nothing is commoner than an ignorant resentment 
 against the expense of it as a sort of wickedness. 
 If tea is bought at the London Docks wholesale at 
 I5d. a pound (including duty) and sold in a country 
 village at 4s. 6d. a pound, the fact is looked on as 
 something monstrous and preternatural, and leads 
 to all sorts of outcries against the villainy of 
 "middlemen;" as if the tea could be expected to 
 walk of itself from the docks, and find out by 
 instinct which cottage in England was waiting to 
 receive it; could then and there receive the need- 
 ful I5d. and convey it back to the merchant at the 
 docks. 
 
 In a barbarous state, Distribution is either enor- 
 mously expensive or often impossible. Commerce 
 is perpetually facilitating and cheapening it, nor are 
 we at all at the end of the cheapening process. By 
 
DISTRIBUTION. 53 
 
 all means let those who can buy wholesale, and 
 otherwise lessen the present expenses of distribu- 
 tion, do so : but let them not utter invectives 
 against middlemen and against commerce, when, 
 but for these, the articles would never have been 
 had at all, or rarely and by few. This fanaticism, 
 however, needs to be explained. 
 
 Intelligence is that which facilitates both Pro- 
 duction and Distribution. He who by greater in- 
 telligence produces a useful article more easily and 
 more rapidly than others, naturally grows rich. 
 Though this is a reward obviously deserved, it 
 often attracts Envy and even Eancour against him ; 
 as in the case of one who invents an ingenious 
 machine for abridging labour. The same intelli- 
 gence enables a merchant to distribute goods judi- 
 ciously. He finds out where certain things abound, 
 and are therefore little valued ; and where, on the 
 contrary, they are deficient, and will be bought 
 gladly at a high price. He thereupon buys them in 
 the cheapest market and sells them in the dearest ; 
 is a benefactor in both places, and makes a large 
 profit by the transaction. His intelligence was as 
 essential to the proper distribution, as in the former 
 case to their creation ; and the more singular his 
 intelligence, the larger his gains are likely to be. 
 But these gains are envied by the half-educated, 
 still more than in the former case ; and an effort at 
 philosophical thought often stigmatizes him as an 
 unfair dealer. It is said : "To buy cheap and sell 
 dear is a fraud." The goods are to the eye un- 
 
54 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 altered and unimproved by the process they have 
 undergone from the merchant; what right, then, 
 has he to enhance their price ? If, indeed, they 
 are heavy, even a rude intellect perceives that it is 
 fair to add to them the expense of carriage. None 
 expect to buy coals that have been conveyed 100 
 miles, as cheap as at the pit's mouth; but in the 
 case of light goods even this is forgotten. More- 
 over, it is notorious that the merchant sells for 
 whatever price he can get, and often has two prices 
 for different buyers : and this is apt to give an idea 
 of his trade being a grasping, if not a dishonest 
 one. Thus the trader, who is the great civilizer 
 and uniter of mankind, is constantly envied and 
 hated by those whom he benefits. So Tyre was 
 hated by the Hebrews, Carthage by the Eomans, 
 Holland by all the surrounding barons and poten- 
 tates, England by Napoleon, and, even now, the 
 trading population of England by too large a 
 fraction of our own people. 
 
 Undoubtedly, commercial Companies or States, 
 after rising to wealth and power, are prone to 
 establish monopolies by force or fraud, in order to 
 hinder others from underselling them. When they 
 do this, they become unjust: but it is not their 
 trade, it is the military or naval force by which 
 they repress the trade of others, which is unjust. 
 To treat a market as exclusively their own, is to 
 forget the rights of their customers, as well as of 
 their rivals. 
 
 The doctrine that a trader " ought to add to the 
 
EXPENSES OF DISTRIBUTION. 55 
 
 price of liis goods only the expense of carriage," is 
 plausible to those only who do not know the diffi- 
 culty or impossibility of even interpreting it. 
 Suppose a merchant to import corn from the Missis- 
 sippi, from Spain and from Odessa, to London : it 
 has cost different nominal prices, and in a different 
 currency ; it has been actually paid for by cargoes 
 of different sorts of goods; the carriage has cost 
 different sums ; it has been warehoused for different 
 periods, and the merchant has been kept out of 
 pocket by it for different lengths of time. The 
 Odessa wheat may have been paid for in broadcloth, 
 crockery, and hardware ; the Spanish in cotton, guns 
 and sugar; the American in haberdashery, saddlery, 
 silk manufactures, books and jewellery. Now, if by 
 an elaborate calculation the merchant were to con- 
 vince himself that it was just to ask for the three 
 sorts of wheat 63s. 54s. and 42s. a quarter, when 
 he brought them into the market, (the quality of 
 all being alike,) how could he possibly prevail on 
 his customers to buy the higher-priced sacks at all ? 
 or what would then be said of his honesty, to 
 charge differently for articles of the same intrinsic 
 value ? It surely is manifest, that, if he is to carry 
 on his trade at all, he must strike some sort of 
 average. Moreover, is he to charge nothing for his 
 own trouble and risk ? Is he alone to live without 
 wages or salary ? or how is he to settle whether to 
 allow himself 100 a year or 5000 ? and will any 
 consumer wish him to be absolute arbiter of such a 
 question ? 
 
56 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Nor is this all : but two different merchants can- 
 not at once sell the same article in the same market 
 at prices sensibly and notoriously different; hence 
 the average is to be struck, not from the dealings of 
 each merchant, but of all. Yet none can know the 
 expenses which another has incurred, or the facili- 
 ties which he has enjoyed. To determine a price 
 by such considerations is evidently an impracti- 
 cable theory and a mere conceit. Each finds out 
 the cost which another has incurred, in no other 
 way but by the price he is willing to accept : and 
 no one dealer is able to make a price : it is made 
 for him by the general striving of the market. 
 Those who say that different dealers should sell at 
 different prices according to their own view of their 
 expenses, are either absurd, or are really desirous 
 of impeding or abolishing all buying and selling. 
 
 Thus the doctrine that the goods in any market 
 ought to be sold at the price they cost, increased 
 only by the price of carriage, is inapplicable ; first, 
 because they have cost different prices, while it is 
 an infinite problem to settle what prices, and a 
 problem as to which the customer could never 
 satisfy himself. But, next, it is also a complex 
 question, what is to be understood by " the ex- 
 pense of carriage" ? If the housekeeper of a 
 nobleman resident in a Welsh baronial castle writes 
 to a London broker, enclosing a draft for money, 
 and requests him to buy a chest of tea in the docks, 
 and send it straight to Wales ; the increased price 
 will be simply a small charge for the ^broker's 
 
EXPENSES OF DISTRIBUTION. 57 
 
 trouble, and the carriage (we will suppose) by 
 Pickford's vans. But how different the case is, if a 
 merchant, without receiving any order or any 
 previous payment, buys quantities of tea and sends 
 them into different parts of the country for the 
 chance of their being sold ? He risks his money, 
 he regains it at length only slowly and with various 
 losses. Teas sent to some places have not sold: 
 elsewhere some has been damaged or wasted by 
 accident, much by exposure to air ; bad debts have 
 here and there been incurred : all these things have 
 to be allowed for in the price. Finally, it may be 
 that a poor woman by the side of the baronial castle 
 buys a quarter of a pound of tea, and pays for it 
 at the rate of 4s. 6d., though the nobleman close by 
 is drinking it at 3s. Qd. This is pointed to as a 
 hardship and an iniquity ! Truly, if the poor will 
 and can combine to give an order to the wholesale 
 merchant and pay beforehand, they also will get the 
 article cheaper ; and by all means let them try to do 
 so : but if, when they try, their union fails from 
 want of the moral qualities essential to its success, 
 it is a slanderous injustice, and a sort of insanity, 
 to declaim against the shopkeepers who " take 
 profit" out of the article. If the purchaser will 
 not or cannot advance the price, he has no right to 
 expect it as cheap as those who do. We thus see 
 that the " expense of carriage " to be added to an 
 article, is not dependent only on the road-charges, 
 but on delay, waste, and other circumstances. If 
 the trader advances and risks the money even for 
 
 D 3 
 
58 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the carriage, and has no personal trouble worth 
 naming, he still needs a higher payment; much 
 more when he advances and risks the original cost 
 also. These are the real causes of the enhanced 
 price. 
 
 Those who declaim against middlemen would 
 soon wish for them, if they were taken away. At 
 present in the towns of Turkey may he felt the 
 inconvenience of their absence. An upholsterer, 
 for instance, (though he is not a merchant, but a 
 manufacturer,) is equally a middleman, who em- 
 ploys wealth in setting men to work in constructing 
 household furniture, and keeps in his shop a stock 
 ready-made for the choice of buyers. Of course he 
 charges more to the customer than he has paid to 
 the workmen, for the reasons I have named 
 advance and risk, besides personal trouble. If in a 
 Syrian town where there are no upholsterers I want 
 to furnish a sofa for my drawing-room, I have the 
 following process to go through. I must stroll to 
 one of the gates of the town and watch for the 
 entrance of some countryman who may perhaps 
 possess sheep ; and after accosting many of them, I 
 at last find one who has on his hands wool unsold. 
 A bargain is made, and after some days the man 
 deposits the wool at my house. We will suppose 
 that I find it all to be good and suitable. I have 
 then to hire some men, who take the wool to wash 
 and clean, after which they restore it to me. Mean- 
 while I have been to some Frank merchant's store 
 to buy English cottons, or it may be silk, as a sofa 
 
MIDDLEMEN. 59 
 
 covering, with all the other materials needed, down 
 to needles and thread : after which I engage some 
 more men to come to my house and there work up 
 my cushions, hassocks, and all their apparatus : and 
 thus at last the article is finished. Unless my time 
 is worthless to me, I gladly pay a substitute for 
 taking off my hands whatever trouble can be taken 
 off : and he is in fact to me a new middleman, less 
 efficient and more expensive than if it had been his 
 profession. The workmen, on the other hand, it 
 may be thought, will get a higher rate of wages 
 than they would have from an upholsterer : but 
 even this is a delusion ; for that system keeps a 
 nation poor, and thereby depresses wages : nor can 
 employment ever be so steady, if every one has 
 to run about for workmen, instead of delegating 
 this to definite persons. 
 
 The multiplication of intermediate agents has 
 manifestly risen out of mutual convenience, and 
 indicates a step onward in the development of 
 industry. There may be new inventions beyond, 
 which will supersede our present system : no one 
 pretends otherwise. But to declaim against middle- 
 men as such, deserves no other title than fanaticism. 
 Moreover, to imagine that workmen could screw up 
 wages by always dealing with the ultimate con- 
 sumer, is ridiculous. But this deserves closer ex- 
 amination. 
 
 First, in regard to the materials of goods, it is 
 generally physically impossible to deal with the 
 original producers. In regard to foreign produc- 
 
60 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tions, this is transparent. The silver, the ivory, the 
 cotton, the mahogany, the tortoiseshell, must he 
 bought by me of a middleman, or I can never have 
 any of them. But suppose I want a leather port- 
 manteau : how, without destroying the Division of 
 Labour, and going back into savagery, could I order 
 such a thing of the original workman ? or who is 
 the original ? is it the cowkeeper, who fed the ox ? 
 or the butcher, who killed it ? or the man who 
 planted the oak, whence came the tannin for curing 
 the hide ? or the tanner that cured it ? Then there 
 is cotton lining and pasteboard, and a brass lock 
 and iron buckles. Am I to deal with the producers 
 of all these ? If he who calls himself the work- 
 man of the portmanteau buys all these materials in 
 the market, he is to me a middleman, and in fact he 
 has to deal with other middlemen. 
 
 In the progress of modern industry, the cheap 
 supply of materials is one of the most amazing 
 results, and eminently important to the poor; but 
 without a vast and various system of Capital and 
 Profits, it could not have been. Consider the 
 abundance and cheapness of iron in England, 
 whence the excellence of tools and the efficiency of 
 labour. The poorest peasant can afford an iron 
 spade and pickaxe: the meanest carpenter has a 
 profusion of instruments which in the middle ages 
 would have made him envied. And whence this 
 cheapness ? From the enormous capital invested 
 in mines. Had not wealthy men and companies 
 constructed vast works, powerful machines and 
 
MIDDLEMEN NECESSARY. 61 
 
 furnaces, and maintained armies of miners, the 
 iron ore would still be deep in the bowels of the 
 earth, or, when by accident cast up, be neglected as 
 a useless stone. These wealthy miners are middle- 
 men. Without Profits their Capital would not and 
 could not have achieved these industrial wonders : 
 and without their Capital and energy, what could 
 the working miner have done? He would have 
 been drowned or starved long before he could reach 
 the ore. Thus, even in regard to our native ma- 
 terials, iron, coal, leather, it is impossible for the 
 first workmen to deal with the ultimate consumer. 
 
 Waiving this objection (decisive as it really is) I 
 admit, that when I had a positive and conscious 
 want, I might in many cases deal with workmen 
 directly : and when I went to look for the workmen, 
 (which would only be when I suffered inconvenience,) 
 they might in special cases get higher wages from 
 me than professional employers now give them. 
 But things bespoken by the consumer, are by far 
 the smallest fraction of things in the market. A 
 workman, when unemployed, does not willingly 
 remain idle. A cabinet-maker (if he has ma- 
 terials) makes boxes, elegant tables, and other 
 furniture ; after which (we will suppose) he exposes 
 them in a stall, or hawks lighter articles in the 
 streets. But still selling too few, he is in danger of 
 labouring for nothing, and begins to be idle and 
 desponding. A wealthy man steps forward, and 
 offers to buy his whole lot, being aware that by 
 transporting it across the sea he can sell it with 
 
62 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 advantage. The cabinet-maker gladly accepts the 
 offer; clears his stall, fills his purse, and sets to 
 work again actively. What, now, would this honest 
 workman feel, if some one, assuming the air of a 
 religious teacher, forbade the intending merchant to 
 gain any profit by the sale, and the merchant bowed 
 humble assent? Could the joiner be blind to the 
 fact, that this was to deprive him in future of the 
 advantage he had just received ? If hereafter the 
 merchant repeated his purchase, it would be as an 
 act of charity, no longer as a transaction of the 
 market: but the joiner does not wish to live on 
 alms ; he wishes to earn an independent livelihood. 
 Surely he would say, that this doctrine of forbidding 
 Profits is a most cruel one to the labouring man, 
 whose work it renders valueless, by forbidding its 
 efficient distribution. Unless to his trade of cabi- 
 net-making he can add that of a merchant, or he 
 can find benevolent persons to buy for the pleasure 
 of aiding him, it is useless for him to go on pro- 
 ducing. In this case, no one could blame him 
 morally, if he chose to hire a merchant : that is, 
 to entrust his stock to one who would try to sell it 
 abroad, and would be paid a commission for his 
 trouble. But the difference from the former case is 
 all to the joiner's disadvantage. He now himself 
 takes the risk of sale or no sale, besides other 
 losses ; and he is kept out of his money for months 
 or years ; he has to judge for himself whither to 
 send his goods, and perhaps miscalculates. If he 
 has to send an agent specially for himself, the 
 
PROFITS NECESSARY TO DISTRIBUTION. 03 
 
 expense will be ruinous : if by good luck he finds a 
 person who is going on other business, it may still 
 easily happen that his commission equals what the 
 merchant's profit would have been. The existing 
 system leaves this method open to the working man, 
 whenever he thinks fit to adopt it ; but also permits 
 his throwing his entire risk on a wealthier person, 
 with the advantage of receiving immediate pay- 
 ment and making none. These most critical ad- 
 vantages the pretended friends of the Poor would 
 refuse them, by their crusade against Profits; 
 would restrict their right of selling the fruit of 
 their labour, and imagine hereby to make it more 
 valuable. 
 
 Undoubtedly the immediate object of each mer- 
 cantile transaction to every man is a personal ad- 
 vantage or convenience ; whether in buying food 
 or jewels, in selling cattle or cotton, or watches or 
 books. This is not only no fault, but is essential 
 to our independence and dignity. What I just now 
 said of the joiner, may be repeated of us all. We 
 wish to be remunerated for doing and supplying 
 what others value; not, to be supported by their 
 benevolence. No doubt, even in marketing, room 
 is left for liberality; yet liberality is not, cannot, 
 and ought not to be, the main and moving prin- 
 ciple. Ones own interest is the main and rightful 
 one, of which we ought not to let sentimental 
 moralists make us ashamed. Now the grand and 
 noble moral theorem expounded by Political Eco- 
 nomy, (and which, in fact, I have had especially in 
 
64 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 view from the beginning of this lecture,) is, that 
 the Laws of the Market which individual interest 
 generates, are precisely those which tend hest to 
 the universal benefit. Hitherto I have been show- 
 ing how necessary Mercantile Profits are to the 
 Distribution of what is produced, and Profits on 
 Manufacturers' Capital to Production. I shall pro- 
 ceed to show what is the result of COMPETITION on 
 the general market: and, first, in regard to the 
 Price of necessary things, especially Food. 
 
 If a ship at sea is long becalmed, and provisions 
 alarmingly decrease, it becomes the duty of the 
 captain to husband the store by enforcing a limited 
 allowance. It would not be philanthropy to insist 
 on feeding as plentifully at such a time, as when 
 there was abundance. When a nation has had 
 several deficient harvests together, when the old 
 stores are spent, when efforts to bring in food from 
 abroad fail, and there is not enough to last till the 
 next harvest at the ordinary rate of consumption, it 
 is evidently to be wished that the rate of consump- 
 tion should be checked. But how is that to be 
 done, by any organization less severe than that of 
 an absolute despotism which enters every family, 
 pries into every larder ; and which is strong enough 
 to exercise, when it pleases, a grinding tyranny over 
 social as well as public life ? The desired end is 
 effected l)y the competition in the market. For 
 example : when corn and flour are scarcer than 
 usual, the large buyers are the more anxious to 
 effect their purchases, and they raise the price by 
 
COMPETITION HUSBANDS FOOD. 65 
 
 their eager bidding. And they are made willing to 
 give more, because they foresee a scarcity which 
 will ultimately make the consumer willing to give 
 them more, rather than go without it. For the 
 same reason the millers and bakers, in purchasing 
 their stocks, are willing to pay higher than usual, 
 and cannot get it without. Thus, ultimately, it be- 
 comes higher in the baker's shop. To avoid the 
 high price, the consumers try to make up by other 
 kinds of food; but unless these are more than 
 usually plentiful, the effect is to raise the price of 
 these also, while that of corn does not rise quite so 
 high as else it might. High prices check consump- 
 tion, and thus enable the stock of food to last longer 
 than it otherwise would. For, the price rises to 
 whatever height is essential to effect the object; if 
 indeed the case is not so bad that starvation is in- 
 evitable. For the holders of the food will not part 
 with it while they see a prospect of its presently 
 becoming dearer, that is, of an increased defi- 
 ciency : there is, therefore, no limit to the possible 
 rise of price, except in the inability of purchasers 
 to pay ; and the moment that inability begins to 
 manifest itself, consumption begins to be checked. 
 
 Nor is this all : but the High Price also stimu- 
 lates merchants to use every exertion to obtain 
 supplies from abroad, by which the want will be 
 alleviated. If, on the contrary, by a weak and fool- 
 ish philanthropy the rich in time of famine were to 
 contribute money in order to enable the poor to eat 
 as much as before, (which is as wise as to decree 
 
66 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 that men shall eat six loaves, where there are only 
 five,) the effect would he to force the prices up 
 higher than the level they else would reach, and 
 increase the distress very rapidly. 
 
 Further, if a despotic government could have 
 power to forbid any rise of price in time of scarcity, 
 (which many persons are thoughtless enough I 
 might say, infatuated enough to desire,) not 
 only would consumption go on unchecked, hut no 
 stimulus would be given to force supplies from 
 abroad ; so that absolute starvation must at length 
 result. The high price enables the food to be 
 brought from greater distances than the ordinary 
 price would remunerate, and allows unusual ex- 
 penses to be incurred by the importers in many 
 other ways. 
 
 When there is no scarcity, a rich man may pos- 
 sibly do good by giving money to the half-fed, and 
 so enabling them to feed themselves fully : but in 
 time of actual famine the only way to do good is by 
 increasing or economizing the stock of food; to 
 be more severe against waste in one's household, to 
 turn into solid food what previously was ornament 
 or luxury, and in extreme cases to lessen one's own 
 diet in order to give away to the starving. Hap- 
 pily, however, our commerce is so wide and active, 
 that if prices do but rise soon enough, a sufficiency 
 of food will be poured in for almost any imaginable 
 want. Yet such times are, at best, very impoverish- 
 ing to tens of thousands. 
 
 You will now be able to understand a remark in 
 
COMPETITION DISTRIBUTES BENEFICIALLY. 67 
 
 the preceding lecture, that even in scarcity approach- 
 ing to famine it is a most doubtful policy for the 
 Government to interfere. If, indeed, there are bad 
 laws which ordinarily forbid the introduction of 
 food, it may be essential to suspend them ; yet that 
 suspension will always be a cruel injury to innocent 
 classes of men : a true Economy therefore forbids 
 such ]aws entirely. Suppose none such to exist, 
 and then ask : What can the Government do in the 
 way of procuring or distributing food, that will not 
 be better done by the merchants ? The case must 
 be truly extraordinary, and implying a radically 
 unsound social system, in which the distress will 
 not be better relieved, if the market is left in the 
 merchants' hands. 
 
 A severe test of this principle was offered a few 
 years back, when the potato crop had failed in 
 Ireland, and the harvest was bad, both in England 
 and in nearly all Europe. About eleven millions 
 sterling was sent from Great Britain as a charitable 
 gift to Ireland. To such a gift from a richer to a 
 poorer country, Political Economy can no more 
 object than to any act of charity from a richer to a 
 poorer individual. Our science, indeed, easily pre- 
 dicted the extreme difficulty of securing that a large 
 part of the grant should not be grasped by those 
 who were in no pressing want, and of hindering the 
 poor who received it from depending thenceforward 
 on public relief. But these topics I now pass by. 
 I do not now ask, Was it right for England to give 
 money to the Irish ? but, Was it expedient for the 
 
68 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Government either to take under its own controul 
 the existing stores of food ? or to act the merchant, 
 by buying fresh supplies from abroad and selling or 
 distributing them by its own officers ? Now let us 
 not forget that there are political conditions, in 
 which an overruling despotism has so supplanted 
 individual energy that the Government is the only 
 energetic merchant: in such case the Government 
 must have public granaries, no doubt. But the 
 mercantile energy of such a government is feeble- 
 ness, compared to that of a people free to hold and 
 use property ; and in our own recent experience the 
 very moderate interference of our Government did 
 harm, I believe, by damping mercantile zeal. 
 Namely, the Queen's ships were employed to bring 
 stores of food to various parts of Ireland : but as 
 no merchant, who has to pay for his ship and 
 sailors, can compete in price with a trader who does 
 not pay for these things, the merchants were at once 
 paralyzed. Where a Queen's ship carried food, no 
 one else could afford to carry it ; hence, unless the 
 Government vessels had been so abundant as more 
 than to supply the whole mercantile navy which 
 they superseded, such interference really diminished 
 the actual importations of food. 
 
 It is easier to cavil against the mode by which 
 food distributes itself in trade, than practically to 
 improve it. " I call it " cavilling," when people re- 
 proach Political Economy with existing distress, 
 and say : " See ! the higgling of the market does 
 not send food to the right mouths." Nobody pre- 
 
THE STATE IS A BAD MERCHANT. 69 
 
 tends that Free Trade or Competition or anything 
 that the wisest Economist can suggest, will remove 
 all human evils. It will neither turn Famine into 
 Plenty, nor Slavery into Freedom ; nor can it neu- 
 tralize personal Vice or Imprudence, nor the various 
 calamities of life, nor unjust Political Institutions. 
 To prevent Misery, all parts of the Social System 
 must be in perfection, and not the Market only. 
 Our question, however, is, whether Freedom of 
 Trade, with the Competition essential to it, does, on 
 the whole and to the majority, economize food and 
 promote its adequate production and desirable diffu- 
 sion, better than any arbitrary interference with 
 private property. In fact, whatever dishonest out- 
 cries may be made by one class of persons, what- 
 ever the exaggerated fancies of another class, and 
 whatever the real injustices of our social state, our 
 nation suffers far more from CARE and FEAR of 
 want than from want itself. Not free trade, but an 
 artificial cramping of it, has often half starved our 
 working men. If in very bad years general distress 
 be still endured, be it remembered that whole tribes 
 of savages sometimes die of sheer starvation, or are 
 dispersed and wholly lost by its violence : and in 
 the ruder times of Commerce, famines are im- 
 measurably more severe than is ever now expe- 
 rienced. But man's chief sufferings are mental. 
 The physical pain of starvation is far less than that 
 of hundreds of diseases by which men die without 
 exciting public horror; and a savage bears to 
 perish by want of food with a quiet apathy unknown 
 
70 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to civilized men. We must not allow ourselves to 
 be deluded into the belief that the difficulty of 
 avoiding this shocking result has increased, because 
 we are so much more shocked at its occurrence 
 when it does occur. The reason we are shocked, is, 
 because we never believe it was unavoidable; and 
 this is because both the supply and the distribution 
 of food has so wonderfully improved, with the in- 
 creasing security of private property and steadiness 
 of traffic. 
 
 I have thus shown how Competition usefully 
 raises the price of food, when it is desirable to check 
 consumption and give a bonus to importation. I 
 must add, that when the merchants err in their 
 calculations, (as all men must sometimes err,) they 
 are punished so severely for it, that it is far safer 
 for the community to trust their tact and good 
 sense, than that of Government officers who cannot 
 lose by their own blunders. If a merchant im- 
 properly refuses to sell, because he overestimates 
 the scarcity, and expects a still higher price, the 
 price necessarily balks him and he sells for less 
 than he might have got : and the larger the number 
 that commit this error, the severer the loss to them ; 
 for the needlessly high price to which they strain up 
 the market, checks consumption more than is 
 needed, (or turns it on to some other article of food 
 which they do not hold,) so that an unexpected 
 plenty is soon manifested, which makes the prices 
 drop suddenly, perhaps to the ruin of many of 
 them. 
 
COMPETITION LEVELS WAGES. 71 
 
 But I now proceed to the kindred subjects, 
 how Competition acts in the matter of Wages, 
 Profits, and Interest, whether for good or for evil ; 
 and in all it will appear to be good. Let me first 
 observe, that free Competition implies a right in 
 either Labourers or Capitalists to combine; and 
 though this right may be ill used, it is a liberty which 
 cannot be destroyed without greater mischief. When 
 workmen strike (as it is called) for higher Wages* 
 they too often terrify their fellows who refuse to 
 join the strike, and dreadful crimes rise out of this. 
 Such evils have nothing to do with the laws of 
 Economy. We must presume that all who unite 
 unite willingly, and then we cannot deny its lawful- 
 ness, even when we discern that it is done at a 
 foolish time and with embittering consequences. 
 To strike for higher wages than the Capitalist can 
 afford, is to do what the Latins would call " milking 
 a hegoat;" and as the men can seldom tell what 
 can be afforded, it is most absurd to commit them- 
 selves unconditionally to the demand of a specific 
 rate of wage, and leave themselves no room for 
 retracting. If then they have, through ignorance, 
 set their demand too high, the Capitalist has no 
 choice but to stop his works entirely or to bring in 
 new labourers from a distance, with much loss and 
 damage. Thus nearly all strikes turn to the hurt of 
 the individuals who make them : yet the dread of 
 such an outbreak acts powerfully on those Capi- 
 talists who are not moved by higher motives ; and, 
 in the long run, the legal ability thus to combine 
 
72 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 seems to be necessary to the workman, wherever the 
 fewness of capitalists in a trade would facilitate 
 their private combinations. 
 
 But it is a strange absurdity to treat all lowering 
 of wages as an injustice. As a simple test of this 
 matter, let us suppose a horde of starving men 
 landed suddenly on our coasts ; we may then choose 
 out of the following modes of conduct: (1) If by 
 chance we have Capital lying unused, and we 
 can use it profitably by employing them, this is the 
 best way. But if there be not much Capital in re- 
 serve, this mode is inadequate. (2) By retrenching 
 luxuries and personal enjoyment and waste, we may 
 possibly scrape together the means of feeding them. 
 This is also good, but not always practicable. 
 (3) We may let them starve. (4) We may spend 
 on them part of the Capital which we before spent 
 on other workmen. The two first methods will not 
 always be possible. Those who disapprove the 3rd 
 are then absurd in objecting to the 4th. We con- 
 clude that the 4th is then a humane proceeding. 
 But in using it, we may either support the new 
 labourers in idleness, or employ them in our service ; 
 and surely, both morally and economically, it is 
 better to use their labour than feed them for 
 nothing. In this case, they appear in the market as 
 competing for work against the old labourers, gene- 
 rally to their vexation, often to their loss. To have 
 a million hungry persons landed on our coasts 
 would undoubtedly be an embarrassment, and would 
 cause many of us to be worse fed ; but if it would 
 
NEW CAPITAL MAY BE SAVED. 73 
 
 be a benevolent thing for the mass of the eaters to 
 lessen their food and comforts in order to succour 
 the strangers, then the principle of Competition acts 
 benevolently in bringing about precisely that result. 
 The depression of Wages which the labourer then 
 has to bear, is a sharing of the advantages conferred 
 by Capital, between him and the new comers. And 
 the only relief for the labourer (unless his rivals 
 are to be killed or banished) lies in an increase of 
 Capital, which alone gives power to hire. 
 
 Sometimes this is possible. The Irish Immi- 
 grants into America are often feared as disorderly 
 citizens, but they are valued as labourers. They 
 work at ruder and more slavish toil than native 
 Americans like, and for lower wages. In conse- 
 quence, many persons who would else have wasted 
 property in immediate enjoyment, because the high 
 native wages absorbed all profit, save more and 
 consume less ; thus producing a new capital which 
 they can use profitably on the Irish labourer. When 
 this happens, they take nothing from the native 
 workman, and they add to the capital of the 
 country. 
 
 Perhaps the case of Irish harvest-men in our 
 northern counties is not dissimilar. A very sudden, 
 large, unprecedented influx, no doubt, would have 
 been distressing to all parties ; but growing gradu- 
 ally so that it could be counted on, it enabled 
 farmers to undertake cultivation which else might 
 have been very hazardous or impracticable ; namely, 
 if the crops were damaged or lost from want of 
 
 E 
 
71 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 hands to gather in the harvest speedily. Indeed it 
 is prohahle enough that, after the recent enormous 
 emigration from Ireland, our northern farmers may 
 find serious embarrassment from the loss of the 
 Irish; and unless some equally cheap labour he 
 discovered, or science step in to help, the English 
 peasant might find himself the worse off from a 
 diminished cultivation. 
 
 And this leads me to remark, that it is as absurd in 
 principle to object to the influx of Irish labourers, 
 as, to the introduction of new labouring cattle. If 
 hitherto the plough were dragged by the toil of 
 men, a farmer who imported plough-horses would 
 incur the spite of the ignorant. Yet to grudge food 
 to one who is a frugal eater and a most efficient 
 producer of food, is surely a mistake. The really 
 formidable thing would be the importing 100,000 
 cavalry horses and setting 100,000 young peasants 
 to ride on them. These men and horses eating 
 much and producing nothing would tend to bring 
 famine on the land ; but not the economic Irishman 
 who earns by hard work his moderate fare. 
 
 Hitherto, I have supposed some sudden increase 
 in the number of labourers. But imagine the con- 
 trary case, a sudden decrease of the capital of a 
 nation, as when an enemy has wasted the land. If 
 a law then forbade the rate of wages to be lowered, 
 either one part of the wage- supported population 
 must starve, or all must have half work and be idle 
 half their time. No better result than the latter is 
 possible from such a law; for employers cannot 
 
ELASTIC RATE OF WAGES GOOD. 75 
 
 spend on labourers more than they have got. But 
 this forced idleness would be a mischief alike to 
 employers and ultimately to the labourers. To the 
 employers, because the cheapness of labour which 
 the Competition of labourers in such a position 
 would naturally bring about would be the best aid 
 to the impoverished capitalist: to the labourers, 
 because a rapid increase of capital, in order to 
 replace what has been destroyed, is their only hope 
 of recovery. Thus here also the Competition is 
 good, the temporary lowering of the Wages is good 
 for all parties, and the legal minimum does nothing 
 but mischief. For the labourers will of themselves 
 abate Competition, when the wages are near the 
 limit at which a man cannot feed himself enough to 
 keep up his full strength. 
 
 In regard to the rate of Wages, CUSTOM has 
 great influence. In counties where it has been 
 customary to lower them considerably when bread is 
 cheap and raise them a little when bread is dear, 
 the peasants acquiesce in this with wonderful cheer- 
 fulness, though it is always to their disadvantage, 
 and is treating them like slaves or cattle. On the 
 other hand, where the workmen are accustomed to 
 combine and know their own strength, employers 
 rarely and timidly propose to lower the customary 
 rate of wages ; hence in times of general depression 
 the workman is apt to be only half employed, and 
 thus earns less, though the rate may be the same. 
 And this, as I have just said, is worse, both for his em- 
 ployers and for himself, than an elastic rate which 
 
 E 2 
 
76 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 rapidly adjusts itself to the real state of the market. 
 Loud as is the outcry in many quarters against 
 " grasping capitalists," the ostensible facts generally 
 seem to me to denote that it is the workmen who 
 are unreasonable. (Observe, I am not saying that 
 the men are not in an undesirable position : I think 
 they are : and I strongly deprecate the hand-and- 
 mouth system.) But I was going to say, if a 
 London journal finds its circulation to be decaying, 
 and its attempts to arrest this alarming symptom 
 fail, it perhaps at last proposes to the printers to 
 work for lower wages. But such a proposal is met 
 by a burst of indignation. The printers write 
 letters of complaint in those newspapers which 
 welcome all attacks on Capitalists. Some one com- 
 putes that the saving of 2000 a year is to be 
 screwed out of the printers' wages, and expresses 
 his extreme disgust that any firm that desires to be 
 thought respectable should thus invade the earnings 
 of honest workmen. 
 
 What more could men say, if the Capitalist had 
 entered into a contract to pay them the old rate of 
 wages for ever ? And what means have they of 
 knowing that he is not forced to choose between 
 lowering their wages and closing his works entirely ? 
 If they are so indignant at his proposing a lower 
 wage, what will they say to their being entirely dis- 
 missed in mass ? If that will be no hardship, they 
 have their remedy ; accept that alternative now, and 
 be contented. Yet those of them who do thus 
 refuse work, are only the louder in clamour against 
 
DEPRESSION OF PROFITS AND INTEREST. 77 
 
 the injustice of a master for not continuing to 
 employ them at a rate of payment, which (for any- 
 thing they can know) may he to him a positive and 
 ruinous loss. 
 
 A few words on Profits and Interest. The Com- 
 petition of Capitalists depresses Profits, to the 
 benefit of the labourer, far more actively than Com- 
 petition can ever depress Wages : for the Competi- 
 tion of Capital has no limit and no scruples. No 
 one likes to pay Wages so small as apparently 
 are insufficient to sustain healthy life: but as to 
 Profits, whether they shall be 20 per cent, or I per 
 cent, there is no delicacy at all. The rate is always 
 beaten down without mercy to whatever the market 
 may suggest; and when Profits are very low, In- 
 terest on money almost vanishes, risk alone being 
 allowed for in lending. The gross Profits of any 
 trade or business being divided between Profits and 
 Wages, whatever tends to lower Profits, tends (if 
 other things be the same) to raise Wages, and con- 
 versely. Now abundance of Capital, (if it be but 
 used, and not locked up, as some kinds of Capital 
 may be,) tends to loth results at once and directly. 
 If, however, it be accompanied by improved methods 
 and increased efficiency of labour, these may sus- 
 tain awhile the rate of Profits in spite of the in- 
 creased wages. But since increased and chea,per 
 production ere long lowers Prices, the Profits must 
 ultimately fall. In fact the course of things for 
 some time back with us has been exactly this in the 
 manufacturing towns. The labourer gets a larger 
 
78 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and larger share of the whole thing produced, which 
 share is exchangeahle for a larger and larger quantity 
 of other things useful and necessary, with exceptions 
 which I shall hereafter note *. Meanwhile the rate 
 of Profits keeps falling every fifty years, and with it 
 the rate of Interest ; so that larger Capital hecomes 
 necessary to those who wish to live solely on 
 Profits, and larger still to those who expect to live 
 on Interest alone with the permission of total idle- 
 ness. In this whole progress we surely see that the 
 entire tendency is to the benefit of the labourer. 
 Capital has increased more rapidly than anything 
 else ; therefore Wages (in the neighbourhood of and 
 in contact with the Capital) have risen, and Profits 
 and Interest have fallen. If, notwithstanding this, 
 large masses of our population are not the better 
 off, the cause is not to be sought in these great laws 
 of ECONOMY which turn upon Competition, but in 
 Moral, Political, and other Social evils or defects, 
 on which I shall afterwards touch. 
 
 In the present lecture I have spoken of Labourers, 
 Employers and receivers of Interest as though 
 Wages, Profits and Interest could not be received 
 all three or any two of them by the same person, 
 and as though no one could pass from one class to 
 the other. Even if this were the case, the laws 
 rising out of Competition would be beneficial to the 
 whole of each class. But in fact I hold it to be 
 alike undesirable and unnecessary that a man's 
 
 * I peculiarly refer to Land, Food, Air and Water, which are apt 
 to be dear among us. 
 
COMPLEX SOURCES OF GAIN GOOD. 79 
 
 receipts should all be of one kind. Every very rich 
 man thinks it a precept of prudence to vest his 
 fortune in different forms of value : to have it partly 
 in land, partly in houses, partly in government- 
 securities, partly in mines, partly in railways, and 
 so on. Now this is universally applicable. In a 
 healthy state, every common labourer ought to 
 accumulate property, and to become a little Capi- 
 talist : and I believe that with a higher morality 
 and more good-will, no country in Europe offers so 
 great facilities as England for thus blending and 
 interfusing the elements of our national Economy. 
 To such interfusion our Science most clearly points ; 
 and in proportion as tin's result is attained, the 
 ignorant outcry against Competition and Profits will 
 die away. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 1. LAWS OF PRICE. 
 
 HITHERTO I have stated in general that Competi- 
 tion equalizes Price beneficially ; but I must now 
 go into fuller details on this very important subject. 
 
 There are two opposite and extreme positions be- 
 tween which all cases of Price must lie : they are, 
 Fancy Prices, and Trade Prices. Fancy Prices are 
 set by the Buyer, Trade Prices by the Seller; Fancy 
 Prices have to do with things very limited in num- 
 ber, Trade Prices with those which can be increased 
 indefinitely at pleasure. Fancy Prices are not 
 spoken of except in regard to things needless: in 
 the case of things necessary when Deficiency forces 
 up the prices, we call them rather Famine or 
 Scarcity Prices. 
 
 Examples of Fancy Prices are in Opera Tickets, 
 Fine Horses, and Diamonds. A Jenny Lind or a 
 Catalani cannot be manufactured at pleasure, neither 
 is it essential to any one to hear her sing. Hence 
 it rests with the public to say how much they are 
 willing to give to hear her. If she pleases their 
 taste and they are rich, the price may run up to 
 any height, for it cannot be reduced by competition. 
 If she does not please, the cost of her education 
 
FANCY PRICES. 81 
 
 will never enable her to raise the price. So, too, a 
 Diamond or a Tulip or an Old Vellum MS. is sold, 
 not for its cost, nor so as to cover average cost, but 
 for whatever sum rich and tasteful customers can be 
 induced to give. 
 
 The most striking instances of Trade Prices are 
 found in things which people will have, whatever 
 the price : for it might have been thought that the 
 sellers could then get advantage. Yet if no increase 
 of demand can sensibly increase the cost of supply, 
 any unusually high profit would lead the sellers to 
 desire to sell more. To effect this, each would a 
 little lower the price while increasing the quantity ; 
 the oversupply would soon thwart their efforts, 
 unless an increase of consumption followed. If 
 this happened, they would be stimulated again to 
 lower the price a little, in hope of selling a still 
 greater quantity. Whether at last they gorged the 
 market or whether not, the process of lowering the 
 price would be continued until the article was not 
 more gainful to the sellers than other articles, but 
 only just as much ; which is what we mean by Trade 
 Price. 
 
 The question now arises, If an article can be 
 produced in, any amount required, is it possible that 
 its permanent Trade Price should be either below or 
 above the Cost of its production ? 
 
 In reply, we seem at first able to say positively 
 that " it cannot be permanently sold below its 
 cost ;" for surely the sellers would decline the sale, 
 
 E 3 
 
82 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 since, sooner or later, they would discover their loss. 
 A closer examination shows that we have no 
 adequate definition of what is meant hy its Cost, 
 which can justify this general proposition, unless it 
 mean merely that " no one will permanently sell at 
 a price lower than it answers Mm to sell at." Cer- 
 tainly he will not go on paying as much for it as he 
 sells it for, and so losing his trouble. But short of 
 this, it is impossible to define how cheap he may 
 sell. A French prisoner of war may carve bone 
 figures, and sell them for an inappreciable sum, as 
 long as he gives nothing for the bone, or for his 
 knife, or for the dye which stains them : but if he 
 has to buy materials or tools, these form a limit to 
 the cheapness of his sale. A man who has to feed 
 himself must live somehow ; but he need not live 
 by one particular article : and where his odd scraps 
 of time suffice for work, he may appreciate his 
 labour at a mere trifle. Just so the Welsh girl sells 
 the worsted stockings she has knitted, at almost any 
 price that exceeds her actual expenses. So, too, 
 when capital is needed ; owing to the difficulty of 
 finding investments, the man who counts on getting 
 7 or 10 per cent, for the bulk of his capital will 
 use some of his money to get 1 or 2 per cent, 
 rather than leave it idle: and this might recur 
 every year, and be really permanent. Our proposi- 
 tion, therefore, is deceptive, in having less meaning 
 than appears ; and it is safer to express it by saying, 
 " Nothing can be permanently sold at so small a 
 
TRADE PRICES. 83 
 
 sum as it cost the seller, in the same market" 
 The necessity of the last words will afterwards 
 appear, when Foreign Trade is spoken of. 
 
 On the other hand, when we ask whether the 
 permanent price can ever exceed the cost of pro- 
 duction, all that can be meant, is, "whether an 
 article may permanently be sold for a higher sum 
 than the seller would insist on getting while other 
 prices in the market remain." Of course this may 
 happen, when there is a permanent deficiency of 
 supply, whether by artificial or natural monopoly ; 
 in other cases the question is really a very compli- 
 cated one. For the cost of production is different 
 to different men. Those who have peculiar natural or 
 artificial facilities may permanently get a price 
 which gives them extraordinary gains ; but if others, 
 who try to rival them, produce at a greater cost, 
 the price suffers only a partial fall. 
 
 Suppose a person to know a secret process for 
 cheaply producing Lawyer's Parchment or Window 
 Glass. Both things being almost necessary, and 
 never so expensive as to be unattainable, price is 
 not thought of by the buyer. The worst manufac- 
 turer might be so discouraged by very low profits, 
 as to leave off producing : consequently the best ma- 
 nufacturer is apt to get a price permanently higher 
 than that which would adequately remunerate his 
 cost of production. Thus it appears that when the 
 superior producers produce too little to satisfy the 
 market, the Trade Price is settled by the greatest 
 cost of production. 
 
84 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 This is true in a fully- developed commercial 
 system, where all the agents of production follow 
 freely and rapidly their economic attractions ; and 
 is therefore regarded by the Eicardo school as a 
 cardinal and universal theorem : but when I ap- 
 proach the subject of Rent, I shall have occasion to 
 question the propriety of applying it so absolutely 
 as they do, in a sphere where the powers of a land- 
 lord interfere with economic forces. 
 
 But though the permanent average Trade Price 
 turns principally on the cost of production, yet at 
 each particular time, opposite forces in the Buyer 
 and in the Seller combine to fix the Price. On the 
 one side, great desire and great ability of the 
 buyer tend to force the price up, but a belief that 
 he can get the article in some other market 
 cheaper tends to press it down. On the part of the 
 seller, the price is sustained by a /belief that he can 
 sell to advantage in some other market, by the 
 fact that the article has already cost him such or 
 such a sum, and finally, by his own desire to use 
 it for himself. Thus three forces on each side com- 
 bine, and according to the nature of the tiling, the 
 one or the other force is superior. 
 
 Nor is this the whole complication ; for the de- 
 sire and the ability of the buyer, which are principal 
 causes that aid to fix the price, themselves vary 
 with the price. A lady enters a shop, intending to 
 buy some ornament of dress, but finds it to be 
 dearer than she thought. She does desire it, but 
 not much, not at that price ; she is able to pur- 
 
SIX FORCES INFLUENCING PRICE. 85 
 
 chase it, but is now made unwilling. Or on the 
 other hand, a poor woman wishes to buy some tea. 
 If she could get it at 3d. an ounce she would be 
 able to afford herself some; but as it is 6d. she is 
 obliged to go without it. She is willing, but unable 
 to buy. 
 
 You will thus see how essential it is, to have 
 regard to the greater or less necessity of articles, 
 and to the expansiveness of desire, as a principal 
 clue to their variations of price. Food is of all 
 marketable things the most necessary ; hence its 
 price runs up most rapidly of all things, on any 
 small deficiency, or even at the fear of one. On 
 the other hand, in a really well fed people there is 
 scarcely any increase of desire for it caused by an 
 increased plenty : hence if no foreign market be 
 open, a considerable fall in price may be caused by 
 a small average excess. For all food is at least ex- 
 pensive to keep, besides loss of the interest or pro- 
 fits of its estimated value ; and many kinds cannot 
 
 kept at all. 
 
 To illustrate this, suppose corn to be deficient 
 in the English market by only 5 per cent, of the 
 average quantity : its price might, nevertheless, rise 
 20 per cent, above the average ; and the richer the 
 people, the higher it will rise. For every one tries 
 to get as much as before, though all cannot ; hence 
 the price keeps rising, until consumption is checked 
 by it, or until the high price attracts fresh supplies 
 which prevent it rising higher still, or possibly make 
 it fall somewhat. Contrariwise, in 1835 and 1836, 
 
86 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 when corn was excessive in England, owing to 
 four good harvests together, when it could not be ex- 
 ported for sale on the Continent, because our corn- 
 laws artificially kept our prices greatly above the 
 continental average, a moderate excess (say of 10 
 per cent.) may have made the price fall 25 per 
 cent, below the average. As to the expense of 
 keeping food, you will remember that corn is apt to 
 get mouldy or be eaten by vermin ; and that the 
 expense of warehousing is not inconsiderable. Say 
 that these two together are a loss of 5 per cent. : 
 then if a merchant would count it a loss of another 
 5 per cent, to have his property locked away from 
 him for a year, he would as willingly sell the corn 
 this day for ^lOO, as this day year for ,110. 
 Next, as to butcher's meat : it will not keep many 
 days, and the live cattle are very expensive in food 
 and tending ; hence an excess of cattle above the 
 average would depress the price still more deeply, 
 unless it were possible to salt the meat for future 
 use or for a distant market. In Australia they boil 
 up whole sheep for tallow. In the prairies of 
 America, bisons are killed by hundreds for their 
 tongues only, and the carcase is left to putrefy on 
 the soil. These are extreme cases, and morally 
 rather painful. The latter seems an abuse of man's 
 power over brute life, and an abuse which will in 
 the end be impoverishing. But they illustrate how 
 worthless food becomes, when decidedly in excess. 
 
 In the Anti-Corn Law contest the principle was 
 first developed by Colonel Torrens and Colonel 
 
SCALE OF URGENCY IN DESIRES. 87 
 
 Thompson simultaneously, that if the more neces- 
 sary food was cheapened, it tended at once to en- 
 hance the price of the more luxurious food. Colonel 
 Torrens distinguished between agricultural neces- 
 saries and agricultural luxuries, by the latter 
 understanding especially garden vegetables, milk 
 and cream, fresh butter, fresh eggs, and other things 
 in which the foreigner cannot compete with the 
 native producer. So small a fraction of our popula- 
 tion at present enjoys these things, that the desire 
 of the purchasers may be called something infinite ; 
 it is only their poverty which checks their demand. 
 Hence if, by the cheapening of bread and meat, they 
 have money to spare, it seems inevitable that the 
 competition for these luxuries must raise the price, 
 at least until the activity of the farmers should have 
 vastly increased the supply of such things. 
 
 But in fact we still only touch an isolated case of 
 a great and fruitful principle, which is expressed by 
 Mr. Banfield nearly as follows : If human wants 
 be arranged in series, beginning from the most 
 urgent and proceeding to the less, the satisfaction 
 of every lower want in the scale adds intensity to 
 some higher want. Let us say that Food and Rags 
 are more urgently needed than decent Clothes, such 
 Clothes than Useful Furniture, and such Furniture 
 than Pictures. Then, so long as Food is deficient, 
 men eagerly part with everything but Rags to buy 
 it. In 1 842 in Manchester, it was stated that no 
 shops but the Rag shops could keep up their prices ; 
 yet that was a time of scarcity only, not famine. 
 
88 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 In years when food is cheap, the manufacturers of 
 clothes know well that they will have brisk demand 
 and good prices. For all the nation, spending less 
 on food, can afford to spend more on decent clothes. 
 Again, the great improvements in machinery have 
 made clothes so cheap, that a larger demand by far 
 falls on Furniture than otherwise could have been : 
 and whenever Food, Clothes, and Furniture shall 
 all have become so cheap that the mass of the 
 nation has much to spare after providing for these, 
 a new value will be given to some higher luxury, 
 whether Pictures or Books, unless the increased 
 facility of producing them contributes to keep the 
 price down. 
 
 You will now see (if indeed not before) the 
 wisdom of that famous argument of the self-styled 
 ts Farmers' Friends," that it was requisite to keep 
 up the price of corn artificially, in order to sustain 
 the price of other things. Forsooth, if corn became 
 cheap, then cotton and silk, and timber, and bricks 
 and mortar, and iron, and leather, and woollen shawls, 
 and crockery and glass, and hardware, and paper and 
 books, and everything else, would become equally 
 cheap, and all the nation would be ruined ! Thus, 
 according to these gentlemen, you will impoverish a 
 nation by sending it plenty, but you will enrich it 
 by semi- starvation. 
 
 The old Mercantile Theory which taught that 
 silver and gold were the only wealth, and that the 
 more of them we bought and the less we parted 
 with, the better off the country was contained 
 
FAMINE DEPRECIATES ALL BUT FOOD. 89 
 
 nothing more monstrous than this extravagance, 
 which still deludes many men who think themselves 
 educated. Did they never see a family in distress 
 for food ? or could not their imagination picture, 
 how a mother, in grief at her children's cries, sells 
 one thing after another, proceeds to pawn any little 
 trinket which she has cherished as a remembrance 
 of love, and finally parts with her bed and sleeps 
 on straw ? Conceive a whole town in this distress, 
 think how full will be the pawnbrokers' shops, 
 how many eager to part with property, how few 
 anxious to buy or advance money ; and you will see 
 that, in famine, all property except that of food 
 suffers immense depreciation. Accordingly, in 
 smaller scarcity, all other property but food suffers 
 some depreciation. But plenty of Food makes 
 everything else more valuable ; and plenty of every 
 kind of common comforts makes all luxuries more 
 valuable. 
 
 We may extend this series upwards to intellec- 
 tual things generally, as well as to the Fine Arts. 
 The lower wants of man are pressing, but they are 
 finite : the higher wants are not at all pressing, but 
 they are infinite. Hereby it is provided that when 
 the stimulus of hunger and cold is removed, man 
 should not stagnate in inaction. When physical 
 comforts have been abundantly supplied, men (ac- 
 cording to the stage of intellectual development) 
 devote vast sums to external religious objects, as to 
 temple-building, or to the fine arts in general, or to 
 private and public education. In a very wealthy 
 
90 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 people the gains of a butcher or baker are not 
 much greater than in a comparatively poor people ; 
 but those of a successful painter, poet, singer, 
 writer, or literary teacher, are far greater. Thus 
 the laws of Economy provide for the fostering of 
 mind, as soon as the body is satiated ; and the 
 mind is insatiable. But the effects of scarcity are 
 felt at once, and with peculiar severity, by the 
 trades which minister to needless luxury that has 
 not grown into habit. 
 
 2. TENDENCY TO EQUALIZATION OF REWARD 
 FOR EQUAL SERVICE. 
 
 Where law makes no impediments to free inter- 
 change, there is a tendency towards uniformity of 
 prices of the same articles, if we pay attention to 
 the causes of diversity already named. In the 
 same village, the milk is sold everywhere at the 
 same price ; but in a distant town it sells for more, 
 since the sellers have to repay themselves for car- 
 riage, waste, risks of all sorts, and profit to their 
 capital. The wages, also, in the same village for the 
 same sort of work are the same at the same time ; 
 but twenty miles off, in the neighbourhood of a 
 town, they may be made higher by the demand for 
 men in various profitable manufactures. The ten- 
 dency of this is, to draw off the country people to 
 the town, and it might be thought that an equal- 
 ization of wages would at length result ; but this is 
 not necessary. People are justly unwilling to leave 
 
DIVERSITIES OF WAGES. 91 
 
 their native place, and their connections, for mere 
 wages : some are thus drawn away, but it is only in 
 the immediate vicinity of towns that the attraction 
 is strong enough to raise the country wages gene- 
 rally to the town average. It has heen ingeniously 
 observed, that Prices " seek their level " in the same 
 sense as Water does, though the head of the Nile 
 is two miles higher than the mouth. 
 
 Wages vary also with the severity of work, with 
 its disagreeableness, and with the rarity of the skill 
 required. Pleasant trades are worse paid, because 
 of the numbers who flock in : so are honourable 
 trades. Men serve as justices of the peace and 
 guardians of the poor for the honour alone, and 
 often exceedingly covet the labour of being mem- 
 bers of Parliament. They also become cavalry 
 officers for a small income, and serve as clergymen 
 for a butler's wages. On the contrary, if a trade is 
 made infamous, competition is narrowed and wages 
 or profits rise ; a fact, which gives a vexatious 
 vitality to all trades of doubtful moral right. But 
 perhaps it is desirable, that if the immorality is not 
 so clear as to justify legal prohibition and penalties, 
 it should be hard or impossible to extirpate a trade 
 by public odium. Had it been otherwise, Usury 
 would have been put down, and both Banking and 
 all Interest of money would have been killed in the 
 bud. 
 
 Interest appears more rapidly and certainly to 
 tend to equalization in the same political commu- 
 nity, than either Profits or Wages. Its rate is no- 
 
92 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 torious, and the thing lent is always the same ; and 
 the facility of transference from place to place is 
 so great as to make distance count for nothing. At 
 the extreme north of Scotland a landed proprietor 
 might borrow money in London on the very same 
 terms as if he had estates of equal value in London 
 itself. Altogether, in modern times, Capital has 
 such power of removal as to make it dangerous to 
 scare it away, especially from colonies and newly- 
 forming communities. I helieve it was no fraud- 
 ulent pretence, but a truth, that several of the 
 States of North America did not dare to impose 
 taxes adequate to pay the interest of the debt they 
 had unwisely incurred, because the taxes would have 
 caused extensive emigration of capital, as well as 
 hindered fresh introductions. 
 
 Some have on this ground said, that the Interest 
 of Money (after deducting what must be called 
 allowance for risk that is, the portion of it which 
 may be called Insurance,) must be equal all over 
 the civilized world. It does not appear to me that 
 this is certain ; and I must go a little more minutely 
 into it. Interest, being paid out of Profits, is likely 
 to rise and sink with Profits, if all besides is un- 
 changed. Profits rise and sink with the efficiency 
 of labour, if Wages remain the same. The effi- 
 ciency of labour increases with the excellence of 
 soil and climate, and with the intelligence of man. 
 Suppose, (from whatever cause, whether low 
 Wages, fine climate, or skilful culture and delicate 
 taste) the average Profits in France to be higher 
 
IS INTEREST UNIFORM EVERYWHERE? 93 
 
 than in England. It does not follow that the 
 accumulation of Capital is also more rapid there ; 
 for the people may have more taste for immediate 
 enjoyment than for saving; and gaining easily, they 
 may spend easily. It therefore might so be, that 
 higher Profits than in England coexisted with per- 
 manently smaller capital. If so, undoubtedly In- 
 terest would be higher in France than in England. 
 Now let us consider, would this equalize itself by 
 the rush of Capital out of England into France ? 
 I cannot convince myself of this. Some English- 
 men (let us admit) would invest money in French 
 works ; and, what amounts to the same, some would 
 buy into the French government-securities, and 
 thereby set French capital free. But foreigners 
 have much timidity in these operations. The pos- 
 sibility of war with France cannot be quite for- 
 gotten. The risks of dealing with Frenchmen are 
 in many ways greater for an Englishman than for 
 a Frenchman, especially if the Englishman is 
 resident in his own country. In many ways, 
 Capital would be far slower in rushing from Eng- 
 land to France than from Scotland to England, on 
 the mere ground of differences in government and 
 language. Hence I think it possible that higher 
 Interest might be permanently received by French- 
 men in France than by Englishmen in England, 
 and that such a difference (if observed) ought not 
 to be necessarily ascribed to some greater risk which 
 balanced the Frenchman's gains. Especially is 
 such a difference possible, if, from the more rapid 
 
94 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 increase of French population or some political 
 disadvantages of the French workmen, the wages of 
 piecework equally well executed were permanently 
 lower in France. Or again, put India for France ; 
 and although India and Britain are under one 
 political supremacy, the impediments to the flow 
 of English Capital into India are so great, that I 
 can see no impossibility in a much higher standard 
 of Profits and Interest in India than in Britain. 
 
 3. GENERAL DEDUCTIONS. 
 
 Let me now recapitulate. Wages rise with the 
 Capital in the market, hut sink with the number of 
 Workmen seeking employment. Other things re- 
 maining the same, Profits rise when Wages sink, and 
 conversely. Wages being fixed, Profits rise with the 
 Efficiency of work, which depends on fine climate 
 and soil, skill, and machinery. Profits being fixed, 
 Interest rises with the scarcity of Capital ; or Capital 
 being given, Interest rises with the rise of Profits. 
 Lastly, Profits being fixed, the rate at which Capital 
 accumulates depends on the disposition of the people 
 to save ; but this disposition is likely to be increased 
 by the security of private property, and by a high 
 range of Profit. Where property is unsafe, accu- 
 mulation takes the form of hoarding, so that the 
 Capital comes very slowly and incompletely into the 
 market, and the disposition, alike to save and to 
 produce, is impaired. 
 
 Our own condition, through the operation of 
 
UNIVERSAL GLUT. 95 
 
 Banks, is directly the opposite. Not only is the 
 disposition to save very general, because all can 
 calculate on being rewarded for their prudence by 
 secure possession ; but what is saved is not hoarded 
 away; it is entrusted to a Banker, as a safer 
 keeper of it. Thus small sums of ^50 or ^100 
 and upwards, which could not by themselves be 
 invested in any business, and all the earnings of 
 professional men, who generally would not know in 
 what to invest, trickle from all quarters of the 
 country into the Banks, where they collectively 
 swell into great amounts. The Banker lends a con- 
 siderable fraction, perhaps a third part of the whole ; 
 so that the serviceable Capital of the nation is 
 greatly increased. The immediate benefit is to the 
 workers; a secondary result is to the Capitalist in his 
 profits ; and a third is to the workers again from the 
 increased rate at which Capital accumulates. 
 
 Thus at every time there are at work four primi- 
 tive Forces, whose mutual action determines other 
 things : 1 . The power of producing, varying with 
 physical geography, with skill and with moral 
 qualities: 2. The number of Workmen: 3. The 
 existing accumulation of Capital : 4. The disposi- 
 tion to save more Capital. The disposition to con- 
 sume is regarded as infinite, though it is restricted 
 always by necessity and generally by prudence. 
 There used once to be much talk of a Universal 
 Glut, but the appearances which suggest the idea 
 are deceptive. When Food, the most necessary of 
 things, is deficient, everything else being depre- 
 
96 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ciated, there seems to be a universal glut ; but that 
 is not true ; for there is no glut of food, but the 
 reverse. On the other hand, it is logically imagin- 
 able, that in a nation of Chinese intelligence, where 
 there is great routine-experience, traditional skill 
 and devoted industry, but an utter want of original 
 invention, the number of trades should not increase, 
 when through increased efficiency they all over- 
 produced. If we suppose all Englishmen to work 
 at one of twenty occupations, we might undoubtedly 
 have a glut in all the existing trades. But this, if 
 equable, would make itself felt by universal and 
 increasing abundance as to all the needs of which 
 we were conscious. At the same time there would 
 be a total deficiency in countless matters which 
 have now become necessaries to us, and the wellbeing 
 of the nation would be like that of sheep in a fat 
 pasture. But as soon as higher desires arose, there 
 would be no propriety in calling it a universal glut, 
 when we had no elegances, no commodious and 
 swift conveyances, no books, no fine arts, no intel- 
 lectual culture. Practically, every glut must be 
 partial ; and generally a glut in any one trade does 
 not imply that more ia, produced than the nation 
 desires, but more than purchasers will or can buy at 
 the prices. Thus the glut in one thing does but 
 indicate a deficiency in something more urgently 
 needed. There seems to be too much clothing in 
 the market, because there is too little bread and 
 meat: there seems to be too much elegant china, 
 because there is too little clothing ; and so on. 
 
9T 
 
 4. ON FIXED AND CIRCULATING CAPITAL. 
 
 From what has been said, you will see that it is 
 of firstrate importance to every nation to possess a 
 very large Capital in proportion to its numbers; 
 and this, whatever may be the form in which its 
 workmen are paid. If, for instance, a farmer, with 
 his wife, sons, and daughters, tills his own ground, 
 so as to pay himself his own wages as well as 
 profits, the efficiency of his industry eminently 
 depends on his Capital. If he has a store of cattle- 
 food, he can keep labouring cattle and rear young 
 stock, he can, also, from other stores purchase the 
 best tools, while if totally without capital he 
 would relapse into the state of a savage. But 
 eminently in a country where a large fraction of the 
 people lives by wages alone (a most undesirable 
 state of things), is the abundance of Capital matter 
 of primary interest to the labourer. 
 
 Consider what would be the effect of a dreadful 
 earthquake which should overthrow our manufac- 
 turing establishments, ingulf our warehouses, and 
 reduce the employers of labour to comparative 
 poverty. The workmen, by hundreds of thousands, 
 would be left unemployed, and, unless fed at the 
 public charge, must ere long either perish or live by 
 plunder. Either method would in a few months 
 enormously aggravate the general impoverishment, 
 and what dreadful solution such a difficulty would 
 receive, no one can conjecture. If, instead of a 
 sudden earthquake, the result were gradually brought 
 
98 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 about by wars and taxation, the convulsion would 
 less affect the imagination, but would be as fatal in 
 the result. Heavy taxes laid on the industrious 
 rich, and increasing from time to time so as never 
 to be compensated by the shiftings of the market, 
 seem peculiarly apt to drive Capital out of a country. 
 Happily, however, for illgoverned nations, Capital 
 often ties itself to the soil, and peculiarly so in the 
 whole modern development of industry : and this 
 leads me to the distinction between fixed and circu- 
 lating Capital. 
 
 In nearly every trade which is energetically pur- 
 sued, the Capitalist is forced to sink one portion of 
 his funds in an immovable form, retaining another 
 portion to pay the ordinary wages of his men. Thus 
 a scientific farmer in some cases lays down drains, 
 excavates a tank, improves a road ; (for whether he 
 does this himself, or his landlord does it, is not just 
 now to the purpose to ask ;) he, at any rate, spends 
 largely on manuring and weeding, in the expecta- 
 tion of recovering his money only after many years. 
 For so long time his capital is fixed in the soil. 
 Buildings of every kind that are used for produc- 
 tion, are fixed capital ; in which we must include 
 harbours, docks, bridges, roads, stations on railroads, 
 and whatever is built to yield an income, in strict- 
 ness, therefore, even dwelling-houses, provided that 
 they are not built for the enjoyment of the owner : 
 but the kind of fixed capital which is of special 
 value to the labourers, is that which can only yield 
 an income by the application of their labour. Such 
 
MACHINERY DETAINS CAPITAL. 99 
 
 is the case with all MACHINERY, against which the 
 ignorant malice of workmen was once directed 
 among us; but this evil prejudice is happily fast 
 dying out. In every economical light from which 
 it can he viewed, machinery is the greatest friend 
 of the poor ; and it is only to be lamented that 
 hitherto its use in agriculture is so restricted. 
 
 The first point in machinery to which I am 
 directing your notice, is, its making the owner so 
 dependent on the workmen ; and to so great an ex- 
 tent securing them against the emigration of Capital. 
 Circulating Capital is the food of him who labours 
 for hire ; and it is as undesirable that his life should 
 depend on the Capitalists, singly or collectively, as 
 that the lives of the community at large should be 
 at the mercy of the holders of food. I noticed in 
 my first lecture, that the perishable nature of food 
 is sufficient to secure that its sellers shall be as 
 eager to sell, as buyers can be to buy; so that 
 neither bakers and butchers nor cornfactors and gra- 
 ziers can starve us into their own terms. Similarly, 
 all machinery is a bond given by the Capitalist to 
 the workmen, which secures that its owner shall be 
 as anxious for their work, as they for his pay. It 
 secures that he will do his best to retain adequate 
 floating capital to defray their wages and the ex- 
 pense of needful materials ; nor, until he has found 
 a successor to take his responsibilities, can he emi- 
 grate with his movable wealth at any smaller sacri- 
 fice than that of losing his whole fixed capital. It 
 is thus totally false (though often asserted), that 
 
 F 2 
 
100 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 workmen are unable to make an equal bargain with 
 their masters. The master who is forced to keep 
 his machinery inactive, incurs not only a loss of its 
 whole profit, but the damage ensuing from its dis- 
 use : hence Avarice, if he be avaricious, vehemently 
 prompts some speedy arrangement with his men. 
 
 Secondly, machinery enormously increases the 
 efficiency of labour ; and so long as it is singularly 
 good, so increases the total receipts of the business 
 as to enable the owner to pay wages above the 
 average, while retaining good profits. This is only 
 a transition- stage ; but while it lasts, the Capitalist 
 seldom gets the whole benefit of it; this is shared, 
 more or less, with the workmen. 
 
 Thirdly, when the same machinery has become 
 general, the competition of sellers who have high 
 profits and great producing power rapidly lowers the 
 price of their goods; but this seldom leads to a 
 lowering of the wages once obtained, because Custom 
 has much power, and employers fear ill-will, espe- 
 cially if they be wealthy and their fixed capital 
 valuable. Some lowering of Profits would rather 
 be submitted to, and I believe that, as a fact, this is 
 the general result, and not a fall in the rate of 
 wages, if one or other becomes essential. The 
 effort to avoid the lowering of Profits is a constant 
 stimulus to new inventions and improved methods. 
 Meanwhile the depressed price of the goods 
 benefits every poor man as a consumer. 
 
 And here I must remark on the great mistake of 
 supposing that the chief result of our vast organi- 
 
MACHINERY CHEAPENS COMMON COMFORTS. 101 
 
 zations is to minister to the luxury of the few : on 
 the contrary, it is to advance the comforts of the 
 millions. The Food, indeed, which the poor consume 
 is not cheaper in price in England than elsewhere, 
 measure the price as you will ; no wonder : for in 
 producing food, machinery has not greatly helped 
 us as yet, and our fertile soils are not very extensive. 
 But whatever else a labouring man needs for com- 
 fort is peculiarly cheap in England. Where else 
 can his clothes, blankets, tools, furniture, be got so 
 cheap ? Even all the materials of a house are 
 remarkably low-priced; and if a house itself is 
 dear, that depends either on the ground (of which I 
 shall afterwards speak), or on the high wages of 
 bricklayers, carpenters, and other workmen, or rather 
 on the superior style of execution which we regard 
 as necessary. Bad finance-laws (the remains of a 
 half-exploded system of taxation) still inflict on 
 rich and poor alike various isolated evils ; but for 
 this no one can blame machinery. On the contrary, 
 it is machinery that makes the useful metals and 
 useful cloth so cheap, and the machines called Ships 
 bring in from all parts a prodigious abundance of 
 cheap luxuries. A rich man in London pays half 
 as much again for a carriage as in Vienna, or for a 
 watch as in Geneva; the enhanced London price 
 being mainly caused (I believe) by the high wages 
 of workmen. But the substantial comforts of the 
 poor are peculiarly cheap among us, while the wages 
 in the neighbourhood of machinery are higher than 
 in any other part of Europe. 
 
102 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 If therefore our working classes suffer any wide- 
 spread or permanent misery, it must arise from some 
 of the following causes : 1, too many of them live 
 on the same area, so as not to have good air or 
 water, and pay too much for the earth on which 
 they rest ; or, 2, they stick to some trade which is 
 overstocked, as to tailoring and milliner's work or 
 handloom-weaving. The last trade ought scarcely 
 to exist at all, and for the other two we have to wish 
 that they may he superseded hy machinery. But, 
 3, much of the distress is perhaps caused hy neglect 
 of industrial education, so that the indigent are not 
 desirable workers to any one. Or 4, the cause is 
 moral ; want of common prudence, want of intelli- 
 gent friends and advisers, want of right principle, or 
 want of willingness to work. Thus the direct reme- 
 dies are either Municipal or Personal and Moral ; 
 but to that topic I shall afterwards return. 
 
 Our Economists have, in several directions, great 
 defects ; hut the outcry against them as Mammon 
 Worshippers because they highly appreciate the 
 importance of Capital, seems to me wholly unjust. 
 Why do they value Capital ? because it feeds the 
 hungry, and sustains the weak. Why do they de- 
 precate all needless interference with private trade ? 
 because, by tending to paralyze industry, it starves 
 the working men. To call this Mammon Worship 
 is to nickname white black. Certain Economists 
 have, in my opinion, shown far too great compla- 
 cency in the actual results of our English social 
 industry. Their temptation has been to feel exult- 
 
DEFECT OF OUR ECONOMISTS. 103 
 
 ation in the great activity and efficiency of our 
 labour, and not to be aware how deep a disgrace 
 lies upon us for our contrasts of penury and 
 luxury. If the total produce has been large, they 
 have seemed to care little about the permanence of 
 moral relations or the distribution of wealth. Yet 
 I cannot admit it to be the proper duty of an 
 Economist, to study " how human wealth ought to 
 be distributed" ; as if there were no rights of private 
 property. The weak point here of the English 
 school is, that they so readily take up with the Com- 
 mercial notion of land, as though land were and 
 ought to be the absolute and exclusive right of 
 individuals : of this I shall afterwards speak. But 
 even if the fullest political justice existed, as re- 
 gards the basis of private property, the differences of 
 mind in different men and families would still pro- 
 duce great differences of wealth ; nor can anything 
 hinder widespread indigence among us, till the mass 
 of the community be better trained, better watched 
 over, and thereby more intelligent, more moral, and 
 more united in habits and affection to definite 
 families and classes above them. The whole subject, 
 therefore, reaches beyond the proper sphere of the 
 Economist : to complain that he does not treat it, 
 is like complaining that a treatise on Mechanics or 
 Gunnery does not teach Anatomy or Politics. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 On Population and the Distribution of Employments. 
 
 I HOPE you are now familiar with the thought, 
 that the efficiency of Lahour depends partly on 
 Nature, and partly on the aid of Capital and skilful 
 Direction, which Capital and Skill are a private 
 property ; that the total product, therefore, is neces- 
 sarily divided into two parts, of which one remune- 
 rates Labourers and the other Capitalists, heing 
 respectively called Wages and Profits; and that 
 the larger the one portion is, the less the other must 
 be, unless the Lahour increase in efficiency. You 
 must farther conceive of Profit as splitting into 
 two branches, of which one remunerates active and 
 the other inactive Capitalists. The latter is called 
 Interest. Of both Profit and Interest a certain 
 varying fraction is allowance for risk, and may be 
 called Insurance. So much for the division of the 
 whole produce. 
 
 You will see of yourselves the confusion arising 
 from an expression that has become frequent of 
 late, that " Labour is the Capital of the poor," 
 whence it is inferred that labourers have a right to 
 Profits as well as Wages! The word Labour is 
 itself here vague. I suppose it means, the ability to 
 labour : but in fact sinews and bone give no ability 
 
HAND-TO-MOUTH SYSTEM. 105 
 
 to labour, unless supported by food. A man who 
 has food in reserve, or the means of purchasing it, 
 is (in so far) a Capitalist; but he who has not the 
 means of feeding himself is not a Capitalist, and 
 has no right to the profit of other men's capital. 
 He has merely a right to make as favourable terms 
 for himself as the market will allow. (I do not now 
 discuss the topic of Poor Laws.) If, instead of 
 being paid a fixed wage, he agrees to receive, in 
 part at least, a payment varying with his employer's 
 profits, he still is not any the more a Capitalist, and 
 his payment ought still to be called Wages. Variable 
 or fixed, it is a payment for personal service, and 
 not for the use of Capital. If, however, he manages 
 to save, and invests his money in his master's 
 business, then he becomes (in so far) a little 
 Capitalist, and receives Profits as a partner, besides 
 his Wages. 
 
 Hitherto, in most nations, a large mass of the 
 people has been without any store of capital ; but 
 perhaps in no community of firstrate greatness has 
 so very large a fraction of the whole lived from hand 
 to mouth, as in Great Britain. The effects of it are 
 in many respects lamentable, and the prospect is 
 most threatening ; yet it has in part risen out of an 
 excellent advantage the great abundance of Wages. 
 The power of production which machinery has given 
 us, has enabled mere children to earn more than 
 their maintenance, and has tempted tens of thousands 
 to migrate to the towns, to marry and raise families, 
 all of whom are to live by Wages. This means, to 
 
 F 3 
 
106 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 be dependent not only on the Capital of others, hut 
 on their Prudence and Skill. On the moral evils of 
 this, as discouraging personal forethought, I may 
 afterwards touch. At present I confine myself to 
 the primary Economic view of the case. Here are 
 vast masses of families dependent on Wages, and 
 therefore liable to starvation if Capital or its means 
 of profitable employment fails. Is it, or is it not, 
 to be feared, that Population will grow faster than 
 Capital, and thereby will effect its own ruin? 
 
 The doctrine which has obtained great currency 
 through Malthus, Chalmers, the two Mills and 
 Macculloch, is, that Population tends to double itself 
 in every 25 years or thereabout, but that, on a given 
 area of soil, no such tendency to constant increase 
 of Capital exists or can permanently exist unim- 
 paired in energy ; nay, in every country which has 
 been long settled, every increase of population 
 makes it increasingly difficult to raise food : hence 
 the numbers are constantly pressing against the 
 limits of subsistence (as the phrase is), and starva- 
 tion will ensue, unless prudential reasons are called 
 in to repress marriage. But such prudence (say 
 they) is impossible, unless the State sternly casts on 
 each head of a family the responsibility of feeding 
 the children. Out of this springs the great Mal- 
 thusian conclusion, that a Poor Law which disem- 
 barrasses the poor from this responsibility must 
 ultimately be most ruinous to them ; for (says the 
 argument) it will stimulate their increase of num- 
 bers so much, that a poor-rate adequate to feed them 
 
INCREASE OF POPULATION. 107 
 
 would rapidly pull down the classes just above them 
 in the scale : and the longer the principle should be 
 persevered in, the more inevitable would be the final 
 misery. Allowing, therefore, that public relief may 
 be given to distress that could not have been fore- 
 seen, Malthusians would refuse it to those whose 
 indigence is caused by imprudent marriage. 
 
 Mr. Malthus of course foresaw the reply that 
 Emigration and Importation of food are the natural 
 remedies for excessive population; but he under- 
 valued the emciency of both modes of relief. Per- 
 haps had he lived to see Steam Navigation, he 
 would have modified this part of his argument. 
 
 The controversy moved by this celebrated question 
 would need a large volume to discuss, and I can 
 only touch its outline. My opinion is, that the 
 Malthusian doctrine, when stated as an abstract 
 theory, is undeniably true, but that every practical 
 application which either Malthus or his followers 
 have given it, is deplorably and perniciously false. 
 
 First; it is certain in the abstract, that if we go 
 on multiplying without restraint, the earth must in 
 a very moderate time be overpeopled. 
 
 The diameter of our globe is less than 8000 
 miles ; its surface therefore is less than 804 millions 
 of square miles, one third part of which, or less than 
 268 millions of square miles, is believed to be land. 
 Suppose, now, that all the human population were 
 cut off, except the 80 millions of Great Britain and 
 Ireland : this would allow an average of less than 9 
 square miles to each individual. The number of 
 
108 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 square feet in 9 square miles is less than 251 
 millions ; hence if the British population were 
 multiplied 251 million fold, the entire solid land of 
 the glohe would be covered so thick that each would 
 have hut a square foot to stand on. And this sum, 
 though large, would result from doubling our popu- 
 lation about 27 times only. Supposing, therefore, 
 that we double in every 40 years, it follows that our 
 posterity alone would thus cover the earth in about 
 1080 years. If we doubled, as the Anglo-Americans, 
 every 25 years, the time would be reduced to 675 
 years: and this would, no doubt, be our rate of 
 increase, if we had a miraculous unlimited supply 
 of food. 
 
 Such an argument, on Malthus's side, is, I think, 
 far more cogent than any which he has used. His 
 opponents may tell him, that the tendency of Agri- 
 culture to improve in efficiency in an educated 
 nation, has been undervalued by him, and is as 
 certain and as effective as the tendency of Popula- 
 tion to increase. They may plead increasing faci- 
 lities for carrying people abroad to the food, and for 
 bringing-in food to the people. But they cannot 
 deny, that if the increase of population is not 
 (somehow) checked, it will at last be smothered by 
 its own numbers; and that, in a period of time 
 which is but one- third or one-fifth of the past 
 existence of historical civilization. But the ques- 
 tion recurs, what is this to us ? 
 
 Would not any one be thought mad, who re- 
 frained from promoting his own moral happiness by 
 
MALTHUSIANISM. 109 
 
 marrying, merely because he feared lest the earth 
 should be overpeopled 1000 years hence ? Clearly. 
 A legislator therefore acts tyrannically, who to serve 
 this distant object impedes marriage. Mai thus 
 himself had no such visionary thoughts. He held 
 population to be already too numerous, that our 
 poor are already suffering from it and likely to suffer 
 more ; and that all which can be done is to secure 
 by law that the inevitable suffering shall fall in the 
 right place ; i.e. on the families of the improvident : 
 to which end, the State (in his view) must never 
 feed the children of those whose fathers are unable 
 to feed them, and the Church should teach the poor 
 the duty of prudential restraint; moreover, his 
 school assure us, such prudence on the part of the 
 poor will have its own reward in the comparatively 
 high market rate of wages. 
 
 Mr. Malthus was a benevolent man of great 
 learning and original thought. His doctrine was 
 one of the phases through which Political Economy 
 inevitably passed, just as Philosophy passed through 
 that of the Selfish System, the upholders of which 
 were not selfish persons. I see not how to deny, 
 that, however true in the abstract is the nucleus of 
 Malthusianism, yet its applications have been blight- 
 ing to our science. On every point practical Mal- 
 thusianism has been undermined, I do not mean 
 by the often unjust assaults of unscientific repug- 
 nance, but by reason and accumulated fact. 
 
 First, it is impossible for any poor man to hope 
 that his individual prudence in the delay or re- 
 
110 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 nnnciation of marriage will ever be remunerated by 
 a higher rate of wages. He knows that others will 
 swamp his market with their children, if he live 
 childless. If the good alone are Malthusians, the 
 bad families will outbreed them. Next, the pro- 
 gress of Irish population has demonstrated, that 
 a total absence of Poor Laws has no tendency 
 to check population, but rather the contrary. When 
 men live in a half brutish state of mind and body, 
 you can no more stop their multiplication, than 
 that of rabbits, by enacting laws : the only way is, 
 to shoot them down. If men are to be treated as 
 men and governed by law, there is only one way of 
 checking their increase, (supposing that to be de- 
 sired,) viz., by increasing their comfort and their 
 selfrespect, by developing their mental faculties, and 
 lifting them above mere animal instincts. An Irish 
 lad marries at 18, because he has nothing to lose 
 and something to gain by it. He has no comfort 
 in life to hope for, but that of a wife ; and who will 
 succeed in persuading him to renounce that also ? 
 Poor Laws are found to be essential as a means of 
 Police; they are also (as I think) matter si justice 
 to the poor, in all countries where Law keeps masses 
 of land idle ; on which subject I shall afterwards 
 speak. But they likewise aid to sustain the poor 
 above that state of recklessness, in which they 
 multiply thoughtlessly as animals. 
 
 You must remember the wild ages through which 
 Human Nature has passed. Our forefathers were 
 all mere savages. In conflict with so many powers 
 
TEST OF REDUNDANCY. Ill 
 
 of destruction, our race could not have sustained 
 itself, had there not been in its animal basis a mar- 
 vellous power of selfreparation. A power essential 
 in times of violence needs to be partially quiescent 
 in times of tranquillity. As the ferocity of the 
 savage is tempered into a noble and mild patriotism, 
 so the instinct which joins him to Woman becomes 
 refined into a tender sentiment, which, in order to 
 listen to virtue and prudence, may feed awhile upon 
 the mental response which it receives. 
 
 But farther, it does not appear that Malthus or 
 any of his followers have given us any test by which 
 we may ascertain that we are actually suffering 
 under redundancy of population. They point to 
 widespread distress, sometimes in one class, some- 
 times in another ; but this may evidently arise out 
 of moral, political, commercial causes which have 
 nothing to do with total overpopulation. The only 
 intelligible test of the last, is that propounded by 
 Mr. Lawson ; viz., A people is then beginning to 
 press on the limits of its subsistence, when a larger 
 and larger fraction of its entire power is needed to 
 raise the food of the community. And, tried by 
 this test, we surely never were so far off from being 
 redundant, as we are at this moment. To say 
 nothing of the relief by Emigration and by Import- 
 ing food, neither of which has at all come near to 
 its maximum of service, if England were the 
 whole world, and we did but cultivate it as saga- 
 ciously as our best-farmed counties, till we had as 
 much food as we could consume, I believe we should 
 
112 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 still have a larger proportion of hands free from the 
 toil of food raising than in the reign of the 8th 
 Henry or the 1st Edward. Our economic disease, 
 therefore, does not consist in too much population, 
 (which means, too little power of getting enough 
 food for all,) but from various clogs and stoppages in 
 the channels of distribution. If there is food for all, 
 yet one person in 100 is either immoral, illtrained, 
 unwise, perverse, or blamelessly unfortunate, so as to 
 miss his food, (and how small a percentage is this !) 
 that will make out of our 30 millions as many as 
 30,000 persons hovering between food and starva- 
 tion. Such a mass of misery, collected in heaps in 
 the chief towns, grievously affects the imagination, 
 as though there was more population than we were 
 able to feed ; and leads others to speculate on the 
 necessity of reconstructing Society and abolishing 
 Competition. 
 
 In order the better to analyze these phenomena, 
 we must consider the law which regulates the dis- 
 tribution of employment into separate trades. In 
 the state of barbarism, every man produces food for 
 himself; every little family is self-sufficient. In 
 ordinary times, the physical wants of all are well 
 supplied ; but famines are frequent and severe, far 
 beyond anything encountered in the same locality 
 by civilized man : and at all times, no mental pro- 
 gress is possible for the savage. You remember, 
 that the first step out of this state rose out of the 
 increased efficiency of the labour that raises food. 
 When hunters become keepers of tame cattle, and 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TRADES. 113 
 
 much more, when they begin to raise crops of corn, 
 a part of the community is able to feed the whole, 
 and the labour of the rest is free to work at articles 
 of comfort and luxury. 
 
 Now this is but the first step in a great ladder. 
 Every increase of human abundance must ordi- 
 narily depend on increased efficiency of work ; and 
 all such increase of efficiency is apt to make itself 
 disagreeably felt to the actual workers, who com- 
 plain that their trade is overstocked. If, after the 
 first step out of barbarism, nine-tenths of the men 
 can feed the whole nation, a second improvement in 
 cultivation may enable seven-tenths to suffice ; and 
 if markets have been established, the excess of pro- 
 duce is at first vexatious to the producers, since 
 they can purchase less with it. Two -tenths of 
 them ought to leave the class of agriculturists, if 
 all could be arranged by mechanism ; but as men 
 cannot or will not break up their habits, it needs 
 several generations to bring about such a result. 
 Let me, however, for a moment suppose an indefinite 
 versatility in the workers, and that, by virtue of 
 this, they could change from trade to trade as 
 speedily as general reasons of Economy dictated. 
 Then, on successive improvements in the art of 
 foodraising, we might see first nine-tenths, then 
 seven- tenths, then only six- tenths of the adult 
 males employed in this duty : for as we can do no- 
 thing with food but eat, and the capacity of our 
 stomachs is limited, it would be a clear absurdity to 
 go on permanently overproducing. Thus a rough 
 
.114 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 measure * of the facility with which a nation feeds 
 itself, is found in the smallness of the fraction of 
 its agriculturists. Meanwhile, the hands set free 
 from this work are engaged as artizans ; some, in 
 making agricultural tools and others weapons, some 
 in clothes and furniture : say that one-tenth of the 
 whole is employed in twisting, netting and knitting, 
 so as to make mats, cloaks, and cloth, of a rude 
 kind. In this stage some ingenious man invents a 
 loom, the use of which soon produces cloth so 
 abundant, that one-tenth of the population is now 
 too much for this work. It is true, that the effect 
 might only go so far, as to enable many to enjoy 
 these things who previously went without them ; but 
 if the looms were confined to the simplest and 
 coarsest produce, it seems inevitable that there 
 would be overproduction. I have explained that 
 the lowest and most urgent wants of man are the 
 most finite; as food and rough rags : it is only 
 by rising into a mental sphere, where fantasy or 
 taste act, that infinite desire is called out. Thus, 
 instead of one-tenth of the people employed in the 
 coarsest clothing, we shall perhaps find one-twen- 
 tieth only; and the other twentieth may produce 
 more elegant and luxurious articles. 
 
 Supposing, then, this infinite versatility in the 
 workmen, and a steady improvement going on in 
 every branch of industrial skill, we should see a 
 
 * It must not be forgotten, that in a very agricultural community, 
 a part of the work of the peasant, as of the females in his family, is 
 that of an artizan. 
 
WANT OF VERSATILITY. 115 
 
 perpetually diminishing fraction of them engaged 
 in those trades which supply our lowest wants, and 
 fresh and fresh fractions perpetually thrown off to 
 work at luxuries previously undreamed of, perhaps 
 at mental occupation. And, as I explained in the 
 preceding lecture, the hetter the lower wants are 
 supplied, the hetter are those remunerated who 
 cater to our higher appetites. To cheapen food, is 
 to add value to clothes and all higher things ; to 
 cheapen clothes also, is to increase still farther the 
 value of what is less necessary, and so on. Hence 
 the workmen would all he benefited hy the progress 
 of industry. The agriculturists would get comforts 
 or luxuries that previously did not exist ; the seller 
 of luxuries would get plenty of agricultural pro- 
 duce ; and so on. 
 
 But in fact, this progress is sadly embarrassed by 
 the failure of our Postulate. Man has not that 
 versatility of which I speak. He is attached to his 
 locality as well as to his trade. He likes to super- 
 intend his children's education, and therefore to 
 bring up his sons to his own trade. And it is hard 
 to break down this sentiment, without impairing 
 patriotism ; without infusing a too purely Com- 
 mercial soul, which values every thing by its market- 
 price. Where to change one's trade is to change 
 one's abode, to lose the friends of our childhood 
 and youth, to be lost among strangers, there, 
 large pecuniary sacrifices may well be recommended 
 in preference. It demands a higher education and 
 great progress in rapid and cheap communication, 
 
116 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to enable families to separate locally without sepa- 
 paration of affection and interests. Nor is this all; 
 but when a trade has been learned by a long ap- 
 prenticeship, when it has been taught by mere 
 routine, when neither the mind nor the eye nor 
 the hand has received any universal culture, but all 
 have been trained to one thing only ; it is so hope- 
 less a thing (or seems so hopeless) to change one's 
 trade, that men cannot be induced to attempt it. 
 Practically, therefore, it may be a great calamity to 
 a nation if its industrial mechanism develops itself 
 too rapidly for its individual flexibility ; for it may 
 produce more of certain articles than it needs or 
 than it has channels for distributing, and the work- 
 men by sticking firmly to their trade will then suffer 
 want in the midst of abundance. 
 
 If this is not clear of itself, consider the possible 
 consequences of an improvement in tools or organ- 
 ization. Suppose a nation of 4 millions of persons, 
 of whom one-fortieth part, or a hundred thousand, 
 are contentedly engaged as working tailors and 
 sempstresses ; but, by the improvement of the 
 needle, it becomes so much easier to draw the 
 thread through the cloth or web, that it can pass 
 six times instead of five with no greater fatigue. 
 In consequence, each workman and workwoman is 
 encouraged to produce more ; and when the goods 
 remain unsold, they are offered at a rather lower 
 price, to get rid of them, else the workers will have 
 to remain idle. If now the community was pre- 
 viously half-clad, more clothes are bought and worn, 
 
DEPRECIATION BY IMPROVED WORK. 117 
 
 so that a fresh and fresh demand takes place. The 
 consumers then get benefit in reduced price, yet the 
 tailors and sempstresses need not lose all advan- 
 tage ; for the price will not sink in so great a ratio 
 as supply has risen ; since the increase of demand 
 helps a little to hear the prices up. But if, on the 
 contrary, the community was fully clad already, and 
 will wear hut little more clothes, even if they he 
 offered cheaper; hut will rather save money in 
 clothes to spend on something else; then the 
 needleworkers find their stock is depreciated and 
 that demand is slack. They do not know that this 
 is a permanent thing, and hope it will mend. Find- 
 ing themselves a little poorer than before, each 
 works harder, in order to make up. Perhaps they 
 before worked only 9 hours a day ; they now begin 
 to work 10. Thus the stock was first increased by 
 one-fifth (or from 100 to 120), by the improvement 
 of needles ; next it is increased one-ninth more, or 
 from 120 to 133J, by the longer hours. Thirdly, 
 this increased demand for the cloth probably makes 
 it rather dearer : this is paid (let me suppose) 
 beforehand by the worker : thus the expenses and 
 labour are increased, and the sole reward is a 
 diminished price of the goods. Obviously, if they 
 persevere in this course, poverty and lingering 
 trouble is inevitable. They are producing more 
 than the community cares to use ; and unless they 
 can export their goods to a new market, there is no 
 remedy but that about 25,000 of them leave that 
 
118 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 particular line of trade. The most hopeful thing 
 would be, to develop some higher form of it. 
 
 Very similar results might happen from improved 
 organization. If a city have 1000 working tailors, 
 accustomed to work separately, with great trouble 
 and loss of time ; some capitalist conceives the idea 
 of economizing labour by bringing together a com- 
 pany of 30 workers. He pays them liberally at 
 first (I will suppose), and the advantage of the 
 Division of Labour largely increases his produce. 
 To promote its sale, he a little lowers the prices, 
 but still makes a good return for his money. His 
 example finds imitators, and as the produce keeps 
 increasing beyond the actual wants of the com- 
 munity, the end ought to be a lessening of the 
 number of tailors ; unless indeed some new pur- 
 chasers can be found or raised up. Thus whatever 
 makes human labour more efficient, tends to glut 
 that particular market, unless the produce is of that 
 kind for which the human desires are infinite. 
 
 The general law of Economy may here be called 
 a law of Providence. It is intended, it is desir- 
 able, it is in the course of human improvement, 
 that by the advancing skill of man, a larger and 
 larger fraction of the nation should migrate out of 
 those trades which provide for our primary and 
 lower wants into other employments. If men fight 
 too obstinately against this economic law, they do 
 it at a severe expense of suffering which must at 
 last subdue them. But let me call your attention 
 
IS COMPETITION EVIL ? 119 
 
 here to a strange misrepresentation. It is said : 
 " How absurdly inconsistent are you Economists ! 
 you first extol Competition, and then you confess it 
 is a most ruinous thing ; and you warn people to 
 run away from it by changing their trade. Surely 
 this justifies us in denouncing Competition as an un- 
 christian iniquity, the very root of evil." I reply : 
 Competition is, in the market of the world, what 
 Gravitation is in the mechanism of the heavens, an 
 all-combining, all-balancing and beneficent law. 
 But the beneficence of which we spoke, applied to 
 the equalization of advantages among those of 
 the same trade, to which Competition tends. 
 If there must be 200,000 tailors, competition tends 
 to level them : this is, under the circumstances, a 
 good thing : but to say that, is not to say that there 
 ought to be so many tailors. Moreover Competition 
 is a not thing invented by Economists: it is a 
 necessary result of private property. To concede 
 that money or goods are a private possession, and 
 deny freedom to buy and sell, is absurd : but this 
 freedom ensures Competition. We see its excellent 
 results : we see also the impossibility of destroying 
 it : but that is no reason why we should not warn 
 persons that if too many of them work at one trade, 
 they will starve one another. Even so, it is not the 
 Competition that starves them, but the pertinacity 
 with which they continue to produce, when the low 
 price warns them that the market is glutted. In 
 fact, however, to the individual who is exposed to 
 competition, the immediate action of that principle 
 
120 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 can seldom be pleasant. To him it is generally 
 painful, even when a useful stimulant ; but its great 
 benefit is to others. We do not " panegyrize" 
 competition in any other sense than we panegyrize 
 Gravitation or Fire. All these things are necessary 
 powers, deeply inherent in nature, and admirably 
 suited to this world. To denounce them as " in 
 themselves evil" is really too absurd. 
 
 The particular question of tailors and semp- 
 stresses has been put by me hypothetically, to 
 illustrate a principle. If I approach the actual 
 facts of modern London, I should observe that the 
 profession of the sempstress in the lowest classes is 
 assumed, as that of the governess in the middle 
 classes, by hundreds who have no aptitude for the 
 work ; and it is quite possible that there may be 
 many who do not get employment or who get it 
 seldom and ill-paid, simply because they work very 
 badly. But as it is certain that if there were too 
 few workers in comparison with the active desire of 
 the public to buy clothes, all who could work well 
 would be able to make advantageous bargains with 
 the master- tailors and drapers, so it appears to be 
 impossible to resist the inference, that the true cause 
 of any really and permanently low wages in these 
 trades is, because the activity of the system has for 
 some time past been oversupplying the public. A 
 tailor's trade either is, or appears to be, so easy to 
 acquire, that too many are always liable to flock 
 into it : and the more this art is taught in the 
 Ragged Schools, the worse, perhaps, will be the case 
 
CAN DEMAND PRECEDE SUPPLY? 121 
 
 of journeymen tailors, at least in the ready-made 
 clothes trade. 
 
 To blame master-tailors for making work efficient, 
 or the public as oppressively eager for low prices, 
 is alike gratuitous. In fact, the work which is 
 bespoken does not seem to be cheaper than thirty 
 years ago, when food and all necessary or con- 
 venient things were dearer. 
 
 And here I am brought to the remedy of Sis- 
 mondi and his school, who declaim about the ne- 
 cessity of Supply following Demand, not going 
 before it. The only meaning which I can see in 
 this is, that nothing should be made for sale, lest 
 too much be made. Unless men are to be con- 
 strained to idleness until an article is bespoken for 
 use, of course Supply goes before Demand. The 
 opposite principle would have extinguished all new 
 invention. Which of us could think of ordering 
 Wedgwood ware or Gutta Percha straps or Mac- 
 intosh coats, if such articles were not first exposed 
 for sale ? Moreover, how can it possibly be known 
 how much the public is willing to pay, except by 
 trial ? The Demand is called out by the usefulness, 
 beauty, and cheapness of articles, which previously, 
 perhaps, were unthought of by the consumer. 
 
 The nucleus of our whole difficulty is, that our 
 people have more Liberty than Versatility or Good 
 Sense. There surely needs no proof that a trade 
 may be overdone : let me exemplify the handloom 
 weavers. Suppose an Act of Parliament to be 
 passed, which would set up a Minister of Industry 
 
122 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and enable him to press them all into whatever 
 trades he pleased ; and that he forced some of them 
 to become streetsweepers, some to be shoeblacks, 
 some to be butchers' boys, and so on: the whole 
 country, and the weavers themselves, would cry out 
 against the tyranny of the measure. It would be 
 powerfully argued, that no one has so strong an 
 interest as each man himself in finding out for what 
 trade he is fitted and what trade will remunerate 
 him ; and that for one mistake made by the indi- 
 vidual, ten will be made by the Minister. Our 
 Freedom to choose our trade must therefore be left 
 to us, great as is the possible suffering to in- 
 dividuals who have chosen badly and who cannot or 
 will not alter. Despotic authority would only make 
 the case prodigiously worse. It remains as a law of 
 Heaven and Earth, which kindness may a little 
 palliate, but cannot remove, that those who use 
 their Freedom pertinaciously to cling to a worn-out 
 or glutted trade, must suffer. No man has a right 
 to expect society to pay him for services which 
 society does not value. No man has a right 
 to claim to be supported in a business which ex- 
 perience shows to be a failing one. Even the claim 
 for charitable commiseration can only be sustained 
 by a plea which such workmen will, perhaps, not 
 choose to adopt; that of total incapacity for any 
 other service than this one which is not wanted. 
 Such a plea would be distasteful to those who are 
 accustomed to assume the tone of wronged and per- 
 secuted men towards the masters whose wages they 
 
PRICE OF FREEDOM. 123 
 
 freely accept, and whose refusal to deal with them 
 would inflict on them still worse suffering. 
 
 Our poor urgently need Industrial Education. 
 They ought not to commence routine- work so early. 
 The Eye, the Hand, the discrimination of Form and 
 of Beauty, should have both broader and deeper 
 culture. They should learn more of principles, less 
 of details. They should be taught to use tools and 
 weapons of the most various kinds and in various 
 ways, with strength or with delicacy. If a wide 
 basis were thus laid, before they commenced their 
 proper profession, they would afterwards be more 
 versatile, and far less bigoted to a single occupation ; 
 and as soon as the lower wants of any trade were 
 satisfied, they would develop some higher form of 
 it. No sums which the State could lavish on such 
 education could be extravagant ; and, in any case, 
 laws forbidding the premature or excessive work of 
 young people are eminently important. But neither 
 the State nor any Societies will discover into what 
 new trades the supernumerary hands of old ones 
 ought to be drafted off. That must be left to indi- 
 vidual sagacity, with the frequent suffering of the 
 unsagacious. 
 
LECTUKE VI. 
 
 History and Nature of Landed Property and of Rent. 
 
 HITHERTO, I have abstained from speaking of Rent 
 of Land, and Landed Property. The subject is so 
 complicated with political, historical, and moral 
 considerations, that much introductory matter is 
 necessary, before we can attain to the purely eco- 
 nomical view. 
 
 We can trace the history of tillage in the Teu- 
 tonic nations as high as the state of barbarism, 
 when no such thing as private property in land was 
 thought of. The Germans in the days of Csesar 
 lived chiefly by tame cattle and on venison. Agri- 
 culture was little practised; the rights of land 
 rested entirely in the tribe or nation, not in 
 the individual*; in fact the magistrates redistri- 
 buted the land to the use of the tenants, year by 
 year, no land remaining in cultivation two years 
 together. The husbandry was, of course, of the 
 least laborious kind, in which case it is not found at 
 all oppressive to yield up a small fixed fraction of 
 the produce (perhaps one tenth) as Rent. Such 
 rent was undoubtedly paid by those whom Tacitus 
 calls the serfs of the Germans; who were not 
 
 * Tacit. Germ. 26 ; Caes. B. G. 6, 22. 
 
PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF LAND. 125 
 
 household slaves, hut lived in their own separate 
 huts, and paid to their lord " a quantity of corn, or 
 of cattle, or of stuff" (Tacit. Germ. 25). These 
 serfs, I think, were conquered Gauls, who had occu- 
 pied the soil before the Germans came upon it, and 
 did not migrate west of the Khine with the mass of 
 the Gaulish nation. People thus conquered would 
 naturally lose their language in the course of many 
 generations, wherever they lived on wide plains and 
 were encompassed by and interfused with Germans. 
 But on mountainous ground they would retain their 
 Gaulish tongue, as we hear that the Gothini in the 
 interior fastnesses of Germany actually did, though 
 compelled to pay tribute (Tacit. Germ. 43). The 
 Boii, a Gallic race, long lived independent within 
 its circle of mountains, and gave its name to 
 Bohemia. Thus the earliest rent in Germany is a 
 kind of tithe, paid for political safety by a popula- 
 tion of serfs, probably foreigners : but no native 
 and free German paid rent, and no individual who- 
 soever possessed land in private right. 
 
 When German invasion deluged the rest of 
 Europe, and feudal monarchies arose, the basis of 
 the social system was in the tenure of land. In 
 many parts, but eminently in Italy, the Towns 
 remained like independent powers with their own 
 territory. Of the rest of the country a division 
 was made almost identical with that of ancient 
 Egypt or ancient India, into three sorts of land, be- 
 longing to the Crown, the Priests, or the Military 
 order, that is, the nobles. The actual cultivators 
 
126 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 generally paid rent in some form to one or other of 
 these three possessors ; but the principle was on the 
 whole clearly upheld, that the land belonged to 
 the State, and to no private person. Small free- 
 holders who cultivated their own land may seem to 
 have been an exception. At any rate the larger 
 holders, or landlords who received rent, were by the 
 very fact constituted into public functionaries, who 
 had service to perform for the payment. Town 
 Lands, as the very name shows, belonged to the 
 public. Nor were the Crown lands the private pro- 
 perty of the Sovereign, nor could he alienate them. 
 The Church lands equally were public, and the 
 clergy owed public religious duties for them. Be- 
 sides this, Bishops and Mitred Abbots, equally with 
 Barons, were bound to maintain soldiers on their 
 estates for the King's need. The Barons' domains 
 descended to their sons or representatives, and 
 might not be sold for the advantage of the imme- 
 diate holder, who had only a life-interest in them. 
 All these great functionaries had to do solemn 
 homage to the King for their land, in token that it 
 was public property : besides which they were liable 
 to other burdens. In fact, the Barons generally 
 had courts of their own, and in many countries 
 were like little sovereigns, whose political duties 
 were requited by honour and by rent, which was 
 not a commercial, but a political payment. Of all 
 this perhaps the only remnant in modern England 
 is seen in unpaid justices of the peace and in the 
 compulsory serving as High Sheriff: and, trifling as 
 
FEUDAL AND INDIAN RENT. 127 
 
 this may appear, it serves to indicate that the law 
 has never given up the principle that landed posses- 
 sions are a TRUST bestowed by the State, and that 
 the person accepting the trust becomes in some 
 sense a public functionary, pledged to definite duties. 
 In India the principle has continued to our days, 
 that the Crown is the owner and proprietor of the 
 great mass of the land. Under the Mogul Em- 
 perors, the rent was gathered by a large number of 
 public officers, called Zemindars, or landholders ; 
 who were allowed some liberal percentage to main- 
 tain their own rank. Lord Cornwallis treated these 
 Zemindars as English landed proprietors, so far as 
 to fix for ever by a single act the sum which they 
 should annually pay to the government. This is 
 celebrated in our Indian History by the name of 
 The Permanent Settlement. Of course it took 
 effect only in that part of the country which was 
 then subject to us. Modern Indian placemen often 
 regret this act, as an unwise alienation of public 
 revenues into individual hands. It certainly was an 
 alienation : but its benefit, as a restricting of despo- 
 tism, seems to outweigh all its other evils. It has 
 secured, wherever it exists, that our taxes shall not 
 grind all down into the same level of poverty. In 
 the other parts of our Empire, the State tries to 
 take to itself the gains of both landlord and farmer, 
 and deals directly with a number of miserable 
 cottiers, (called the Ryots,) whose tenure is yearly 
 renewed at a rack rent which would rise with the 
 industry or good luck of the tenant. 
 
128 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The system of sustaining the expenses of the 
 State by the rents of public lands is characteristic 
 of a stage which has almost vanished in modern 
 Europe. It is appropriate to Feudal Monarchy, 
 but, without some modification, is illsuited to our 
 own times. Feudal Eent is essentially distinguished 
 from Commercial Rent in being fixed in amount by 
 custom : either such a fraction of the produce, or 
 such a number and quantity of specified things, or 
 a very moderate quit-rent in money, for a long 
 period of years. The king or baron who received 
 gifts in kind, kept a host of retainers in rude plenty, 
 but was not always able to command any large sum 
 of cash, even if he condescended to keep a public 
 store, and sold goods on his own account ; for the 
 superintending officers swallow up a large amount. 
 A moderate fraction of the produce is a natural and 
 easy payment, if the land is fertile and easy to 
 cultivate, and so long as the farmer uses little exer- 
 tion. But, as I shall have occasion to show fully 
 when I speak of Tithes, so soon as elaborate culti- 
 vation is needed, to demand a fixed fraction of the 
 gross produce is an infliction that presently stops 
 improvement. 
 
 While the public Revenue depends solely on the 
 rent of Crown Possessions, and some reasonable 
 rule of custom determines the amount of the rents, 
 all goes on well enough. But after the Monarch 
 finds himself able to get supplies in hard money 
 from another source, as by gifts from trading cities, 
 and votes of his Parliament, the temptation becomes 
 
CROWN ESTATES. 129 
 
 irresistible to gratify some favourite by putting him 
 in office over some of the Crown Estates, and not 
 exacting of him the full rent. The legitimate 
 revenue is squandered, because the king can re- 
 plenish the loss conveniently in another way, and 
 prefers ready cash to produce which needs to be 
 sold. Perhaps in no country of Europe have the 
 Crown Estates been honourably used, even where 
 they have not been alienated. For instance, in 
 Hungary the Austrian emperors have preserved the 
 Crown Estates; but they have not succeeded in 
 making any use of them proportionate to the in- 
 dustry and knowledge of our times. A king cannot 
 hold auctions of his farms or mines in person, so 
 as duly to raise the proceeds; and his officers 
 generally manage to divert to their own uses any 
 increase of rents which from time to time ought to 
 arise. We cannot wonder at this, when we know 
 that some of the most valuable estates still remain- 
 ing to the English Crown, are no source of public 
 revenue. The illegal alienation of the Crown 
 Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is a 
 scandalous chapter in English history. Against it 
 the Parliaments again and again protested, and 
 often effected a resumption of the Estates; nay, 
 Kichard I., after selling some of them, and using 
 the purchase money, took back the lands himself, 
 alleging that the sale had been essentially beyond 
 his power. However, after the Abbey Lands had 
 been distributed among the aristocracy by Henry 
 VIII., Parliament was dumb, so many having eaten 
 
 G 3 
 
]30 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the sop ; and the alienation of Crown Lands went 
 on, until at last the whole taxation of the country, 
 which ought now, as originally, to have heen de- 
 frayed hy Bent of Land, was shifted off on to trade 
 and industry. The landholders passed laws to ex- 
 empt themselves from feudal service, so as to hold 
 their rents for nothing, and presented the king with 
 a tax on beer instead ! 
 
 It is strange to add, that the Commercial part of 
 the community was so far from resisting or resenting 
 this great financial revolution, which was really a 
 gigantic fraud on the nation, and peculiarly on the 
 towns, that they practically aided it, owing to their 
 great desire to see land converted into a purely 
 commercial article. No sooner has a man become 
 wealthy in trade, than he desires to become master 
 of a landed estate by purchase. But the old laws 
 did not allow a nobleman or baronet to sell his 
 estate ; for it was a fraud on his successors, to take 
 in ready money the value of the land for ever. Yet 
 from an early period the Crusades urged so many 
 to desire to sell their lands, that (I believe) the law 
 was often evaded; and I have heard it is mainly 
 from the necessity of evasions and fictions, when- 
 ever land was to be transferred for money, that the 
 rules of landed property have become such an un- 
 intelligible mystery in England. The conspiracy 
 went on against the law for two or three centuries, 
 between impoverished landholders, wealthy mer- 
 chants, and cunning attorneys, whose combined 
 force, aided by the decisions of Judges, gradually 
 
USURPATION OF THE LAND. 131 
 
 overturned the old feudal theory, and worked into 
 the English mind the commercial idea of land, as 
 something to be bought and sold freely in the 
 market. The Barons' courts were suppressed by 
 those of the King ; the Barons' soldiers were thought 
 less trustworthy than an army raised by the king's 
 own functionaries, and paid by money from the 
 Parliamentary taxes. Thenceforward the Crown 
 left off caring that a large number of men service- 
 able for war should be sustained on every estate ; 
 Henry VII. 's Parliaments aided the king's policy of 
 breaking entails : commercial notions of land pre- 
 vailed, and in process of time landholders claimed a 
 right to their estates as if no one else had a right in 
 them. As far as I am aware, to eject the popula- 
 tion in mass is a very modern enormity. We think 
 of it as peculiarly Irish : yet, nowhere, perhaps was 
 it done more boldly, more causelessly, and more 
 heartlessly, than from the Sutherland estates of 
 Northern Scotland early in this century. Between 
 the years 1811 and 1820, 15,000 persons were 
 driven off the lands of the Marchioness of Stafford 
 alone ; all their villages were pulled down or burnt, 
 and their fields turned into pasturage. A like pro- 
 cess was carried on about the same time by seven or 
 eight neighbouring lords. The human inhabitants 
 were thus ejected, in order that sheep might take 
 their place ; because some one had persuaded these 
 great landholders that sheep would pay letter than 
 human beings ! 
 
 This is truly monstrous. It is probable that 
 
132 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 nothing so shocking could have been done, but for 
 a juggling plea concerning the claims of Political 
 Economy. It is defined as the science of Wealth : 
 rightly. It will not confound itself with Politics : 
 right again. It cannot undertake to define what 
 things are, and what are not, private property: it 
 assumes that Political Law regards the landlord as 
 the landowner, and justifies him in emptying his 
 estates at pleasure. Well : if so, it follows that the 
 rules of mere Economy are no sufficient guide to 
 the conduct of a moral being. If Statesmen, Par- 
 liaments, or Courts of Law have neglected to de- 
 fine and establish the rights of those who dwell on 
 and cultivate the soil, the landlord cannot plead 
 that neglect to justify his wrong. Grant that, as an 
 Economist, I have no right to ask whether land is 
 or is not private property ; yet, as a politician or as a 
 moralist, I may see that no lord of Sutherland ever 
 could have morally, or ever ought to have legally, 
 a greater right over his estates than the King or 
 Queen had, to whom his ancestor originally did 
 homage for them. A baron, in his highest pleni- 
 tude of power, has rather less right over the soil, 
 than the King from whom he derived his right : and 
 a king of England might as well claim to drive all 
 his subjects into the sea, as a baron to empty his 
 estates. We read how William the Conqueror burnt 
 villages and ejected the people by hundreds, in 
 order to make a hunting ground for himself in the 
 New Forest. This deed, which has been execrated 
 by all who relate it, seemed an extreme of tyranny : 
 
NEGLECTS OF THE LAW. 133 
 
 yet our Courts of Law and our Parliaments allow 
 the same thing to be done by smaller tyrants ; and 
 the public sits by, and mourns to think that people 
 deal so unkindly with that which is their own! 
 Here is the fundamental error, the crude and mon- 
 strous assumption, that the land, which God has 
 given to our nation, is or can be the private pro- 
 perty of any one. It is a usurpation exactly similar 
 to that of Slavery. The slavemaster calls himself 
 slaveowner, and pleads that he has purchased the 
 slave, and that the law has pronounced slaves to be 
 chattels. We reply that the law is immoral and un- 
 just, and that no one could sell what was not his 
 own; and that no number of immoral sales can 
 destroy the rights of man. All this equally applies 
 to land. The land was not regarded as private 
 property by our old law ; it is not to this day treated 
 by the law on the same footing as movables ; and 
 there are many other persons who have rights in a 
 piece of land, besides him who gets rent from it. 
 The lord of the manor has his dues, but this does 
 not annihilate the claims of others. For land is 
 not only a surface that pays rent, but a surface to 
 live upon : and the law ought to have cared, and 
 ought still to care, for those who need the land for 
 life, as much as for those who have inherited or 
 bought a title to certain fruits from it. 
 
 Political Economy, in a country which sanctions 
 Slavery, will talk of slaves as of cattle ; and rightly, 
 as regards commercial calculations. So, too, among 
 ourselves, Economists have accepted as fact the 
 
134 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 commercial doctrine of land. Their science is not 
 to blame for it : but some of them, as individuals, 
 are to blame, for having so much sympathy with 
 the rich and so little with the poor, as not to see 
 the iniquity of such a state of things ; but rather to 
 panegyrize English industry as living under glorious 
 advantages, where the labourer on the soil has no 
 tenure in it, no direct and visible interest in its pro- 
 fitable culture, no security that he may be not driven 
 off from it, in order to swell the rental of one who 
 calls himself its owner. 
 
 To analyze this subject the better, I shall put 
 various suppositions. 
 
 If a solitary family land on the shores of an 
 empty continent, like Australia, and occupy a plot 
 of desart land, prior occupation would confer on 
 them a right superior to that of any other claimant. 
 After they had cultivated it ten years, if a stranger 
 tried to drive them off, all bystanders would call it 
 an invasion of right. Let him take a portion of the 
 unoccupied land, if he please, but not eject them 
 from that which they have made their own by usage 
 and by improvement. Thus the occupants have a 
 certain right in the land prior to Statute Law, which 
 right ought to be confirmed by Law, when the time 
 comes for enactments. 
 
 If the stranger, on considering the labour which 
 it will cost him to clear copses, to make fences, to 
 dig drains or wells, to build outhouses, to make 
 roads, or execute other works, to say nothing of 
 the dwellinghouse, chooses to offer a price to the 
 
MORAL CLAIMS TO RENT. 135 
 
 pioneers of civilization for their improvements, on 
 condition of their yielding up the farm to him ; it 
 needs no proof that they are able to make over to 
 him the whole of their right ; and that the price 
 which they receive will have been honestly earned. 
 But thereby they abandon all farther claim to it. 
 
 Should he not be rich enough to pay down what 
 they regard as a fair compensation for their labour, 
 the contract may take the form of a yearly payment 
 on his part, which may perhaps be called a Rent. 
 But supposing it to be intended as a remuneration 
 for the trouble which they have taken with the 
 estate, the payment will, in fact, be a return of 
 Profit to the Capital sunk, exactly as in a common 
 House Rent. 
 
 If the first civilized colonists find the land over- 
 run by tribes of hunters who will be more or less 
 dangerous to them, it may be wise to disarm their 
 hostility by Gifts; and it is probable that the 
 colonists, if otherwise prosperous, will see it advisable 
 afterwards to renew such Gifts; and, in order to 
 save themselves from importunities in too many 
 quarters, to address themselves to one, who may 
 seem to them the most powerful chieftain in those 
 parts, in hope of putting some limit to the exactions. 
 The first Gifts may be called Peace Offerings. Their 
 intention and effect is, to show that the strangers 
 come with peaceful intentions, and need not be 
 feared. The gifts which follow are mere exactions, 
 extorted by rudeness on the one side from timidity 
 on the other ; but they have no moral end or pro- 
 
136 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 priety. When, however, one powerful chieftain enters 
 into an engagement with the colonists, that if they 
 will make certain annual payments to him, he will 
 secure them from being molested by any one else, 
 these gifts are an acknowledgment or recompence 
 for his Protection ; and if he prove strong and 
 faithful, he is gradually discerned to represent the 
 State. The Rent paid to him is not strictly commer- 
 cial, but political; nevertheless, it is not given for 
 nothing, since quiet and undisputed possession is 
 secured by it. If, however, the power of the natives 
 declines, and that of colonists of the same race as 
 the first increases, so that after a time the colonists 
 can amply defend themselves, it is probable that 
 they will at last refuse farther payment, feeling 
 with good reason that the original grounds of it 
 have vanished. Unfortunately, this almost always 
 leads to a trial of strength. The habitual rent- 
 receiver regards himself as cheated, when the pay- 
 ments stop, and he generally invades the colonists 
 with violence. But if they succeed in repelling 
 him, it becomes manifest that they need not pay him 
 for protecting them, and that therefore he has no 
 farther claims over them. 
 
 Gifts for Protection may be indifferently called 
 Rent, Tribute, or Taxes ; and if viewed economically, 
 are a compensation, not for the land, but for the 
 trouble and expense of defending the cultivator. 
 When the State defends all property alike, and 
 taxes all alike, no special burden will on this account 
 rest on the cultivator of land. 
 
RIGHTS OF OCCUPATION. 137 
 
 Let me alter my supposition. After the colonist 
 has held his land for some years, he removes, and 
 occupies a different spot. A new colonist comes in, 
 and seats himself on the vacated ground. Can we 
 imagine the first occupant hereupon to send him 
 word, not to intrude on his private property, but 
 go elsewhither ? I think not. The new comer 
 would reply, that empty ground is open to all; 
 that the first was free to use, to occupy, to keep ; 
 but what he has left, he cannot keep. At the 
 utmost he might hope to receive some thankoffering 
 from the new comer, as soon as it proved conve- 
 nient, as an acknowledgment for the advantage 
 derived from his predecessor's labours. But any 
 claim on his part to be regarded as the owner of the 
 soil, would be treated with contempt. "What!" 
 (the stranger would reply,) " did you create the 
 earth ? or why is it yours ? You used it, while 
 convenient; you abandoned it when convenient; 
 and it is now mine, as much as it then was yours." 
 
 In short, it is clear that no man has or can 
 
 have a natural right to land, except so long as he 
 occupies it in person. His right is to the use, and 
 to the use only. All other right is the creation of 
 artificial Law. 
 
 But what if a settler were to forbid a stranger to 
 occupy land within a mile of that which the former 
 was cultivating, saying that he wished to keep this 
 for galloping and hunting ground ; or that he ex- 
 pected it would be useful to his children 20 years 
 hence ? This surely would be greedy usurpation, 
 
138 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 not to be defended by the plea that he had set up 
 marks, or run a light trench, to denote the extent of 
 his intended park, or of his children's future estate. 
 Where land is so abundant and so equally conve- 
 nient, that each may exercise his caprice without 
 inconvenience to others, even caprices may be 
 respected; but none would be justified in thus 
 excluding their neighbours from valuable sites. If 
 any one who pleases is allowed to carve out a park 
 in the wilderness ; yet he cannot be allowed to take 
 the riverside for it, so as to shut others out from its 
 conveniences. Over Land that has never been 
 subdued and improved by labour, no individual 
 has any moral claim. Being wild, it is public. 
 
 Let me suppose that the English Crown, while 
 it was the legal owner of vast tracts in interior 
 America, gave away an estate ten miles square to 
 some British subject, who succeeded in planting 
 colonists on it, from whom he received some trifling 
 rent. This rent they are willing to pay, in order to 
 get security from molestation. Time goes on, and 
 a political revolution overthrows all power of Eng- 
 land in those districts. The increase of popula- 
 tion and the industry of the farmers has gradually 
 improved the farms ; a new generation has suc- 
 ceeded ; and now the representative of the first 
 grantee, calling himself the owner of the soil by 
 gift of the King of England, claims to raise the 
 rents of the farmers, because of the increased value 
 of the farms. Is this conceivable ? In England, 
 undoubtedly such things are done : but if not enacted 
 
RENT PARTLY PROFIT. 139 
 
 by a most peculiar state of law, it certainly would 
 never suggest itself as right. In America, such a 
 claim would be a signal to the farmers to pay no 
 more rent. They would say : This man, who calls 
 himself landowner, has done nothing for the soil. 
 By favour of an old king, his predecessor was once 
 invested with a nominal right over it ; that right 
 was worth something at the time, and it was paid 
 for : it is worth nothing now, and we will pay no 
 longer. 
 
 The moral claims of an actual tenant to be 
 allowed undisturbed possession, are evidently valid 
 against all strangers. The claims to Rent, on the 
 part of one who calls himself landlord (whatever 
 the full meaning of that term) can rest on only two 
 grounds, viz., 1, that he gives secure and undis- 
 puted possession, fulfilling herein the function of 
 the State; or, 2, that he has spent capital on the 
 soil in various forms, and is entitled to a remunera- 
 tion for it. Where it is possible to discriminate the 
 latter ground of claim, Economists will of course 
 call the payment Profit, and the other part alone is 
 called Eent. Here is a most inconvenient ambiguity, 
 of which you must be aware. If a man spends 
 2000 on a house, and expects a payment of 140 
 a year from the tenant who is to live in it, he calls 
 this House Rent ; yet it is mere Profit on his capital. 
 A part of nearly all agricultural rent is practically 
 of this kind. The landlord keeps up the farm- 
 house and other necessary buildings, and sometimes 
 even executes permanent improvements. The pay 
 
140 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ment, however, which is made for these is not in- 
 cluded in Kent, in the specific sense in which 
 Economists use the word. And do not complain of 
 them for this. They are in a difficulty, owing to 
 the amhiguity of language. We want a new word, 
 which is not found in common life, to denote that 
 part of Agricultural rent which is not, and is not 
 intended as profit for capital expended, hut is 
 barely an acknowledgment for the secure possession 
 of a natural instrument. This, and this only, in 
 future, I understand hy Kent in the specific sense. 
 
 The nature of the case at once shows that the 
 State is the only primary claimant of legitimate 
 Kent ; whether the State show itself in the person 
 of a King, or of a powerful Baron, or of a demo- 
 cratic President. In the later, as much as in the 
 earlier stages of human society, this conviction 
 forces itself upon us. Imagine a continent like 
 America to be gradually covered by tenant free- 
 holders, each of whom is recognized/br the present 
 as absolute owner of the soil which he cultivates. 
 You will yet see, that an increase of human popu- 
 lation might hereafter take place, so great, that the 
 law must refuse any longer to admit the right of the 
 freeholders to be absolute. For to allow anything 
 to hecome a complete private property, it must either 
 be needless to human life, as jewels, or practically 
 unlimited in quantity, as water, or brought into 
 existence by human labour, as the most important 
 kinds of food : and it is rather as a result of expe- 
 rience and wisdom, than by direct moral perception, 
 
PQBLIC RESUMPTIONS OF LAND. 141 
 
 that we forbid all invasion of private property in 
 food, even to alleviate public famine. Now, as 
 water, which is ordinarily allowed to be private, 
 becomes public property in time of siege, so soon as 
 its quantity is painfully limited ; and as the posses- 
 sors of wells would then be indemnified for the 
 expense of their well only and not for the water ; so 
 if at any time land becomes needed to live upon, 
 the right of private possessors to withhold it comes 
 to an end, and the State has merely to secure that 
 they be liberally indemnified for their actual ex- 
 penses, and for any fixed capital which they are 
 made to yield up. 
 
 In fact, more than this principle is daily acted 
 on by our legislature. Individuals are forced to 
 yield up their land, and compensation is awarded to 
 them by a neutral party, on reasons much slighter 
 than necessity for life. It is thought convenient to 
 the public to have a road or a canal or a railroad 
 station; and the landholder is unceremoniously 
 forced to give way. No doubt the compensation 
 is generally not liberal merely, but lavish : that 
 however is a question of detail. The matter of 
 principle is, that the nation at pleasure resumes 
 possession, and does not allow the holder of the 
 land himself to fix his price. 
 
 Thus, as the result alike of history, of practical 
 law and of moral reasoning, we elicit that an in- 
 dividual can never have absolute or sole right in 
 land, that there is always some limitation of his 
 rights, and a power of resumption reserved for the 
 
]42 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 State. In some countries, the rent of the land- 
 holder is determined by Custom ; but if the Custom 
 consist in a fixed fraction of the crop, it does not 
 appear that that can be permanently desirable, 
 except where the landlord's capital aids the cultiva- 
 tion. The critical matter is, whether the land- 
 lord has a right of ejecting one tenant, and putting 
 in another. In English law he has this right, and 
 this it is which has gradually enabled him to appear 
 as the landowner. The right of ejection is pro- 
 bably that against which the Roman plebeians 
 struggled so long ; the enforcement of which vir- 
 tually enabled the patricians to convert public land 
 into their private property. As a consequence of 
 the power of ejection the English landlords are able 
 to raise the rent, if a farmer's labour have im- 
 proved the land, and in a succession of many gene- 
 rations have systematically appropriated to them- 
 selves the fruits of their tenants' industry. 
 
 The injustices of the past have been very great, 
 and they may yet suggest some political measures 
 which it is not my place here to indicate : but we 
 cannot give back to the true owners property which 
 was theirs, and the law is forced to regard as the 
 absolute property of the landlord the whole in- 
 creased value which the soil has received from 
 labour, in so far as this can be ascertained. The 
 landlord no longer gives political protection, and 
 seems scarcely to owe any political duties to the 
 State. The moral justification of his rent is now 
 found only in the commercial value which he or his 
 
RENT EXCEEDS LEGITIMATE PROFITS. 143 
 
 predecessors have added to the soil, by labour, 
 manure, and other fixed capital. If the rent were 
 strictly and solely a remuneration for this, it would 
 be mere Profits of stock : but in fact it is almost 
 always more than this, as I must now proceed to 
 indicate. 
 
 " Kent," says Adam Smith, " is the portion of the 
 gains of the person employing the land, which he 
 finds it worth his while to pay for its use." No 
 better definition has ever been given. But you will 
 immediately see that two men differently circum- 
 stanced will find it worth their while to pay very 
 differently for the use of the land. An Irishman 
 who fears starvation if he has not a halfacre of 
 potato ground, or an English townsman who desires 
 a halfacre to keep a cow upon, for the luxury of 
 good milk and butter, will be willing to give a far 
 higher proportionate rent, than a farmer for 300 or 
 600 acres : and as land, especially on the outskirt of 
 towns, is limited, the competition for it is severe, if 
 the town be wealthy. There are thus at least four 
 kinds of agricultural Eent, to be carefully kept apart 
 in our minds : Eent of land desired by cottiers as 
 a security against starvation, Eent of small pas- 
 tures intended to minister to domestic luxury, 
 Eent of ground for market gardens close to a wealthy 
 town, and common farmer's Eent : and besides all 
 these, there is Ground Eent of buildings. This 
 requires so much separate remark, that I must re- 
 sume the topic in my next lecture. Generally, how- 
 ever, so much may be said : " When Eent is paid 
 
144 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by a Capitalist who is seeking an investment of 
 money, and finds Land essential to his trade, then 
 Rent is a certain excess of his gains above what he 
 might expect from employing his money and time 
 elsewhere." This is true, whether he be a Grazier 
 or a Corn Grower, a market- gardener or a builder. 
 
 To exhibit more generally the principle, that ex- 
 cessive gains lead to Rent, I will suppose a man to 
 have constructed a ship which sails so beautifully and 
 obeys the helm so easily, as to need a less amount of 
 sails and cordage, and fewer sailors to manage her, 
 than other ships, and to perform her voyages to 
 China in half the usual time, and with such safety 
 as to cost only one-tenth of the ordinary insurance, 
 and yet to carry more goods than usual, and carry 
 them drier and less damaged. From all these 
 advantages the owner would undoubtedly make large 
 gains, if all prices beside remained the same. Sup- 
 pose, now, that the efforts of shipbuilders to rival 
 this ship totally failed : that her build was a matter 
 of such delicate good luck, that science and practice 
 were both at fault, so that she remained unparalleled. 
 If so, the prices of her goods and of carriage would 
 not be lowered by the competition of other ships, 
 and the gains of the owner would be permanently 
 high. I will imagine it to become notorious, that, 
 after allowing for risk, to have this ship at one's 
 disposal for a year, rather than another of the 
 same apparent size, was as good as 1000 a year in 
 a merchant's pocket. If so, here would be a peculiar 
 redundancy of gain, which had no tendency to 
 
SURPLUS PROFIT CAUSES RENT. 145 
 
 equalization by the same law as other redundant 
 profits ; and if the owner were disposed to lend his 
 ship for a year to a merchant, he would expect to 
 receive an additional 1000, beyond the common 
 payment. This excess we call RENT, whatever may 
 chance to be its cause. 
 
 If a beautiful organ, like the Apollonicon, proved 
 inimitable by other skill, and in consequence its 
 melody commanded high Fancy Prices from the 
 lovers of music, its maker might get extraordinary 
 profits ; and if he chose to let it out, he would 
 receive virtual Rent. So, if (by undisputed custom) 
 a duke has sole power of fishing in certain streams, 
 where trout or salmon are abundant, and the taste 
 of the rich for these fish makes the gains of the 
 fishery permanently far higher than the average of 
 common trade, the duke will be able to let out the 
 fishery to advantage, and will receive Rent for it. 
 Thus, in the large sense of the word Rent, we may 
 apply it to any extraordinarily gainful machine, the 
 use of which is transferable. But manufactured 
 things being almost always imitable, do not perma- 
 nently yield extraordinary profits ; for they are ex- 
 posed to competition, (except so far as they may be 
 artificially defended by a Patent Right,) and the 
 prices of their productions are at length reduced. 
 Hence when we speak of Rent, we almost always 
 have in view some natural advantage, as of a place, 
 which enables its legal owner or holder to command 
 high profits, and to claim Rent if he transfers these 
 profits to another. 
 
 H 
 
146 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Suppose the island of Guernsey to be thickly 
 peopled by wealthy manufacturers, and that the 
 inhabitants are supplied with substantial food by 
 purchase from beyond sea. If now the island, so 
 far as it can be yielded to Agriculture, is divided by 
 the State into dairy farms, it may prove worth while 
 to private persons to pay Kent to the State for 
 them. Why? because the gains of the dairy 
 farmer in such circumstances are large. But why 
 so ? because so many wealthy persons desire cream, 
 fresh butter, and other luxuries which cannot be 
 imported, that the price of those things is high. 
 But why does not the competition of the farmers 
 against one another again lower the price ? because 
 the power of the ground is very limited, and the 
 market is necessarily undersupplied. Thus the 
 fundamental reason of high gains of the farmer is 
 found in his having a virtual monopoly. He has a 
 market larger than he can possibly fill. Deficient 
 supply makes high price and large gains ; because 
 of his large gains, he is able and willing to pay 
 Kent ; and it is therefore just for the State, as owner 
 of the land, to exact it from him. 
 
 Thus, whatever the circumstances of the locality 
 that produce excessive gain, Rent is a natural and 
 fair consequence ; fairest and most rightful, when it 
 is levied for the uses of the community and not for 
 a private landholder. It is not necessary to Rent 
 that one farm be more productive than another, but 
 that (in the average of years) the Capitalist shall 
 have greater gains from the farm than he could have 
 
MONOPOLY A CAUSE OF KENT. 147 
 
 expected by using his money and time in any other 
 way accessible or acceptable to him. 
 
 Such is our first general view ; but in my next 
 lecture I must follow it into many separate ques- 
 tions. 
 
 H 2 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 The Laws of Rent and Tithe. 
 
 LET me resume Adam Smith's definition of Kent, 
 as the sum which the occupier of land finds it 
 worth his while to pay for the use of it. On 
 studying this statement, (the truth of which is self- 
 evident,) we see two opposite and extreme sorts of 
 tenants, whose power or will to pay Kent is governed 
 by very different laws. On the one side the tenant 
 may he a wealthy capitalist, who desires the land 
 as an investment for his money; or, on the other, 
 may be a needy cottier, who has half a year's store 
 of food and a few rude tools, and who desires the 
 land as essential to save him from starvation or 
 beggary. If the capitalist farmer can come to no 
 satisfactory bargain with this particular landlord, he 
 can transport himself and his money into another 
 county or to the opposite end of the island, and 
 can search far and wide, by personal inspection, by 
 advertisement, and by agency, until he finds a farm 
 to suit him. But the cottier is virtually bound to 
 the soil and dependent on one particular lord of the 
 manor, or nearly so; for if he cannot suit his 
 purse to the bailiff's demand, he has little chance of 
 being accepted as a tenant on other estates where 
 
COTTIER RENT. 149 
 
 he is unknown, unless indeed he has some peculiar 
 superiority to the average of his class. Speaking, 
 therefore, of the cottiers collectively, we may say 
 that their power of industry hangs entirely on the 
 good-will of their landlord and his hailiff. If 
 ejected from their potato ground, it is true that 
 some of them may find work for wages with neigh- 
 bouring farmers ; and if such farmers were nu- 
 merous and wealthy, the pressure on the cottiers 
 would be soon relieved. But when (as in Ireland) 
 large districts exist, in which farmers rich enough 
 to pay wages all the year round are very rare, and 
 in which no great resource is found in manufactur- 
 ing towns, there, it is nearly the truth to say, that a 
 man regards it like a loss of his livelihood to lose 
 his patch of land. He consequently finds it worth 
 his while to give as much for it as he can give 
 without starvation, rather than not get it ; and will 
 promise to pay more for it than it is possible for 
 him to perform. The landlord is able to extract 
 out of him so much as barely to leave him the 
 means of vegetating, and, over and above, to 
 keep him permanently in arrears of debt, by ac- 
 cepting from him engagements too high to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Where the use of land is thus manifestly essen- 
 tial to the life of the community, it is an obvious 
 maxim of political justice, that the Rent should be 
 limited by law ; old custom giving a rough index 
 to the reasonable amount. The condition of things 
 is Feudal, and the principle also of rent ought to 
 
150 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 be Feudal. But the calamity of Ireland has been, 
 that we have transferred to her the principle of 
 Commercial Bent, determined hy competition, which 
 is just or expedient only in a much later stage of 
 industrial development. Thus, in Ireland, poor 
 labourers bid against one another for land, just as 
 in England for wages ; in which the Irishman has 
 had a twofold disadvantage : first, that the land, 
 for which he competes, does not grow larger with 
 time, while the Capital which is to pay wages to 
 the Englishman is perpetually increasing and has 
 no limit; secondly, that the very misery of the 
 Irishman has led to a far more rapid increase of the 
 population. In such a state of things, cottier-rent 
 is paid out of daily industry, not out of the gains 
 of capital, and it is guided by no other law than 
 that of swallowing up the whole result of industry, 
 minus what is essential to sustain the lowest 
 physical wants of the labourer. This is exactly 
 like the state of slavery, or the condition of do- 
 mestic animals. The cottier, the slave, the horse 
 or ass, must all be fed and sheltered; whatever 
 beyond this their labour produces, belongs to their 
 master. 
 
 In the deficiency of potato grounds and of farm- 
 wages experienced by the Irish cottier, some relief 
 was sought in the system of conacre. Farmers 
 who are not able to pay money wages underlet a 
 patch of ground ready manured to a destitute 
 peasant, who promises money-rent for its use, but 
 in fact expects to cancel his money- debt by working 
 
CAPITALIST'S RENT. 151 
 
 it out for nominal wages. If a large number of 
 labourers were not thus provided for, the pressure of 
 their competition for cottier land would assuredly 
 become far more severe. But though the market 
 is of course somewhat eased by this supplementary 
 system, it would be an error to infer that the 
 peasant who tills land on conacre is better off than 
 one who has a potato ground from the superior 
 landlord. 
 
 Some, indeed, are fond of attributing the miser- 
 able state of the peasant to middlemen. No doubt 
 it is a sad aggravation of difficulty, when, by a series 
 of contracts, so many persons have a partial right 
 as landlords, that no one is responsible for evil or 
 able to introduce improvement. But, as regards the 
 absolute sum extracted from the tenant as rent for 
 the land which he is to dig, it does not appear that 
 there is any advantage in dealing with the head- 
 landlord rather than with a middleman. 
 
 Such, however, is the one extreme sort of Rent, - 
 extracted out of the necessities of the workman, 
 miserable to him, and not proportionably gainful to 
 the landlord: for the labour of such tenants is 
 inefficient, and their ability to pay small. On the 
 other extreme is the Rent paid by a wealthy 
 capitalist farmer, who takes a lease of 21 years. 
 This is paid, not out of his necessities, but out of 
 his abundance, and is the superfluity of his gains. 
 These depend principally on his capital, not on his 
 personal labour ; or at least, it is the labour of his 
 mind, his intelligent superintendence, that is to be 
 
152 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 remunerated. Suppose him to have ^5000 em- 
 ployed in his trade, and that on a particular farm, 
 after paying all outgoings except Bent, there remains 
 to him ^10 50. Suppose, farther, that in the open 
 market of the world men of equal intelligence, and 
 having about the same sum, and devoting the same 
 amount of effort, would expect to make 12 per cent, 
 of their money, or cPGOO. He will thus have a 
 surplus of ^450 as an advantage presented to him 
 hy the farm : consequently, if he pay this as rent 
 to the landlord he will not he worse off than traders 
 or manufacturers in general. 
 
 The case, as here put, can never describe the 
 exact form which the bargain takes in actual life : 
 for as the landlord cannot know what exact sum a 
 farmer means to lay out, he cannot calculate the 
 rent hereby. A clever farmer tries to get land that 
 has not hitherto been well tilled, and which therefore 
 has not hitherto been able to afford high rent. He 
 offers an advance of rent, provided that the farm is 
 secured to him for a long term, as 21 years : after 
 this it is worth his while to sink a part of his 
 capital in the soil, by manuring, hoeing, scarifying, 
 and other operations, in the expectation of recover- 
 ing it after five, six, and more years. Such pro- 
 cesses confer on the land a new fertility, and enable 
 the farmer to remunerate himself in spite of his 
 payment of rent. This is popularly called High 
 Farming. 
 
 But in Political Economy it has been usual, 
 since Malthus and Bicardo, to illustrate the subject 
 
PROGRESS OF COMMERCIAL RENT. 153 
 
 of Kent by the very opposite case ; that of Low 
 Farming, and from the consideration of wheatland 
 only. Suppose, it is said, a first set of American 
 farmers to have occupied all the best land of the 
 country, and that it produces five quarters of wheat 
 per acre, with very careless cultivation. Suppose 
 after this the new settlers are forced to take up with 
 inferior land, which with the same trouble yields 
 only four quarters per acre. We may then, without 
 economical absurdity, imagine the occupier of the 
 best land to let it to some one who would be willing 
 to pay the surplus 1 quarter per acre as rent. Let 
 the increase of population go on, until the demand 
 for food and rise of price makes it worth while to 
 cultivate still worse land, such as yields three quarters 
 per acre: then those who possess the second sort 
 may receive as rent one quarter per acre, and those 
 who have the best land may get two quarters as rent. 
 And so the process may continue ; the worst land 
 cultivated will pay no rent, and the best will pay as 
 rent its excess over the worst. 
 
 This may be not uninstructive, as illustrating 
 how the successive depressing of the average gains 
 in an agricultural community tends to generate and 
 increase Kent ; but it is very untrue as a represent- 
 ation of the real state of an advanced country. 
 In fact, it assumes that wheat is the only agricul- 
 tural product, and that the value of land is to be 
 measured by capacity of producing it. But this is 
 an entire fiction. There are such tilings as dairy 
 farms; there are market gardens, orchards, vine- 
 
 H 3 
 
154 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 yards, copses, and shooting grounds ; there are mul- 
 berrytrees for the silkworm, there is flax, barley, 
 oats, and in hotter climates an infinity of other pro- 
 ductions. It is incorrect to call land absolutely 
 best, or absolutely of the second, third, fourth 
 quality, merely by considering its capacity for 
 wheat. A piece of thin soil quite unproductive of 
 wheat, might chance to bear grapes of so exquisite a 
 flavour that the gains of the planter would surpass 
 those from the best wheatland of the same size ; in 
 which case the vineyard will pay a high rent. Nor 
 is this all ; but the more productive is the wheaten 
 land of a country, and the more abundant the sup- 
 ply from it, the more valuable does the other land 
 become which can produce higher luxuries. Follow- 
 ing the letter of the above theory, if there are three 
 sorts of land capable of producing with equal human 
 effort six, five, four quarters of wheat per acre, 
 and the cultivation of the two better sorts suffices 
 to feed the community, then the best pays 1 quarter 
 per acre as Rent, the second sort pays nothing, and the 
 worst cannot be cultivated. Yet, in fact, this which 
 he calls the worst might pay for dairies as much 
 rent as the best for wheat. And if a great improve- 
 ment in agriculture, outrunning population, were 
 to cheapen the wheat, the dairyland might begin to 
 pay by far the best of all, and portions of the 
 second sort of land, if cultivated for flax or 
 tobacco, might chance to yield higher Bent than the 
 best wheatland. 
 
 If we recur to Adam Smith's definition of Rent, 
 
LOW PROFITS OF TENANT FARMERS. 155 
 
 and farther ask, how much a capitalist farmer 
 ivill "find it worth his while " to pay, the reply is, 
 " He will be willing to pay so much as will leave to 
 him the average gain expected by men of his class, 
 his education, and his capital :" but it remains un- 
 certain whether this is identical with the average 
 gains of manufacturers, shopkeepers, or merchants 
 of similar standing. How the case may be with 
 the few leading capitalist farmers, it is hard to 
 conjecture; but, looking to the majority of those 
 farmers who are not indigent and who must cer- 
 tainly be called Capitalists, we must judge that the 
 love of a country life makes them (on a permanent 
 average) satisfied with less gain than might have 
 been expected in other businesses from the same 
 capital. Nor is this at all to be wondered at, when 
 we compare the ease, and almost idleness, of many 
 farmers with the indefatigable attentions of trades- 
 men in the towns. Many a farmer finds time to 
 hunt and to course habitually, and gives but a 
 fraction of his time to active business. 
 
 The fresh air of the country is healthier than a 
 close counting-house, the facility of keeping riding 
 horses is an allurement; and while a disproportionate 
 number are ever flocking into the farmer's business, 
 those who are brought up as farmers feel an in- 
 superable repugnance and inability for the slavery 
 of a town life; hence there is no relief to their 
 numbers but by emigration. Assuming, then, that 
 on the whole a farmer's capital receives less profits 
 
156 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 than those of a shopkeeper of equal wealth, we 
 have two propositions, which stand thus : 
 
 A Farmer's average profits are less than, but rise 
 and fall with, the average profits of Shop- 
 keepers, &c. 
 
 Landlord's Kent is equal to Farmer's total gains, 
 minus Farmer's expected average profits. 
 
 Hence, if other things remain unchanged, 
 the Rent is highest when Average Profits in the 
 different classes of the community are lowest. 
 Evidently, Eent rises highest, where there is a 
 rich community of customers, large capital spent 
 on land, and a low rate of common profit : all these 
 conditions are fulfilled in England, and seem 
 likely to "become more intense with the progress of 
 time. 
 
 Out of this rise the interesting questions, 
 Is Eent a burden on the community? Is it a 
 payment extracted from purchasers? Is it an 
 element which determines prices ? To answer these 
 questions I must devote some attention. 
 
 In one sense, undoubtedly all Rent received by 
 private persons for no value bestowed by them on 
 the land, is a loss to the community ; namely, it is 
 a public fund which has been unthriftily alienated. 
 But it may so happen, that, in comparison with 
 a centralized despotism over land, the Political 
 advantage of private possession overpowers the 
 Economical disadvantage, as I have already ob- 
 served concerning the Permanent Settlement in 
 
IS RENT A BURDEN? 157 
 
 India. If the central government in any large 
 nation has possession of the land so as to be able 
 to raise rents and eject tenants, it will either give 
 intensity to despotism, as in India, or lead to job- 
 bery as in regard to the Public Land of the Romans 
 and our own Crown Lands. Still, these are not the 
 only possible arrangements. Every parish corpo- 
 ration might hold its own lands, and every town ; 
 and a certain percentage of their rents might be 
 payable to the Crown for the general government : 
 yet the management might rest with each corpora- 
 tion ; and with a free municipal system, if there 
 were some jobbery, still much would be saved for 
 public uses, where there is nothing saved now. In 
 some of the Swiss cantons this is, I believe, sub- 
 stantially the mode of letting land, the corporate 
 canton representing the landlord. Until some such 
 arrangement be proved impossible in England, I 
 think it must be admitted that we have unwisely 
 alienated a vast and ever-increasing revenue ; and 
 of course the community is taxed to make up for 
 the loss, or otherwise goes without advantages that 
 might have been had. 
 
 But to maintain this, is not to maintain that 
 Rent raises Prices. It may be, that because Prices 
 will and must be high, therefore there is Rent ; and 
 that a mere abolition of Rent by law would not 
 lower Price, but would only transfer the Rent from 
 the landlord's pocket to the farmer's. This is the 
 general belief of English Economists, since Malthus 
 and Ricardo. It was assumed, erroneouslv, I think, 
 
158 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 that all the land was cultivated which at existing 
 prices if was worthwhile to cultivate, including that 
 which was so inferior that absolutely no rent could 
 be paid upon it : if, therefore, rent were abolished, 
 no more soil could he tilled, no more food could be 
 produced, and prices would not fall. The farmer 
 would appropriate the rent which the landlord takes 
 now. Bent, therefore, is an effect of high price, but 
 in no respect a cause. It was inferred, that the 
 power possessed over the soil by the landlords was 
 not an infliction on the consumer of agricultural 
 produce. 
 
 I fully admit that the monopoly of the soil pos- 
 sessed by our landlords has been so broken down 
 since the freer importation of foreign food, that 
 henceforward the English provision-market cannot 
 be much affected, in the long run, by any faults or 
 caprices of the rentowner. But as a question of 
 science, or indeed of history, we may ask, " May 
 not the landlords of a limited and wellpeopled island 
 raise prices in the market, and did not the English 
 landlords do this before 1846, by their power of in- 
 sisting on Rent ? " I think they did. Our enormous 
 increase of consumption in 1848, 49, 50, shows that 
 we were previously underfed, and that prices were 
 forced up by the deficiency of supply. These high 
 prices (it is urged) caused, and were not caused by, 
 high rent on wheaten lands : granted : but, if I 
 mistake not, it was the landlord's power of restrict- 
 ing cultivation that kept the supply deficient and 
 sustained the high prices, not, indeed, to the full, 
 
EFFECT OF RESTRICTING CULTIVATION. 159 
 
 yet considerably. The Eicardo argument, which 
 J. Stuart Mill adopts, turns on the assumption that 
 the power of demanding rent can in no case of real 
 life diminish supply. But why not ? 
 
 There are very considerable tracts which would 
 immediately have been cultivated if no rent could 
 have been demanded for them, but which were arti- 
 ficially kept vacant, either because landlords could 
 let them advantageously as shooting ground, or 
 because they prefer the pleasure of seeing a romantic 
 wilderness to the petty and nominal rent which 
 alone they could get by allowing them to be culti- 
 vated, i (For the present I take no notice of Tithes.) 
 Now if this be admitted, it will follow that a free 
 right to cultivate without rent even the tracts 
 hitherto wild would at once have led to a larger 
 supply of food. In fact, if the abolition of rent 
 had been universal, the lowering of price from the 
 increased supply would not have induced the 
 farmers of the old land to lessen their production 
 until the fall had been very great ; the new land 
 would quickly improve by cultivation ; and the ap- 
 petite of the public has been shown equal to devour 
 an enormous increase of quantity. 
 
 Much more does it seem probable that this in- 
 crease of supply would have followed the destruc- 
 tion of the landlord's power, if the effects of spade 
 husbandry and small holdings be considered. At 
 present it is notorious that landlords can extract 
 three or four times as much rent for small allot- 
 ments of land, as any farmer would pay; apparently, 
 
160 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 because so many poor families could cultivate these 
 out of energies which now go to waste, as far as 
 Economy is concerned. Spare hours, and aid from 
 children and wife, suffice without new capital or 
 diminution of other labour to make such plots pro- 
 ductive. If, therefore, instead of rescinding the 
 cornlaws, we suppose, for argument's sake, that the 
 land had been made free to all, this would have 
 increased the quantity and have lowered the price of 
 the most necessary food, just as foreign importation 
 has done. The power, therefore, of insisting on 
 rent seems to me to tend to make the necessaries of 
 life dearer. It enables landlords to tighten their 
 monopoly by keeping land idle. 
 
 Still more clearly does it seem to be true, that 
 Building Bents are often a burden on the com- 
 munity, especially in the outskirts of towns. In 
 the centre, indeed, of a trading town, near the Ex- 
 change and the Post Office, land is necessarily so 
 limited and so coveted as a means of gain, that a 
 high house-rent could perhaps always be obtained ; 
 and if the ground- owner is not allowed to take it, 
 the builder will get it. In this instance the ground- 
 rent is an effect, not a cause of high price. We can- 
 not murmur against the existence of such ground- 
 rent, however high, but only at the scandal of its 
 having been wantonly granted away to private 
 persons, instead of reserving it by law as a town 
 property. But on the outskirts of towns the land 
 is far more extensive, and need not be dear. Yet, 
 even if there be plenty for all, still when large 
 
BUILDING RENTS. 161 
 
 strips belong to single landlords, their monopoly 
 enables them to force prices up, especially as the 
 principal houses on their ground are built for enjoy- 
 ment not for trade. For instance, in London, if 
 instead of a single nobleman possessing a large 
 area of land, say from Kussell Square northward, 
 builders had been free to erect rows of houses (in 
 certain approved directions) without liability to 
 ground-rent and without forfeiting the houses them- 
 selves (as they do now) when the ground-lease ter- 
 minates, the builders would not have been able, fifty 
 and a hundred years ago, to strain up the prices to 
 the heights they actually have reached, and so 
 appropriate to themselves what the landlord has now 
 taken. For if they had attempted this, the abund- 
 ance of building land would have tempted and 
 enabled other builders to undersell them. Thus 
 prices in past generations would have ranged lower, 
 and when, through the increase of population, the 
 demand increased, other things remaining the same, 
 the population would have spread, just as now, on 
 to more and more remote areas ; with the sole dif- 
 ference that house-rent would be lower, first, by the 
 amount of ground-rent, secondly, by the fact that 
 the builder would no longer part with the house to 
 a stranger after 100 or 63 years. 
 
 A perfectly similar case to this is that of Sea 
 Side ground-rents. Some traveller who loves the 
 picturesque discovers a pleasant line of coast, a 
 mile or two long, where sea and rock or mountain 
 blend delightfully. He reveals his secret to a few 
 
162 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 friends in an inland populous town, and they go 
 together to spend some summer weeks there. The 
 report of the beauty of the place spreads : the 
 visitors need more accommodation than the rude 
 scanty houses afford them, and builders plan to 
 erect new ones. In steps the" lord of the manor, 
 and demands of them not only ten times as much 
 ground-rent as was ever before dreamed of, but also 
 that the houses themselves shall become his, when 
 the building lease ends. To such terms, of course, 
 the builders could not accede, unless they were able 
 to count on high payment from the visitors. Now 
 comes our question : Would they in any case have 
 extracted this same payment, even if there had been 
 no landlord ? would they merely have kept them- 
 selves what they now give to him ? I think, not. 
 For a couple of miles of coast, if open (under a 
 few restrictions) to all builders, will hold so many 
 houses, that, unless it were of supreme and unpa- 
 ralleled beauty, it would be long indeed before the 
 pressure of visitors would force the prices up. The 
 builders could not aim at inordinate gain without 
 the certainty of stimulating building beyond the 
 demand ; and it is not likely that any such greedi- 
 ness would be attempted. The builders would seek 
 (then, as now) to set their prices so as to get a 
 handsome average profit, and that is all. But the 
 landlord artificially increases their costs, and thereby 
 throws a new charge on the public. 
 
 A reply is attempted, by saying, that " ultimately, 
 when the pressure of visitors had begun to exhaust 
 
FARMERS IN A TRANSITION STATE. 163 
 
 all the favourable sites, the builders or houseowners 
 would extract and appropriate the same rent as the 
 landlord now." But there is a fallacy in this word 
 ultimately. True, it concedes, that until the ulti- 
 mate state comes, our argument is correct ; which is 
 in fact all the concession that we need ; for there 
 would be no such ultimate state anywhere within 
 prospect, but for the power of landlords. Whenever 
 an incipient rise of house-rent was discerned, some 
 new watering-place would begin to be frequented, 
 and the flow of visitors would be diverted ; but now, 
 there is no such relief; for every place has a lord of 
 the manor, whose expectations and demands rise, 
 the moment that he perceives a chance that his strip 
 of coast may attract visitors. 
 
 It therefore appears to me that Kent, involving 
 always more or less the principle of monopoly, is 
 apt to raise prices, and fall on the consumer, to a 
 degree beyond that which English Economists since 
 Ricardo have been willing to admit. The landlord 
 in fact appropriates to himself not land only, but 
 pure air, pure water, the sight of the sea and the 
 mountains; and taxes all who desire to enjoy them. 
 But I return to Agricultural Rent. It has ap- 
 peared that there are in theory two extremes among 
 Rent payers : the cottier, who has no capital, who 
 needs land for life, and who pays out of his per- 
 sonal earnings; and the capitalist farmer, whose 
 gains we reckon from his capital, his personal labour 
 not increasing much with his capital and its gains. 
 But, if I mistake not, a majority of our actual 
 
164 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 farmers lie between these two extremes, and partake 
 of both. Many of them have capital so small, that 
 its profits bear too small a proportion to the 
 salary of their personal service: they have little 
 credit, to enable them to borrow the capital of 
 others ; the law of distraint makes it dangerous to 
 lend to them ; their capital, their knowledge, and 
 their experience are suited only to low farming ; and 
 as they are quite unable to turn to a town life, they 
 look on a farm as necessary to their existence, as 
 much as the cottier looks to his potato ground. 
 Hence, except where knowledge and connexions lead 
 them to the generally painful resource of emigrating, 
 they consent to pay any rent which will allow them 
 to live in something like their usual habits, even 
 though they get no appreciable return for their 
 capital, but barely what might be their salary as 
 bailiffs. To how large a proportion of English 
 farmers this description justly applies, it is not 
 essential for me here to decide. It suffices to in- 
 dicate that this is the probable and ostensible 
 position of a large number, between the two ex- 
 tremes. 
 
 The mixture of the two systems, Feudal and 
 Commercial, mark the present as a system of transi- 
 tion, and constitute its extreme difficulty. While 
 things so heterogeneous lie side by side in the 
 market, legislation would increase the confusion, for 
 it can proceed on no clear principle. To go back 
 towards Feudal relations would be a futile attempt, 
 if desirable ; and if the relations must be Commer- 
 
TITHES. 1G5 
 
 cial, it remains that the farmers must fight their 
 own battle *, as all other manufacturers do ; and if 
 their numbers are at present redundant, so that they 
 ruin one another, emigrate to the colonies with their 
 capital before it is lost. 
 
 But besides the landlord's rent, there is Tithe or 
 its equivalent to be paid : and this very important 
 subject needs special explanation. 
 
 In a rude state of agriculture, a tithe or some 
 other fraction of the produce is (as I have said) the 
 most natural and unoppressive kind of rent. One 
 who cultivates with his own hands rich, perhaps 
 virgin soil, by merely scratching it and casting seed, 
 may reap a most abundant harvest. To such a 
 farmer it is no hardship to yield up even a quarter 
 of the produce for rent. Suppose his seed to be 
 multiplied forty fold : the landlord or State which 
 demands of him a fourth part, still leaves him an 
 increase of thirty fold ; and as his tools are few and 
 rude, and he has nothing to pay in wages, an ample 
 remuneration remains to him. 
 
 But the poorer the soil and the more need the 
 farmer finds of spending capital upon it, for agri- 
 cultural tools, cattle and cattle food, for manure and 
 for men's wages, the greater the burden of a tithe 
 
 * The law of Distraint should be removed, as defrauding a farmer's 
 other creditors in favour of his landlord, as increasing his difficulty in 
 borrowing money, and as accustoming the farmer erroneously to regard 
 his debt for rent as something more sacred than other debts. The 
 Game Laws are also a monstrous and indefensible infliction on 
 farmers; but until they unanimously take courage to claim their 
 abolition, they will not be abolished. 
 
166 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 becomes. Suppose the expense of these things, added 
 to that of seed, so great, that, after deducting them all 
 from the value of the crop, the farmer finds every 
 100 of capital which he possessed at the beginning 
 of the year to be turned into l 10. If, now, the 
 landlord or the State were to exact of him one- 
 tenth of his clear profit, this would take away ll 
 out of his l 10, and leave him 99 : so that, instead 
 of gaining ^10 per cent., he would have lost l per 
 cent, by his year's labour. The tithe, you must 
 observe, is not levied on his clear profit, but on his 
 gross produce. The vastness of the difference may 
 be best understood by an actual illustration from 
 high farming. 
 
 YEARLY EXPENDITURE*. 
 
 
 
 Bent 843 
 
 Wages 1690 
 
 Manure . . . . .686 
 Tradesmen's Bills . . .353 
 
 Taxes 150 
 
 Seed 150 
 
 Insurance, Losses, &c. . . 100 
 Grains for Cows 100 
 
 * In the real bill from which this is extracted, Rent and Tithe are 
 blended, and the farmer does not tell for what he sold his crop. The 
 charge for Tithe being no longer a real tithe, I have been forced to 
 alter this part of the bill, for the sake of illustration. 
 
TITHES RESTRICT CULTIVATION. 167 
 
 Imagine the farmer to sell his total produce at 
 4560, which gives him a profit of 488, or 12 per 
 cent, on his capital expended. But now suppose a 
 demand of tithe is made : this is a tenth of the 
 total 4560, not of his gain 488 : thus 456 is 
 deducted from him ; which will 'leave him only 32 
 as the fruit of his year's labour and profit of 4072. 
 
 To make it worth his while to cultivate at this 
 rate, if he is to pay tithe, it is essential that his 
 total produce should sell for 5066 ; then the tithe 
 506 being deducted, there remains for him 4560. 
 By following out this principle, it is easy to form an 
 idea of the mass of land which a tithe may exclude 
 from cultivation. Suppose that Capitalist Farmers 
 expect 10 per cent, for their money, (and if any 
 other percentage be assumed, it will not affect the 
 general result,) we then see that on tithed land 
 they will need to get nearly 23 per cent, before it is 
 worth their while to cultivate. For of the 123 
 which their 100 produces, 12 6s. is taken away 
 by the tithe; leaving little more than 110. But 
 if the produce becomes as small as 122 for every 
 l 00, the farmer's portion is LESS than 1 1 0, which 
 (we suppose) is the least sum that he ought to 
 receive. Hence, even if no rent be asked of him, 
 his liability to tithe might keep out of cultivation all 
 the land which would return between 23 per cent, 
 and 10 per cent. ; surely a very large fraction, until 
 dense population produces scarcity prices. A similar 
 computation, however, applies even to land which 
 is cultivated. For it is manifest that the very best 
 
168 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 land has some limit to its productiveness; hence 
 when we draw near to this limit, our efforts meet 
 with less and less reward. Suppose that a field can 
 hy no known skill and lahour he made to yield 
 ahove 20 quarters in the very hest season : we may 
 then be sure that the last 5 quarters are extracted 
 from it with disproportionate effort. Possibly 10 
 quarters are obtained economically enough ; but 5 
 more with greater expense, 3 more with still greater, 
 1 with greater yet, and the last most expensively of 
 all. We now see, that if there were no tithe, the 
 farmer might go on to spend as long as his money 
 returned 10 per cent., but the tithe will not let him 
 spend except when it yields nearly 23 per cent. It 
 therefore forbids even on old lands all application of 
 capital which would yield between 10 and 23 ; sup- 
 posing 10 to be the least which contents the farmer. 
 Thus the tithe weighed heavily on high farming. 
 
 In very low farming, the soil does so much with- 
 out human aid, that a large fraction of the crop is 
 easily spared; but in high farming, where the 
 ground is little else than a place on which the 
 farmer deposits the fructifying materials which he 
 has purchased, the tithe is really taken from his 
 capital. Hence, no long time back, before the 
 Tithe Commutation Act, a farmer who put lime or 
 bonedust or other manure on his fields used to look 
 bitterly at every cart which carried the valuable 
 load, and think or say, One-tenth part of that load 
 is to be taken away from me by the parson ! There 
 is an obvious justice in making the rent pro- 
 
WHO BEARS THE TITHE? 169 
 
 portional to the produce, when the produce measures 
 the natural fertility of the soil ; hut as obvious an 
 injustice in it, when the produce is increased only 
 by the capital or labour and skill of the tenant. 
 
 The question now rises, " Who bears the burden of 
 tithe ? " We do not sufficiently know the details of 
 the original history to answer this, in respect to 
 early times. Four possible answers to the question 
 might be given : " 1. the landlords; 2. the farmers; 
 3. the consumers of agricultural produce; 4. the 
 property-holders in general ; namely, if wages were 
 raised with the price of food, and profits there- 
 fore fell, or prices rose." Tithes are so very old an 
 enactment, that the last solution would probably 
 have been the nearest to truth, if all the land had been 
 tithed, and no foreign produce sold in our market. 
 Suppose tithes suddenly introduced; farmers 
 would unanimously demand ten shillings instead of 
 nine in every sale, to indemnify themselves for losing 
 one- tenth of all produce. If all consumers were 
 rich enough to pay this, consumption would not be 
 checked. Labourers, however, would try to raise 
 their wages to make up* for the increased price of 
 food, and would in part succeed : thus the cost of 
 production being raised in all other things, either 
 profits must fall, or (what is impossible) all prices 
 must rise in the ratio of the increased wages. The na- 
 tion has been taxed for the benefit of the titheowner; 
 
 * This does not necessarily mean in so high a ratio as 9 to 10. If 
 the food of a family consumes only half its income, from 9 to 9 
 is a sufficient rise of wages. 
 
 I 
 
170 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and, since some one must suffer, the burden must ulti- 
 mately be distributed upon the capital and property- 
 holders of the community, if the mass of the people 
 manages to feed as well as before. If a less costly food 
 must become commoner, or the poor eat more stint- 
 edly, produce would fall in price, and rents might at 
 length be affected ; so that the landlord, like capital- 
 ists, would bear a share of the tithe. Which of all 
 these would happen, I do not think we have the means 
 
 of deciding. But when the system was more than 
 
 eight centuries old, and about half the produce 
 sold in our market was tithed, the burden un- 
 doubtedly fell partly on the tithed landlords, (whose 
 rent was depressed by it,) and partly on the whole 
 property of the community, who paid * rather more 
 for everything or else got rather less profit in every 
 business, because the cost of maintaining workmen 
 was greater. Tithes being a system spread over all 
 Europe, we could not get light on these results by 
 contrasting two independent markets similar in 
 other things, but differing in tithe only. But in the 
 former half of the past century England seems to 
 have enjoyed so much abundance, that no one can 
 say that the tithe then repressed eating, and fell on 
 the vital powers of the labourer: it was clearly 
 sustained out of the property of all who had any 
 superfluity. The landlord of an untithed estate 
 made the absence of tithe a reason for demanding 
 
 * Ramsay and Mill offer proof that a universal proportionate 
 increase of wages would not alter prices. Nor would it, I believe, 
 if all things sold were equally necessary. 
 
OLD BURDENS ADJUST THEMSELVES. 171 
 
 higher rent ; this assures us that if tithe had heen 
 rescinded, other landlords also would have heen 
 able to raise their rent more or less ; possibly even 
 to the amount of the tithe, aided by their semifeudal 
 position and by the slowness of the farmers. But 
 ultimately, the rescinding of tithe must have brought 
 about a disproportionate increase of cultivation and 
 cheapness of food. In any case, I believe, rents 
 would somewhat have fallen, unless new changes be 
 supposed. 
 
 The only general conclusions which I am able to 
 arrive at are these : If we fed exclusively on native 
 produce, all tithed, and had continued to do so for 
 many centuries, and were all well fed, the tithe 
 would be paid out of the superfluities of the whole 
 community. If part only of the produce were 
 tithed, the landlords of this part would get less 
 rent, and the landlords of the untithed part more 
 rent, than if there had been no tithe. The larger 
 the portion untithed, the more the remaining burden 
 is taken off the shoulders of the community and 
 placed upon landlord or farmer. Of course if the 
 farmer had fair play, no part of the tithe could fall 
 upon him any more than on other members of the 
 nation, but whatever burden came on " the land" (as 
 it is called) would solely lessen the surplus which is 
 the landlord's rent. 
 
 Originally, no doubt, it was the landlord who 
 alienated the tithe from his successors ; and it was 
 conceived of as a diminution of his dues. No one 
 imagined that it would or could fall on the farmer or 
 
 I 2 
 
172 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 on the consumer of agricultural produce ; but it 
 was regarded as a pious sacrifice made to the Church 
 on the part of the landlord : and in an age when 
 all legal mysteries rested with the clergy, the ille- 
 gality of such bequeathments and deeds, made by 
 private persons who had only a life-interest in their 
 estates, was winked at, and the piety of the deed 
 applauded, until custom sanctioned it and it became 
 law. Yet manifestly it was a great usurpation, even 
 if the donors had had a perpetual right over the 
 land. If any landlord of tithe-free estates were now 
 by will to declare that the half of their gross pro- 
 duce should in future for ever be given to Durham 
 University, either a Court of Equity, or at least a 
 Declaratory Act of Parliament, would speedily over- 
 rule such a settlement. But why ? Not because a 
 landlord may not give his property to Durham 
 University, but because this landlord is giving away 
 what is not his own, viz., the gross produce which 
 the industry of future tenants may create on his 
 estates. The rent is his, but not the crop. If his 
 will took the form of forbidding his successors ever 
 to let the land without a covenant that the tenant 
 should so appropriate the half of the crop, this would 
 amount to prohibiting altogether the cultivation of 
 the land, and for that reason also such a will ought 
 to be pronounced invalid. Now, although it is not 
 so manifest at first sight, it is no less true, that land 
 may be kept barren and useless by a tithe, as well as 
 by confiscating the halfcrop ; and that which is in 
 some sense cultivated must be kept worse cultivated 
 
COMMUTATION OF TITHE. 173 
 
 and partially barren, if tithe is demanded. Thus to 
 devote the tithe to the Church was an act of piety, 
 of the same tendency as to consecrate land in 
 Greek fashion to the infernal goddesses. 
 
 Our farmers and landlords began to understand 
 the intrinsic mischief of Tithe from the time that 
 the enclosure of new lands became general; and 
 after fifty years' preparation of public opinion the 
 Tithe Commutation Act was passed. Instead of a 
 Tithe, each parish now pays for ever a fixed corn- 
 rent, such or such a number of bushels of wheat* 
 barley, oats. Henceforward, the payment does not 
 increase with the farmer's increase of diligence and 
 expense ; high farming is, therefore, no longer dis- 
 couraged by it. On the contrary, now, any return to 
 low farming is strongly forbidden by the commuted 
 tithe; and this may be a serious aggravation of dif- 
 ficulty to the weakest part of our farmers. For the 
 quantity of corn to be paid for tithe was fixed by a 
 computation founded on the results of a period, in 
 which scarcity-prices stimulated the growth of wheat 
 on unsuitable soils. In a free system, now that 
 corn comes in abundantly from abroad, the high 
 cultivation of these soils ought to give way. If 
 they could not be conveniently used for other crops, 
 low farming would take the place of high. But as 
 the rentcharge for tithe is fixed, to lessen the crop 
 is to make the charge more severely felt. The only 
 mode of alleviating the tithecharge is to produce 
 largely ; and as the payment is virtually one of corn, 
 the prices are (as far as this charge is concerned) un- 
 
174 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 important to the farmer, as soon as the averages have 
 become equitable. When, however, it is necessary 
 to change the nature of the crop, because the soil 
 ought never to have been cultivated for wheat, the 
 farmer whose routine of experience fails him, and 
 who is destitute of science and general principles, is 
 surely in a deplorable position. 
 
 At the same time, it seems to be unreasonable in 
 farmers to blame the tithe, (that is, the rentcharge 
 which is in place of tithe,) as long as they agree 
 over and above to pay rent ; except, indeed, where it 
 can be shown that the payment to the landlord is 
 mere profit due to him for money expended on the 
 estate, or for the dwelling-house and farm-buildings. 
 To this he has an undoubted right, but to this 
 only, prior to the right of the titheowner. Not until 
 his rent is reduced to this limit, will the farmer have 
 any ground of claiming exemption from tithe where 
 exemption might most fairly be claimed, that is, on 
 the lands enclosed during high prices. 
 
 Concerning Importation I must afterwards speak 
 more distinctly. Suffice it here to add, that as the 
 increase of tithe-free land throws a larger and larger 
 fraction of the tithe on to the landlord or farmer, so 
 the introduction of food from abroad, which (for 
 whatever reason) is cheaper than our own has been, 
 exceedingly assists this process. If tithe were 
 totally removed, I presume that food would be some- 
 what cheaper still ; and if so, the consumer or the 
 community still bears a part of it. But with the de- 
 velopment of foreign importation this part will get 
 
IS TITHE A DEDUCTION FROM RENT? 175 
 
 less and less, so that the charge for tithe will he 
 almost entirely a deduction from rent, as was 
 intended hy the old harons who originally be- 
 queathed it. 
 
 ON THE THEORY OF RENT COMMONLY CALLED 
 RICARDO'S. 
 
 RENT, according to this theory, is the excess of gain yielded 
 by good or favourably situated land over the worst or worst 
 situated of all the lands, the produce of which is sold in the 
 same market : whence it follows that the worst land pays 
 no rent. When to this it is objected that the inferior land 
 not only does not cause rent on the superior, but limits its 
 amount, we are told that there is another view of Rent 
 equally true and still more instructive ; viz., that Rent is 
 the excess of gain yielded by the most profitable of the 
 capitals applied to land, over the least profitable. 
 
 This is closely connected with the doctrine, that the per- 
 manent average price of corn must needs be the true Cost- 
 price of that which is produced under the most smfavour- 
 able circumstances, and which, therefore (we are told), pays 
 no rent. It follows that a permanent scarcity-price is an 
 impossibility except in cases merely hypothetical and quite 
 unreal (J. Stuart Mill, book 3, ch. 5, sect. 2. p. 560). 
 
 The whole doctrine here propounded is too untangible to 
 be either verified or disproved by appeal to direct fact ; and 
 there seems to me extreme danger of verbal controversy. 
 We know that when food is deficient, none willingly lessen 
 their consumption, and that the price rises in a higher ratio 
 than the deficiency. This is popularly called a Scarcity 
 Price, and I think justly. If, then, we admit (what must be 
 admitted) that from 1837 to 1847 the English people had 
 not as much to eat as they would gladly have eaten if they 
 could have got it, we surely must believe that for those 11 
 
176 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 years a permanent scarcity-price continued, and showed no 
 tendency to abate. But if I understand Mr. Mill, he would 
 reason thus. " The fact of the price not having fallen, 
 proves that some part of the supply (namely that raised 
 under the least favourable circumstances) was barely remu- 
 nerated by that high price ; which can only have just paid 
 the Cost of Production to that part of the supply. Hence 
 the price was not a scarcity-price." According to this, there 
 is no test of a scarcity-price except the recency of a rise. 
 Indeed, even in a famine, when bread sells for three times 
 as much as usual, and thousands are actually starving, who 
 will assure us that there are not hundreds of sheaves of 
 wheat which barely pay the cost of production to negligent 
 or unskilful cultivators ? If the market were at 90s. a 
 quarter, and a farmer exhibited his books to us, and showed 
 that on some of his fields this price only just remunerated 
 him, would this lead us to deny that 90s. is a scarcity-price ! 
 Until there is far more equality of skill in our farmers, and 
 the tenure and use of land has more commercial freedom, it 
 is hard to give scientific accuracy to any of our expres- 
 sions ; and longdrawn general reasonings are extremely 
 deceptive. 
 
 The Ricardo theory (excepting its apparent undue stress 
 on wheat) must become true, I apprehend, in a limiting ideal 
 state, when the landed system shall in all its parts be as 
 rapidly moving and fluid, as it is now rigid and slow. But 
 its proof seems to require the concession of a great many 
 postulates, most of which are approximately true in general 
 trade, but all of them false as applied to agriculture. Such 
 are the following : 
 
 1. Every producer distinctly knows how much he gains 
 and how much he loses on each separate article, and will 
 try to produce more of the more profitable and less of the 
 less. 
 
 2. Every producer can find other investments for his 
 capital than in his own business, if parts of that business 
 are less profitable than ordinary trade. 
 
RICARDO'S THEORY OF RENT. 177 
 
 3. Every producer can get an increase of capital by loan 
 or partnership, if his business is more than usually gainful ; 
 or if not, yet an unlimited number of rival producers can 
 enter it. 
 
 4. Every producer can invest capital in his business, with 
 a fair prospect that its gains will be his own. 
 
 5. Capital moves so freely from trade to trade, and from 
 county to county, that there cannot be a permanent dif- 
 ference of profit to it in different trades or counties. 
 
 6. Every producer can use all the parts of his premises 
 for whatever purpose he pleases, and arrange the processes 
 in whatever way he pleases. 
 
 7. Every producer can abandon his trade and carry his 
 capital elsewhither, if he finds too many rivals in it. (This 
 is but very partially true in any trade ; and the undue 
 assumption vitiates many arguments of Economists.) 
 
 8. Rent is estimated, not as a necessary item in the Cost 
 of Production, but as a surplus which can be afforded with- 
 out loss. (Only our firstrate Capitalist Farmers, I appre- 
 hend, really thus estimate it. The majority deal with the 
 Rent of a farm, just as a shopkeeper with his shopfronting and 
 his taxes ; i.e. treat them as inevitable and fixed expenses. 
 The farmers have notoriously expected Parliament so to 
 manage the price of food, as to enable them to pay rent, 
 instead of claiming that rent should be adapted to their 
 surplus.) 
 
 While we see neighbouring farms differ in agricultural 
 skill so much, that they might belong to different centuries, 
 it is idle to regard them as organic parts of one selfregulating 
 system. If a manufacturer differed from a rival manu- 
 facturer in skill, and in attention both to his ledger and to 
 the processes of his art, as much as farmer differs from 
 farmer, we should safely predict that the ignorant and 
 careless manufacturer would be ruined. But we know this 
 has not necessarily been the case with the farmer. The 
 economic forces have been artificially fenced out from agri- 
 culture ; and to apply the Ricardo theory of Cost Price and 
 
 I 3 
 
178 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Rent to English agriculture as it has been, and indeed still 
 is, seems to me like applying a general theory of the tides 
 to the level of waters held up by locks. 
 
 I may add ; when the Ricardo school deny the possibility 
 of a permanent scarcity-price of wheat, they are obliged to 
 argue that " if it existed for a while, it would necessarily 
 stimulate production to such an extent, as presently to 
 lower the market, until, on every sort of land, the worst 
 remunerated capital received only the lowest profit for 
 which it could be employed." But this is to assume that 
 capital flows freely from trade into agriculture. A commoner 
 result is, that the farmer, having no secure tenure, cannot 
 borrow money ; hence unusually high gains do not draw 
 large capital into his business, but only make him less resist the 
 exaction of high rent ; unless, indeed, the price has risen so 
 suddenly and so high, as to enrich the farmers before their 
 leases end, give them a new credit with monied men, and 
 enable them to pay as high an interest as the trading com- 
 munity. This extreme case will stimulate cultivation, no 
 doubt ; but, short of this, it may seem that low prices are 
 stronger persuasions than high, not only to economic, but to 
 productive cultivation. 
 
LECTUKE VIII. 
 
 On various Tenures of Land. On Foreign Commerce and 
 Emigration. 
 
 1. ON VARIOUS TENURES OF LAND. 
 
 IN my last lecture I spoke of Agricultural Eent 
 generically, under two extreme cases, that of the 
 Cottier, and that of the Capitalist Farmer, both 
 existing in eminent types in the same Britannic 
 kingdom. But over a large part of the world 
 neither extreme is known ; and I must "briefly indi- 
 cate other varieties in the tenure of land. 
 
 In North America the farmers have their land 
 almost always in freehold, subject only to a mode- 
 rate fixed money-payment in the United States, 
 which is a tax or rent incapable of increase. Thus 
 the farmer is virtually his own landlord. As land is 
 abundant, and watercarriage excellent, the farming 
 is low and profits are high. No unsuitable land 
 being forced into cultivation, labour is highly pro- 
 ductive. Hence the farmer can at once sell cheap, 
 pay high wages, and get high profits ; so the con- 
 sumer, the daylabourer, and the farmer are all at 
 once well off. This seems to be the most flourish- 
 ing possible state of a nation. And as they have 
 at once the rude abundance of barbarism and the 
 transmitted mental culture of old Europe, there is 
 
180 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 good hope that their prosperity will he permanent. 
 For the ease of getting a livelihood enables the 
 poorest to allow full time for his children's educa- 
 tion ; and in the United States the fear felt "by the 
 rich for an w??enlightened democracy comhines with 
 the ambition of the poorest for their children's 
 future elevation, to give efficiency to the public 
 schools. Hence in half a century more their lowest 
 classes will he educated to a pitch that the world has 
 never yet seen ; and this is the only guarantee that 
 they will not relapse into the state of the Old 
 World, when their population has so increased that 
 land becomes scarce. 
 
 In France as many as 2j millions of proprietors 
 cultivate about half of the soil as freehold, in farms 
 which principally lie between the size of five acres 
 and eight acres and a half. The proprietors pay 
 about tenpence an acre every year to the Govern- 
 ment. Consequently with a fine soil and climate, 
 they are able to be very well off; and where they 
 are embarrassed, it is from secondary causes. Many, 
 it seems, have purchased their land with borrowed 
 money, have bought it very dear, and are burdened 
 with a heavy mortgage. This must ruin their whole 
 position. The coveting of land in such a people is 
 an intense passion; and the little proprietor, as 
 much as our English squire, is prone to the vice of 
 borrowing in order to buy. Apparently the law 
 ought to disallow all mortgages on landed estates 
 below a certain magnitude or value, and all mort- 
 gaging higher than a certain percentage of the 
 
FRENCH PROPRIETORS. 181 
 
 value. But the French law not only, like our own, 
 recognizes all mortgages, whatever the absolute or 
 relative smallness of the property, but over and 
 above creates evil by strictly enforcing the equal 
 subdivision of estates among children ; to such an 
 extent, that if several fields belonging to a father 
 are of different quality, each must separately be 
 divided between the children. A vicious doctrine of 
 mercantile Protection meanwhile cripples the com- 
 mercial development of France, and a centralized 
 Government perpetuates political ignorance. It is 
 an obvious inconvenience of small freeholds, that 
 even a slow increase of population cannot be sup- 
 ported on the same area, and the legally enforced 
 subdivision adds strength to the natural unwilling- 
 ness of children to look out for a new mode of 
 subsistence. There has been some controversy, of 
 late, concerning the state of these French pro- 
 prietors; and those who hate everything French 
 have represented their state as deplorable indeed. 
 Mr. J. Stuart Mill contends, that though the mort- 
 gages must embarrass many individuals exceed- 
 ingly, yet as the average of all the mortgages is 
 less than 5 shillings an acre, the burden is not 
 absolutely a great one. There appears to be no 
 doubt whatever, that the French small proprietors 
 and peasants of every kind are at this moment 
 immeasurably better off than they were under Louis 
 XIV., XV., XVI. ; or that their state is an enviable 
 one to an Irish cottier. 
 
 In Norway, Rhenish Germany, Holland, and 
 
18% POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Belgium, peasant freeholds abound as in France ; 
 but there is no law of forced subdivision, the mort- 
 gages are not burdensome, and the cultivation is 
 better ; that of Belgium being celebrated for its excel- 
 lence, in consequence of which the worst soils rapidly 
 improve and approximate to the best. In all the 
 very successful cases of small properties, the labour 
 of the family is unremitting; and apparently the 
 most formidable objection to this kind of life, if it 
 is to become widely spread in a nation, is, that it 
 converts the wife and children into drudges, who 
 have no time to learn or practise the higher arts 
 which elevate and sweeten home. 
 
 In Italy a system of tenure prevails which we call 
 the metayer. In it, the proprietor takes (about) 
 half the gross produce as rent, but at the same 
 time furnishes the cultivator with the cattle and 
 seed, in whole or in part: he also pays all the 
 government taxes. If we compare him with the 
 English landlord, he may seem to take rent in its 
 worst form, since the halfcrop is far more formidable 
 than a tithe ; and the first inference that rises is, 
 that this must be most hurtful to the cultivation. 
 In old France the nobility paid no taxes, but threw 
 all on the peasant : there, in consequence, the effect 
 of the metayer system was seen to the worst ; and 
 nearly all English writers until J. Stuart Mill had 
 no word to say in favour of it. But in Lombardy, 
 Piedmont, and Tuscany the united and ample testi- 
 mony of MM. Chateauvieux and Sismondi shows 
 that where there is a good moral understanding 
 
METAYER CULTURE. 183 
 
 between the proprietor and labourer, the metayer 
 system may produce results which English peasants 
 would envy. 
 
 It is not fair to compare the metayer proprietor 
 with the English landlord, and the metayer labourer 
 with the English farmer : for to what then in Italy 
 would the English peasant correspond ? But the 
 English peasant must be compared with the metayer 
 cultivator, the English Capitalist farmer with the 
 metayer proprietor, and the English landlord with 
 the Italian State-power which demands a landtax. 
 To throw the taxes on the cultivators, would be like 
 making our peasants pay the landlord's rent, which 
 would oppress them however low it might be set. In 
 this comparison, the English would approximate to 
 the Italian system, if our farmers, in the first place, 
 had a firm tenure of their farms, and were not liable 
 to a rise of rent, except when imposed by the legis- 
 lature alike on every farmer in the country; if, 
 secondly, the peasants were paid, not in wages, but 
 in a fixed fraction of the crop, about one half being 
 divided among them ; if, thirdly, there was an un- 
 derstanding what capital the farmer should con- 
 tribute, what the peasant ; if, lastly, the details of 
 cultivation were managed by the peasants, the farmer 
 giving occasional directions only, and feeling such 
 confidence in their desire for the best possible crop 
 as to dispense with elaborate superintendence. 
 
 No doubt, in such an arrangement the farmer puts 
 himself somewhat in the power of the peasants ; but 
 he has the double advantage of no longer being 
 
184 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 subject to a superior landlord himself, and in having 
 the hulk of his time free from petty cares. Hence 
 he would assuredly feel that he was a gainer by the 
 exchange. On the other hand, the labourer in this 
 system holds his place by custom, and at any rate 
 has a yearly tenure instead of being hired by the 
 week. He is elevated into a joint proprietor of the 
 farm, and has a direct interest in its prosperity. 
 Surely, therefore, he must feel himself better off than 
 under the English system. And if the arrange- 
 ments as to the joint contribution of capital by pro- 
 prietor and peasant are judicious, and there is a 
 tolerably good understanding between the parties, 
 there is no reason why cultivation should not go on 
 vigorously. In an ecclesiastical tithe, the tithe- 
 owner, who is the sleeping partner, contributes no 
 capital ; hence the managing partner grudges to 
 spend his own capital for the other's benefit. But in 
 the metayer system the sleeping partner contributes 
 probably more than half of the capital, so that the 
 manager can never lose by any amount of activity, 
 but is more likely to carry off a disproportionate 
 share of gain. 
 
 It is thus clear that the good or bad success of the 
 metayer system depends on the judicious arrange- 
 ment of the details. If, as in old France, the 
 proprietor has all the airs of a nobleman, and is 
 separated by a chasm of feeling from the cultivator ; 
 if feudal power enables the superior to throw off all 
 burdens on to the inferior, to demand the maximum 
 of advantage and yield the minimum of aid ; the 
 
INDIAN EXPERIMENT. 185 
 
 peasant will sink under the unfair load. But if the 
 contract is judiciously settled, and the proprietor 
 brings a fresh eye and a cultivated understanding to 
 give suggestions and aid to the labourers, the two 
 parties having but one interest and his capital being 
 risked as much as theirs, to me it appears that 
 such a system would produce results far more satis- 
 factory to the consumers of food, to the capitalist 
 farmers, and to the peasants, than those of English 
 farm wages. 
 
 A friend of mine, unlearned in theories, econo- 
 mical or political, some sixteen years ago attempted 
 cultivation in India. He with difficulty obtained 
 some land from the government, and began by 
 paying wages to his workmen ; but after the expe- 
 rience of one or two seasons he found that he was 
 cheated at every corner of his little estate, unless he 
 was in perpetual activity to overlook the men, who 
 were idle as often as they dared to be. Nor did he 
 succeed by piecework; I suppose, because the 
 quality of work is as important as its quantity, and 
 is often difficult to test in agriculture. The amount 
 of superintendence essential would have killed him 
 in an Indian climate ; besides, he valued his time 
 for other purposes : he therefore changed his plans. 
 Having obtained from Indian authorities a lease of 
 30 years, he went to the expense of constructing a 
 canal more than a mile long, with a tank, to receive 
 the superfluous water of a river in the flood season, 
 and retain it for use in the drought. He altered 
 the levels of his estate so as to be able to irrigate 
 
186 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the whole from his tank. He divided it into equal 
 patches, of such a size that one family could culti- 
 vate each. He surrounded all with a single fence, 
 and let out the patches on a metayer contract. Each 
 cultivator was to halve the crop with him. He was 
 to afford seed (I think), carts, and other implements, 
 and of course (what was most precious of all) 
 water : he was also to pay every kind of govern- 
 ment tax. On the other hand he exacted that the 
 bullocks should be the peasants' own, as he thought 
 that the animals would not be so well cared for, 
 if they were his. With these arrangements both 
 parties were well pleased. The industry of the culti- 
 vators increased as by magic ; wives and children 
 lent aid, and the little estate throve admirably. Of 
 the metayer system I doubt whether my friend had 
 ever read ; for he related all this as an original in- 
 vention of his own. I lament to add, that the last 
 news I heard from him was to the effect that Sir 
 Henry Pottinger questioned the legality of his lease 
 for 30 years, and that he feared he should be 
 deprived of the capital which he has invested in the 
 soil. But I cannot yet believe Ijiat the highest 
 authorities will permit such a result. 
 
 Besides the scientific questions concerning Free- 
 hold and other tenures, there remains a practical 
 question concerning Large and Small tenant farms. 
 I do not feel that it belongs to the science of 
 Economy to discuss which of these is better, any 
 more than what amount of capital shopkeepers 
 ought to have. It is for POLITICS to lay down 
 
FOREIGN COMMERCE. 187 
 
 what power over the land individuals ought to pos- 
 sess. That being decided with a view to justice and 
 expediency, then ECONOMY has nothing to say hut, 
 let that which pays best prevail. Yet I may 
 briefly add, that the progress of opinion is towards 
 maintaining, first, that where it is worth while to 
 cultivate inferior land, it is worth while to manure 
 it well ; secondly, that this implies a large quantity 
 of cattle in proportion to the farm ; thirdly, that 
 cattle are most profitable if fed in stalls ; fourthly, 
 that this is done most cheaply if farms are not very 
 large. The general result seems to be, that low 
 farming may succeed well on large farms, but that 
 in high farming moderate farms are best, only large 
 enough fully to occupy the desirable machinery. 
 Be this as it may. 
 
 2. ON FOREIGN COMMERCE. 
 
 On casting a glance back on what has been said, 
 we shall see that a right application of the common 
 property of a nation, the Land, joined with secu- 
 rity and free use of all private property, is essential 
 to national prosperity. A certain abundance of 
 land is also desirable, that there may be no induce- 
 ment to grow food on unsuitable soils, with great 
 loss of labour. But where land is naturally limited, 
 two resources open themselves to a growing nation, 
 FOREIGN COMMERCE and EMIGRATION, on both of 
 which I must speak briefly. 
 
 So great is the power of Sea Carriage, that it 
 
188 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 may be said to multiply a small country into a 
 great one. The internal conveyance on a great con- 
 tinent is seldom so easy and convenient as from 
 coast to coast: and even where railways facilitate 
 the transit, the expense is possibly greater than of 
 a sailing voyage ten times as distant. Moreover, 
 by Importation we can take a dvantage of superior 
 climates as well as soils, so as to make each land 
 bear what it bears with greatest profit. 
 
 Who, then, is to find out what exports and imports 
 will best promote our interest ? In past days, the 
 routine-doctrine of our statesmen said, The Govern- 
 ment. But few Englishmen now need to be told, 
 that questions of trade can only be solved by trades- 
 men. If the Government is to dictate what we buy 
 from Germany, France, and Russia, it may as well 
 dictate what things Middlesex shall purchase from 
 Surrey ; and a huge system of blundering ruinous 
 centralization must result. There is no other rule 
 needed by London merchants in dealing with French- 
 men than in dealing with Irishmen. All that they 
 have to say to the Government is what the mer- 
 chants of France said to a French minister who de- 
 sired to benefit them, " We entreat you to let us 
 alone ! " * 
 
 No merchants in Europe, except those of Swit- 
 
 * This celebrated maxim, Laisser faire, must be strictly confined to 
 Political Economy, as contrasted with Politics. To Politics it is 
 hard to imagine how any sound mind could think of applying it. 
 There has been some blundering here, and, I fear, still more dis- 
 ingenuousness. 
 
MEDDLING OF STATESMEN. 189 
 
 zerland and Holland, and, in some sense, Turkey, 
 have enjoyed this privilege. The meddling states- 
 man was not satisfied with regulating foreign trade ; 
 he must also dictate what shall be the interchange 
 of goods with colonies. Colonies might have been 
 peculiarly valuable to Commerce, seeing how often 
 War interrupts intercourse with foreign States; but 
 experience would rather show that the political 
 inferiority of the Colony is a hindrance, and that its 
 similarity of language and manners is most useful 
 to a mother country, when joined with Independ- 
 ence. Certainly our commerce with the United 
 States of America would not have increased as it 
 has done, had they remained subject to the Crown 
 of England ; for they would not have been allowed 
 to manage their affairs so intelligently. 
 
 The baneful influence of the old "Mercantile 
 Theory " displayed itself towards the English and 
 Dutch colonies as distinctly as towards those of 
 Spain, although the despotism of Spain made its 
 enactments more galling. Spain had her " Laws of 
 the Indies" to torment America; England her 
 Navigation Laws, begun by Cromwell to ruin 
 Holland, and kept up to vex all nations. Nearly 
 every colony was forbidden to do exactly the things 
 which it was most her interest to do, and was com- 
 manded to traffic where it was not her interest. In 
 these enactments the most partial and petty in- 
 fluences often predominated. It is related that the 
 Mexicans were ordered to root up all their vines, 
 because the vine-growers near Cadiz complained to 
 
190 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the court of Spain that Mexican wines injured their 
 trade. The English government was never so 
 ruthless, but it was often as narrow. Not to quote 
 recent instances, which might seem to savour of 
 party-politics, I may refer to King William the 
 Third's solemn promise to Parliament, that he 
 would do everything in his power to discourage the 
 woollen manufactures of Ireland. 
 
 In all these matters English legislation had a 
 grotesque sincerity of its own, for it plagued Eng- 
 land to the full as much as the colonies or the 
 foreigners. The first shock to it came from the 
 revolt and independence of the United States ; after 
 which we no longer had the same monopoly on the 
 high seas ; and our Navigation Laws became more 
 and more abortive. Smuggling, which had virtually 
 overthrown the Spanish code on the American 
 shores, next gave aid to undermine the English 
 system : Mr. Huskisson, aided by the argument of 
 the smuggler, brought about a considerable relaxation 
 in our laws of trade 25 years ago. But the event 
 which has finally determined the return of England 
 to simplicity and justice, is, the abolition of our 
 Corn Laws in 1846. 
 
 A question which very severely tried the principle 
 of Free Traders, occurred during the struggle for 
 that abolition. The manufacturers who most desired 
 general freedom, felt nevertheless a natural and 
 great anxiety concerning the exportation of Machi- 
 nery. While it was forbidden to us to buy food freely 
 from the foreigner, it seemed a fearful thing to allow 
 
RESTRICTIONS ON IMPORTING FOOD. 191 
 
 our machinery to be sent abroad, and thereby raise 
 up rivals to our hardpressed manufacturers. But it 
 was found practically impossible to define what was 
 Machinery. Bits of machines were sent over in 
 different packages, so that in spite of our prohibi- 
 tion the foreigner got what he wanted. It was 
 farther pleaded to be unfair on the machine- manu- 
 facturer to forbid the sale of his goods, and that no 
 one had a right to say what magnitude this trade 
 might assume, if left unfettered. The free exporta- 
 tion therefore was at last authorized. Our manu- 
 facturers offered no opposition ; but, instead, braced 
 their minds more intensely against the arbitrary 
 laws which restricted the importation of foreign 
 food and other raw produce. 
 
 The injustice of these laws was so manifold, that 
 to expound them would fill a volume. But I must 
 now specially direct your mind to the damage they 
 did to our manufacturers, independently of the abso- 
 lute evil of dear food. The great power of our 
 machinery is able to produce far more than England 
 was able to purchase. A large foreign trade arose ; 
 sales steadily advanced; new and new works were 
 erected, until a point was reached at which the 
 foreigner, though desiring to buy more, was unable, 
 because we refused his most important means of 
 paying us, corn, sugar, timber: and then indigna- 
 tion against us commenced. For instance, Brazil 
 was an excellent customer to us ; but became dis- 
 gusted on finding that her sugar could be carried by 
 us for sale to the West Indies, but not to England, 
 
192 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by which her power of purchasing was crippled. It 
 has heen sarcastically said, that nations are not so 
 angry about what they are forbidden to get, as 
 about what they are not allowed to part with : i.e. 
 they do not so much grumble that imports are re- 
 fused to them, as that their exports are repudiated. 
 I do not think that nations are herein quite so 
 absurd as they seem, though undoubtedly the heat 
 of blood confuses them. But they feel like a man 
 who on going to buy at a shop is told that his gold 
 has a forbidden stamp and must not be taken, or 
 that his banker's name is suspicious and no check 
 drawn on him will be accepted. The refusal to take 
 his coin may deprive him of something which he 
 meant to buy ; but he thinks far less about this than 
 of the dishonour put on his money. Why ? Because 
 the former is a finite inconvenience, the latter an 
 indefinite, I might say an infinite damage. Suppose 
 the Brazilian merchants to have been simply refused 
 English cotton : well, they would buy something 
 else : they are not so very much bent on getting 
 this one thing, though they would have liked it : 
 but if you refuse their sugar, you dishonour their 
 greatest means of purchase ; you declare their most 
 valuable coin worthless, which is felt as a far worse 
 wrong than the mere refusing of a single article. 
 Much more were they aggrieved at our reason for it, 
 viz., that it was slave- grown ; which is like refusing a 
 person's gold, on the ground that it is stolen pro- 
 perty. They thought their national honour com- 
 promised, and they threatened retaliatory duties on 
 
FORJEIGN TRADE IS BARTER. ] 93 
 
 our goods; thus wronging themselves still farther 
 jn order to harm us. Such enactments are called 
 Hostile Tariffs. By their operation our manu- 
 facturers had lost some markets and were in danger 
 of losing others. To leave off producing was to 
 sacrifice all their works, not to say, to starve their 
 workmen : yet, if they went on producing, a ruinous 
 glut was inevitable, unless foreign markets could be 
 kept open and enlarged. But our most important 
 foreign customers had nothing in so great super- 
 abundance as the very things we refused to take 
 corn, flour, sugar, timber ; and when we were vir- 
 tually refusing their current coin, they were dis- 
 gusted with the hypocrisy and wilfulness of England, 
 who said, " Buy of us, but pay us with anything 
 rather than that which you have to spare." 
 
 This statement may seem to imply, what, since 
 Mr. Ricardo wrote, has been acknowledged as vir- 
 tually true, that foreign trade goes on in the way of 
 barter. If a ship from Liverpool carries out cottons, 
 silks, woollen, and iron manufactures to New 
 Orleans or to Kio Janeiro, it does not indeed directly 
 exchange these for raw cotton, rice, flour, sugar, 
 coffee and precious wood; but the cargo is sold for 
 money of the country, it matters not what relation 
 this bears to English current coin, and then this 
 money is immediately laid out in buying on the 
 spot a new cargo to bring back to England. In 
 fact not much money passes, but it is managed by 
 notes between merchants. But if the English ship 
 is forbidden to bring back the produce which most 
 
194 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 abounds in the port where the cargo is sold, actual 
 dollars must be received. To sell her cargo is then 
 harder, and, after it is sold, the dollars themselves 
 must be carried off, and the ship perhaps return 
 home in ballast. Thus more than half the profits of 
 the voyage would be lost ; and to prevent this, was 
 a problem of perpetual difficulty. Nature herself 
 dictates the cargo which each country shall yield. 
 To affect to deal with Norway and refuse her timber, 
 or with France and refuse her corn and wine, is a 
 mockery. Yet, in fact, as there is no fear that France 
 will give us her goods for nothing, no illiberality on 
 her part in refusing (for instance) to take our iron, 
 could ever be a good reason for our refusing to buy 
 of her what we wanted. If she will not take our most 
 convenient mode of payment, she will more or less 
 cripple the trade ; but whatever of it remains, remains 
 because it is still gainful : and we cannot punish 
 France by destroying it, except at our own expense. 
 The plea of reciprocation was the last fallacy by 
 which it was sought to forbid Free Trade ; and the 
 meaning of it was, to keep up the system of prohi- 
 bitions after it was condemned, by teaching each 
 State that no one must abolish it for fear others 
 should not follow its example. 
 
 It is not obvious, yet it is true, that even if France 
 produced both wheat and barley more cheaply than 
 we, still an exchange between these things would 
 arise with us, if France had a greater advantage 
 over us in wheat than in barley. If she could pro- 
 duce 20 quarters of wheat as cheaply as we produce 
 
DISPARITY PRODUCES COMMERCE. 195 
 
 15 in England, and 20 quarters of barley as cheaply 
 as 18 in England, it might be profitable to send 
 English barley to France, and bring French wheat 
 to England; because a quarter of barley would 
 purchase more wheat in France than in England, 
 and a quarter of wheat would purchase more barley 
 in England than in France. This was first clearly 
 explained, I believe, by Mr. Ricardo. 
 
 To show by another example how foreign trade is 
 determined by a difference between the relative 
 values of commodities in two different countries, 
 imagine that a pound of gold in England exchanged 
 for 21 pounds of silver, but in France for 20 only, 
 In that case a traveller from England to France 
 will be wise in taking with him silver rather than 
 gold. If before starting he changes all his gold 
 into silver, he carries into France 21 pounds of 
 silver for every pound of gold ; but if he had taken 
 gold with him and changed it in France, it would 
 have brought him only 20 silver pounds for each 
 pound. With 20 of every 21 silver pounds which 
 he has we will suppose him to buy gold in France ; 
 then when he returns to England carrying gold, the 
 result will be that every 20 Ibs. of gold which he 
 had originally have been turned into 21 ; or he has 
 gained 5 per cent, by the double transaction, in 
 perhaps only a few days. In such a state of the 
 market it would be so profitable to send silver into 
 France and bring gold into England, that the 
 quantity of silver in England would rapidly dimi- 
 nish and that of gold increase ; and conversely in 
 
196 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 France. Thus silver would fall in England and 
 rise in France, relatively to gold, until in both 
 countries the two metals were at the same or nearly 
 at the same value. I say nearly at the same ; for 
 a slight difference may subsist, if it be too small to 
 defray costs, viz., profit, insurance, commission, &c. 
 
 This example will explain how an impetus is 
 given to an exchange between two nations: but 
 equilibrium is not to be always expected as the 
 result. If England had silver mines and France 
 gold mines, the perpetual production from these 
 might lead to a permanent stream of silver out of 
 England into France and of gold out of France 
 into England. There might be the permanent ratio 
 of 21 to 1 in England, and of 20 to 1 in France, if 
 the production was as active as the trade. And 
 this is the case with the exchange of English cottons 
 for French wine and wheat. The fresh production 
 preserves in each country the inequality which 
 stimulates to exchange. 
 
 Thus it appears, that Commerce between nations 
 is most profitable to both, when there is the greatest 
 disparity in their facilities. England and Belgium 
 are not likely to have so various and important 
 interchanges as England and Russia ; because the two 
 first are in the same stage of generally dense popu- 
 lation and advanced manufactures. Thus it may 
 happen that the Colonies of a nation are by no 
 means so well suited to traffic with, as some foreign 
 power : in which case, the attempt to force a trade 
 is a mutual loss. Even when the colony and mother- 
 
COLONIES A FIELD FOR EMIGRATION. 197 
 
 country are excellently suited for mutual commerce, 
 the mother-country cannot be trusted to make regu- 
 lations. Spain ruined her American possessions, 
 and England provoked hers to revolt, when in 
 neither case was there a real collision of interest. 
 
 3. ON EMIGRATION AND COLONIAL LAND. 
 
 After two centuries of perversity, we have at 
 length admitted the principle that every colony is 
 to be guided in trade by its own perceptions of ad- 
 vantage ; and, although much illblood remains from 
 past vexation, and the future is by no means free 
 from danger, there is hope that England and her 
 colonies may still learn peacefully how valuable 
 each may be to the other. Concerning Trade and 
 general Government there are, I apprehend, no real 
 difficulties ; none but what will be easily arranged 
 by persons who desire justice, freedom, and union. 
 But on the critical point on which EMIGRATION 
 turns, viz., the disposal of Colonial Land, there 
 seem still to be unsolved problems of much delicacy. 
 
 In fact it is not for Commerce that Colonies are 
 specifically important. Commerce we may have, to 
 any extent, with foreign and uncongenial nations : 
 but Colonies are eminently a place for Emigration ; 
 and if the same language, religion, moral tone, and 
 even political system, prevail as in the mother- 
 country, Emigration is comparatively an easy thing. 
 In every old country a great rigidity is apt to be 
 felt; so much complication has come in to the 
 
19S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tenures of property and the custom of trades, that 
 it is hard to attain that versatility which is essential 
 to the comfort, and almost to the safety, of every 
 rapidly- growing community. A wide and desirable 
 field for Emigrants prevents the partial glut which 
 all such countries otherwise feel, even when demon- 
 strahly not overpeopled on the whole. 
 
 The Colonies of England are of two very different 
 kinds. Those only are fit for emigrants which have 
 a climate suited to our bodily constitution ; espe- 
 cially North America, Southern Africa, and Aus- 
 tralia. Our tropical colonies, which are peopled by 
 men of foreign blood and language, are more pro- 
 perly called Dependencies. To these our Capital 
 may migrate, but no large number of our popu- 
 lation. 
 
 But now rises the question, who is to have the 
 disposal of Colonial land, and how is it to be done ? 
 I do not pretend to see the way through this difficult 
 subject, but I must sketch practice and opinions. 
 In old days the English Crown granted away by 
 favour large masses of American land. These were 
 kept, in large measure wild, by individuals, on 
 speculation that they would at a future time prove 
 valuable. When the United States arose as an 
 independent power, this system was annihilated 
 there, and the State land was sold at a moderate 
 fixed price, subject, however, to a fixed yearly tax 
 which is thought as high as new land will well bear. 
 In Canada also we have tried to change our course ; 
 but the enormous quantity there granted away to 
 
DISPOSAL OF COLONIAL LAND. 199 
 
 individuals now hinders the Crown* from selling with 
 any such tax reserved, and puts great difficulty in 
 the way of finding purchasers at all. In Australia 
 we have introduced new and hetter methods ; but as 
 the land has not been fully surveyed, (the expense 
 of which would be overwhelming,) it is highly 
 unjust to expect persons to buy it from inspecting a 
 map. Great dissatisfaction has been created in the 
 colonies by the difficulties which we now interpose 
 in the way of settling on the land. Sales by auction 
 are strongly objected to ; since the authorities, by 
 selecting the place of sale, can virtually give the 
 land away to their friends and friends' friends. And 
 where should the auction be held ? In London, to 
 sell Australian lands ? but who will buy land thus 
 at the Antipodes without seeing it ? Should, then, 
 the auction be in the colony ? But many who mighty 
 be willing to bid for the land are in Great Britain. 
 It is a delusion to pretend that an auction yields 
 the highest price that can be got : it can be nothing 
 but a cover for fraud. Once more, (say the oppo- 
 nents,) it is utterly unreasonable to expect men to 
 settle down on new land with no choice of exchange. 
 A certain freedom of occupation is reasonable, at 
 least for a moderate time. Lastly, the colonial 
 doctrine seems to be, that the land ought to be at 
 the disposal of the purely local influence : but here 
 in England we maintain that undivided colonial 
 land is the heritage of the whole English people, 
 
 * I believe the Crown is in this respect almost a fiction. The 
 Colonial Legislature is now the real sovereign of the land. 
 
200 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and not the private right of that fraction of them 
 which happens already to have emigrated. 
 
 An ingenious theory was started some years back 
 by Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, which is now characterized 
 by his name. He pointed out that the settlers 
 were embarrassed by too much land, in consequence 
 of which no one would willingly serve for hire, 
 since all wished to be freeholders. To obviate this, 
 he suggested that the land ought to be sold at a 
 sufficiently high price, and the money to be employed 
 in sending out labourers to the colony. Such 
 labourers, being unable to purchase land at first, 
 would work for hire on the farms of others until 
 they became rich enough to afford the price of the 
 land. Thus a constant stream of emigration would 
 be afforded. Mr. Wakefield alleges that his scheme 
 has not failed, for it has not been really and sin- 
 cerely tried. That remark of his seems to be true ; 
 but it is also true that he has not so explained his 
 view, as to make impossible to try it. He proposes, 
 you observe, that the land should be sold at a suf- 
 ficient price; that is, sufficient to bring in culti- 
 vators and keep a proper balance between proprietors 
 and hired workmen r but he gives no mode of settling 
 what price will suffice for this. Apparently it must 
 differ in every colony, and in every year. Nor has 
 Mr. Wakefield explained what tribunal could be 
 trusted to solve so delicate a problem as the suf- 
 ficient price. The Colonial Office in London could 
 not have the exact local knowledge : a local tribunal 
 in every colony is required. Yet it would be hard to 
 
WHOSE IS THE COLONIAL LAND ? 201 
 
 trust the power into the hands of those whose 
 interest it was to keep land dear, in order to have a 
 larger number of persons working for wages. The 
 poor would need to he amply represented in this 
 tribunal, and, it is to be feared, in no case could the 
 deepest discontent be avoided. 
 
 Possibly advancing experience is really showing 
 the way through these difficulties about Colonial 
 Land ; only I am not aware of it. I would hope 
 so. Judging, however, by the past, it would seem, 
 that to give up the land entirely to the local autho- 
 rities of every Colony, (provided that it has a 
 popular constitution,) could not produce worse 
 results, and probably must produce far better, than 
 regulations made in London. And this opinion 
 derives great confirmation from the history of the 
 subject in the United States of America. The 
 pride of England is slow to admit such a solution ; 
 yet Canada is already a precedent. 
 
 Great as has been our mismanagement, (as 
 naturally followed when we had no guiding prin- 
 ciple,) Emigration, is on the whole, attended with 
 decided benefit to the physical welfare of the emi- 
 grants. Its benefit, however, to the mother- country 
 is not so manifest; and considering that Emigrants 
 are on the average superior to the mass in know- 
 ledge, enterprize, and wealth, the question has been 
 started whether their departure with so considerable 
 stores of capital may not drain us dry, and leave us 
 less able than ever to support our poor. 
 
 Evidently some emigrations have been very ex- 
 
 K 3 
 
202 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 hausting. Spain suffered loss by driving out the 
 Moors, and France by the escape of the Protestants. 
 But in these cases the emigrants did not withdraw 
 on account of their economic field being overfilled 
 at home, but in order to avoid tyrannical power. 
 The emigration did not draw off a natural surplus, 
 but the healthful lifeblood of the nation. A bad 
 state of law will also lead to an excessive drain of 
 the population. The remedy is not by impeding 
 the emigration, but by improving the law. Some- 
 times, indeed, as perhaps now in Ireland, nothing so 
 assists this very improvement as a temporary excess 
 of emigrating. 
 
 To some new countries the loss of population 
 and capital by the absence of deep-seated love to 
 the soil, is exceedingly embarrassing; but only 
 tyranny can alienate men's affections from old coun- 
 tries. England is too dear to Englishmen to be 
 abandoned without strong reasons : so long as our 
 freedom and internal peace continue, no more than 
 a natural surplus of our people will emigrate. As to 
 Capita], if so very large a mass were not fixed on 
 our soil, year by year, in the form of buildings and 
 works, the danger of losing it might not unjustly 
 alarm us. But, as I before observed, every building 
 that is erected for production, and all property spent 
 in works, are a great guarantee that circulating 
 capital shall be reserved sufficient for carrying on 
 these works; without which they would become 
 valueless. Among ourselves the security of pro- 
 perty has given such force to the desire of accumu- 
 
EXPORTATION OF CAPITAL. 203 
 
 lation, that too rapid an increase of capital seems 
 to be a periodical inconvenience. During the war, 
 for 14 years together we must have outright thrown 
 away, on an average, full forty millions a year, yet 
 the nation collectively was richer at the end of the 
 period than at the beginning. A large part of this 
 must have been deducted from enjoyment, not from 
 money destined for trade. Since the war, we have 
 had several eras of wild speculation, with enormous 
 waste of property and wide-spread ruin* produced in 
 no small measure by the excessive abundance of 
 capital; and although severe pressure was felt in 
 some seasons by the too great demands of railways 
 on the purses of their undertakers, yet the expe- 
 rience of twenty years shows how easily England 
 can bear an annual expense of from 12 to 15 mil- 
 lions on entirely new enterprizes. Had not the 
 invention of railways taken up all this capital, a 
 very large fraction of it would have been wasted in 
 silly foreign schemes, like the Bubbles of 1825-26. 
 This tendency of capital to become embarrassingly 
 abundant is as notable as the same tendency of 
 population, and seems to set at rest the expediency 
 of allowing fall facility for the exportation of 
 Capital. 
 
 What, then, is my general conclusion concerning 
 Emigration ? We have, it seems, surplus popula- 
 tion and surplus capital, both of which we send 
 away ! Is not this self-contradictory ? I think 
 not. The surplus of which we speak is not absolute, 
 but relative to our knowledge and to our versatility. 
 
204 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Capital is excessive, not because there is" a want of 
 population to set at work with it in England, but 
 because the capitalist is ignorant what new ways 
 will be lucrative, and because the most important 
 of the old trades are overdone. Population is exces- 
 sive, not because there is not in the whole com- 
 munity capital adequate to feed the whole com- 
 munity, but again because some of the old trades 
 are overdone, and the people cannot conveniently 
 learn new otfes. The very same cause produces the 
 two phenomena, which Economists are apt to con- 
 sider contradictory, only because they do not give 
 just weight to the rigidity of men's habits. Com- 
 merce, if developed in extreme activity with the 
 whole world, might perhaps ordinarily supersede the 
 necessity of Emigration ; but not till our municipal 
 and rural organizations are immensely improved. 
 Emigration and Commerce appear to me both to act 
 in the same direction, to bring a remedy for our 
 want of versatility, as well as to furnish us more 
 economically with articles of prime necessity. 
 
 NOTE on the glut named in p. I9S. 
 
 Everybody is aware that the gain from foreign trade 
 would be annihilated if there were no imports ; nor does 
 any manufacturer who desires "a vent for his surplus 
 produce " mean that he is to sell for nothing ; hut as he 
 does not particularly care what sort of thing he gets in 
 exchange, so that only it be marketable, his mind dwells 
 more on what he wants to get rid of (for a consideration) 
 
VENT FOR A SURPLUS. 205 
 
 than on the return-cargo which has no definite picture in 
 his imagination. This, no doubt, has led to a serious 
 error in measuring the general value of trade by the total 
 of exports. If all that we care for is the total, only the 
 imports must be regarded : but if we are inquiring how far 
 this or that mass of our society is likely to partake in 
 those imports, the distribution of the export trade is highly 
 significant. Moreover, if certain exports be refused in 
 foreign markets, our total of imports will be diminished. 
 
 I am truly surprised at the following passage of Mr. 
 J. Stuart Mill, who seems to believe in the infinite flexi- 
 bility of human action (book 3, ch. 17, 4, vol. ii., p. 177) : 
 
 " Adam Smith's theory of the benefit of foreign trade 
 was, that it afforded an outlet for the surplus produce of a 
 country, and enabled a portion of the capital of a country 
 to replace itself with profit. These expressions suggest 
 ideas inconsistent with a clear conception of the pheno- 
 mena. The expression, surplus produce, seems to imply 
 that a country is under some kind of necessity of producing 
 the corn or cloth which it exports ; so that the portion 
 which it does not itself consume, if not wanted and con- 
 sumed elsewhere, would either be produced in sheer waste, 
 or, if it were not produced, the corresponding portion of 
 capital would remain idle, and the mass of productions in 
 the country would be diminished by so much. Either of 
 these suppositions would be entirely erroneous. The country 
 produces an exportable article, in excess of its own wants, 
 from no inherent necessity, but as the cheapest mode of 
 supplying itself with other things. If prevented from 
 exporting this surplus, it would cease to produce it," [with 
 the sacrifice of all the fixed capital, and, perhaps, of firstrate 
 natural advantages,] "and would no longer import any- 
 thing, being unable to give an equivalent ; but the labour 
 and capital which had been employed in producing with a 
 view to exportation, would find immediate employment (! !) 
 in producing those desirable objects which were previously 
 brought from abroad The <mly losers (after the 
 
206 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 temporary inconvenience of the change) would be the con- 
 sumers of the heretofore imported articles, who would be 
 obliged either to do without them, consuming in lieu of 
 them something which they did not like so well, or to pay 
 a higher price for them than before." 
 
 Truly if our trade with India, China, and other tropical 
 countries, did us no other service but to bring in a few 
 luxuries which our forefathers, not having known, never 
 desired, it would be of little real importance. But we may 
 rather believe, the great use is, to enable those among us 
 who do not produce food and other first necessaries, to get 
 a share in those necessaries. This it does, ly obviating our 
 want of flexibility ; enabling poor men to continue in the 
 practice of a trade which they have learnt, and richer men 
 to reap continued benefit from works which they have 
 established at great cost. This is why manufacturers so 
 hail " the opening of a new market." 
 
 A sufficient condemnation of our Corn Restrictions was, 
 that they made it simply impossible for an English farmer 
 ever to export his surplus, after several years of extraor- 
 dinary productiveness. What is the universal relief of 
 other trades when suffering, legislation destroyed for him. 
 
 As to the " immediateness " of employment, the loss of 
 two or three years may seem as nothing in the life of a 
 nation, but they may be sufficient to starve hundreds of 
 thousands of families, or produce political revolution and 
 demoralization in the convulsive effort to hinder it. 
 
LECTUKE IX. 
 
 On Government Revenue. 
 
 I now approach the important subject of Govern- 
 ment Revenue. I have already observed, that a 
 Feudal Monarch was in principle sustained like his 
 Barons, on the rents of land, and some other cus- 
 tomary payments. He was little else than a Baron 
 on a great scale. And if the Crown Estates had 
 been duly preserved and faithfully improved, no 
 other revenue would be needed for ordinary govern- 
 ment. The expenses, however, of Wars would al- 
 ways have to be defrayed by some special taxation. 
 Among the early Eomans the public lands and 
 other estates were let out by the magistrates, and 
 this was presumed sufficient for the current necessi- 
 ties of peace. Tribute, that is, tribemoney, (parish- 
 money,) was levied for wars. But, in point of fact, 
 the wars were so constant, that wartaxes were per- 
 petual, and the public lands were hired for a trifle 
 by individuals of the aristocracy, through mutual 
 connivance : thus the legitimate revenues were dissi- 
 pated. This is so uniform a story in every country, 
 that the moderns appear to have become desperate 
 as to the possibility of managing government 
 estates honestly. Public opinion among ourselves 
 regards the function of a landlord as too similar to 
 
208 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 that of a merchant or trader to be efficiently exer- 
 cised by a government. Indeed all old and noble 
 families are apt to understand how to spend, better 
 than how to amass, revenues ; still more eminently 
 is this true of purpleborn princes : and ministers 
 who have a short tenure of office do not feel dis- 
 posed to undergo the odium of raising the Crown 
 rents, if no immediate result of great importance to 
 the treasury is attainable. To tax the nation is 
 easier. 
 
 I suppose that we must regard the experiment of 
 Government Estates as decided against the nation : 
 to go back to an older system is generally a political 
 impossibility. Nevertheless, where a general system 
 of Landed Rent is introduced, no tax appears more 
 simple, more just, more unfailing, than to take a 
 percentage of the rent for Government Service. In 
 England this is now impossible retrospectively, 
 since land has so long been bought without any 
 such liability being counted on. But Mr. J. Stuart 
 Mill, a very cautious man, sees no objection to thus 
 taxing all future accessions of rent. The best time 
 for such an enactment is one at which the general 
 rent of land has apparently reached its maximum ; 
 for then least of all would landholders feel aggrieved 
 at such a tax : and such a time is the present. But 
 I am not able to hope that anything of the kind 
 will be done ; and for the reason that I stated the 
 insecure tenure of power held by each successive 
 cabinet. Free nations have to pay the penalty of 
 freedom. Their government cannot defy public 
 
FORETHOUGHT FOR COLONIAL REVENUES. 209 
 
 opinion, and therefore cannot afford to make ene- 
 mies without necessity. The consequence is, that 
 they will not originate work for a distant ohject, 
 unless driven on hy a powerful public opinion. 
 
 Still, one might have hoped that in the regulations 
 for new colonies some kind of foresight might have 
 been exercised, to save them from falling in to the same 
 wastefulness as ourselves. The Colonial Land is 
 avowedly a state- possession. To grant it away to 
 individuals from favour is now at length repudiated 
 as a public profligacy ; but to sell it is thought to 
 be the part of prudent statesmanship. What ? To 
 sell, for the immediate convenience of this one 
 generation, what ought to be a perpetual source of 
 revenue in future centuries ? This is a strange 
 economy ! But (on first hearing it might be ima- 
 gined) this generation at any rate benefits by it, if 
 future ones suffer? By no means. The land is 
 necessarily sold at a price so trifling, that the colo- 
 nies never pay their own expenses. Naturally, it is 
 impossible to forested the value of land, although 
 we know that it will increase hereafter with the 
 growth of population. Our practice of selling it 
 alienates to individuals for ever, and for an insigni- 
 cant sum paid down, the permanent heritage of great 
 nations that are to be. 
 
 How much wiser are individuals in providing for 
 their greatgrandchildren ! The holder of townland, 
 when he grants a building lease, anxiously secures 
 that after 99 years the land with all the houses and 
 fixtures upon it shall be the property of his heirs ; 
 
210 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and to this most unreasonable demand builders 
 innumerable are found to agree with perfect cheer- 
 fulness. Yet the State, which calls itself Mother 
 Country, exercises no such foresight for the future 
 welfare of Colonies, when it might be clone so 
 easily. If, instead of selling the land for ever, they 
 sold it for 100 years only, securing to the occupant 
 an exclusive and unquestioned right to all houses 
 and fixtures which could be valued separately from 
 the land, but reserving the land itself to the State, 
 no one could murmur at the arrangement. 
 
 During the early period in which there is abun- 
 dance of land, and rent cannot be got by a land- 
 holder, the government revenue upon it can only be 
 taken by an acreage: afterwards, when rent is 
 general, a percentage of the rent itself may be 
 taken by the State. These two modes of taxing 
 need particular attention. 
 
 An acreage is a tax of so much an acre, without 
 any reference to the quality of soil or other advan- 
 tages of a farm. In a country like England, where 
 bad and good land are alike cultivated, such a tax 
 is extremely unequal, and unless very light, becomes 
 oppressive on all the inferior soils. Obviously the 
 richest soils (I mean those which best pay the cul- 
 tivator) ought to pay the highest tax : an acreage 
 is on the whole unsuited to our stage of advance- 
 ment. On the contrary it is admirably suited to 
 the United States, where good land so abounds, that 
 none will cultivate what is bad, except where posi- 
 tion and other circumstances may compensate. It 
 
TAX ON RENT. 211 
 
 also seems a much wiser and honester plan to take 
 an annual acreage with a small present payment, 
 than to receive all in a single sum paid down ; by 
 which we defraud posterity and get little benefit 
 ourselves. 
 
 A tax on rent (say of 50 per cent.), if it had been 
 enacted in England 400 years ago, would now be 
 quite unexceptionable, and by far the best of taxes ; 
 far better to the nation than the possession of the 
 land by the State as landlord. First, because the 
 landlords, when hindered from being a despotism 
 themselves, are the best of all guarantees against 
 other despotism, and, as an Order of men, are of 
 firstrate political and moral value. Secondly, be- 
 cause they would do the State the economical 
 service of saving it from the jobbery and abuses 
 innumerable which Centralized Power always in- 
 troduces. The residue of rent retained by them 
 would be the remuneration for managing the 
 estates well ; as to which they would have but one 
 interest with the Public Treasury. Severe taxation 
 of the rent might indeed seriously affect a landlord's 
 disposition to undertake great works on his lands, 
 as draining ; but hitherto the tenants with us, not 
 the landlords, have been the great improvers ; and 
 in the worst case, when great and peculiar works were 
 notoriously needed, government might make special 
 remissions of its share in the rent to aid in them. 
 
 A tax on rent being of all taxes the most equi- 
 table and the easiest to levy, and one that becomes 
 more and more productive in those later periods of 
 
212 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 industrial development, in which government be- 
 comes most complicated ; it seems an unthrifty and 
 reckless proceeding not to take measures prospec- 
 tively in all new States for ultimately levying this. 
 To collect taxes in a half- formed community is often 
 expensive ; and this may be a reason for accepting 
 a smaller sum paid down, as an equivalent for 
 occupancy during a limited term : but after this a 
 moderate acreage should succeed, to be commuted 
 in course of time into a tax on rent. Provided that 
 this were done by an act applicable to all estates 
 alike, nothing oppressive could be enacted in a free 
 State; and under despotism nothing so abates 
 harshness and makes it tolerable, as when it is 
 uniform. 
 
 What is really oppressive, is, when each estate 
 has its tax separately settled by a yearly estimate, 
 and despotic officers have to make that estimate. 
 Such is the unhappy condition of a large part of 
 India. Bribes paid to these officers are often as 
 necessary as the tax to the government., and are 
 perhaps the most galling part of the burden. The 
 Indian ryot, as the Irish cottier, could not dare to 
 improve, lest his rent be raised upon him. If he even 
 plants new trees in his ground, they are counted and 
 taxed before their produce is brought to market. 
 But in this case the Government does not tax the 
 rent, i.e., take a percentage of it, but invades the 
 whole; and then with despotic power assesses it. 
 Nor does this mean that an educated statesman 
 has to decide : petty and needy persons often wield 
 
INDIAN LAND TAX. 213 
 
 for their own benefit the sceptre of Britain. And 
 even when the estimate is formed by the practical 
 judgment of a British collector, still it is so notorious 
 that he gives discontent to his superiors if he send 
 too little rent, that to increase the burdens of the 
 people is the tendency of every ambitious man, and 
 to lower them is almost impossible. 
 
 Thus a large part of India is in the very oppo- 
 site extreme from England and her colonies ; and 
 both extremes vicious. Here the government has 
 yielded up the public rights ; there it has grasped 
 at so much, that an army of state-functionaries is 
 needed ; the race of landlords and farmers are both 
 annihilated ; and the peasant is certainly no better, 
 but apparently worse, than our farmlabourers in the 
 worst counties. 
 
 One would hope that every evil has its good ; 
 and such certainly has been the case with the pecu- 
 niary prodigality of our monarchs. If Henry the 
 Eighth and his successors had wisely husbanded 
 the Crown Estates, the monarchy must have become 
 despotic. The State may easily be too rich ; and 
 that is our only comfort in our present overwhelming 
 public poverty. But to this I must return, when I 
 touch on National Debt. 
 
 I now leave the question of Land, to speak of 
 taxation generally. 
 
 And first let us ask, What is it that is taxed, and 
 why, when a State has abandoned and lost its own 
 natural possession the Land ? The State is the 
 organization, which is to hold together human so- 
 
214 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ciety on principles of Justice and Right. Giving 
 great and precious advantages, it demands honour 
 and pecuniary support; honour from all, property 
 from those who have any surplus. The State is so 
 far from desiring to press down into starvation those 
 who have only just enough for life, that it supports 
 by Poor Laws those who have less than enough. 
 The moral ground of such laws I shall afterwards 
 open. But as at least the State is not intended as 
 an engine of oppression to the weak, it cannot 
 (wilfully and knowingly) tax those families which 
 barely can feed themselves. Hence no taxes can be 
 intended to fall on sinews, bone, and breath, as 
 such, but on property, as such. The moment this 
 is conceded, it follows that the more property a man 
 has to spare, the more fit a subject for taxation he 
 is, and the higher the percentage which may justly 
 be taken from his surplus. I cannot understand 
 the tone assumed by some writers on this subject, 
 who call it robbery and spoliation to tax greater 
 wealth at a greater percentage. My belief is, that 
 this is intrinsically just, and that it would tend, 
 moreover, to political stability, by removing the 
 odium attached to great wealth with the vulgar. 
 
 It is usual to divide taxation into two kinds, 
 Direct and Indirect. By Direct is meant, a de- 
 mand on the taxpayer which is ostensibly for the 
 Government, being made by a public taxgatherer. 
 By Indirect is understood a payment which is ulti- 
 mately received by the Government, but is trans- 
 mitted through several hands first, so that he who 
 
TAXATION DIRECT OR INDIRECT. 215 
 
 really pays it does not pay it ostensibly or perhaps 
 consciously as a tax. 
 
 Thus our Direct Taxes are whatever is collected 
 from house to house by government officers, whe- 
 ther avoidable or unavoidable. The Assessed 
 Taxes (as they are called) are avoidable by many 
 persons. Namely, if I am taxed for keeping a 
 horse, a dog, a carriage, a manservant, or for hav- 
 ing so many windows in my house, it is possible for 
 me to give up some of these luxuries, and propor- 
 tionably lessen the tax. But if a tax is put upon 
 my Income, I cannot avoid this by any change in 
 my habits ; and to avoid it by lessening my fortune 
 would occur to no sound mind. 
 
 When a tax is avoided, the public revenue gains 
 nothing, and the individual who avoids it is uselessly 
 aggrieved. It appears exceedingly absurd, that people 
 should drive in cars with low wheels, because high 
 wheels are taxed ; and worse still, if a little horse sells 
 for more money, because by being an inch lower at 
 the shoulder he evades the tax. If taxes could always 
 be rightly imposed, we could not wish them ever to 
 be avoidable. But since we must count upon error 
 in finance -ministers, and on the occasional harsh 
 operation of every general rule, it is less clear that 
 this quality of a tax is always bad. In many cases 
 the trouble which a person will take to avoid a tax, 
 is a measure of his poverty. No man in comfort- 
 able circumstances would think of stopping a win- 
 dow in his house to avoid the tax : that any poorer 
 persons should stop so many as to make their houses 
 
216 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 unhealthy, is a serious evil : hut, short of this, the 
 submitting to inconvenience indicates that the indi- 
 vidual is not one out of whom the payment ought to 
 he wrested, as it might be by a tax on his income 
 or property. 
 
 A House-tax, with some advantages, has peculiar 
 special difficulties. There are certain trades and 
 professions, to which an expensive house is needed 
 as an instrument of the trade and not for enjoyment. 
 Such is the case with a schoolmaster, a dentist, a 
 physician, a hotel-keeper. Sometimes even for a 
 very common coffeehouse a large rent is paid be- 
 cause of the site. It is very unreasonable to tax 
 such houses at the same rate as ordinary dwelling- 
 houses, while a warehouse and workshop are not 
 thus charged. On the other hand, noblemen's 
 palaces are a constant scandal and perplexity with 
 a house-tax. If a rather poor nobleman inherits a 
 house on which wealthy ancestors lavished vast 
 sums, it will force him to pull it down if you tax him 
 in proportion to what it is intrinsically worth. Yet 
 possibly this very house will let for only a trifling 
 sum ; for it costs too much to live in. If, therefore, 
 it be taxed in proportion to the rent for which it 
 will let, the tax is absurdly small; but if in pro- 
 portion to that which it would cost to build, the tax 
 is oppressively great. 
 
 A Tax on Income has this great recommendation to 
 an Economist, that it never interferes with industry, 
 so as to pervert it into wrong channels; nor ever 
 induces persons to suspend their activity, except 
 
WHO PAYS INDIRECT TAXES? 217 
 
 when it is so heavy as to lessen the willingness to 
 save. On the objections to this tax I shall pre- 
 sently speak. 
 
 Indirect Taxation is principally of two sorts, 
 Customs and Excise. The Customs consist of 
 duties levied on foreign produce when brought into 
 the English market; which duties are naturally re- 
 ceived at the ports. The Excise is taken on do- 
 mestic industry, as on the manufacture of paper, of 
 soap, of malt, of British spirits. It is intended 
 that these taxes, though levied on a tradesman, 
 should be really paid by the consumer of his goods : 
 and it is generally taken for granted that an advance 
 of price, exactly equal to the amount of the tax, 
 immediately takes place, and indemnifies the trades- 
 man. It is argued ; whether the Cost of Produc- 
 tion be increased naturally or artificially, matters 
 not ; the price will rise with it, and the producer 
 will not suffer. 
 
 Undoubtedly this happens under several condi- 
 tions : as, first, if the article be one of extreme 
 utility and of no great expense. I have before 
 alluded to Lawyer's Parchment, as likely to rise or 
 fall quickly with the cost of production. A tax 
 placed on it would not dimmish consumption, and 
 must immediately be paid by the consumer. Se- 
 condly, the same would happen if the article were 
 made without much fixed capital ; so that if the rise 
 of price lessened the use, the quantity in the market 
 might rapidly be lessened also. Thus if a new tax 
 were laid on bricks, which led to a higher price 
 
 L 
 
218 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and restricted use, the brickmakers would quickly 
 and without any particular loss diminish their pro- 
 duction. Thirdly, if the article were one that sold 
 in a vast market, as is the case with tea ; and the 
 market affected hy the duty were very small in com- 
 parison. An increase of our duty on tea would 
 raise our prices hy the amount of the duty, and this 
 would lessen our consumption. Yet the tea thrown 
 hack upon China would not be felt so as to depre- 
 ciate it; for the tea used by England is a very small 
 fraction of that used in China and the surrounding 
 countries, besides Eussia and North America. 
 
 But when the article subjected to a tax is one for 
 the production of which an enormous fixed capital 
 has been devoted, or towards which there is a sort 
 of predestined bent ; when it is not of absolute 
 necessity to the consumer ; and when the market 
 affected is a very sensible fraction of the whole, then 
 the doctrine no longer seems to be so true. I do 
 not deny, that in a system otherwise tranquil, the 
 ultimate result is that alleged by the current doc- 
 trine ; but it appears to me to be neither so imme- 
 diate nor so certain. 
 
 But let us examine this more closely, beginning 
 with the question of sugar. 
 
 If our increase of duties be considerable, so as to 
 raise the price (we will say) from Qd. a pound to lOd. 
 it will lead a vast number of persons to lessen their 
 consumption. Hence, ere long, the stock of sugar 
 accumulates; and if we assume that it cannot be 
 sold in any other market, the price will drop a little 
 
THE CONSUMER SOMETIMES ESCAPES. 219 
 
 (let us say, to Qd.) ; thus a part of the tax is taken 
 off from the consumers, and falls on the importers. 
 Next year, they are discouraged, and lessen their 
 orders on the sugar-plantations. Now if those plan- 
 tations and their managers had an infinite versatility, 
 they would at once lessen their sugar and grow 
 something else. But if they have a system regu- 
 larly constructed at great expense, for sugar and 
 sugar only, the loss to them from abandoning or 
 lessening the growth, maybe greater than from sub- 
 mitting to a rather lower price. No one can have 
 confidence that others will diminish the quantity; 
 and if he attempts this method, he may find he has 
 less to sell and that the price has not risen. Pro- 
 bably, instead of this, each studies a more economic 
 and assiduous culture. The quantity produced, 
 year by year, not being diminished, yet the perma- 
 nent consumption in a vast market being less, (for 
 the consumption at the price of 9d. must be greatly 
 less than it was at 6rf.,) a new and greater accumu- 
 lation follows, and the price drops again, perhaps to 
 l\d. Some increase of demand follows, and raises 
 it to 8d. Now if all beside is unchanged, we may 
 predict without fear of contradiction, that in the 
 course of years it will become notorious that sugar- 
 raising is a bad business. Some firms will break : 
 those that hold up somehow will not have a vigorous 
 life. Old works will not be efficiently repaired ; 
 no new ones will be erected ; and the growth will be 
 stinted by a sparing application of capital. Thus 
 at length the quantity will be so reduced as to force 
 
220 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 up the price; yet slowly; since (other things 
 remaining) every advance causes a diminution of 
 consumption. However, at least a gradual rise of 
 price must continue till the planter is as well remu- 
 nerated as other capitalists. If this mean that the 
 sugar is again at Wd., he has at last thrown off the 
 whole duty on to the consumer. The language of 
 Economists is sometimes so incautiously decisive, 
 that one might imagine them to mean that this re- 
 sult is ordinarily produced, finally and completely, 
 in a single year. Hence it passes as a sort of axiom, 
 that " every indirect tax is paid hy the consumer." 
 
 Until lately, our artificial laws kept the price of 
 sugar in the United Kingdom permanently higher 
 than in any other market in the world ; conse- 
 quently, if we had thrown back on the West Indies 
 any portion of their sugar, they could not have dis- 
 posed of it elsewhere. But even if they had had 
 another market, yet one to which ours bore a large 
 ratio, taxes, such as I imagine, would for more than 
 a few years have fallen in part on the planters. 
 
 Again, the larger the fixed capital in any produc- 
 tion, the more difficult is it to the producers to lessen 
 their production. If in sugarmaking there is more 
 fixed capital than in ricegrowing, it would take 
 longer time to diminish the growth of sugar and 
 adapt the quantity to a lessened market, than in the 
 case of rice. 
 
 If a process of change is not effected instanta- 
 neously, we are in danger of fallacy from our 
 postulate about " other things remaining." Perhaps 
 
TRADERS ARE MADE VICTIMS. 221 
 
 "other things" do not "remain." The low prices 
 of sugar may have led to more prudent expenditure 
 and economic cultivation, which permanently keeps 
 the prices below what seemed their natural mark. 
 Or the purchasing community may get richer, so as 
 to bear the prices up at an earlier period : or new 
 sugarfields may have been found, in the quest after 
 cheapness, which enable the new growers better to 
 bear the market, to the still greater distress of the 
 old producers. Many such things may happen, be- 
 fore a final adjustment of price takes place ; if any 
 thing be final. Hence it is extremely difficult, or 
 impossible, for statesmen certainly to calculate by 
 whom a tax of this nature will be borne. A part 
 of it generally falls where they do not expect or 
 wish. 
 
 Consider the parallel case of our manufacturers 
 in the last thirty-five years. In my last lecture I 
 alluded to the losses and anxiety to which they 
 were subjected, by the retaliatory duties which 
 many States inflicted on us, because we refused the 
 corn, sugar, or other staple articles of the foreigner. 
 As in maritime war the innocent trader is made 
 the first victim, so it is with the war of tariffs. The 
 Englishman, when new duties were imposed on his 
 goods, could not raise his price to the Brazilians, 
 (for instance,) higher than his rivals from Germany 
 or North America. Unless he could find another 
 market equally large, he must choose between low- 
 ering his price and so bearing the Brazilian duty 
 himself, or lessening his production by the whole 
 
222 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 quantity hitherto sold in Brazil. If the latter 
 could be done, the Brazilian government would 
 gain no revenue from the tax, the Brazilian people 
 would have worse or dearer goods, English capital- 
 ists would lose an investment, English workmen 
 be forced to look out for a new trade. But this 
 over and above implied the sacrifice of the fixed 
 capital. Sooner than endure this, the manufacturer 
 would bear a part at least of the Brazilian duty 
 himself, and still struggle to sell in that market as 
 cheaply as his rivals. The price, it is probable, 
 rose to the Brazilian customer, but not to the height 
 of the duty ; a portion of the English trade was 
 displaced, and had to find a new market or produce 
 less. 
 
 Generally, it is matter of great hardship in all 
 indirect taxation, that the State which taxes throivs 
 all risk and onus on a particular class of men. 
 If new duties are laid on one sort of goods, the 
 producers or merchants of those goods are forced to 
 pay large sums to the Government, and then to 
 take the chance of indemnifying themselves. And 
 if they will not at their own cost bear this risk, 
 they are ordered to suspend their trade ! This is 
 in principle as unjustifiable as avowedly to lay a 
 special impost on one class. The objection does 
 not indeed apply to old taxes, as to which the 
 market has long ago settled itself, but it is a pow- 
 erful reason against any new or increased indirect 
 tax. And even in regard to old taxes, it is a hard 
 thing that the Government casts its own bad debts 
 
BAD DEBTS OF THE EXCHEQUER. 223 
 
 upon individuals. For instance, if a grocer becomes 
 bankrupt, and a tea-merchant hereby loses a large 
 sum, half of this debt, perhaps, is the duty on the 
 tea which the merchant was forced to advance to 
 the Government : yet not a shilling will the Go- 
 vernment refund, though the merchant bring clear 
 proof that he has not been able to recover the 
 amount of duty. The Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer virtually says : " You must count on these 
 things, and manage to charge high enough to cover 
 both tax and risk." In a struggle for national 
 existence, all sorts of inequalities are inevitable : 
 nor should we criticise such things in a barbarous 
 power, which only cared to get money with the 
 least trouble. But a just, peaceful, and flourishing 
 State ought not to count itself to have a surplus, 
 until it has borne its own bad debts. 
 
 This, however, is but a small part of the practical 
 oppressiveness of our system. For instance, if 
 some of the sailors in a ship hide tobacco in it, the 
 ship-owner is responsible for their offence, and the 
 ship itself may be confiscated. He is taught to 
 regard himself as exceedingly well off for only 
 bearing heavy fines, and is left to recover, if he can, 
 the d(?50 or ^100 loss, from the needy sailors. 
 The injustice is the more glaring, since the owner 
 cannot possibly hinder such offences, while there is 
 an enormous double premium held out by law for 
 their commission ; viz., first, in the exceedingly 
 high gain from smuggling, and, secondly, in the 
 high reward for informing. The fraudulent sailor 
 has a perfectly safe game; for if he get no good 
 
224 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 opportunity of carrying the smuggled articles 
 safely to shore, he can make his harvest by turn- 
 ing informer against the ship. 
 
 Mr. Banfield has maintained that the most im- 
 portant distinction of taxes is not that of Direct 
 and Indirect, but that of taxes near to production 
 and taxes near to consumption. This needs to be 
 explained. If an acreage be demanded on land 
 before its use has begun, this is a tax that even 
 precedes production. If the tax be paid on the 
 field while the crop is standing, this is immediately 
 after production. If it is paid at the mill, where 
 the corn is being ground, this is later after produc- 
 tion. If it is paid by the baker, when he buys his 
 flour, this is nearer to the period of consumption. 
 If it could be paid by the customer, at the moment 
 of his purchasing a loaf for domestic use, this 
 would be nearest to consumption. Now, according 
 to Mr. Banfield, the nearer a tax falls to the actual 
 moment of consumption, the better. Thus the 
 malt- tax is a far better tax than if the same money 
 were levied on the standing barley ; and that, again, 
 would not be so bad, as if the same amount were 
 levied by an acreage. On the other hand, if for 
 the malt-tax were substituted a tax on beer to the 
 same amount, levied at the brewers, it would be an 
 improvement ; and to levy it (were it possible) of 
 every consumer, at the moment before drinking, 
 would be best of all. 
 
 The principle contained in this remark is unde- 
 niably true, and is easily understood in the opera- 
 tion of bonding foreign goods. A merchant who 
 
PRINCIPLE INVOLVED IN BONDING GOODS. 225 
 
 imports a cargo is not forced to pay the duty at 
 the moment of landing. Were this the case, he 
 must either he at the expense of keeping the ship 
 inactive, in order not to land the goods, or he must 
 pay away his money to the Government prema- 
 turely. But he is allowed to deposit the cargo in 
 certain warehouses, under the lock of a public 
 officer; and it is then said to be in bond. The 
 merchant takes out what he pleases and when he 
 pleases, on paying the tax and the warehouse 
 charges. Of course he waits to the last moment, 
 when the goods are really wanted by a consumer or 
 by a retail tradesman ; and in this way he avoids 
 locking up his capital. In the same way, if five 
 millions be paid on malt, that five millions is 
 advanced by the maltsters ; it is again advanced by 
 the brewers, again by the publicans, and finally paid 
 by the consumers. If we could delay the payment 
 till the end of the process, then neither maltsters, 
 brewers, nor publicans would need to make this 
 large advance. At present, the maltsters and brewers 
 want larger capital for carrying on their trade, by 
 reason of this tax ; and if the publicans do not, it 
 is only because they receive credit from the brewers, 
 and this increases the risk of bad debts to the 
 brewers. On the other hand, if the five millions 
 were taken on the growing barley, the farmer would 
 be so emptied by it, that he could not pay wages or 
 otherwise carry on his affairs. If indirect taxes 
 are to be levied at all, there seems no question that 
 Mr. Banfi eld's generalization is economically just. 
 
 L 3 
 
226 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Politically, of course, there is a limit. To collect a 
 beer-tax from each person at the moment of his 
 lifting the cup to the lips, is impracticable ; but the 
 nearer to this crisis the tax can be postponed, the 
 better. 
 
 Still, the most important distinction of taxes 
 seems to be, into, Taxes which hinder industry, 
 and, Taxes which do not hinder industry. All 
 other* distinctions are secondary to this. A tax is 
 not mischievous for what it orders to be paid, so 
 much as for what it hinders from being produced. 
 The Direct Taxation of southern India is far worse in 
 this respect than our worst Indirect Taxation, which 
 with us is alone liable to this objection. I have ex- 
 plained how a tithe on corn will hinder a farmer 
 from improving his cultivation : the same principle 
 meets one at every corner in Indirect Taxation. 
 Thus, if such taxes are to exist at all, tea and 
 tobacco are very suitable articles to be taxed ; yet 
 the tax lessens the number of ships built, and 
 shortens the employment of a large number of 
 artizans and seamen. Nor can it be replied, that 
 the capital is only diverted into other channels : 
 capital is apt to stagnate for want of a suitable in- 
 vestment. This is a real objection even to the best 
 Indirect Taxation. The great and undeniable excel- 
 lence of an Income Tax is, that it can never per- 
 vert trade into artificial channels, nor make any 
 branch of industry less profitable. At worst, it en 
 
 * This is said economically, not politically. 
 
MORAL DIFFICULTIES IN TAXATION. 227 
 
 feebles the work by lessening the capital that is to 
 carry it on ; but this is to be apprehended only in 
 countries which are deficient in capital : whereas 
 English capital is constantly overflowing. Com- 
 pare England as she is, with England 40 years 
 ago, and I think it will appear to be not the abso- 
 lute amount of our taxation that is formidable, but 
 the vexatiousness of the mode. 
 
 Here, as in other things, our difficulty is a moral 
 one. Past governments have been prodigal and 
 profligate : every government has a bad reputation 
 for spending, and the nation pays grudgingly. 
 Public spirit in individuals, as for raising useful 
 structures in their native town or parks in its 
 vicinity, is not quite extinct among us. When 
 people can see what good their money does, 
 liberality is not wanting ; and, if properly cultivated, 
 might be made contagious. But with an enormous 
 centralized system like ours, where millions fall 
 into the treasury, and are to go out nobody knows 
 whither, it seems to be beyond human nature to 
 pay taxes willingly. Whatever the cast of a man's 
 opinions, it is almost inevitable for him to disap- 
 prove of many of the uses made of the public 
 money, not to speak of the neglect to husband ex- 
 isting public estates. While a government does 
 something else than govern its own people at home, 
 it cannot hope that its people will ordinarily feel 
 sympathy with its proceedings, or willingly pay 
 money to sustain its action. This, I believe, is our 
 main difficulty. 
 
228 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Hence it is that the Indirect Taxes are collected 
 with so great expense, and the Direct ones often 
 with harsh despotism. An army of revenue-ser- 
 vice lines our coasts, to hinder smuggling. A 
 ship must sail many leagues farther than she wishes, 
 to carry her goods to a Custom House : and many 
 other expenses besides are added. Small ships 
 would he ruined hy these : a premium is thus given 
 to large vessels. In the Excise, the hindrances to 
 improvements in manufacture, from the constant 
 fear lest the revenue be defrauded, are an enormous 
 evil : then the expense of Excisemen is another 
 incubus. It was only in 1842 that a vast heap of 
 Customs duties was swept away in a single act 
 by Sir Robert Peel, on above 400 articles, which 
 brought much vexation to industry and barely 
 repaid the expense of collecting. Such taxes are 
 the heritage of the late war, in which our govern- 
 ment lavished hundreds of millions sterling for a 
 futile object, and grasped at every sort of tax with- 
 out trying to ascertain the consequences. The years 
 of misrule were indeed far longer than has since 
 been our period of incipient reform ; and it is no 
 marvel that we are not yet clear from the disease 
 then infused into our economical system. 
 
 The thing to be desired is, that the government 
 and nation should have mutual confidence, and that 
 people should lay aside that "ignorant impatience 
 of taxation " of which Lord Castlereagh com- 
 plained, when he and his colleagues had made the 
 burdens greatest. But this desirable result is im- 
 
WHAT ARE THE BEST TAXES ? 229 
 
 possible, until the Government becomes manifestly 
 economic, I may even say, manifestly frugal. The 
 whole topic is a Political one ; and therefore I must 
 be allowed to assume as a postulate, that there were 
 this good understanding between the government 
 and the nation ; then it follows to ask, What sort of 
 Taxes are on the whole least oppressive to us, a 
 certain large amount being needed ? 
 
 The first reply is, " Such Taxes as do not 
 interfere with industry, and do not cost too much 
 in collecting." This would suggest that all the 
 taxes should be Direct ; except when the expense 
 of collecting would make them worthless. Cer- 
 tainly the vexatiousness of an Excise to all those 
 employments in which improved methods might 
 otherwise be hoped, seems to make it the worst of 
 our taxes when applied to processes of art, as soap 
 and paper. 
 
 A second reply is, that " all old taxes (whatever 
 other defects they may have) tend to diffuse them- 
 selves equally over the community, provided that 
 there is civil freedom and equal law." Thus if 
 beer and tea have been taxed for fifty years at their 
 existing rate, this has probably become calculated 
 on in the wages of many trades, and has affected 
 the cost of production of articles, so that the tax is 
 partially paid by the consumer of those articles. 
 For instance, if colliers need to drink porter, or 
 think they need, a tax on porter that is fifty years 
 old is probably no burden to the collier, but is paid 
 by the consumer of the coals. 
 
230 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Where a whole nation is well fed and housed, pro- 
 perty may have been taxed unequally, and the little 
 properties may have been unfairly treated, yet, we 
 are sure, nothing but property has been taxed. On 
 the other hand, by a process of halfstarvation 
 something might be squeezed out of those who are 
 now in physical welfare, but have no property. 
 When a part of a nation is notoriously ill provided, 
 it is very difficult to judge what share in this is 
 imputable to taxation. Those who are in physical 
 affluence are too apt to argue, that tobacco, and 
 sugar and tea and coffee and spirits are not neces- 
 saries of life. Certainly they are not, to those who 
 have plenty of bread and meat and milk and butter 
 and eggs ; with warm clothing and good fires : but 
 to those who can only afford bread and water, who 
 find meat, eggs, butter and milk too expensive, and 
 who are exposed to wet and cold, something to give 
 a taste and stimulus and warmth is a necessary of 
 life ; and large experience indicates that cheap coffee 
 and tea are the best remedies for the fatal tendency 
 to gin and other spirits. Even tobacco may be a 
 necessary in raw damp weather. I cannot therefore 
 look with complacency on any but a light taxation 
 on these innocent luxuries, although it is impossible 
 to recommend its immediate and total abolition. 
 
 In fact, if our whole system of Indirect Taxation 
 were at once swept away, and the same revenue 
 raised by a Direct Tax, (which might require 12 per 
 cent, on all incomes above ^650,) it is a great error 
 to imagine that the poor would pay none of this. 
 
EVIL OF SUDDEN CHANGES. 231 
 
 The effect of such a change would be convulsive. 
 Noblemen and wealthy commoners would greatly 
 lessen their higher luxuries, as pictures and other 
 indulgence in the fine arts; many carriages and 
 horses would be sold, large numbers of coachmen, 
 footmen, and grooms would be dismissed, many 
 wealthy tradesmen (as coachbuilders, upholsterers, 
 and others,) and professional artists and superior 
 artisans would suffer an enormous decrease in their 
 trade. In turn these would be forced to economize, 
 and to lessen their indulgences, both on account of 
 the increased tax and far more on account of the 
 lessening of their gains. Thus the suffering would 
 be propagated downward towards the poor. The 
 wages of household servants would probably every- 
 where fall largely, and even so, many women as well 
 as men would be dismissed. In compensation, un- 
 doubtedly those special trades which are now an- 
 noyed by Indirect Taxation would enjoy immediate 
 gain ; and in the course of some years the prosperity 
 would diffuse itself gradually over the rest of the 
 nation : but meanwhile, the rest would have a time 
 of severe suffering, of which no one can predict the 
 results. 
 
 This is but part of a general principle, the 
 rigidity of our social economy : whence all great 
 changes are painful. Sometimes they are inevi- 
 table ; but when they are not, we need to inquire 
 anxiously, whether the demoralization induced by 
 the state of transition may not more than neutralize 
 the economic good hoped for by the reform. 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 It is a most delicate question, whether changes, 
 when necessary, ought to be sudden and total, or 
 gradual and foreseen. I believe it must depend on 
 the nature of the case. A diminution of duties, it 
 would seem, ought to be sudden and total ; for if it 
 be foreseen, the trade is paralyzed in expectation of 
 the favourable moment. But an increase of any 
 tax should, if possible, be foreseen and gradual ; 
 and in this way alone could the Income Tax receive 
 any considerable increase without severe distress. 
 If that increase were foreknown for five or ten years, 
 arrangements would be previously made to bear it. 
 
 But, in concluding this subject, I must touch on 
 the practical objections which are urged against au 
 Income Tax. They are principally two : first, that 
 it is unfair to tax transitory income as high as that 
 which is permanent : secondly, that the impossi- 
 bility of settling exactly what a tradesman's income 
 is, makes the taxgatherer inquisitorial, despotic, and 
 unjust. I shall speak of each objection separately. 
 
 There are some who say that men ought to be 
 taxed on the present value of their property. This 
 is specious, but, it seems, unsound, if the taxation is 
 to be annual, and not once for all. Put a case. 
 Two men possess a capital of 100 each, yielding 
 4: a year. One of them sells out, and spends his 
 whole 100 in the year. If each of them is taxed 
 that year the same, (on the ground that the present 
 value of their property is the same,) the one pays 
 once only; but the other will pay that same tax 
 every year for ever. This seems to be a penalty on 
 
PRINCIPLE OF AN INCOME TAX. 233 
 
 forbearance, and I cannot understand why a man is 
 to be taxed less, because he uses up the property at 
 once. 
 
 Admitting the opposite principle, that properties 
 of equal present value are liable to a total equal 
 taxation, it will follow that if an Income Tax of 5 
 per cent, is levied, the man who turns the 100 into 
 income ought to pay 5 upon it, while the other 
 who invests it ought to pay only 4s. a year, as the 
 percentage on his annual <4. In that case we have 
 a plausible reply to the objection, that transitory 
 income ought not to be taxed at the same rate as 
 permanent : the reply is, that transitory income will 
 undergo transitory taxation, and permanent income 
 permanent taxation. I call this plausible ; for it is 
 mathematically perfect. If two persons have pro- 
 perties of equal present value, the one in perpetual 
 annuity, the other in an annuity to last 40 or 30 
 years; and if each annuity be taxed at the same 
 rate, the one for ever, the other for the 40 or the 
 30 years ; then the present value of the total 
 taxation endured by each is the same. Nor will 
 any irregularity of income derange the result. 
 Nevertheless, there is a practical injustice rising out 
 of the tax not being perpetual. Returning to the 
 two cases of 100 each ; if we taxed the one man 
 5 outright, and the other 4 shillings a year for 
 three years only, and then removed the tax, it would 
 be grossly unfair. The one will have paid 5, the 
 other (in present value) less than 12 shillings. 
 
34 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Thus it is the want of permanence in the tax which 
 makes it unjust to transient incomes. 
 
 At the same time it is uncleniahle that the penalty 
 on forbearance, of which I spoke, is now actually 
 imposed by every Income Tax. If two persons of 
 equal properties and equal necessities receive equal 
 incomes, but one of them spends his whole income, 
 while the other saves and invests .100 of it; they 
 are taxed equally that year, but he who saves is 
 taxed over and above every year for all the future 
 proceeds of his saving. To be consistent, an In- 
 come Tax ought every year to except from taxation 
 that portion of a man's income which he invests, 
 and tax 'only that which he spends on enjoyment. 
 If it is often practically impossible to discriminate, 
 it is also often possible ; and it is a bad system to 
 make every difficulty a plea for severity and extor- 
 tion. Perhaps this is, after all, what is meant by 
 the complaints of taxing transient income. The 
 real thing felt is, that the savings made out of in- 
 come for investment ought not to be twice taxed, first 
 as income, next permanently in its fruits. 
 
 It is said, indeed, that the procedures of business 
 are so complicated, that in many cases a man does 
 not nearly know what is his income. That he sel- 
 dom or never knows the value of his property, is 
 obviously true ; and every attempt to tax men by its 
 present value, would be enormously unequal. But 
 every man must be able to know, from time to time, 
 the clear money realized; and, since mercantile 
 
HARSHNESS FELT IN AN INCOME TAX. 235 
 
 goods are never bought as a permanent possession, 
 a perpetual Income Tax would sooner or later come 
 on all of them, as soon as the real gain from them 
 was made safe. Perpetuity, here also, seems to me 
 to remove the great difficulty imagined, if the tax- 
 ing officers do not grasp at a premature harvest. 
 
 Income made in trade is very unequable, owing 
 to large occasional losses. If a man gain (or think 
 he has gained) 2000 one year, he may lose 500 
 the next ; but the exchequer will not refund. Such 
 being the unfair liability of trade, no Income Tax 
 can give permanent satisfaction, nor is likely to be 
 permanent in a free country, if it is not liberally 
 administered. To bring about any moral union be- 
 tween the nation and government, the collecting 
 officers must be taught that the government desires 
 to be equitable, and not to scrape together the 
 largest sums by methods rather questionable. 
 
 On certain Professional men and Tradesmen, 
 also, an Income Tax is apt to press unfairly. A 
 country surgeon needs horses and a gig for his 
 trade, a town physician his carriage and coachman ; 
 nay, a grocer needs his shopcar. The expense of 
 these articles should be deducted before a man's 
 clear income is struck ; and the collectors should 
 be ordered to err rather on the side of liberality. 
 But if they force the surgeon to swear that he has 
 never taken his wife to church in his gig, or the 
 grocer that he has never driven his children into the 
 country for an airing in his car, and, unless this 
 oath is taken, gig and car are counted as vehicles of 
 
236 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 pleasure, though all tradesmen know that they are 
 essential to the business, men are disgusted hy 
 the tax. If the percentage were raised and the tax 
 interpreted liberally, it would be borne more cheer- 
 fully than a lower percentage while enforced harshly. 
 
 There is one more tax too important not to name, 
 and too important also to treat summarily, a 
 Legacy Tax. Some have thought that a graduated 
 Legacy Tax, putting a very high percentage on 
 large bequests (and on large possessions inherited 
 without a will) would be extremely profitable to the 
 Treasury and not burdensome to individuals. Pro- 
 bably so, if the tax were very moderate on small 
 amounts. It would also beneficially punish the 
 mischievous practice of bequeathing lands deeply 
 mortgaged, instead of selling a part to clear off 
 debts on the rest. 
 
 Indirect Taxation is most valuable when taken on 
 luxuries which have become habitual, such as tea 
 and tobacco. The increase of steamers endangers 
 an increase of demoralization through smuggling. 
 Yet it would seem not hopeless to awaken in the 
 public a higher moral sense in this matter, if the 
 system were made more reasonable and less extor- 
 tionate, and if rulers could gain credit for frugal 
 conscientiousness. If this is impossible, all tax- 
 paying is apt to be a struggle of fraud against power. 
 Indirect Taxation is then, on the whole, the worst, 
 because it unites economic to peculiarly great moral 
 evils. In Direct Taxation, let it be admitted, there 
 is a premium held out to deception : but, at the 
 
EXPENSES OF COLLECTING. 237 
 
 worst, the deception is a single act, it is not a trade, 
 or state of living. A man pays (suppose) .5, 10, 
 or 20 less than he ought : there the evil ends. 
 But smuggling hecomes a mode of life, or pervades 
 the whole life, and needs an enormous additional 
 apparatus to controul it. 
 
 It is, lastly, to be remembered, how many systems 
 of taxation we have, each needing a separate ma- 
 chinery. To collect 10 per cent, costs no more in 
 officers than to collect 1 per cent. ; hence if we could 
 raise our revenue by this method alone, we should 
 dispense with the Excise Officers, the Custom House 
 and Preventive Service, besides Officers of Stamps 
 and other Taxes. In all this it is manifest that a 
 large field for needful reform is still open to judi- 
 cious statesmen. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 Money and its Representatives. 
 
 1. DIFFUSION OF THE PRECIOUS METALS IN 
 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 
 
 IN the ordinary transactions of a village-market, 
 men sell to get the means of baying, and buy for 
 their own consumption ; the sellers, however, by no 
 means try to lay out in goods all the money which 
 they receive. But in Foreign Commerce the mer- 
 chant-ship which discharges a cargo would be gene- 
 rally well pleased to reinvest its proceeds in a new 
 cargo. In fact, the payment being received in a 
 foreign money, to carry much of this home is un- 
 desirable. If, for instance, an English ship at New 
 Orleans sell her freight for dollars, she will wish to 
 spend those dollars in native goods, such as are 
 likely to be acceptable in England. If this is done, 
 we see at once that the dollars might be paper, and 
 the result would be as satisfactory to the English- 
 man. The intrinsic value of the currency is here 
 of no importance to him, but only the relation 
 between the cargo sold and the cargo purchased, as 
 in the case of direct barter. 
 
 Hence it may happen that an English merchant 
 can afford to sell goods cheaper abroad than at 
 home. For instance, he may send out Manchester 
 
INTRINSIC VALUE OF MONEY. 239 
 
 cottons and sell them at Smyrna or Beirout for a 
 smaller price than in London. Why ? Because, 
 if a return- cargo can be got, the gains from it make 
 up for the apparent loss just before encountered. 
 
 I believe there is an additional reason for the 
 same phenomenon. Just as an English publisher 
 of a book, before breaking up his types, some- 
 times strikes off an additional number of copies to 
 sell cheap in America or in the English colonies ; 
 so manufacturers employ odd time, and apparatus 
 which it is well to keep going, to produce an extra 
 quantity of articles for cheap foreign sale. But I 
 drop this at present. 
 
 You may ask : Is, then, the intrinsic value of 
 money unimportant ? and why does its value vary ? 
 To the former question I reply : If the merchant 
 at Beirout sell his cargo for Turkish piastres and 
 then pay away all the piastres for Syrian produce, 
 then he does not care about the intrinsic value of 
 the coins. But if he cannot find a sufficient number 
 of goods suitable to buy, and is forced to carry off 
 one quarter of the piastres, and try to make up his 
 cargo in Sicily or Naples where prices are not quite 
 the same as in Beirout, in that case the quality and 
 quantity of the metal in the coin becomes important 
 to him. As for the second question : The value 
 of gold in comparison to wheat or iron in England 
 is decided by the same principles as the value of 
 coffee or cotton ; and as coining gold costs no- 
 thing to the bullion-owner in England, our coin 
 conforms in value to our bullion. The same 
 
240 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 class of causes which make sugar abundant in 
 England and scarce in Turkey, make gold more 
 plentiful here than there : at least there is no greater 
 mystery in the one than in the other phenomenon. 
 
 A country which has no mines must buy the 
 precious metals by goods ; that is to say, its exports 
 must be valued at more than its imports, in order 
 that a balance of gold and silver may be due to it. 
 Thus a certain quantity comes in ; enough, let us 
 say, to keep up the amount of currency which is 
 found convenient. If things were stationary, and 
 exactly one amount of gold and silver coin per- 
 manently sufficed ; then, after it had been obtained, 
 an equality of exports and imports would sustain 
 equilibrium. But if (as in Turkey) there is great 
 internal decay, if cultivation lessens, if population 
 dwindles, if cities are overthrown, if towns and 
 villages vanish, if gold and silver are swallowed up 
 by earthquakes or hoarded through fear and in- 
 security all internal industry which needs capital 
 is paralyzed. Then it is hard to find exports, yet 
 a taste for many foreign goods leads to purchases ; 
 hence, it is generally supposed, a balance of coin 
 every year is paid to the foreign merchant, so that 
 the Turkish empire is more and more drained of 
 gold and silver, and on that ground prices continue 
 to fall. This is a condition which the old Mer- 
 cantile Theory presaged with horror, and which 
 many States have sought to avoid by forbidding the 
 exportation of the coin. 
 
 I do not myself understand how it is ascertained 
 
LOCAL DEFICIENCY OF THE PRECIOUS METALS. 241 
 
 that "general prices" are lower in Turkey than in 
 England : the markets are so irregular. Wheat in 
 Syria is perhaps three times as dear in March as in 
 September : French shoes sell at an advance of 50 
 per cent., if a lady goes to buy them a fortnight too 
 late. No doubt food, warmth, land, pure air, and 
 fine scenery are cheaper in Turkey than in England, 
 but protection and security are so dear as scarcely 
 to be purchasable ; hence the pure air, broad 
 earth, and fine scenery cannot be enjoye'd : and while 
 some of the first necessaries of life are cheaper 
 than with us, a large mass of the conveniences of 
 life is dearer. It must also be carefully considered 
 that the scale of general prices does not depend 
 on the absolute quantity of gold and silver in a 
 country, nor yet on its relation to the commodities ; 
 but on the quantity circulating in the market, com- 
 pared with the goods ready for sale. If in Turkey 
 there were as much gold existing as in England, 
 compared with marketable goods, yet people became 
 slow to buy and prone to hoard, the prices of all 
 goods would sink, exactly as if the coin were non- 
 existent. 
 
 Economic doctrine, at first sight, may seem to 
 repudiate a permanent depression of prices in 
 Turkey, as compared to Europe, as simply impos- 
 sible. Surely (it may be said) if general prices are 
 very low in Turkey, owing to the scarcity of silver 
 and gold, foreigners will be too glad to take advan- 
 tage of it : they will come in and buy largely : their 
 purchases will greatly exceed their sales ; the ba- 
 
 M 
 
242 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 lance will then turn in favour of Turkey, and coin 
 or bullion will flow in. As inevitably as water 
 rushes from the higher to the lower spot, so will 
 gold and silver find their way to the place where 
 they exchange to greatest advantage. A permanent 
 difference of value for them in different countries 
 appears economically absurd. 
 
 I incline to accede to this argument, although it 
 perhaps assumes too readily that certain facilities 
 for purchasing exist, which do not exist. An English 
 ship may easily sell a cargo of cottons in Syria, 
 because the articles are esteemed there and cannot 
 be made so cheaply as we sell them ; only to buy a 
 suitable return-cargo is often difficult. To facilitate 
 the operation, English and Italian houses have re- 
 sident agents in Syrian towns, who make contracts 
 beforehand at suitable times for goods destined to 
 exportation. Yet the prevalent insecurity, the in- 
 disposition to employ capital on any large scale, the 
 inclination rather to enjoy or to hoard than to use 
 productively, leads people to spend on foreign arti- 
 cles more readily than to elaborate exports ; whence 
 a permanent decrease of the silver and a total 
 vanishing of gold. Still, whether the gold and 
 silver in the market has decreased more than the 
 material wealth of Turkey, I see not how to ascertain. 
 
 In contrast to all this, England has no disposition 
 to hoard, and a vehement desire to use capital pro- 
 ductively, as well as to consume. From the magni- 
 tude and regularity of our industry we overflow 
 with exportable commodities. Hence we easily 
 
SUPPOSED RESULT OF HIGH PRICES. 243 
 
 purchase from abroad great quantities of gold, as of 
 sugar; and it is correct to say that the same cause 
 makes both these articles abound among us. 
 
 But, you may ask, assuming a relative scarcity and 
 high relative value of gold and silver, does Turkey 
 suffer any inconvenience from it? and would her 
 state be bettered by the prohibitions of the old 
 Mercantile Theory ? Some Economists will answer : 
 She has this inconvenience, that her people can ill 
 afford to travel or to purchase out of their super- 
 fluities any rarities of foreign art. If all our prices 
 were half what they are, and every man's gold and 
 silver and every man's debts were halved, we should 
 be neither better nor worse, as far as English buying 
 and selling is concerned. Moreover, all that part of 
 our foreign trade which strictly resolves itself into 
 barter might go on as now. But if a wealthy gen- 
 tleman from his superfluities desired to take a tour 
 in Italy, or purchase foreign pictures or a foreign 
 museum, or a library of choice MSS., he would 
 find his means extremely crippled. At present, 
 since general prices in England range rather higher 
 than on the Continent, a person who lives on two- 
 thirds of his income finds the remaining one-third 
 to go a great way abroad. But if all our prices 
 were lowered, and all foreign prices raised, the case 
 would be seriously altered. Thus while Englishmen 
 feel travelling abroad cheap, to a Turk of propor- 
 tionate wealth it seems unbearably dear ; and while 
 specimens of art or of antiquity readily find their 
 way into England, they as readily quit the soil of 
 
 M 2 
 
244 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Turkey. This view is at least plausible : that it is 
 yet entitled to be advanced as scientific truth, I 
 could not assert. What, if it appeared, after the 
 last of our commercial restrictions are swept away, 
 that the average price of food is as low with 
 us as in Turkey, while the price of most manu- 
 factured articles (of equal quality) is less in Eng- 
 land ? If this shall ever be brought about, it will 
 not enable Turks any the better to command foreign 
 luxuries ; nor will it disable Englishmen from ex- 
 penses which they now incur : on the contrary it 
 will facilitate their farther enjoyment. I suspect 
 that the advantage enjoyed by England is simply in 
 her absolute wealth, and that her imagined high 
 scale of general prices is no advantage. With us 
 certain great necessaries of life have been harder to 
 get than in Turkey, and this is a decided evil to us. 
 But, at any rate, the cure to Turkey is not, to forbid 
 the exportation of silver or of Greek marbles ; (in 
 fact, silver comes in, when marbles go out;) but to 
 increase the security of property : then hoarding 
 will lessen, stores of money will come forth, in- 
 dustry will increase, commodities will multiply, 
 exports will be in abundance, and foreigners will 
 pay balances of gold and silver. 
 
 Most governments, at some time or other, have 
 debased the coin. The Turks have done it beyond 
 all others, apparently because gold and silver is not 
 to be had. In 1812 there were about forty piastres 
 in a pound sterling; in 1880 there were seventy- 
 two, and in 1836 about a hundred. Such debase- 
 
DEBASED CURRENCY. 245 
 
 ment acts exactly as the refusal to pay gold on 
 notes, of which I shall presently speak. The money, 
 being less valuable when proffered to foreigners, 
 becomes depreciated towards natives : and if prices 
 rise, every creditor is defrauded, when forced to 
 accept payment in the debased coinage. 
 
 2. BILLS AND PAPER MONEY. 
 
 I have before indicated, how, when two countries 
 try to hold commerce, one which is disabled from 
 selling may find it unprofitable to buy. The dif- 
 ficulty is sometimes eluded by the co-operation of 
 several nations. Thus if a single country, as France, 
 tries to exclude English imports, England may 
 possibly, nevertheless, manage to buy of France 
 nearly as much as she wants. For it might happen, 
 that we sold so largely to Spain and Italy, as to 
 draw thence a balance of money large enough to 
 pay our whole debt to France, who in turn might 
 buy of Spain and Italy, so that the money circu- 
 lated back to them and enabled them to continue 
 purchasing of us. In fact, however, the great opera- 
 tions of foreign commerce are, as far as possible, 
 settled by the intervention of Bills, instead of 
 money ; to avoid the danger of losing it on the 
 way. The balance which cannot be settled by bills, 
 is principally discharged by uncoined bullion. 
 
 To understand the nature of bills, you may sup- 
 pose a French merchant of whom an English mer- 
 chant has bought goods, to draw a bill for 1000 on 
 
246 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the Englishman, and then to transmit this to Italy 
 in payment for goods bought by the Frenchman 
 in Italy. The Italian holder of the bill uses it to 
 pay the Englishman for English goods. When it 
 reaches the hand of the person on whom it is 
 drawn, and is fitly acknowledged, it has fulfilled its 
 office. Bill Brokers are a special class of men who 
 traffic in such bills; so that merchants know 
 whither to go either to buy or sell them. 
 
 Another mode in which the use of money is 
 economized, is, by transfers in Bankers' Books. If 
 two persons have the same banker, and one of them 
 wishes to pay a debt of 100 to the other, he can 
 draw an order on the banker to that amount. The 
 second presents the check to the banker, and re- 
 quests it may be put to his credit. Thus no money 
 needs to pass, yet the debt is paid. 
 
 When the parties have not the same banker, the 
 matter becomes more elaborate ; yet the principle is 
 the same. The mass of payments made through 
 bankers is so vast in England, that the actual cur- 
 rency does but a small fraction of the business of 
 the country. 
 
 I previously explained how the first bankers 
 facilitated trade by lending money ; so that private 
 traders no longer need to keep large hoards of gold 
 and silver. Of course the Banking System is 
 feeble, as long as bankers lend only their own 
 money, which cannot be very large in comparison 
 with a whole nation. But the banker also receives 
 deposits of other people's money, paying either no 
 
ACTION OF BANKS. 247 
 
 interest or a very small rate; and lends a large 
 fraction of these deposits, as well as his own ready 
 cash. People are induced so to deposit their 
 money 1st, because it rids them of the danger and 
 anxiety of keeping considerable sums at home; 
 2nd, because it facilitates both paying and receiving 
 of money. So long as the banker lends prudently, 
 and no public calamity like war or famine occurs, 
 all is safe. In such calamity no property can be 
 safe : but it cannot be denied that possible im- 
 prudence in the banker is a new and in some cases 
 a serious danger to the depositor. 
 
 The principle of a banker's gain is always this, 
 that he gets higher interest on the money which he 
 lends, than he pays on the money which is deposited 
 with him. Deposits which may be withdrawn from 
 him at any moment, are said to be left on call. On 
 such, many banks pay no interest at all. If bankers 
 were to lend so largely as to exhaust at once their 
 own resources and nearly all the money deposited 
 with them, they would be unable to answer the 
 demands of payment made by the depositors. Expe- 
 rience teaches them what fraction of the whole it 
 is safe to lend. If, now and then, the calls on them 
 exceed this limit, and their store of cash is running 
 low, they apply to some other flourishing bank, and 
 get pecuniary aid from it, which is advanced on the 
 security of the actual property to which they can 
 point as their own. 
 
 If a banker, instead of lending money only, 
 lends NOTES manufactured by himself, payable in 
 
248 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 money on demand, he temporarily enlarges his 
 capital by it, with an increased gain, hut also with 
 an increased risk. The longer his notes remain in 
 circulation, if the number issued in a given time be 
 limited, the greater his gain ; for the longer he can 
 defer the day of paying them, the more money he 
 has meanwhile to spare for other purposes. 
 
 But how does the banker gain by issuing a note ? 
 for it is not yet clear for what length of time the 
 person to whom it is lent is willing to pay interest. 
 The reply is found in the system of Discounting. 
 A merchant or tradesman has money due to him 
 three months hence, say 1000, from a quarter 
 thoroughly reliable ; but he wishes to use this at 
 once, for some other advantageous or necessary 
 purposes. He goes to a bank, exhibits his pros- 
 pects, and asks " accommodation." The bank is 
 willing to give it at suitable interest, say at 6 per 
 cent. ; which is equivalent to saying that it will 
 advance to him about 985 now, to get his 1000 
 three months hence. He pays 15 all but a few 
 shillings, for the accommodation. Now if the bank 
 thinks it prudent to issue its own notes, and these 
 notes are in result held by the public for the full 
 3 months, and the 1000 is then duly paid, the 
 15 is a clear gain to the bank, deducting only 
 something towards the expense of the bank-appa- 
 ratus. A bank in which the public has so much 
 confidence that its notes are readily taken and even 
 stored up like money, makes larger gains and can 
 afford to discount at a lower rate, and is tempted to 
 
THE BANK OF ENGLAND. 
 
 be less scrupulous as to the quality of the securities 
 offered. The same danger attaches to new banks, 
 which want to push their way. If a banker, ac- 
 tuated by mercy, lends to a weak house, on unsub- 
 stantial securities, he runs a risk of being unjust to 
 other parties: hence very rigid general rules of 
 business are needed, and severe experience of bank- 
 failures has barely been enough to teach this stern 
 lesson. 
 
 Among ourselves the great eminence of the Bank 
 of England unites all other banks into a single 
 organic system with it. This vast establishment is 
 really a private foundation. Bank Stock is bought 
 and sold in the market like Kailway Shares ; and 
 the shareholders are the partners in the concern. 
 But the Government employs it as banker to the 
 Treasury, and thereby confers on it a public position. 
 If I bank with any London house, the bankruptcy 
 of that house would involve to me some loss of 
 private fortune ; hence I have a personal interest in 
 supporting it. So when the Government enters 
 into relations with a bank, it becomes a direct matter 
 of public policy and economy to uphold its solvency. 
 Much more was this an imperative duty during the 
 last great war, when the advances made by the Bank 
 to the Government had drained it of gold. Out of 
 this rose the celebrated Bank Restriction Act ; which 
 absolved the Bank from performing the promise to 
 pay printed upon its notes, and at the same time 
 declared them to be a legal tender in every debt. 
 This great experiment, after twentyfour hours' agita- 
 
 M 3 
 
250 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tion and panic, entirely succeeded. The public 
 willingly submitted, and the notes continued cur- 
 rent. Yet, since they could not be used as legal 
 tender beyond the English dominions, they were 
 less available to a merchant than gold. He who 
 had ten thousand-pound notes could no longer get 
 gold for them on demand from the Bank, but was 
 obliged to buy gold with them as he best might. 
 But since every-body, for the very same reason, 
 preferred two thousand guineas to 21 hundred- 
 pound notes, he was forced to submit to loss in the 
 purchase ; thus an infliction was immediately laid 
 on all the holders of the notes. A second or third 
 set of holders might sometimes encounter a similar 
 loss, if, while the deficiency of gold increased, they 
 were forced to make foreign payments. And the 
 deficiency necessarily did increase, because the gold 
 was instantly either hoarded or sent abroad. No 
 merchants paid their home-debts in gold, when they 
 could pay more cheaply in paper, and when the 
 gold, once parted with, was recoverable only at extra 
 expense. Consequently all the guineas vanished 
 from the common market. 
 
 An excessive issue of inconvertible notes, if per- 
 sisted in, may suffer depreciation to an unlimited 
 extent. As there is no getting rid of them, they 
 become cheap like any other article which is poured 
 in excess on the market. An eminent instance of 
 this was in the assignats of the first French Revolu- 
 tion. Although their value was secured upon the 
 confiscated land, this did not save them from a 
 
INCONVERTIBLE PAPER. 251 
 
 tremendous depreciation. There are many theories 
 afloat which find ardent supporters, for inconvertible 
 paper. It is to be hoped that if science fails us, 
 our timidity will nevertheless reject all schemes in 
 this direction. 
 
 The question however arises, Is it a necessary 
 consequence of an inconvertible paper currency, that 
 it will exterminate all the gold ? I believe the 
 reply is : that this result must necessarily happen, 
 except under a condition of things which would 
 take away all possible reason for inconvertible 
 paper ; viz., if the exports of the State that issued 
 the notes were always more valuable than its im- 
 ports. If this were a course of trade on which 
 foreigners could count, they would be certain that 
 the notes would be sought after (like Bills of Ex- 
 change) to pay the balance that was due for goods : 
 hence the foreigner would gladly take the notes, and 
 the native merchants would have no motive for pre- 
 ferring gold. But such a state of trade would 
 make gold flow in freely, and thereby give the 
 means of cashing the notes on demand ; and, on the 
 other hand, no legislation could secure the fulfilment 
 of the condition supposed. 
 
 Ingenious persons have speculated on the advan- 
 tages of a paper currency, overlooking (it might 
 seem) the depreciation of it which foreign trade 
 occasions. But even if there were no foreign trade, 
 if England, for instance, were the whole world, 
 an inconvertible paper currency would soon be 
 depreciated by excessive issues. For, unfortunately, 
 
252 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the best-intentioned statesman has not an omni- 
 scient mind, to know beforehand what will be too 
 much or too little. A State which can coin paper, 
 and enforce its passing, has an unlimited power of 
 spending, and the temptation to use it is great. 
 Some method, then, is essential for lessening the 
 number of notes, if, through the necessary ignorance 
 of statesmen, the issue have been excessive. The 
 only test of excess is found in the fact of depre- 
 ciation. Thus if a thousand-pound note will only sell 
 for 999 sovereigns, notes clearly ought to be with- 
 drawn. But there is only one way of withdrawing 
 them, viz., by paying gold to any one who wishes it. 
 Thus the convertibility of paper to gold is always 
 practically needful to check depreciation ; and any 
 notorious depreciation will presently make the gold 
 vanish. 
 
 While paper notes are convertible, all traders find 
 in them the great advantage of portability and 
 secrecy, and the nation saves a vast sum in escaping 
 the wear and tear of gold coin. The Bank of 
 England now has branch banks all over England, 
 which issue their own notes and pay for them in 
 gold on demand ; in London they are all of them 
 without distinction payable. 
 
 It may almost seem that we have reached the point, 
 at which no panic which is not grounded on fear of 
 Political revolution can shake the credit of the 
 Bank of England; which has been unaffected in 
 our severest commercial crises. 
 
253 
 
 3. CREDIT AND ITS SUDDEN DESTRUCTION. 
 
 Although in my first lecture I touched on 
 Commercial Crises, I cannot here pass the painful 
 and alarming phenomenon, without explaining it to 
 the best of my power. It forms part of the great 
 system of CREDIT, in which we seem to move and 
 breathe. 
 
 Credit is not a creation of new Capital ; yet the 
 phenomena so suggest the idea, that people may 
 almost be pardoned for having believed it. Credit 
 is the principle which allows one man to use the 
 capital of another ; and hereby to convert to service 
 capital which perhaps else might lie idle. To put 
 the simplest case : suppose a man of such notorious 
 probity and skill, that, though he was exceedingly 
 poor, people would trust him to any amount. If 
 he desired to enter any business, as that of a ship- 
 builder, he might pick and choose all that he 
 needed from many quarters. He might take timber 
 out of one store, iron and copper from another, 
 tools of all kind from a third, besides sailcloth, 
 blocks and ropes; he might borrow money of 
 bankers to pay workmen's wages, and construct a 
 ship ; finally, having sold his ship, he might replace 
 with interest all that he had borrowed, and retain 
 some handsome remuneration for his own service 
 and anxieties. Now when we ask whether the 
 nation is any better off for the trust which has been 
 reposed in this man, the reply depends on our ability 
 to judge whether the materials which he has made 
 
254 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 serviceable would have been applied to equally good 
 and rapid service by others, without need of credit. 
 A large part of the national capital may perhaps 
 meet with immediate employment by its owners ; 
 but if all trades are industrious, they are very apt 
 to produce more of everything than can be instantly 
 purchased for the purposes of other trades. Then 
 Credit steps in, to quicken the use. Indeed the 
 more active every trade is, the more urgently it calls 
 for the system of Credit, to aid fresh production. 
 The manufacturer who has just produced five thou- 
 sand shawls, does not wish his machinery to remain 
 idle and his workmen unoccupied until the shawls 
 can find their way to the backs which they are to 
 grace. Unless merchants of large capital speedily 
 relieve him of them, he must borrow money of a 
 banker on the credit of these shawls, and apply 
 the money to buy new materials, pay new wages, 
 and again set his indefatigable machinery at work. 
 
 A debt secured upon a thing which is in actual 
 possession, provided its estimated value is consider- 
 ably greater than the debt, is reasonably regarded 
 as safe, and needs not to cause anxiety. But when 
 once this rigid rule is overstepped, and property is 
 lent on the security of personal character alone, 
 infinite anxieties come in and frequent great in- 
 justices to innocent creditors. Credit, on the large 
 scale, is too deeply rooted in the nature of our 
 social industry, to exterminate : we have only to 
 think how to improve it ; nor does the theory of this 
 seem difficult. But, on the small scale, where 
 
SHOP CREDITS. 255 
 
 mortgaging property is impossible and would be 
 ridiculous, there to destroy the system of Credit 
 entirely seems easy and much to be desired. I refer 
 especially to shopdebts. Heartily do I wish that 
 shopdebts were pronounced to be after a certain day 
 irrecoverable at law. The effect would be, that 
 no one would be able to ask credit at a shop except 
 where he was well known and for trifling sums. All 
 prices would sink to the scale of cash-prices. The 
 dishonourable system of fashionable debtors, who 
 always pay too late, if at all, and cast their de- 
 ficiencies on other customers in the form of increased 
 charges, would be at once annihilated. Shopkeepers 
 would be rid of a great deal of care, which ruins 
 the happiness of thousands, and a speedy remedy 
 would be brought to the extravagances of young 
 men at the Universities. Nor is this all ; but, unless 
 I mistake, another very desirable result would 
 follow ; namely, the moral bond between customer 
 and dealer would be strengthen ed. Very many 
 persons, for the convenience of the thing, would 
 lodge small sums in the hands of their tradesmen, on 
 account ; five pounds to the bootmaker, ten pounds 
 to the tailor, ten or twenty or thirty pounds to the 
 bookseller, and so on, according to a man's means, 
 taste, or the size of his family. Those who did not 
 find this convenient, would probably limit their pur- 
 chases to a smaller number of shops, so that shop- 
 keepers would better know what amount of custom 
 they had to expect. Certainly the long-continued 
 habit of dealing with a particular shop has the 
 
256 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 advantage of cementing different orders of society ; 
 a moral object which is far more important than 
 that of saving a small sum in prices or getting 
 articles of more perfect quality. 
 
 If the principle of Credit could be strictly limited 
 to advancing money on things mortgaged to the 
 lender, it would extinguish Bankruptcy and all its 
 evils; except where positive dishonesty was practised. 
 At present, a large part of the trading community 
 is necessarily at once debtor and creditor, and de- 
 pends on the solvency of others for its own solvency. 
 The brewer trusts the publicans with large supplies 
 of porter and ale; and, hoping that they will be 
 solvent, borrows of the bankers himself. The 
 manufacturer, or the merchant at his side, trusts 
 the retail shopkeepers with quantities of goods, and 
 applies to some bank to make fresh advances on the 
 credit of the sums due to him, as exhibited in his 
 ledger : he perhaps attains his end, by inducing a 
 kind friend, who thinks well of his judgment and 
 trade, to endorse his bill. I see not how to doubt 
 that this network of debts is essentially bad, and 
 nowise necessary. 
 
 When a mercantile house which has been trusted 
 largely, fails to meet its engagements, a certain 
 mischief, more or less widespread, ensues. Creditors 
 are injured, and possibly, in turn, cannot do justice 
 to their creditors ; and so on. But it is well if the 
 evil stays there. A worse result is sometimes the 
 moral one the panic caused in the public by the 
 loss of faith. Moral evils are always our worst 
 
RUNS ON BANKS. 257 
 
 evils. Just as, in political affairs, an eminent man, 
 who after being trusted by the nation sells himself 
 to an enemy, does still more harm by the discredit 
 which he casts on all patriotism than by the direct 
 mischief of his single apostasy; so, in mercantile 
 affairs, a general and painful shock is given to all 
 Credit by great and unexpected failures. The most 
 visible and palpable kind is that which too often 
 agitated England thirty and forty years ago, in the 
 form of runs upon banks. If one bank had failed, 
 and numerous poor people lost their deposits or 
 found the notes in their hands useless, the holders 
 of notes belonging to other banks would make a 
 general rush to get them changed into gold. Many 
 solvent firms were forced to stop payment for several 
 days, in order to bring down gold from London ; 
 but meanwhile the public agitation increased and 
 spread, under the belief that this was a pretence ; 
 and when a sudden demand for gold was thus made 
 on all sides, all could not get accommodation, and 
 many of the weaker firms were overthrown. 
 
 When the celebrated "Bank Kestriction Act" 
 had been passed, and in consequence the gold- 
 currency vanished, as I have described, a sort of 
 premium was thereby offered to the issuing of notes 
 by private bankers: for if people could not get 
 gold, they did not much care whether they had 
 private paper or Bank of England paper; and 
 many country farmers to this day like the notes of 
 bankers whose faces, houses, and lands they know, 
 better than notes marked with unknown names. 
 
258 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Hence private banks exceedingly increased in the 
 latter part of the war. The return to peace gave a 
 violent change to the industry of the country ; great 
 losses followed, and in 1814, 1815, as many as 
 eighty-nine banks broke. The next great Commer- 
 cial Crisis was in 1825, 1826. The country had 
 been afflicted with too much prosperity, and could 
 not find sufficient investments for its wealth. Hence 
 the wildest schemes gained favour. Companies of 
 all kinds were formed, and shares were rapidly taken 
 by the public. Millions were wasted on both sides 
 of the Atlantic, and in .1826 the rebound was 
 dreadfully felt. The run upon the London banks 
 was unparelleled. To economize gold, the Bank of 
 England reissued its old onepound notes which had 
 been destined to the flames, and the public received 
 them with satisfaction. Eighty banks fell in this 
 memorable time. After it, to avoid similar scenes, 
 onepound notes were forbidden, with excellent re- 
 sult. The holders of the fivepound notes belong to 
 a better-informed part of the community, less sub- 
 ject to contagious panic. In Lancashire, moreover, 
 the private bankers have entirely given up issuing 
 notes. 
 
 A decidedly milder crisis was that of 1837; and 
 still more limited in extent, though violent in certain 
 directions, was the last of these dangerous events, 
 in 1847. It would appear that our merchants and 
 bankers do, on the whole, learn by experience, and 
 that the successive crises are less and less formidable : 
 None in this century seems to have equalled the 
 
COMMERCIAL CRISES. 259 
 
 celebrated South Sea Bubble in the last. The 
 Natural History of them all of late has been the 
 same. Overflowing wealth makes men long for 
 means of using it to profit; speculating projectors 
 then propose companies and gather money : enormous 
 waste of means follows, and after it comes a uni- 
 versal distrust and unwillingness to part with 
 money. Then honourable debtors who have pro- 
 perty, and have depended on bankers to advance 
 money to them on the security of their property, 
 cannot get advances ; for the bankers are forced to 
 hoard the money, in dread of a run upon them. 
 Moreover, those bankers who do not issue notes are 
 liable to have an unusually large part of their de- 
 posits withdrawn at such times. Happily, the 
 English nation now look on the Bank of England 
 as though it were a part of the State. It is seen 
 that the calamity of its failure would be too great 
 for the State ever to allow; hence its notes are 
 received with absolute confidence. In the last crisis, 
 the results showed, that a temporarily enlarged cur- 
 rency was really wanted ; but the Bank had been dis- 
 abled from giving this assistance, by a celebrated Act 
 passed in 1844 by Sir Eobert Peel, which limited the 
 number of notes that might be issued except when 
 demanded in exchange for gold. It was imagined 
 that this would give additional stability to the Bank. 
 Experience seems to have decided that those were 
 right, who deprecated a numerical enactment which 
 could not rest on scientific principle. The distress 
 to traders from want of money (I do not mean 
 
260 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 want of property, but want of notes,} continued, 
 until the Government used an extreme right reserved 
 to it, and authorized the Bank to neglect the re- 
 striction. Thereupon the pressure for money soon 
 subsided ; private bankers no longer held the notes 
 so tight, when they knew that more could be got 
 from the Bank of England ; it thus became mani- 
 fest that the fear of wanting them was that which 
 caused the want. It was also a strong proof of the 
 Bank needing no such artificial support as the Act 
 of 1844 would give it, that its notes were hoarded 
 exactly as if they had been gold. 
 
 No system of currency can be good that is not 
 selfregulating ; for no statesman can possibly guess 
 how much or how little is wanted. I have explained 
 how our gold currency regulates itself. If it is 
 deficient, the private bankers press on the Bank of 
 England, and force it to send bullion to the Mint ; if 
 it is excessive, the sovereigns get exported. As for 
 our paper currency, if it is ever excessive, the public 
 presently checks this by presenting the notes and 
 demanding gold. But if it is defective, the public 
 has no relief; the system does not enlarge of itself; 
 for in a panic, the bills of private houses often 
 would not be trusted if they could be obtained. Yet 
 it is a cruel thing to honourable traders, who possess 
 property to meet all their engagements, if they are 
 dishonoured or ruined because the national currency 
 is not duly supplied. Considering the public 
 functions of the Bank, it seems unreasonable that 
 it should refuse notes in discount solely because a 
 
OCCASIONAL NEED OF LARGER CURRENCY. 261 
 
 certain large number is already issued. Provided 
 that it is scrupulous as to securities and asks a high 
 rate of interest, there seems no danger from an 
 unlimited amount of accommodation. 
 
 You may still ask, Why was a larger currency 
 than usual wanted ? The amount of currency 
 needed, generally increases with the magnitude of 
 payments to be made, and the slowness of the 
 circulation. But if chilling fear palsies the com- 
 mercial heart, the circulation stagnates; notes, as 
 well as gold, get locked up. Hence the moment a 
 panic occurs, the Bank of England will do good 
 service by increasing its notes indefinitely, i.e., by 
 discounting to all who have good security. But 
 besides, in 1847, food had simultaneously become 
 dear, and great works in railways were going on, 
 which things cause a great increase of spending and 
 a legitimate demand for an unusually large currency. 
 On the contrary, it is in seasons of prosperity, 
 when Capital is beginning to overflow and Interest is 
 depressed, that the real danger of lending too un- 
 inquiringly comes on the Bank of England and on 
 every bank. Those are the times in which the great 
 losses are encountered, the suffering from which 
 afterwards produces the dreadful crisis. 
 
 I fear to lead you into a vexed controversy, if I 
 touch on the question, " Whether the Bank of 
 England, being a bank of deposit as well as a bank 
 of issue, is thereby tempted to use its great powers 
 to the public mischief for its private benefit." I 
 have never been able to understand the argument. 
 
262 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Every bank, I repeat, in times of prosperity and 
 high hope, is liable to lend unwisely ; no doubt, if 
 the Bank of England did this, its magnitude would 
 make the results more terrible. But, on the other 
 hand, its rigidity and adherence to precedent go far 
 to secure it from all ordinary danger. Nor can the 
 Bank force Interest up or down at its pleasure. The 
 rate at which it discounts, is dictated by the state 
 of the market, just as all other prices are. When 
 gold is drawn fast out of the Bank cellars, and it is 
 hard to get loans of money, the rate of interest for 
 discounts rises everywhere, and of course rises with 
 the Bank. When, on the contrary, gold is poured 
 in plentifully on bankers, the rate of discount falls. 
 Another controversy, famous with some, is, about 
 the mint-price of gold. This also seems to me to 
 involve a fundamental mistake. The Mint does 
 not settle the price of gold, but merely how much 
 gold to put into a sovereign. This is all that is 
 meant, by saying that the Mint (or the Bank) must 
 give sovereigns (or notes convertible into sove- 
 reigns) at the rate of 3 17s. Qd. for an ounce of 
 bullion. The only questionable tiling is, whether 
 the Mint ought to coin without charge. 
 
LECTUEE XI. 
 
 National Debt and Poor Laws. 
 1. MORTGAGES, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC. 
 
 DEBTS attached to definite pieces of property, I 
 have avowed to be legitimate and safe transactions. 
 Nevertheless, there are certain kinds of property as 
 to which mortgages are extremely undesirable, 
 namely, when a divided ownership is embarrassing. 
 Whether a bale of silk belongs to one man or to 
 ten, matters little ; but if ten men possess the same 
 house, the case is awkward enough. This actually 
 happens in India. In many districts of the north 
 the families used to practise a sort of Communism, 
 which our magistrates did not understand. Five 
 families, perhaps, lived in one house and possessed 
 one farm : they elected their best man of business 
 as manager and trustee. If he was unfortunate, 
 and could not pay his taxes, our collectors sold one 
 fifth part of the property by auction ; and the pur- 
 chaser found himself to have a legal title to some 
 fifth or other of a certain house and some fifth of a 
 certain field ; but which fifth, he did not know. A 
 report made by a Government Commission a 
 quarter of a century ago described the confusion of 
 property, the violences and the entanglements of 
 
264 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 industry arising from this cause, as so frightful, 
 that any injustice which should really settle some 
 one in possession would he preferable. 
 
 Such a state of things is a sort of extreme limit, 
 towards which mortgages of land more or less tend. 
 A mortgagee is never regarded by us as a part- 
 owner, nor has he legal power to touch the article 
 mortgaged, unless there is some failure in perform- 
 ing the contract : but if land is thus mortgaged, 
 and an annual payment from it stipulated, it may 
 easily happen that the fact itself impedes improve- 
 ment by crippling the landlord. All landed estates 
 which have been long in the possession of one 
 family naturally become encumbered by settlements 
 on sons and daughters ; so that after several gene- 
 rations the ostensible proprietor inherits all the 
 pride and name of the estate, with all its habits of 
 expense, but with exceedingly reduced means. It 
 is desirable, alike for the individual and for the 
 public, that some limit be set to the legal amount of 
 fixed charges on land. For the individual ; because 
 few men have strength of mind voluntarily to sacri- 
 fice the show of large possessions, however great its 
 embarrassment; although it would be for their 
 welfare to sell a part of the estate in order to pay 
 off the debts. For the public; because a deeply- 
 encumbered landlord is unable to promote those 
 permanent improvements in cultivation, for which 
 tenants look reasonably to landlords. But here a 
 Political is still more powerful than the Economic 
 reason. The Feudal position of a landlord is by 
 
LEGAL LIJtfIT TO INCUMBRANCES. 265 
 
 no means wholly obliterated. Political influence 
 exceedingly depends on landed property. Hence 
 there is a powerful temptation, not merely not to 
 sell land in order to clear off old burdens, but even 
 to buy with borrowed money. If landed property 
 is to have political influence, the nation has a right 
 to insist that the property shall not be fictitious. 
 No class of persons is more dangerous to a State 
 than those who have the external pretensions and 
 pride of aristocracy, combined with real indigence. 
 Hence political reasons confirm and justify the pro- 
 priety of a law which Economy would suggest, to 
 limit the legal extent of landed incumbrances. 
 
 Similar remarks apply to underletting. If the 
 State parts with the land to individuals, this can be 
 justified only by its coincidence with the public 
 benefit. It is, therefore, a very legitimate topic for 
 public law to regulate under what circumstances 
 and to what extent underletting, or even nonresi- 
 dence of proprietors, shall be allowed. All these 
 things have swelled the misery of Ireland. 
 
 Some meritorious Economists write in such a 
 tone concerning CREDIT, as apparently to justify 
 the satirical representation, that the great use of a 
 high reputation is, to assist one to get into debt. 
 The system of debt does, indeed, seem to per- 
 vade English industry to a formidable extent. A 
 man spends ,20,000 on works, and immediately 
 mortgages them for 10,000; which, added to his 
 remaining capital, enables him to carry on business. 
 Now if we ask, Why was he not satisfied to erect 
 
 N 
 
266 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 smaller works, and conduct them without borrowed 
 capital ? the reply is, that he hopes to get an average 
 of 8, 9, or 10 per cent, for his capital in trade, while 
 he will pay 4 or 5 for that which he borrows on the 
 security of his fixed property. If so, it is like a 
 loss of 4, 5, or 6 per cent, on 10,000, if he re- 
 frain from borrowing, or from 400 to 600 a year: 
 indeed the more he can borrow on the credit of his 
 works, the greater his expected gain. Men sub- 
 jected to this temptation, are apt to forget the 
 slavery and the dangers in which all considerable 
 debt entangles one ; and it may be suspected, that 
 the system is often carried much too far, so as to 
 precipitate calamity when a great market is shut or 
 new taxes are imposed. 
 
 But in nothing has this system of mortgaging 
 been so prodigious, as in regard to what used to be 
 called the King's Debt, but is now, in courtesy to 
 royalty, named the National Debt. It is a mort- 
 gage laid upon an untangible sort of property, 
 upon Taxes; and is at present about 770 millions. 
 There could not be a more signal breach of the 
 muchboasted but muchviolated English Constitu- 
 tion ; for it belongs to each House of Commons in 
 turn to enact taxes at pleasure, and no existing 
 House has any right to engage that taxes shall be 
 voted by its successor. I pass rapidly over this and 
 many kindred topics, as political, rather than econo- 
 mical. If, however, taxes are to be mortgaged, at 
 least some limit needs to be set, both as to the total 
 amount to which we may dare to burden following 
 
LIMIT OF TIME FOR PUBLIC DEBT. 267 
 
 generations, and as to the length of time. To un- 
 dertake eternal payments is a monstrous absurdity. 
 Indeed if all our loans in time of war had been 
 contracted with the condition that interest should in 
 no case be paid for longer than 100 years, they 
 would have been obtained either on the same or on 
 very nearly the same terms ; and our debt at present 
 would be of a very manageable amount. It is an 
 excellent rule established in many of the American 
 States, that no interest or payments shall be 
 guaranteed on any loan for more than 30 years : 
 hereby each generation is made to bear the burden 
 of its own wars. Those States, however, have inde- 
 pendent systems of taxation. In England, where a 
 centralized treasury absorbs payments from every 
 county, it is to be apprehended that the blocking 
 up of one drain on its wealth will only lead to the 
 opening of another. 
 
 In ancient monarchies and empires, the ruling 
 power always regarded it as of first importance to 
 have a wellfilled treasury of reserve : and the very 
 knowledge that such a store existed, gave strength 
 to a government. This we now leave to semibar 
 barous powers. Let the Shah of Persia on coming 
 to the throne eagerly take possession of his father's 
 treasures : let the notoriety of his wealth make all 
 the petty potentates around tremble. The crown of 
 England disdains such aid: it allows the money 
 " to fructify in the pockets " of the people, well 
 assured that it can be had in any emergency. I 
 
 N 2 
 
268 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 fear, indeed, that this doctrine is invented to console 
 us in our mutilated state, like the theory propounded 
 by the Fox who had lost his tail. If one-hundredth 
 part of the millions which have been wasted in abortive 
 or hurtful warfare, since centralized taxation began, 
 had been lodged safely in the Tower of London, 
 and no debt had been incurred, far more money 
 would have been left " to fructify in the pocket" ; a 
 reserved treasure of ten millions might lie in the 
 Tower, and the people would be more willing than 
 now to bring out their stores in real need. At 
 present, the supreme Government is in unseemly 
 dependence on a few monied capitalists, who do not 
 choose to lend large sums, unless they be added to 
 the old debt. Only one way exists, by which it is 
 at all hopeful that this monstrous system can be 
 brought to an end, viz. by converting Perpetual into 
 Terminable Annuities. Unless this is done in good 
 time, a violent catastrophe is exceedingly to be 
 feared, from the want of moral basis in the whole 
 transaction. 
 
 However, no evil can be inflicted on men, no loss, 
 no injustice, but long time and kind Nature and 
 incessant strivings mollify it. If a volcano were to 
 overwhelm our fertile fields, we should after a time 
 quarry into the lava to make houses and snuff- 
 boxes ; we should export it, we should build upon 
 it ; and a theory would come forth, that the appa- 
 rent calamity was a source of riches to us. Just so it 
 has been with the National Debt. As the govern- 
 
TENDENCIES OF NATIONAL DEBT. 209 
 
 ment is a steady paymaster, shares in the Debt are 
 bought and sold: it is called the public Funds, 
 and is vulgarly thought to be a fountain of 
 mysterious gain. Bankers, Insurance Offices, and 
 Trustees hold a large mass of it : annuities in it are 
 bought for household servants, and an interest in it 
 is diffused far and wide in the community. A theory 
 is in consequence started, that a National Debt is 
 really a great national convenience. 
 
 It may nevertheless seriously deserve examination, 
 wherein consists the mischief of a Debt, if the in- 
 terest be paid only to individuals of the nation. The 
 primitive mischief of course was, in the wasting of 
 the capital. But as, in all probability, the larger 
 part of that capital would have been wasted quite 
 as much in some other way, either on immediate 
 enjoyment, or on foolish schemes; since, in short, 
 England overflows with capital as she is ; we must 
 forget that waste, as something past and gone. If 
 so, our present position is exactly the same, as if 
 our rulers had arbitrarily enacted that one part of 
 the nation and its heirs should for ever pay a vast 
 tribute to another part of the nation and its heirs. 
 The nation collectively would not be the poorer for 
 this, unless the receivers of the tribute were in conse- 
 quence made more idle. In part, that might follow: 
 but if there is so much energy in the wealthier 
 classes, that this can hardly be alleged as the evil, 
 such an arrangement (apparently) must tend, not to 
 lower the average wealth of the people, but to 
 aggravate the contrasts of wealth and poverty. 
 
270 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 What is called "the convenience"* of the Debt, 
 viz., that it affords people an easy investment, appears 
 to me one of its grievances. The State has virtually 
 taken on itself the responsibility of finding invest- 
 ments for individuals, to the amount of 27 millions 
 a year. This can only be done by the labour and 
 thought of the community. 
 
 The payments for the Debt are borne by Great 
 Britain alone, the taxation of Ireland being very 
 small. We may then say that a population of 20 mil- 
 lions, or 4 million families, pays 27 million pounds 
 sterling; or, on the average, nearly 7 per annum 
 for each head of a family. As I before said, old 
 taxation tends to shift itself equally over the whole 
 community by affecting the prices of all things, 
 even the rate of wages ; but this is only a tendency, 
 not an accomplished fact. No one can form any 
 near estimate what is the real direct burden to poor 
 or rich. But let us imagine that the equalizing 
 power of long time had ground off all the asperities 
 
 * Another alleged advantage of it, is, that it makes the monied 
 classes so " conservative/' and thereby diminishes the chance of 
 domestic tumult ! Might we not rather put it thus : " It exposes the 
 State to such extreme danger from temporary disorganization, as to 
 give tremendous power to agitators who are too ignorant or too 
 frenzied to regard the danger"? We have seen in Paris, that the 
 monied classes disliked, yet promptly accepted, a republic, merely 
 because they dreaded nothing so much as a new struggle. Perhaps 
 a future age will count it to be the great calamity of the nineteenth 
 century, that the political judgments and aspirations of the wealthier 
 and more cultivated classes are paralyzed by financial dangers. Hence 
 low, ignorant, and desperate demagogues derive an astonishing power. 
 The selfishness of wealth needs no artificial increase. 
 
TAXES WITHOUT MORAL BASIS. 271 
 
 of taxation : it will still remain to inquire, whether 
 the nation is the worse for a tax laid upon one part 
 and paid over to another part. 
 
 Economically, we at once object to the expense of 
 the machinery. The collecting of these taxes pro- 
 hably costs 2 millions a year, and the managing the 
 debt something considerable: this is obviously a 
 clear loss. But an enormously worse evil rises out 
 of the want of a moral basis in the whole affair. 
 If all the taxpayers were willing, I mean, if men 
 paid the tax as willingly as their legitimate debts, 
 it could be paid with little loss by a direct impost ; 
 but now it has to be scraped up in a variety of 
 wasteful means, which impede and cripple industry. 
 
 That England is able, if she were but willing, to 
 terminate her debt, appears undeniable. Since we 
 have been a nation, never were we so rich as now. 
 The mere abolition of restrictions on the import of 
 food has recently made us at least twenty millions a 
 year richer than we were; and the capital which 
 in times of overflow used to be wasted in wars or in 
 foreign speculations has been employed of late in 
 railways, not always beneficial to the undertakers, 
 but certain to be ultimately beneficial to the nation. 
 Our numbers are double what they were at the 
 beginning of the century, our taxation far lighter 
 than then. It is not the total sum, but the mode of 
 raising it, and the want of good heart, which is 
 embarrassing. 
 
 To the method of terminating the Debt by con- 
 verting it into Long Annuities, there is no Economic 
 
272 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 objection whatever : but all other modes that can be 
 counted on as effectual* are liable to derange the 
 course of trade ; and this is very impoverishing. In 
 fact even the arts of luxury, when carried to a mon- 
 strous excess, cannot be suddenly laid aside without 
 severe suffering. Moral changes of every sort, and 
 changes in taste, are generally gradual ; were it 
 otherwise, even moral reforms would give a painful 
 shock to trade. In really bad cases, this may be 
 inevitable. If national drunkenness is cured by a 
 contagious enthusiasm, we rejoice in it, in spite of 
 the ruin of the liquorsellers. But undoubtedly we 
 should pity lacemakers, and milliners, and jewellers, 
 and other purveyors to personal vanity, if, through 
 a sudden change of the wealthy to a simpler taste, 
 these trades were suddenly bereft of their custom. 
 Hence any extensive and abrupt transfer of pro- 
 perty from one part of a nation to another of dif- 
 ferent habits is a calamity similar to a great loss. 
 The breaking out of a war ruins many, its termina- 
 tion is apt to ruin still more ; for the end is gene- 
 rally still more sudden and complete in its results 
 than its opening. 
 
 2. LUXURY. 
 
 That there is a vast and painful disparity among 
 us, an astonishing contrast of wealth and poverty, 
 
 * No method can be effectual, which demands the vigilant action of 
 a succession of ministers. The celebrated sinkingfund which was to 
 pay off the Debt, merely increased it by eleven millions. The neces- 
 sary settlement must be made by a single, public, legislative act. 
 
SUMPTUARY LAWS. 273 
 
 of knowledge and ignorance, is undeniable. The 
 phenomenon was always thought scandalous in the 
 States of antiquity, and a mark of incipient decline. 
 One favourite method with early moralists for equal- 
 izing enjoyment of external good, was by what are 
 called Sumptuary Laws. To forbid wearing gold 
 ornaments, dining off gold plate, paying too much 
 for fish, seemed to an old Roman natural and 
 proper; and the laws continued in theory till late 
 times. The moderns reject all such enactments, 
 chiefly, I believe, because no principle can be found 
 for defining and limiting them. There is no end of 
 detail. Shall we forbid paying a guinea a bottle 
 for wine, and allow of keeping hothouses from 
 which grapes are produced that ultimately cost the 
 owner 12*. a Ib. ? or if we allow the grapehouses, 
 how shall we forbid a palace of glass built to contain 
 a tropical forest ? The interference with private life 
 which would rise out of such questions, would be un- 
 endurable ; and in fact no laws of this nature have 
 ever outlasted the rigid uniformity of an infantine 
 state. Still, it may be asked : What would happen ? 
 would it be better or worse, if all rich men 
 voluntarily imposed on themselves sumptuary laws ? 
 And it is worth while to analyze this question. 
 
 If all rich men refused personal luxuries and 
 lived in austere simplicity, they must do one of three 
 things, I imagine, with their superfluity: 1. they 
 might give it away to the more or less needy ; 2. 
 they might bestow it on some public objects ; 3. 
 they might try to invest it in profitable businesses. 
 
 N 3 
 
274 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Now as to the first method, vulgarly called Charity, 
 it is manifest that pure good is done, only when it 
 is so bestowed as not to increase the mass of indi- 
 gence. If I so give away, as to relieve need, with- 
 out thereby relaxing the industry or confirming the 
 imprudence of the needy, nothing can be better. 
 But it is often hard to fulfil these conditions ; and I 
 believe there is no greater anxiety and vexation to 
 very rich persons than the manifest evil which their 
 liberalities produce. Nothing indeed is commoner 
 than for such to complain bitterly of the ingratitude 
 of the poor. A very generous and rich Irish gen- 
 tleman told me, that he had observed for many years 
 that the poor were better off in an out of the way 
 mountain- district where they were allowed and forced 
 to shift for themselves, than in his neighbourhood, 
 where he and other gentry were extremely liberal to 
 them. As for himself, neither his heart nor his re- 
 ligion would endure to drive the poor from his door ; 
 yet his understanding told him that if all the rich 
 around could agree to do so, the poor would in the 
 long run be the better for it *. I do not produce this 
 sentiment as an oracle, but as suggesting how evil 
 is any system of Alms which can be counted on by 
 the poor. As soon as such an expectation is esta- 
 blished, the failure of it is a calamity, but its fulfil- 
 ment is not felt as a relief. Gifts are then no longer 
 gifts. He who so gives as to break down another's 
 independence, is not doing good if he stops short of 
 
 * I suspect that in the mountain district they were less molested 
 about rent when they occupied waste land. 
 
BESTOWAL OF WEALTH. 275 
 
 taking on himself for life the task of maintaining 
 the other. It would be far better for an overwealthy 
 man to alienate his property in larger masses than 
 to risk corrupting people by injudicious charities. 
 
 But, 2, there is never want of moral and in- 
 tellectual and other public objects, by which a rich 
 man may promote the general welfare; although 
 here, also, if he bequeath money instead of bestow- 
 ing it, intrigue of various kinds may thwart his 
 intentions. But I pass from this to the 3rd head ; 
 profitable investment. 
 
 A rich man who saves his money and invests it 
 profitably is, undoubtedly, a public benefactor. He 
 both gives immediate advantage to workmen, and 
 by accumulating ensures them still greater future 
 advantage. Hence it will be seen that there is such 
 a thing as a Liberal and Unselfish desire of Accu- 
 mulating. The old moralists thought it despicable 
 and stupid in a miser to try to accumulate more 
 than he could possibly use ; but their very censure 
 of him was in a tone of selfishness. If he would 
 have spent on his own enjoyment, they would have 
 censured him less. Surely it is not a selfish nor 
 yet a stupid thing, to sacrifice personal enjoyment 
 and accumulate wealth for the avowed future benefit 
 of others. Only when a man has not the heart to 
 give on suitable occasions for present wants, we 
 suspect that he is (after all) in intention keeping it 
 for himself. Even such avarice, as long as it is 
 just, is of little harm and of much benefit to the 
 community ; the victim of this vice is himself the 
 
276 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 chief sufferer. But if all men limited their enjoy- 
 ments very austerely, it would he comparatively 
 hard to find a profitahle use for Capital ; for no one 
 would huy the things produced, unless they were of 
 the most ordinary kind. All elegance and all fine 
 art would thus he exterminated, and it is difficult to 
 helieve that this could be unattended with general 
 mischief to the human mind. Too great severity 
 would certainly not tend to national wealth, and 
 probably not to national culture. The gifts of God 
 were made to be consumed and enjoyed ; and nothing 
 is to be refused, solely because it is a luxury. Curious 
 and beautiful things must be possessed by some 
 one. We could not wish the breed of splendid race- 
 horses to be destroyed, because they are expensive 
 creatures to keep. The balance of passions by 
 which men are actuated in the disposal of property, 
 love of comfort admiration of elegance love 
 of power love of display love of friends and 
 pity for indigence, seems to tend more steadily to 
 the industry and wellbeing of the community, than 
 any single principle on which some Moralists would 
 fain reconstruct human society. 
 
 There is yet another light in which one part of 
 Luxury may be regarded, as a fly-wheel or re- 
 gulator, that contains a reserve of food against 
 extreme scarcity. It is not desirable for a nation 
 to feed too closely up to its average stores ; a margin 
 of waste should be allowed as insurance. In severe 
 pressure for food, every wealthy family is able to make 
 a large diminution in its consumption, and if the 
 
FREE CONSUMPTION OF FOOD. 277 
 
 general scale of allowance in middling families is 
 abundant, the possible saving is so great as to 
 supply a most important aid in famine. The effect 
 of ordinarily free consumption, with some measure 
 of waste, is, to cause a larger ordinary production. 
 Nobody is really the worse fed for this, though a 
 loss is encountered of some other property: but 
 such loss is not to be regretted, if it gives greater 
 security. It is a branch of the same principle, 
 which forbids a nation to live on the cheapest of all 
 foods, as Potatoes ; on the ground, that when that 
 crop fails, there is nothing below it to which recourse 
 may be had. I do not mean to say that habitual 
 Waste is in itself good : but that, until better 
 modes are devised, a needless abundance in common 
 seasons, though it entail waste, is a far less evil 
 than a diet and an allowance so closely calculated 
 as to leave no power of retrenching in famine. 
 There must needs be large waste even in granaries. 
 The Luxuries for which there is nothing to be 
 said, as far as I can see, are those which engage 
 immense manual labour and destroy Capital with no 
 result of intellectual progress or cultivation of 
 beauty, no enjoyment to any one. Such is the 
 handmanufacture of Lace, or the searching after 
 Jewels. 
 
 3. POOR LAWS. 
 
 In any case it is a painful thing to a feeling mind 
 to enjoy the luxuries of elaborate art while those 
 who produce them are notoriously in misery. I can 
 
278 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 quite conceive of a prince breaking in pieces his 
 choicest ornaments, in the spirit of the Hebrew 
 David, who poured out on the sand the delicious 
 water for which he had longed, because he would 
 not drink what was earned by the risk of his warriors' 
 lives. No wealthy orders can with a happy con- 
 science, any more than with safety, neglect the cry 
 of a halfstarved multitude, whatever the cause of 
 the distress. If only to avert the danger of men's 
 despair, some system of Poor Laws will enter into 
 the scheme of every populous and wealthy nation, 
 at least to palliate pauperism, if not to obviate it. 
 It is quite in vain for a Malthusian to denounce 
 Poor Laws on the grounds of Economy ; for on 
 grounds of Politics such laws will necessarily be 
 kept up, until something better is found. In nearly 
 all advanced communities there is also a claim of 
 justice on the part of the poor, (entirely overlooked, 
 I think, by Malthus,) rising out of the laws of Land. 
 
 I have already indicated how very artificial are 
 the laws now existing among us. Vast tracts are 
 kept vacant by the will of landlords or parishes or 
 of the Crown officers, which poor men would gladly 
 cultivate, and from which they would get an inde- 
 pendent livelihood. How selfish a use can be made 
 of this power, you may possibly judge for yourselves 
 from the folio wing Irish illustration : 
 
 " It is well known that much waste land has 
 been brought under culture for several years past. 
 This has been effected, chiefly by allowing cottiers 
 to take in a portion of the mountainside ; and when 
 
RECLAIMING WASTE LAND. 279 
 
 they had tilled it for a few years, and partially re- 
 claimed it, calling on them either to give it up 
 to the landlord or to pay a rent. In some cases, 
 they probably retained it ; but in others, they gave 
 it up and commenced anew ; not unfrequently ending 
 near the top of the mountain, at the bottom of 
 which they commenced many years before. Thus 
 cultivation crept up the mountainsides, or encroached 
 on the secluded valleys heretofore untilled. This 
 mode of reclamation required no capital on the 
 part of the landlord. The cottier or tenant was 
 the sole agent. He obtained a bare subsistence by 
 severe labour, and rarely effected any improve- 
 ment in his own condition. It was practicable, on 
 account of the facility with which the potato was 
 cultivated; and it is very doubtful whether it be 
 practicable with any other crop."* 
 
 The excellent writer from whom I quote does not 
 venture to hint, nor does it seem to occur to him, 
 that it is an essential iniquity for one man thus to 
 appropriate the labour of another. Here is land 
 kept waste, because no farmer will pay rent for it. 
 It is wild and unreclaimed; but William III., or 
 Cromwell, or some other conquering warrior in 
 ancient times, gave it to a predecessor of the present 
 lord of the manor, and through his legal power it is 
 kept barren. But a poor cottier gladly accepts 
 the toil of cultivating it free from rent; he turns 
 it from a wilderness into a fertile field, without any 
 
 * Jonathan Pirn : " Condition and Prospects of Ireland," p. 171 . 
 1848. 
 
280 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 aid from him whom the power of the sword and the 
 dogma of law have pronounced to he its lord. No 
 sooner is the barren land made fruitful, than the 
 lord steps in, to reap where he did not sow. The 
 labourer, if left to himself in the wilderness, would 
 soon become rich : but this is not to be endured ; 
 the landlord takes care that he shall rarely have 
 more than " bare subsistence." And these are Irish 
 peasants, so much calumniated for idleness. 
 
 A passage equally instructive is quoted by J. S. 
 Mill from the treatise on Flemish husbandry, in the 
 Farmer's Series of the Society for Diffusion of Useful 
 Knowledge. Itis too long here to quote ; and I refer 
 to it chiefly as indicating that the low fare of Irishmen 
 is not essential to enable cottiers to work such mar- 
 vels. It is only necessary that the cottier shall not be 
 ivarned off the barren land by the terrors of the law, 
 and that he shall be allowed to reap his own harvest. 
 On a patch of loose white sand, like that of the 
 sea, a little wild heath and broom is sown, which 
 takes root and binds the sand together : in two or 
 three years, the fibres of the roots and the droppings 
 of the leaves improve the soil; a sprinkling of 
 clover, or even of potatoes is tried ; sometimes a 
 little manure is brought; a hut and cowshed is 
 erected : the pig might soon be kept, I presume, but 
 the Flemings seem to look chiefly to the cow. 
 When potatoes and clover enough to feed a cow are 
 obtained, the soil rapidly improves by the manure ; 
 rye and wheat follow ; and, in the course of years, 
 the worst land approximates to the best. 
 
CLAIMS OF THE INDIGENT ON THE SOIL. 281 
 
 Now it is a fair subject for political decision what 
 parts or proportion of a land shall be kept untilled. 
 We want free air, as well as food. I do not mean 
 to call it an axiom of nature that every destitute 
 man has a right to till, possess, and become lord of 
 any portion of wild land. Undoubtedly such things 
 must be settled by law. But I do say, that if, for 
 the good of society at large, land is kept waste, or 
 is so given over to the power of individuals as to 
 allow of their keeping it waste ; an imperative duty 
 rests on society to secure that the indigent shall not 
 starve. Streetsweepers by the hundred would be 
 glad to become freeholders of three or four acres of 
 desolate common, if the relentless law did not 
 forbid them : the same law, therefore, which drives 
 them from the empty land, must feed them when, 
 through undeserved misfortune, they are destitute. 
 How much more, when much of the most fertile 
 soil in the country is kept vacant, to afford elegant 
 parks for the delight of lords and ladies. 
 
 We thus encounter two opposite truths, both of 
 them undeniable, both of them stern and unchange- 
 able, both of them working misery and ruin if 
 despised. The one truth proclaims, that to feed 
 by law hungry men in idleness and comfort is 
 demoralizing to industry; the other, that to let 
 those starve who could feed themselves from the 
 land but for your artificial prohibitions, is unjust 
 and cruel and must engender despair and ferocity. 
 The difficult problem of Poor Laws has to steer its 
 way between these rocks. 
 
282 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Not to be tedious, it may be best rather dicta- 
 torially to propound my own belief on this question 
 Poor Laws are not always the right cure for 
 Pauperism. In widespread famine, as in pestilence 
 and in war at the doors, it needs a high moral enthu- 
 siasm in a nation to save it from becoming depraved. 
 Severe affliction may make the good better, but it 
 generally makes the bad worse. Through such 
 times, therefore, every nation scrambles as it best 
 may; and wisdom has very little scope. But if 
 famine be an habitual danger, in a climate and soil 
 not unfertile, and with a people not disposed to 
 ravage the crops ; it is manifest that there is some 
 deep political injustice in the fundamental institu- 
 tions, which will either ruin all orders or at length 
 precipitate revolution. Such was the state of 
 France in the 1 8th century ; such has been that of 
 Ireland in the 18th and first half of the 19th. 
 Had not the might of England crushed the Irish 
 poor, they would twice and three times have 
 imitated the French : the oppressive claims to the 
 soil would have been swept away, and the present 
 generation of their peasants would be freeholders, 
 rich and happy in comparison. If England, for 
 her own reasons of policy, chooses to put down 
 these agrarian revolts, she is bound in conscience, 
 in honour, and in prudence, to extirpate their causes. 
 In my belief, it was not a Poor Law that Ireland 
 needed twelve years ago, (nay, I fear that the 
 Poor Law has impoverished the landlords without 
 good to the peasants ;) but it was, a secure posses- 
 
IRISH TENURES. 283 
 
 sion of the soil. Probably no English statesmen 
 could have carried such a measure : with that I have 
 nothing to do : but this is what the Prussian Go- 
 vernment did, and saved their country : this is what, 
 I believe, we should have done, if we had been 
 more enlightened. That a cottier-nation, to whom 
 land is needful to life, should be liable to rent rising 
 with their own exertions, and be ejected at the 
 landlord's pleasure ; should also be prohibited from 
 the wastelands, or be forced to pay by their own 
 improvements ; is a state of law in my opinion so 
 immoral, that I fear to utter the epithets which rise 
 to my lips. Since the great famine, Ireland has 
 suffered large alterations : large emigration has 
 taken place, much change is still in progress from 
 the sale of Encumbered Estates. These great 
 calamities would never have occurred, if justice had 
 been done to the peasants in 1829, as to the Roman 
 Catholic gentry. Whether the recent revolution 
 has so far assimilated Ireland to England, that the 
 same laws of land may become just for both coun- 
 tries, I am not yet able to form an opinion. 
 
 Nevertheless, on both sides of the Channel, the 
 rich need exceedingly to learn some truths obvious 
 to common men, our Judges also and our Par- 
 liaments need to enforce them : such as, that 
 God made the solid land for something else than 
 to pay rent; and that the tenant who improves the 
 soil, and not the landlord, has a right to every tittle 
 of the increased value. 
 
 Poor Laws cannot be made to relieve more than 
 
284 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 a small part of a nation. If a large fraction is 
 habitually in misery, then, I have said, some change 
 in the foundation of property is generally needed. 
 But when we have only to provide for a few, Poor 
 Laws must be regulated by the following political 
 axioms: 1. to avoid Centralization; 2. as far as 
 possible, to unite local knowledge and local sym- 
 pathy with the pecuniary relief; 3. to prevent, 
 rather than to relieve, distress ; 4. to teach and 
 train, and make labour valuable, so as not to break 
 down the independence of those relieved; 5. to 
 aid the relieved to become independent of relief. 
 Most justly do the Malthusians denounce public 
 alms as demoralizing, when separated from all 
 sympathy, given harshly and reluctantly, and 
 only because the law commanded it. The Poor 
 Law in England, before the last great reform, was, 
 I believe, ruinous to all the country districts : in 
 the towns, however, as far as I can gather, it was 
 better than the present law. But such is the 
 misery and absurdity of a centralized system. It 
 cannot adapt itself equally well to different com- 
 munities, and what is an improvement to one part is 
 injurious to another. 
 
 A most difficult matter embarrassing the adminis- 
 tration of a Poor Law, is, what is called The Law 
 of Settlement. I do not profess to understand all 
 the practical sides of this question, and will only 
 remark on the principles which must guide it. 
 First, each district must be specially responsible 
 for its own poor ; else nothing but waste, apathy, 
 
LAW OF SETTLEMENT. 285 
 
 and hopeless confusion will result : hence some 
 definition of " one's own " poor is essential. 
 Secondly, there must be some mode of becoming 
 naturalized in a new parish, when a person's labour 
 has been bond fide transferred into it; and it is 
 necessary to provide that this shall not be evaded 
 by any arbitrary dismissal of servants or by refusing 
 liberty to build dwelling houses. The proceeding 
 of farmers and landlords is often alike scandalous 
 in these matters : but what is the best cure, I dare 
 not undertake to say. Again, what is to be done 
 with those who have no settlement, and yet are in 
 distress ? The case is like that of Irishmen at 
 Liverpool, or foreigners anywhere. I hardly think 
 it is a first point to consider. If Poor Laws, in 
 other respects good, were once in successful action, 
 it would afterwards appear what amount of effort 
 is needed for parishes to deal with poor that are 
 not their own. 
 
 It will be a great calamity to England, if the 
 present system of Poor Laws is allowed to go on, 
 without perceiving that they are a temporary make- 
 shift, and fundamentally defective. See how heaps 
 of wretched beings cluster into our towns, into 
 which all the misery of the country drains ! Here 
 they live in masses too great to be known by the 
 richer classes. We are all too busy to look after 
 them, and they are too numerous and too much 
 alike for selection. On this subject I shall have 
 more to say in my remaining lectures : I will here 
 only add, that a Home Colonization appears to me 
 
286 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 a matter of first importance. The masses of popu- 
 lation crushed together in our great towns need to 
 be largely poured out on the country. To effect 
 this from London alone, would be an effort worthy 
 of a whole life ; and probably could not succeed 
 but as part of a larger reform, based on principles 
 fraught with manifold results. 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 
 PUBLIC REMEDIES FOR OUR PAUPERISM. 
 " Local Selfgovernment is the True SOCIALISM." Toulmin Smith. 
 
 1. WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF POLITICS? 
 
 I HAVE several times protested against the notion, 
 that mere Political Economy is to be regarded as a 
 sufficient guide to a Statesman : nevertheless, there 
 are many cases, in which the information given by 
 this science is of such critical moment, as virtually 
 to decide the Statesman's action. Nearly the same 
 might be said of Mechanics. If a bill were brought 
 into a chamber of deliberation at Milan, for cutting 
 a canal from the Po, a body of Engineers who should 
 authoritatively depose that the inevitable result 
 would be to inundate the entire country and sweep 
 away the inhabitants, would surely decide the fate 
 of such a bill, if they were believed. The Engineer 
 sometimes, the Economist much oftener, supplies to 
 the Statesman certain links of argument, showing 
 what would be the results of certain measures. 
 When those results are glaringly and indefensibly 
 mischievous, we may say that the Statesman needs 
 no other guide than the Engineer or the Economist 
 to keep him from them. 
 
288 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Thus, if a Statesman is meditating to do a favour 
 to " the landed interest " by excluding foreign food, 
 in order to raise the price of native produce, the 
 Economist indicates what will he the result; 1. 
 probably to keep a large part of the nation half-fed, 
 if the end of raising the price is really attained ; 
 2. to depreciate all other produce than food, and 
 thereby impoverish other classes; 3. to stimulate 
 the production of food from unsuitable soils ; 4. to 
 raise rent, and impoverish the farmer in common 
 with all other capitalists and all other consumers of 
 produce ; 5. to lessen the farmer's home-market for 
 delicacies ; 6. to destroy altogether his chance of 
 selling in the foreign market ; 7. to encourage bad 
 farming ; 8. to cripple the foreign trade of manu- 
 facturers. Now, we admit, to be an Economist is 
 not to be a Statesman. Still, if a certain common 
 sense and feeling of equity is presupposed, the 
 Economist who proves a measure to inflict a per- 
 manent wrong on all the community with no good 
 to any but to landlords and titheowners, has some 
 right to speak dogmatically against it, without 
 affecting to be in any complete sense a Statesman 
 or Politician. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is manifest that Finance is not 
 the sole thing to be regulated in social life, and the 
 Moral Interests that connect men are the matters 
 of primary consideration in Politics. Many minds, 
 of a commanding and somewhat despotic cast, long 
 for a dictatorial science of Politics, such as Plato 
 and Aristotle conceived ; which shall reason in the 
 
CAN THE STATE DIRECT LABOUR? 289 
 
 following tone. "A nautical people is fickle and 
 unattached to the soil ; we, therefore, will not have 
 many sailors. Artizans who are enslaved to one 
 machine become stunted in mind : we must dis- 
 courage this. Merchants who sit too much in a 
 counting-house lose manly qualities and become 
 devoted to gain : they must be kept in severe pro- 
 portion to the agriculturists. To till the land is 
 the healthiest, simplest, noblest occupation ; we 
 must, therefore, secure a large mass of small free- 
 hold proprietors, who are the real strength and 
 ornament of every State." 
 
 No small part of those who affect to act the 
 Greek Philosopher in this matter, and love to cast 
 contempt on our Political Economy, (which they 
 call CHREMATISTICS, or the science of Gainful Oc- 
 cupation,) shrink from the last conclusion ; because 
 they dread agrarian laws and redivisions of the 
 soil. They would wish our manufactures destroyed 
 and the people poured forth on the country, if only 
 the hateful necessity of giving them freehold land 
 could be avoided; if it were but possible to turn 
 them into industrious quiet farm-labourers, earning 
 their modest seven or eight shillings a week in 
 wages, with the Poor-House for their resource in 
 old age ! But this could only be through a pro- 
 digious increase of farming capital, and is at present 
 ridiculous to imagine. To declaim against the 
 employment of so large a population in manufac- 
 tures can mean nothing practical, except to redivide 
 
 o 
 
290 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the soil ; a measure which it can hardly be doubted 
 that Plato or Aristotle would have unhesitatingly 
 urged. 
 
 All aspirations after a science which is to direct 
 the channels of employment on moral grounds, 
 seem to me to indicate forgetfulness of the narrow 
 limits of a ruler's power. We talk of the omni- 
 potence of Parliament. What Parliament but 
 abhors gin-palaces ? yet how many votes will be 
 given to abolish them ? All know that to prohibit 
 spirits would lead to their secret sale. Until we 
 can better succeed in suppressing immoral occupa- 
 tions and limiting more strictly those which are 
 confessedly very undesirable, it appears absurd to 
 deal with such problems as despotically-minded 
 Greek theorists dreamed of. 
 
 It is unfortunate for the prospects of Europe, 
 that the theorists of Radical Reform have so largely 
 played the game of Absolutism. It is hard to say 
 whether Jeremy Bentham or the Emperor Joseph 
 II., the French revolutionists or Louis XIV., were 
 greater centralizers. Socrates and Plato held, in 
 common with Bentham, that a nation ought to be 
 governed by a set of functionaries, and that all 
 the rest had nothing to do but pay tribute and obey. 
 In our cultivated ranks, those who are not stupi- 
 fied by the opium of Bentham, are too often made 
 giddy by the champagne of Plato : but, disguise 
 it as one will, selfishness and materialism is the 
 result. 
 
HIGHEST FUNCTION OF THE STATE. 291 
 
 No despotic rulers can be so wise, that it could 
 be desirable to bave them dictate what employments 
 shall be pursued ; and (farther than to forbid cruelty 
 and immorality) no free nation will endure that 
 their government should entertain such problems. 
 Men's employments are determined, partly by the 
 laws of land, partly by the physical geography of 
 every country, in combination with the knowledge, 
 capital, and available labour. The ruling power 
 can scarcely interfere, except by fixing or modifying 
 the laws of landed property ; nor can these be 
 touched rudely, without the certainty of civil war. 
 The higher science of Politics, which rises above 
 Economy, is never really able to direct the channels 
 of employment ; but its most important function is, 
 to impart moral character, sanction moral rela- 
 tions, and claim the performance of relative 
 duties, in all the existing and tolerated forms of 
 social life. And in this consists the Organization 
 of States. 
 
 2. LOCAL PATRIOTISM. 
 
 Between Moral beings all the intercourse of life 
 ought, if possible, to tend towards moral union, by 
 which the lowest dealings are elevated. But the 
 possibility chiefly depends on the continuance of 
 the intercourse. He who buys once at a shop or in 
 a fair, enters into no permanent moral relation with 
 the seller, nor conceives any particular interest in 
 his welfare : but if we, every day of our lives, see 
 the same streetsweeper at the same crossing, the 
 
 o 2 
 
292 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 repeated sight gives him some kind of lodgment in 
 our good will and good wishes. It is a specific 
 duty of the Ruler to promote moral unions, and, 
 with a view to them, to sanction permanent rela- 
 tions in various ways. Of these, that with which 
 all civilization begins, is Marriage. To he without 
 this, is to he lower than the lowest savages now 
 known : yet, marvellous to say, this (with the kins- 
 manship rising out of it) is fast becoming the only 
 permanent relation in cultivated England, so 
 grievously disorganized are we ; so deplorably has 
 the temporal power forgot its moral mission. 
 
 We all know that the sanctity of marriage depends 
 upon its permanence ; and the same is true of all 
 other relations. But nearly all of these are apt to 
 be dissolved by change of place ; hence a flitting 
 population loses internal coherence. The masses 
 which meet externally in large towns have lost all 
 organization. They work at certain trades, or for 
 certain masters, and sell to certain shops or in the 
 open market and street; but they have no fixed 
 moral unions with any part of the community, ex- 
 cept the narrowest ties of family life. Nearly the 
 same is true of all ranks in London : hence a sel- 
 fishness which barely extends beyond the family 
 circle is a prevalent type of character ; and this is 
 a precursor of dissolution in society, which is re- 
 lapsing into a disorganization similar to that of 
 primitive barbarism. 
 
 In Politics the difficulty often is not to find the 
 true remedy, but to induce the patient to swallow 
 
LOCAL COMMUNITIES. 293 
 
 it. Here it seems clear enough what is the primary 
 cause of the nation becoming as a heap of sand, 
 viz., the loss of local patriotism, which has fol- 
 lowed on the decay of local liberties by the develop- 
 ment of centralization. Every town in England, 
 and every county, ought to have the feelings of a 
 little State ; as in fact it once had. Our own his- 
 tory for many centuries shows that this is quite 
 consistent with the existence of a central power, 
 a Crown and Parliament, for all purposes truly 
 national; and if the action of the central power 
 were strictly limited to such things, the provinces 
 would, now more than ever, have abundant room 
 for high ambition. Of all this we still have in the 
 modern world a splendid example on the other side 
 of the Atlantic ; and that is a sufficient defence 
 against the reproach of vainly longing after "an- 
 tiquated institutions," when we point to the ener- 
 getic local authorities of past centuries. 
 
 Hungary also is a magnificent instance of the 
 patriotism, energy, and national well-being which 
 a sound system of local self-government keeps 
 up under every possible disadvantage, isolation 
 from the rest of Europe, mixture of heterogeneous 
 races, and the perpetual plotting of a perjured and 
 often atrocious Court against the welfare and free- 
 dom of the land. 
 
 Our disease rises out of the fact, that Parliament, 
 instead of being supported and aided by the pro- 
 vincial legislatures, has practically swallowed them 
 up ; has so drained their powers, that the wealthy, 
 
294 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 cultivated, and ambitious disdain a seat in them, and 
 the lower people despise the provincial franchise. 
 The introducing of private bills in Parliament is 
 an invasion which has destroyed the dignity and 
 independence of all the provinces. 
 
 To illustrate this, consider what would be the 
 process of a bill for making a railroad, if the pro- 
 vinces had their due powers. A short petition 
 might first be laid before the Lords or Commons, 
 pro forma, asking leave to make a railroad from 
 London to Birmingham. If no objection were 
 urged to the principle, the proposal would be laid 
 before every county and town legislation concerned 
 in the rail, with this preliminary approval to back 
 it : and the details of the road would be settled by 
 the separate legislatures. After all was completed 
 by them, the entire scheme would be laid before 
 Parliament; and receive the final confirmation. 
 Thus the function of Parliament in the matter would 
 be one of broad and grand supervision, of a truly 
 imperial kind ; and its acts might be short and 
 clear. The time of the supreme legislature would not 
 then be frittered away in details, but would be de- 
 voted to great principles and to receiving appeals, or 
 to a mature consideration of foreign affairs. On 
 the other hand the power of the local legislatures 
 would be so large, as to fill the ambition of able and 
 accomplished men. 
 
 A Greek or Roman statesman would look with 
 horror and despair at our unorganized masses of 
 men ; and to him it would seem as an axiom, that 
 
FUNCTIONS OF A CITIZEN. 295 
 
 they ought to be made either slaves or citizens. 
 With us they have the freedom of a citizen without 
 his attachments, the ignorance of a slave without his 
 constraints. Since no sane man will propose that 
 they should be forced down into the immoral state 
 of slaves, it is manifest that they need to be raised 
 to the moral duties of citizens. 
 
 It is not my fault that this lecture is so political; 
 the subject forces it on me. But I beg you to 
 understand, that to become a citizen is a very dif- 
 ferent thing from voting once in seven years for a 
 member of Parliament, or once in four years for the 
 President of a Eepublic. Universal suffrage has 
 left France as disorganized as ever; more disor- 
 ganized by far than England, because centraliza- 
 tion is there far more complete. But " to be a 
 citizen" ought to be a thing felt in every- day life, as 
 much in Birmingham or London, as once in Khodes 
 or Athens. And this might be done without revo- 
 lution, without commotion, without introducing 
 novel or untried principles, without lowering any 
 prerogative or dignity of the Crown, without less- 
 ening the honour of Parliament, by merely revert- 
 ing to the old law of the land. If the inherent 
 powers of the town of Birmingham were not over- 
 ruled by "private bills" at Westminster, if those 
 statutes were merely rescinded which have en- 
 croached on its legitimate sphere of action, it would 
 have full power over, its own finance, its own police, 
 its own militia, under such restrictions only as the 
 general safety demanded. A local patriotism is 
 
296 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ready to rise, as in old days ; and the example of 
 the United States assures us that this is quite con- 
 sistent with a warm attachment to the general union 
 of the whole nation, and with loyalty towards its 
 central object. In such a state of things, Bir- 
 mingham would have its own University, as so 
 many inferior towns of Germany have. Its magis- 
 trates and local ministry would have a far more 
 arduous and honourable task than now is possible. 
 Its schools of Professional men, and Courts of 
 Law, need not be, as now, eclipsed by the metro- 
 polis. The people would be knit together in daily 
 relations as citizens, and would be expected to hear, 
 discuss, and judge, in regular monthly sittings. 
 The provision for the Poor, the establishment of 
 Industrial Schools, (on which no expense should 
 be grudged,) the administration of Charities, and 
 of all the Public Endowments, now so often anti- 
 quated and useless, and numerous kindred matters, 
 would come before all the citizens for their con- 
 sideration or for their active service. 
 
 All our most valuable Laws grew up out of 
 Custom, and were finally ratified by implication in 
 Statutes and legal Decisions. So long as a nation 
 is unaltered in its social state, it may go on with its 
 laws unchanged : but when numbers rapidly in- 
 crease, and a vast variety of new trades arise, great 
 changes or additions to its laws are needed, But if 
 law be centralized, it always lingers far behind 
 men's wants. Our Factory laws, for instance, sup- 
 posing them to be good, came 50 years too late, 
 
ENTANGLEMENTS OF CENTRALIZATION. 297 
 
 because they could not be made in each town as 
 fast as they were wanted. Custom also is artificially 
 hindered from growing into Law; so that the 
 civilized State appears to be less sagacious than 
 Barbarism, and moralizes in wonder at the wisdom 
 of its ancestors. Moreover, the central Legislature, 
 having undertaken the hopeless task of enacting 
 details suitable for all parts of a varied country and 
 vast population, so overlays its laws, that to know 
 or understand them is simply impossible for the 
 community and but partially possible to professional 
 students of law. 
 
 The same centralization hinders special parts of 
 the country from making free experiments for the 
 benefit of the poor. Indeed, under our old Poor 
 Law, twenty years ago, things were no better : for 
 though there was less of central authority, there 
 was an equal decay of local patriotism. A grave 
 argument against making game saleable, used to be, 
 that it would lead to the total nonresidence of 
 country squires if the game were destroyed ; since, 
 it was urged, the pleasure of shooting for a few 
 months alone drew them to their estates. This, no 
 doubt, was an absurd exaggeration ; yet one which 
 could not have occurred in a healthy state of 
 society. The squires being few or inefficient, the 
 administration of the Poor Law fell to the farmers ; 
 and they generally abused it, to pay wages out of 
 the rates. The difficulty here rose from want of 
 variety in the social elements. Squires, Farmers, 
 and Labourers for wages are three heterogeneous 
 
 o 3 
 
98 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 orders, insufficient to form a State; and if the 
 Squires are absentees half the year, the Farmers are 
 too powerful. But if small freeholds were more 
 frequent, if for every farmer of 300 acres there 
 were three freeholders of 50 acres each, all the 
 little villages would be more prosperous; every 
 smith, carpenter, wheelwright, ironmonger and mis- 
 cellaneous chandler would feel the difference ; and 
 the county would afford far more varied elements 
 than now, for conducting their common affairs. 
 
 The land on which a town is built ought never to 
 be held in masses by a small number of persons. 
 In theory it ought (in general) to be all the pro- 
 perty of the town-community ; and when sold to an 
 individual for the purpose of building, the town 
 should always reserve to itself the power of re- 
 sumption at any time on repaying the original price, 
 and remunerating the house-owner for his house. 
 In this way no individual would enrich himself at 
 the public expense by the increasing demand for 
 land ; and whenever it was desirable for health or 
 convenience to throw open any part of the town, it 
 would be done without artificial cost. 
 
 Every town should have its own domain for 
 public purposes, both of recreation and of training 
 to the arts of war and peace. Moreover, it should 
 have a right (within certain limits) of purchasing 
 country-land of individuals at prices settled by a 
 jury, to colonize its poor upon. Such colonies 
 should never be formed in large masses ; for it is 
 an unwholesome condition of society to have many 
 
HOME COLONIZATION. 299 
 
 of one occupation or of one rank thrown by them- 
 selves : there is no doubt a large field here open for 
 judicious arrangement in detail. But it seems un- 
 questionable, that with London (for instance) a first 
 object of public policy should be to plant out into 
 the country tens of thousands who people its 
 swamps and dense alleys. To send our people to 
 the Antipodes at vast expense, is a device to save 
 statesmen the effort of reorganizing our decayed 
 polity. But the poor never can be sent fast enough, 
 and our difficulties will only increase, until we raise 
 up in strength the local institutions which ought to 
 use forethought against them. 
 
 The right of petitioning Parliament was once 
 much valued : it has become nearly useless, because 
 Parliament is too busy to attend to any ordinary 
 grievance. But in no case could that privilege be 
 half so valuable to the poor, as the right of petition- 
 ing their own local legislature. Many of their 
 petitions might be absurd. They would probably 
 ask for a compulsory rate of wages, and other ex- 
 clusive laws. But all such occasions would lead to 
 discussion, and they would learn sound principles by 
 it. At the same time their real grievances would 
 come to light, however entangled with their erro- 
 neous theories concerning the proper remedy : and 
 the whole mass of the people would speedily learn a 
 new patriotism on finding their relation to the State 
 to be a reality. 
 
300 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 3. MORE LEISURE AND HIGHER CULTURE. 
 
 Of all grievances to which our countrymen are 
 subject, not the poor only, but a very large part of 
 the rich also, the most widespread and serious is 
 excessive occupation in the routine of ivork. This 
 it is which keeps men in barbarous uncultivation. 
 The North American savage is in some respects a 
 civilized man in comparison to thousands of our 
 people. He has no newspaper on Saturday after- 
 noon, and no sermon on Sunday, it is true : but he 
 habitually sits in council and hears his elders dis- 
 cuss; and although his range of knowledge is very 
 limited, he has a clearness and decision of judgment, 
 and a dignity of deportment, which shows to great 
 advantage. With us, it is not merely the collier 
 and the omnibus- driver, the household servant and 
 the applewoman ; but the shopapprentice and the 
 clerk, nay, the rnastertradesman and manufacturer, 
 are often so absorbed in the everlasting work of 
 the trade, that no energy is left for serious applica- 
 tion to anything else, public or private ; and mental 
 cultivation is despaired of. 
 
 Yet, after all, this cultivation is now the real dis- 
 tinction of the aristocracy from the plebeians. One 
 whose English is not pure in grammar and in pro- 
 nunciation is at once put aside as "not a gentle- 
 man"; and every man's permanent grade in life 
 mainly depends on the length and perseverance of his 
 mental training. A large part of our middle classes 
 
PLEBEIANISM. 
 
 send their boys early to school, but take them away 
 at 14 or 16. The routine of trade then commences, 
 and continues incessantly until the decline of life : 
 so that only a small fraction ever receives a full 
 manly culture, and much less any high development 
 of taste. A miserable consequence is, the existence 
 of heterogeneous nations in one community. Oil 
 and water will no more mix, than the patrician and 
 the plebeian temperament. Keserve and contempt 
 on the one side, envy and grudge on the other, are 
 mild forms which the feud between the orders 
 assumes. Much good may be done by the improve- 
 ment of schools, if people would leave their sons 
 longer at them ; but I believe this to be of secondary 
 importance to the education gained in life itself, at 
 an age when a manly mind and manly energy are 
 brought to topics of real interest*. The Americans 
 of the United States can rise from the lowest con- 
 dition to the head of the republic ; so little neces- 
 sary in the nature of things is our slavelike degra- 
 dation of the poor. But without more leisure, free 
 institutions remain mere shadows or screens, and a 
 magnificent national literature will not save the 
 mass of the people from barbarism. 
 
 To what then does this tend ? Ought we to have 
 
 * In old days, every Statute of Parliament was read aloud to the 
 people assembled in the monthly Shiremote, that all the laws might 
 be known to those who had to obey them. What a school of life 
 was that ! ten times over, worth all the much -paraded schools of 
 modern days. Of course, the Acts of Parliament were then short 
 and intelligible, and dealt in principles. They were written for 
 common men, not for lawyers. 
 
302 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Acts of Parliament to forbid the excessive labour of 
 adults ? Far be it from me to say so. Possibly 
 indeed all England has come to feel, that her people 
 works too long. Our ancestors, I believe, had some 
 fifty holidays in the year, beside the Sundays ; and 
 did not work in general so hard as our poor now 
 work ; yet their labour was far less efficient than 
 ours. Unless therefore land and pure water or 
 pure air are so dear as to impoverish the labourer, 
 he ought to be able to command as much leisure as 
 his ancestors did ; and a fashion would soon rise for 
 culture of mind and body, if it were carried on 
 sociably. But to limit the labour of adults by law, 
 is to treat them as children, and tends to keep them 
 as children ; and when it is not done and cannot be 
 done in other business, the private rights of the 
 millowner are harshly and hurtfully violated, in 
 forbidding his machinery to run as long as he can 
 get adults to work it, whether by relays or other- 
 wise. Laws to protect infancy from excessive work 
 (in villages, as well as towns) are much to be de- 
 sired ; but all legislation concerning trades in detail 
 is inconsistent with the nature of Parliament, and 
 only tends to confusion. On the other haod, there 
 would be every propriety in a general enactment, 
 that one day every month (the first Monday in 
 every month has been suggested) should be kept as 
 a public holiday for the sake of the political assem- 
 blies. At present, such days are times of mere re- 
 laxation; because men have no serious business. 
 But, if we had Athenian institutions, we should 
 
LOCAL SPECIALTIES. 303 
 
 soon verify what Pericles said of the Athenians, 
 that they "counted a feastday as nothing but a 
 time for transacting duty." 
 
 4. LOCAL DEVELOPMENTS. 
 
 To recognize little States in our towns and coun- 
 ties would be but the first step of organization : I 
 believe it would be an easy one. Such questions, 
 however, must be left to professed lawyers to discuss. 
 But all healthy organization has, and needs, a 
 power of internal growth. The larger cities are 
 already resolved into townships and into wards ; the 
 counties into hundreds : but with numbers so great 
 as ours, and many trades so peculiar, numerous ex- 
 ceptive arrangements would arise. 
 
 Moreover, if each town had full power to tax itself 
 for public purposes, a thousand civilizing ameliora- 
 tions would be introduced. Instead of allowing water 
 to be dealt out pure by private companies to the rich 
 who can afford it, and leaving the poor to drink what 
 is polluted and foul, the town would itself provide at 
 public expense pure water for all. Indeed, if local 
 institutions had been kept up in energy, the un- 
 healthy buildings which now exist could never have 
 arisen: there is at present an Augean stable to 
 cleanse. Again, look at the sellers in the streets, 
 look at the cabdrivers and their horses, on a rainy 
 day : what can be more barbarous than their expo- 
 sure ? The recent excessive mortality of London 
 testifies to the fatal consequences of much wet 
 
304 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 weather. Nothing surely is more obvious, than that 
 in a city where 30 or 40 thousand persons live all 
 day under the sky, having no power to shelter them- 
 selves, there ought to be numerous covered piazzas, 
 market-places, and sheds for cabriolets. By such 
 means to save the poor from rheumatism and in- 
 flammations, would be cheaper than to raise their 
 wages if that were possible ; and would confer far 
 more direct benefit on them than the removing of 
 taxes. 
 
 Moreover, the stated meeting of a moderate num- 
 ber of people in a Ward-Mote would make their faces 
 familiar to one another, and give to the richer orders 
 a distinct acquaintance with a definite portion of the 
 vast community. This is with us the more urgently 
 important, because (unhappily) religion has ceased 
 to be a bond to our nation. In fact, a congrega- 
 tion that meets in a metropolitan church, finds little 
 in it to develop mutual acquaintance. Far different 
 would be the result of meeting for discussion of 
 practical business in a Ward-Mote. Out of this 
 would rise numerous other relations. In ancient 
 Greece or Italy, to be fellow- tribesmen or fellow - 
 clansmen, was a bond of union, besides the closer 
 tie of clientship. The last is the bond, I apprehend, 
 in which our domestic servants ought to be joined 
 to us. 
 
 5. MORAL UNIONS. 
 
 In the Hebrew law, if a servant loved his master 
 and his family, and desired to serve for ever, the 
 
CLIENTSHIP. 305 
 
 master performed a symbolic act by which the ser- 
 vant became nailed to the house as a permanent 
 part of it : and the same result would everywhere be 
 a wholesome consummation. Our difficulty is, that 
 Custom needs to grow up, as a guide to Law, 
 before enactments can be wise and profitable ; while 
 in fact Custom has long been moving in the oppo- 
 site direction, making the union of master and ser- 
 vant, as of buyer and seller, more and more transient. 
 In ancient times Religion did for a nation what Law 
 could not do; and so it might be with us, if we 
 would wink at some of our differences, and if the 
 ministers of religion were not bound in iron fetters. 
 Else, if I had a servant whom I esteemed and who 
 trusted me, why might I not come forward with him 
 lefore the Church, and exchange solemn pledges 
 with him; I, declaring that I take him as my client, 
 and promise to him a kindly protection and care for 
 his welfare ; and he, avowing that he takes me as 
 his Patron, and promises to me honour and respect? 
 After such a mutual public recognition, a neglect of 
 duty on either side would incur moral censure. 
 Precedent would grow up, indicating and limiting 
 the rights of the parties ; and it would ultimately 
 appear, whether the sanction of legislation was also 
 desirable. By the institution of clientship, every 
 family rich enough to have servants, would be 
 brought into nearer contact with a number of poorer 
 families. For when a client married, or on other 
 grounds left the patron's house, the bond would not 
 be broken : and that result would in part be brought 
 
306 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 about, which is so very desirable in large towns a 
 definite relation between certain richer and certain 
 poorer men. 
 
 At present, so negligent is our code of these 
 highly important moral unions, that it has not even 
 a law of Adoption. A childless lady may bring up 
 poor children, yet she can never claim the rights of 
 a parent towards one of them. In a community where 
 orphans exist by the thousand, and unmarried and 
 childless persons also by the thousand, it ought to 
 be a first effort of the ruler to promote adoption. A 
 parent has to make so many sacrifices, with results 
 so uncertain, that it needs a rare effort of philan- 
 thropy to rear other people's children ; and it is 
 probably beyond human nature to love with love at 
 all approaching to that of a parent, unless the child 
 be solemnly given over to be one's own. Among 
 many ancient nations, to 'be childless was a dis- 
 honour. The analogous sentiment which ought now 
 to be active, is, that it becomes those who have no 
 children of their own, and are not obviously incapa- 
 citated by their occupation or their poverty, to adopt 
 and educate children. But, it seems, the State has 
 abdicated its functions in these matters, and the 
 Church is tied and bound in one place by the 
 State, in another by its own precedents. We seem 
 almost to need to go to Paganism * and Mohammed- 
 
 * The Germans and French have introduced Adoption from the 
 Roman law, but have fettered it in so many ways as to make it of 
 little use. The great fear of the legislator seems to be, lest a man 
 should be too anxious to adopt children, and hereby too easily satis- 
 
ADOPTIVE CHILDREN. 307 
 
 ism ; to old Kome and Greece, to modern India, 
 to Turkey ; in order to find that excellent insti- 
 tution of adoptive children sanctioned by law and 
 religion. 
 
 A fearful and horrible stain on Christendom, a 
 scourge and disgrace unknown to semi-barbarous 
 Turkey, can only be glanced at in this company; 
 the existence of hordes of destitute females, cut off 
 from family and home, from respect and from love, 
 miserable, and propagators of misery. Our exist- 
 ing institutions show themselves utterly powerless to 
 touch this dreadful evil. Never will it be stopped, 
 if distressed families are to migrate into populous 
 towns, and there be lost to sight. Closer bonds 
 between the rich and the poor, definite relation of 
 families to families, and a prompt municipal system 
 of Poor Laws, must all combine to dry up the 
 sources of the bitter fountain which it is beyond 
 human power to transmute into sweet water. 
 
 When children are left orphans and destitute, the 
 first inquiry of the magistrate should be, who are 
 their nearest of kin ? If these can be found, they 
 should be invited to adopt the children as their own 
 by the legal ceremony. The scale of relationship 
 which at present determines their legal guardian, 
 would suffice to show who have the first claims over 
 them. If kinsfolk cannot be found, or refuse to 
 adopt, then, after a certain delay, the magistrate 
 ought to proclaim the want of adoptive parents, and 
 
 fied without raising a family of bis own ; or, lest he should be 
 anxious to get a slave, under pretence of a child. 
 
308 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to invite applications. The ministers of religion 
 should add their influence to urge the pious duty. 
 In adopting children who are not orphans, of course 
 the public consent of the parents is necessary : hut 
 such adoption also ought to be greatly encouraged 
 by the law ; for they are a mode by which richer 
 support weaker families, and they add one more 
 cement to society. Especially, when the adopted 
 child comes from a rather lower rank, the union 
 tends to break down our sharp divisions, and blend 
 the orders together. As for orphans, when they 
 are very young, it would probably be easy to find 
 persons willing to adopt; when they are older, it 
 can seldom be effected till after some years' familia- 
 rity. At any rate, the thing to be aimed at is, to 
 find new parents for those who have lost their 
 natural protectors. Instead of which, we now think 
 we do great things by bringing up orphans in an 
 orphan-house ; a peculiarly dangerous practice : for 
 the children are cast loose upon the world without a 
 parent or a home, exactly at the critical and most 
 dangerous age, without experience of life, and with- 
 out being accustomed to its roughness. An orphan 
 girl at the age of 17 goes into household service or 
 into a factory : she quarrels with her employers or 
 with fellow- servants, and loses her place. What 
 then is to become of her ? The orphan house can- 
 not take her back, and she has not even the fami- 
 liarity of kind neighbours to shelter her. I speak 
 not from theory, but with painful facts before me, in 
 strongly expressing my sense of the mischief of this. 
 
ORPHAN ASYLUMS. 309 
 
 To bring up children in asylums and institutions, is 
 to deprive them of all chance of winning family re- 
 lations : but alas ! those who subscribe their annual 
 guineas are gratified to see the orphans in regi- 
 ment, all cleaned and drilled, one like another ; and 
 it is fondly believed that in these asylums they have 
 great religious privileges, which more than make up 
 for the loss of the family life. 
 
 In Ireland, where the household servants marry, 
 it is usual to put the children under the care of 
 nurses, to whom a little stipend is paid. The nurse 
 soon loves the child so much, that dishonest parents 
 speculate on her love, and after a time stop all pay- 
 ment. This is sadly common, yet the nurse is 
 never known to cast out the child. It shows how 
 easy it would be to procure new mothers for orphans, 
 by paying a stipend for some years. Love presently 
 grows up out of familiarity. But in a well-ordered 
 State, such a thing ought not to be endured, as 
 young females growing up in no family relation. 
 Both for their own sake, and for the public welfare, 
 they should be sedulously planted into families. 
 
 The children of criminals are another class of 
 extreme importance. The father of a family is 
 tempted by hard times to poach; he gets into a 
 feud in which a gamekeeper is killed, and he is 
 transported with his accomplices. His wife and 
 children are neither criminal nor vicious, they are 
 simply unfortunate. To the wife the husband is 
 worse than dead. She cannot go with him, if for 
 no other reason, yet because her children retain her 
 
310 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 at home. She is hound to love him and no other, 
 yet the helief steals over her that she is quite for- 
 gotten hy him, and that if ever he returns, he will 
 not care for her. To keep her and her children 
 from despair and recklessness is no alight matter ; 
 and under such circumstances the evil done hy 
 transportation is incalculable. Perhaps ere long, 
 that punishment will be annihilated on other grounds. 
 If every local community had to deal with its own 
 criminals at home, (subject only to general princi- 
 ples ruled by Parliament,) we should exert ourselves 
 far more eagerly to root up the causes of crime. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, we must mainly refer our prac- 
 tical evils to the demoralization of the State which 
 the Kestoration of the Stuarts caused. Then began 
 the social corruption, proceeding from the Court of 
 Charles II., which made earnestness in religion to be 
 disloyalty. Then began the estrangement of the 
 commonalty from the Church of the aristocracy : 
 then too the Church and Universities assumed a 
 false position from which they have never recovered. 
 Out -of religious persecutions next rose the well- 
 meant, but false, political axiom of honest Reform- 
 ers and lovers of Freedom, that the State has no 
 other function but to defend Person and Property. 
 At least, by this phrase the moral character of the 
 State was obscured, and the duty of preventing 
 rather than punishing wrong was overlooked. It is 
 a striking illustration how demoralizing was this 
 theory, that the Marriage Ceremony, honestly de- 
 vised in modern times to relieve Dissenters, is so 
 
DUTIES OF THE STATE. 311 
 
 deficient in every element of solemnity as rather to 
 degrade than elevate the union which the State un- 
 doubtedly desired to make sacred. 
 
 After the disastrous neglects of two centuries, no 
 one will now Iij3 ahle to re-unite State and Church : 
 but all who desire to save us from the swamp of 
 materialism and selfishness, from pampered wealth 
 and envious reckless pauperism, from desperate 
 rabbles to be kept down only by armed force, 
 should join (whatever their religious creed) in 
 avowing and maintaining the moral duties, moral 
 rights, and in so far, the real sanctity of the political 
 union, and of the Sovereign as its Head. It is 
 the duty of the State, not only to fine and tax, 
 to flog and kill; but also, and much rather, to 
 shelter the houseless, to strengthen the weak, to 
 teach the ignorant, to reconcile the quarrelling ; to 
 unite its citizens in firm bonds ; to secure that the 
 society shall be cemented by mutual duty, and shall 
 perform the offices of mutual kindness. This 
 is the true SOCIALISM. 
 
 So much have I ventured to say, on the political 
 side of our social state. I believe that the argu- 
 ment would be strengthened, if the Colonies and 
 Ireland were taken in. If indeed our Colonies, as 
 well as all our Counties, had had effective local legis- 
 latures and local administration, London would 
 never have become the overgrown enormity which 
 it now is. It cannot now be destroyed; but to 
 hinder its constant increase, would seem a legitimate 
 object of State-policy. To limit by law the number 
 
312 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of chimneys allowable on a given surface, is an 
 obvious precaution for pure air ; and the larger a 
 town is, the less density of population on any part 
 should be permitted. What avail railroads, if the 
 result of them is to make London more populous ? 
 The great thing to be desired is, to make our pro- 
 vinces more attractive places of residence than Lon- 
 don, by giving high political duties in them to the 
 surrounding gentry. 
 
 And this leads me finally to propose the query, 
 whether the decay of English organization has not 
 in part been occasioned by the strong separation of 
 boroughs and counties. From early times the petty 
 nobility of the country have despised the towns : in 
 the counties you have now too strong a patrician 
 element, in the towns you have a deficiency of it ; 
 and the professional men, bankers and chief mer- 
 chants in the towns lose local patriotism, while try- 
 ing to associate themselves with the county gentry. 
 
 Herein it is an inestimable advantage to us, that 
 the United States have preserved, developed, and 
 improved, the noble institutions which we have 
 allowed to go into decay; and their experience 
 ought to be as a pole star to us. The distinction of 
 town and country is a schism which they have 
 escaped : ought not our wealthy landlords also to 
 have Duty and Honour within the towns, and stand 
 in definite political relations towards the towns- 
 people ? At present we are suffering a paralysis of 
 political action from the armed neutrality between 
 Town and County ; and meanwhile, anarchy con- 
 
EXISTING ANARCHY. 313 
 
 sumes us. Do not misunderstand this word : it 
 means, " absence of government." 
 
 Even if there be no violence, and no ill-will, a 
 crowd of fifty thousand persons who live together on 
 a small area without feeling the relation of citizens, 
 or any moral union by which one directs, protects, 
 aids, or obeys another, are but little more organ- 
 ized than gregarious animals ; and the consequence 
 to be expected is, destitution, vice, misery, and 
 crime. 
 
LECTUBE XIII. 
 
 The Economical Remedies for Pauperism. 
 1. RETAIL BUYING AND SELLING. 
 
 THE last lecture went beyond the proper limits of 
 Economy into the region of Politics. I now return 
 to questions that more immediately concern the or- 
 ganization of labour, especially with an eye to pre- 
 vent those evils which seem to be characteristic of 
 our age. 
 
 There was a propriety in first dwelling on the 
 Political topic ; for it is in every way the more in- 
 fluential. Public arrangements have wonderful 
 power in setting the fashion even for private life; 
 and while they are bad or defective, it is almost be- 
 yond hope that any combination of private effort 
 can be effected, adequate to supply the need. 
 Especially when large and destitute masses of the 
 community have fallen away from all definite rela- 
 tions to other classes that are able to help them, no 
 remedy seems to remain but in the activity of the 
 local public. For Industrial and Practical Educa- 
 tion, in its liberal sense, we must necessarily look 
 to the organized community, if it is to be imparted 
 to those who most urgently need it ; and it must 
 be clear, how exceedingly this would affect all in- 
 dustrial relations. 
 
INDISCRIMINATE MARKETING. 315 
 
 But let us suppose that our anarchy were termi- 
 nated, that a vigorous administration pervaded 
 every locality, and called out the exertions of all 
 our citizens ; that the workers in the lowest rank 
 were well trained, and no part of the community 
 unorganized. It will still remain to ask whether 
 any improvements of a more purely economical 
 kind will he wanted, to fill up what is necessarily 
 wanting in a public system. 
 
 It leads the way to a reply, if we consider a par- 
 ticular case. Every stranger in London is apt to 
 he made disagreeably aware of the extortionate 
 tendencies of cabriolet- drivers ; nor is it difficult to 
 discern what emboldens them. They do not expect 
 to have to drive the same stranger a second time : 
 out of so many drivers, they do not fear to be 
 again recognized. It may be unpleasant to a gen- 
 tleman to pay two shillings more than he ought ; but 
 still more unpleasant to attend at a police office, in 
 order to gain redress. The reputation of the driver 
 for honesty is made valueless by these circum- 
 stances ; present gain is therefore chiefly thought of 
 by a majority. All must see that it is unwise to 
 expose men's honesty to this sort of trial; and we 
 may gather out of this case two maxims: first, that 
 it is a good point in industrial regulations, when an 
 unblemished reputation brings with it a natural 
 pecuniary reward: secondly, that the more our deal- 
 ings are confined to a small number of persons, the 
 more every dealer expects his gains to be affected 
 by his good or bad fame. 
 
 P 2 
 
316 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 To limit men's dealings by law, is a clumsy at- 
 tempt to effect a right object; clumsy, because it 
 sacrifices the end for the means. The result of it 
 equally is, that the dealer finds his custom unaffected 
 by his reputation. Do not then suppose, that any- 
 thing is gained by putting constraint on the course 
 of prudential buying and selling. Our highest aim 
 here may be judged low by a moralist, yet it is such 
 as no statesman can afford to despise, that of 
 making all feel that " Honesty is the best policy"; 
 and with a view to this, " to deal, as far as we are 
 able, with persons whose honorable character we 
 know." 
 
 In contrast to this, a very large part of the shop 
 trade in our great towns consists of sales to un- 
 known customers, whose faces are never likely to 
 be seen again. When this is considered, so far from 
 wondering if there is some trickery and management 
 in the sellers, we may rather wonder at the general 
 honesty. Some wellmeaning persons indeed look 
 with peculiar complacency on this trade, because 
 it conduces to a virtue rare in shopkeepers, politi- 
 cal independence. The intimidation practised on 
 them in many cases is no doubt scandalous and 
 pernicious ; but moral influence must not be con- 
 founded with intimidation. The same state of pub- 
 lic opinion which would dictate to us, as far as 
 might be, to deal habitually with the same parties, 
 would also prohibit and stigmatize any attempt to 
 damage them in trade, because of their political or 
 religious opposition to us. 
 
MORAL ATTACHMENTS IN TRADE. 317 
 
 In a city which counts its strangers hy tens of 
 thousands, there must of necessity be an immense 
 trade destitute of permanent relations. The moral 
 tone of this will more or less depend on that of the 
 community. The general tendency of such a state 
 of things is had ; and although that tendency may 
 be overcome by excellent national institutions and 
 a prevalent good spirit, it is unwise to trust too 
 much to this counteraction. Although strangers 
 must needs buy of those who are unknown, it 
 seems to be far better that the residents of every 
 place should be less indiscriminate. Not that this 
 implies a yielding ourselves up to the prices and 
 goods of one tradesman. I remember a school- 
 master, head of a very large establishment, who 
 always dealt with two butchers, but with two only : 
 in this way each had surely a greater inducement to 
 serve him well, than if he had been served from a 
 vast market where he never bought twice from the 
 same person. 
 
 I presume that those who cling closely to special 
 tradesmen are not so likely to get the very best 
 articles for their money, as those who are always 
 alert and trust their own inspection more than the 
 good faith or judgment of the seller: but where 
 the article is bought for consumption and does not 
 enter into any fabric destined for new sale, some 
 inferiority in it is a very slight evil, not to be 
 counted in comparison to a moral advantage. 
 
318 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 2. BANKRUPTCY OF SHOPKEEPERS. 
 
 I have already hinted how the legal destruction 
 of shop-credits might aid towards closer relations 
 between buyer and seller. I now venture to add, 
 that out of this might arise a more healthy kind of 
 credit than that which is now given by the whole- 
 sale to the retail trade. At present, every shop is 
 stocked either at the expense of the shopkeeper or 
 by goods advanced to him from the manufacturer : 
 yet the sale is quite a lottery. There is every pro- 
 bability, that, even without fault on the part of the 
 retail trader, a certain fraction of the whole number 
 of shops will get insufficient custom. Then, either 
 the shopkeeper suffers a painful loss of capital, or, 
 if the stock have been advanced to him, he becomes 
 bankrupt. I have read somewhere, that the annual 
 bankruptcies in Great Britain are rated at 50 mil- 
 lions sterling. How to verify this, I know not; 
 but undoubtedly they are of fearful amount. They 
 seem to be inevitable, while our system offers such 
 facilities to traders of reckless and gambling tem- 
 per, and while the prudent and honest have so little 
 clue to the caprice of purchasers. 
 
 Now if shopcredits were extinguished, by re- 
 fusing to acknowledge them in courts of justice, 
 if public opinion inclined to more fixedness of deal- 
 ing, if those who had ready money would ad- 
 vance to their tradesmen moderate sums on account, 
 which of course would imply lower prices to them, 
 
PREPAYMENTS BY CUSTOMERS. 319 
 
 a tradesman of good reputation would virtually 
 trade with his customers' money, and would propor- 
 tion ably be safe, since he would know on what cus- 
 tomers he could count. The wholesale dealer would 
 receive from him ready cash, and be in no danger 
 from his bankruptcy. Neither would the customer 
 be in danger; for he could always get back his 
 money in goods, unless his advances had been ex- 
 cessive. Moreover, the wholesale dealer would pre- 
 sently be less willing to part with goods to be sold 
 in retail, except for ready cash ; and a useful dis- 
 couragement would be given to a species of Credit, 
 which, though extremely mischievous, could not at 
 once be legally disowned, without still more danger- 
 ous results. 
 
 The commercial part of our nation is quite alive 
 to the expense entailed by all risk. Insurance en- 
 ters all prices as one element, and all are aware that 
 a chief advantage of cashprices is in avoiding the 
 risk of bad. debts. To prepayment we have become 
 accustomed, both in the postage of letters and in 
 travelling by rail ; in all Colleges* and Proprietary 
 Schools it is insisted on ; and if only some public 
 event were to give an impetus, I see nothing to 
 hinder a great extension of the same principle. 
 Possibly there may be some one trade in which it 
 might be begun with advantage. Most persons who 
 buy books deal principally with one bookseller ; I 
 
 * The old Universities take it in the form of Caution Money, 
 which is deposited with the Bursar of the College. 
 
320 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 imagine also that most who drink wine deal with 
 one wine merchant. If some hookseller or some 
 wine merchant, under peculiar circumstances, could 
 publicly invite and induce his ordinary customers 
 to advance on account three quarters of what they 
 habitually spend on his goods, offering a discount 
 which was felt to be liberal, the success of one 
 such attempt might go far to improve the whole 
 trade ; and what succeeds in one trade is gradually 
 imitated in others. 
 
 3. RELATIONS OF MASTERS AND WORKMEN. 
 
 For national prosperity it does not suffice that 
 there be abundance : this abundance must also be 
 well distributed. Families must not only not be 
 exposed to want; they must be raised above the 
 daily fear of want: else they become habitually 
 reckless; in fact, this recklessness is then a virtue. 
 The great evil against which Society ought here to 
 make war, is, the hand-and-mouth system, which 
 makes man as thoughtless concerning the future as 
 a beast, and in fact prepares the mass of men to 
 ravin like beasts when they miss their food. The 
 security for their sustenance which we desire may 
 be twofold ; first, from every one having a store in 
 reserve ; or secondly, from all being so knit toge- 
 ther with others, that the destitute are aware on 
 whom they have a natural claim. The former, we 
 suppose, is the better ; but it seems, it is a farther 
 stage which can only be attained by means of the 
 
JEALOUSY IN WORKMEN. 321 
 
 latter. If once the poorer form lasting unions 
 with the richer, they may hope to be raised above 
 want themselves. 
 
 Philanthropy is fashionable at present: so much 
 the better. It is one mark of increased national 
 sensibility. But the cheapest kind of philanthropy 
 is that which vents itself in invective against hard- 
 hearted employers of labour, as though it were 
 their fault that labourers are indigent or reckless. 
 Many wealthy manufacturers are themselves sprung 
 from the ranks of workmen : from such masters it 
 would be highly unreasonable to expect enlarged 
 social views ; the fact of their own rise generally 
 satisfies them, that the order which they have left is 
 not so depressed by economic causes as those who 
 hear of it from a distance imagine. I must indeed 
 avow it as my own strong impression, that the 
 deepest deficiency in the operatives of our great 
 towns is a moral one, consisting in an extravagant 
 susceptibility to the opinion of their own order, or 
 an unreasonable suspicion of even the best masters. 
 
 I lately heard the -case of a letter-printer, now 
 deceased, who used to employ in his trade the 
 savings of his workmen with mutual advantage. 
 At one time, he had thus in his hands as much 
 as a thousand pounds, the property of one of the 
 workmen. A master manufacturer at Manchester 
 assured me, that he would gladly employ in his 
 business any sums which his men would entrust 
 him with ; but that it was out of the question, al- 
 though personally he was on excellent terms with 
 
 p 3 
 
322 POLITICAL ECONOMY* 
 
 them. To invest money in their master's business, 
 would be binding themselves to his interests and 
 separating themselves proportionably from that of 
 their own order. Such a step might even expose 
 them to resentment, and at any rate their party 
 feeling was too alive. They had an indefinable 
 suspicion that the master would be able to take 
 advantage of it. Many of them perhaps did not 
 like the master to know how rich they were. If 
 they could set up a business among themselves, 
 with their own capital, this would flatter their 
 pride ; but to combine with the master was so un- 
 palatable a thought, that they preferred to receive 
 at the Savings' Bank a smaller percentage than he 
 would give them, or else to contribute their money 
 (in large measure to be wasted) at Benefit Clubs, or 
 finally to consume it in immediate enjoyment. 
 
 All the information which I have been able to 
 gather, converges to the same conclusion; that the 
 operatives have a decided repugnance to the only 
 thing which has a reasonable chance of doing them 
 good collectively, viz., a closer union between 
 themselves and their master. If this be the case, 
 they must wait and suffer, until their mind is 
 changed, or until a new generation rises, with a 
 better mind, or until they can make a republican 
 system, whose director is only their hired agent, 
 compete in energy and judgment with one which 
 is conducted by a capitalist who has so much more 
 to gain or lose. 
 
 Prudent masters do, for their own sake, endea- 
 
MUTUALITY DESIRABLE. 323 
 
 vour to keep their men together, and anxiously 
 make work for them even in slack times that they 
 may not lose their good hands. In so far, without 
 any definite contract, they act on the principle of 
 keeping up a permanent union, and fully under- 
 stand its advantage. So too in every branch of 
 business established houses pay respect to their old 
 servants ; in fact, some have counted these as one 
 of the burdens which put the old firms at disadvan- 
 tage in comparison with those that are rising. Yet 
 T cannot think that it is the same thing to inferiors, 
 whether they are united to their superiors by a posi- 
 tive right, such as the moral sense of the commu- 
 nity will interpret and enforce, or only during the 
 pleasure of the superior. In the familiar case of 
 marriage we see how monstrous is the fallacy of 
 underrating the importance of legal rights merely 
 because moral feeling supplies the deficiency. We 
 all understand, that it is not enough for a woman 
 not to be deserted and neglected by her husband ; 
 for her honorable and just position it is essential 
 that he should not be able with impunity so to act. 
 Unless she is secured not only from abandonment, 
 but from the fear of it, she is exposed to suspicions 
 and alarms, and is driven in self-defence to study 
 her separate interests. Of course no other union 
 can compete with this in closeness ; but the princi- 
 ples which it so clearly brings out are true in every 
 part of human nature. Kind masters of slaves are 
 apt to flatter themselves that slavery loses its de- 
 grading power because they are kind; not seeing 
 
324 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 that if subjection to the will of a fellowman is to 
 be liberal and honourable, his reciprocal duties to 
 his inferiors must be as loudly proclaimed and as 
 stringently enforced as theirs to him. We do not 
 want kind slaveowners, nor kind despots, but loy- 
 alty and freedom : so too, we cannot be satisfied 
 with arrangements which keep inferiors unduly in 
 the power of a superior, and render the exercise of 
 a harsh and arbitrary caprice possible. Whether 
 the relation be that of master and servant, or of 
 principal and foreman, or of banker and clerk, 
 whenever their reciprocal services and trial are such 
 that each feels in conscience that he ought not to 
 abandon the other except in consequence of some 
 moral change, there is an evident propriety in some 
 public mode of mutual recognition which would 
 make the indulgence of caprice disreputable. 
 
 4. LAW OF COMMANDITE. 
 
 Just now, many persons are anxious to see the 
 law of Commandite (as the French call it) intro- 
 duced into England. Mr. Carey and Mr. J. S. 
 Mill have done valuable service in directing public 
 attention to this, and we may perhaps hope ere 
 long to see it adopted. It consists in recognizing 
 " limited responsibility in sleeping partners." At 
 present, if any one becomes a sleeping partner in a 
 mercantile house, he is liable to make good with his 
 whole property the debts of the firm, as happened 
 to Sir Walter Scott when the Ballantynes failed. 
 
USES OF COMMANDITE. 325 
 
 And our law regards every one as a partner, who 
 agrees to be remunerated in proportion to the suc- 
 cess of the concern. Thus if I lend a tradesman 
 100, and agree to receive 5 a year as interest, I 
 am not a partner ; nay, if he fails, I come in as a 
 creditor for my share of his property. But if T 
 lend the 100, on the more liberal understanding 
 that he shall pay me more or less according as he is 
 able, then the law judges me to be answerable for 
 all his debts ! This monstrosity is justified, by say- 
 ing that it is necessary for the protection of cre- 
 ditors ; but in fact, it is worse for creditors, since it 
 hinders people from lending to tradesmen except 
 for fixed interest. It thus converts into a creditor 
 the man who else would have been a sleeping part- 
 ner, and probably swells the number of bankrupt- 
 cies by forcing those to accept stock on credit who 
 could have got ready capital on the principle 
 of Commandite. All managing partners, in the 
 French law, are liable with their whole property for 
 the debts of the house, and the sleeping partners 
 must of course lose their entire stake before the 
 creditors can lose anything. 
 
 In a moral point of view the law of Commandite 
 would be of great value in England. It would 
 enable richer men to aid deserving tradesmen, with 
 no sacrifice to themselves, and poorer men to em- 
 ploy their savings to advantage, in the business of 
 the richer. Altogether, its tendency would be to 
 cement opposite orders. At this moment there are 
 master tradesmen in London, who would follow the 
 
326 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 example begun in Paris, of paying their men's 
 wages in some proportion to their own profits: then 
 every man would have something to gain by his 
 master's success and would work zealously as for 
 himself. But this is now impossible, because the 
 law will instantly count all the men partners, will 
 hold them responsible for the master's debts, and 
 possibly give them- far too great power over his 
 proceedings. Justice, as well as expediency, ur- 
 gently demands the overthrow of this arbitrary* 
 rule, and the recognition of the principle of Com- 
 niandite. If the operatives in our manufactories 
 could be induced to invest their money in their 
 master's business, this would be by far the best 
 form of investment ; for it would give them a direct 
 interest in the success of the concern, and a sym- 
 pathy with its losses. But if they are to remain in 
 their present suspicious state of mind, or such 
 slaves to their fellows that they dare not unite with 
 a master, the law of Commandite will be a dead 
 letter to them when adopted. 
 
 For workmen and capitalist to have one interest, 
 would of course terminate the vexatious strikes, 
 which have been often entered into by workmen 
 simply because they are commanded by their club. 
 
 * The lawyers settle everything here, by the maxim, that " who. 
 ever profits by the success of a trade, must suffer by its failure"; 
 therefore, if I lend 100 with the chance of getting from nothing up 
 to ten or twelve pounds, I must be liable to forfeit 10,000, if I 
 have so much ! Surely, if a tradesman is prosperous enough to pro- 
 mise me positively 12 per cent, for my money, I " profit by his suc- 
 cess " as truly as if his promise be contingent. 
 
LONG CONTRACTS WITH WORKMEN. 327 
 
 A sufficient reason for them sometimes is, that they 
 know the master to have contracted to deliver goods 
 on a certain day: this makes them believe that he 
 will he forced to submit, if they seize the opportu- 
 nity of striking for higher wages. Such injurious 
 proceedings ought to excite the masters to inquire, 
 whether there is not some way of inducing the best 
 men to enter into engagements for a longer series 
 of time; which might be called Labour-leases. 
 The arrangement would be highly desirable for the 
 men, if it be true that they have at present any- 
 thing to complain of. I hear of two objections to 
 it from the masters ; first, that the workmen who 
 are really good and to be depended on, (with whom 
 alone the masters would choose to make such a 
 contract,) can at present always command employ- 
 ment, and feel themselves so firm and so independ- 
 ent, that they could not be induced to tie them- 
 selves to a master : secondly, that there are no 
 tribunals to settle speedily and satisfactorily petty 
 quarrels which would arise out of the interpretation 
 of contracts. If the former objection is solid, the 
 workmen less and less deserve or need patronage ; 
 for they are strong enough to aid themselves. The 
 latter objection is a disgrace to our institutions. 
 
 It is impossible to wonder that enlightened mas- 
 ters who have aimed to benefit their workmen, are 
 discouraged and even disgusted when they find the 
 men to own a closer allegiance to an irresponsible 
 oligarchy which domineers in the club, than to the 
 superior who desires to join their interests with his 
 
328 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 own. Such masters retire from the effort as vain, 
 saying that the men desire to be free to make war 
 upon them, as essential to their notion of independ- 
 ence. The club probahly will always do its utmost 
 to hinder a union which would destroy the import- 
 ance of its factious members ; so, it seems, nothing 
 can be done but to wait. 
 
 5. SAVINGS' BANKS. 
 
 At present nothing so keeps down our lowest 
 labourers as the want of investments for their 
 savings. To employ these, the wellmeant institu- 
 tion of Savings' Banks has been devised ; which in 
 particular cases may do some good, but must neces- 
 sarily prove less efficient in proportion as the scale 
 of operation enlarges. My inquiry is not, whether 
 individuals should use it, in the defect of anything 
 better : perhaps they ought ; but my inquiry is, 
 whether the Government should establish and sup- 
 port the system. The first question is ; Whence is 
 the means of paying interest to be got, except by 
 taxing the people ? The answer which will be 
 given, is, that " the money paid into the Savings' 
 Banks may be invested in purchasing shares in the 
 National Debt; consequently, if that Debt be esti- 
 mated at 750 millions, no difficulty is encountered 
 as long as the total accumulated in the Savings' 
 Banks is less than this sum. The Government does 
 but pay to the depositors the yearly interest which 
 otherwise some other parties would have received." 
 
EXPENSE OF SAVINGS' BANKS. 329 
 
 It is true that the deposits of the Banks are paid 
 over to the Commissioners for reducing the Debt : 
 and as long as the sum is under 100 millions, the 
 public will perhaps remain blind to the fact, that 
 this is a powerful agent for artificially buoying up 
 the value of the government securities, and riveting 
 this noxious system more firmly than ever on the 
 nation. If, without Savings' Banks, the natural 
 price of Consols were at 90, (which means, that 
 90 is to be paid for a nominal 100 of "stock" 
 which entitles the holder to 3 a year,) the bringing 
 in of Savings' Banks with a capital of 30 millions 
 which must be invested in Consols, will of course 
 force up their price. But since Parliament has 
 agreed to allow to these Banks 3 16s. per cent, 
 yearly, the State sustains a loss if the Commis- 
 sioners for reducing the Debt invest the money of 
 the Banks in Consols and pay more than 79 : for if 
 79 receives 3 as interest, this is very nearly at 
 the rate of 3 16s. for 100. Possibly other 
 " stock" is bought a little cheaper than Consols. 
 I do not sufficiently understand some of the tech- 
 nical statements made on the subject, to ven- 
 ture to say more in detail. But in a State which 
 is already so hopelessly in Debt that it will make 
 no vigorous effort for relief, to plunge itself into a 
 voluntary guarantee of 3 16s. per cent, for what- 
 ever sums the industrious classes may choose to 
 entrust it with, seems like an infatuation. What 
 else is it, but to volunteer to become borrower of 
 
330 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 any number of additional millions, with the farther 
 embarrassment of being liable to pay to the depo- 
 sitors any sums at call ? If a panic arose, which 
 caused a run on these banks, the G-ovemment must 
 of necessity refuse payment. 
 
 From forty to sixty years ago a system was in 
 operation, which was called the " Sinking Fund," 
 intended to lessen the National Debt. This was at 
 last destroyed by Parliament, on finding that it had 
 simply caused a new loss of eleven millions ster- 
 ling. I cannot but feel a misgiving as to the mo- 
 dern " Commissioners for reducing the National 
 Debt," to whom the money of the Savings' Banks 
 is entrusted. Of course they do as they are bid; 
 that is not the point: but possibly when this matter 
 some years hence is closely looked into, it may 
 appear, that the Savings' Banks have cost the 
 nation a second eleven millions. 
 
 The whole idea is preposterous and ruinous, of 
 the State finding investments for individuals. It is 
 an idea which never could have been conceived, 
 except where the vastness of Centralization and the 
 entanglement of an artificial system of revenue 
 darkens men's view of natural tendencies. People 
 seem to forget that the annual taxes must be paid 
 out of annual skill and industry, and that Parlia- 
 ment has no fertile farm where sovereigns will grow 
 into guineas of themselves. If a law of Com- 
 mandite were passed, I cannot but think it would 
 be a most wholesome thing to enact, that within five 
 
WORKMEN SHOULD BE CAPITALISTS. 331 
 
 years' time the whole money of the Savings' Banks 
 be repaid to the depositors, and the system totally 
 destroyed. 
 
 If our operatives were once accustomed to invest 
 their savings in their master's trade, nay, or even 
 in other trades hy the side of it, there is no reason 
 why every one who was moral and prudent and 
 enjoyed good health should not by the age of 30 be 
 a little capitalist. And all wellbeing tends to its 
 own increase : better education, better habits, more 
 knowledge, sounder sense, would all grow together. 
 Moreover, when the workmen began to receive 
 visible gains from capital, they would rapidly leave 
 off their grudge against capitalists, and the feud 
 of the orders would come to an end. The clubs 
 might survive, but be directed to far better ends, 
 especially if they elected rich men for their honorary 
 treasurers, and admitted all persons of the same 
 locality, without reference to trade or station. But 
 in all these matters they must fight their own 
 battle, and win their own happiness. They repu- 
 diate advice as dictation; other orders therefore 
 must be satisfied with securing that there be nothing 
 in the public enactments to perpetuate the wilfulness 
 and misery of this class. 
 
 6. AGRICULTURIST RELATIONS. 
 
 But I turn to the agricultural population, whose 
 case is far more difficult, because they depend on 
 the farmers, and the farmers have been persecuted 
 
332 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by a series of vicious enactments, the ill effects of 
 which are almost at their maximum. The Game 
 Laws and the Law of Distraint, the system of 
 Tenants at Will, unwise and unequitable Covenants 
 in leases, Tithes (now commuted), Corn Laws often 
 changed and every time to the farmer's mischief, 
 weigh heavily even on skilful tenants. It is difficult 
 to hope for a permanent improvement in the state of 
 the labourers, until that of the farmers is more 
 established. 
 
 But the very same economic evils meet us in the 
 country, as in the towns, viz., the uncertainty of 
 men's position. In many counties the farmers are 
 tenants at will, in very few have they leases of suf- 
 ficient length. So too the labourers are hired by the 
 week, and in no case have any interest in the crop. 
 Seventy years ago most of the unmarried farm-ser- 
 vants lodged in the farmer's house and ate at his 
 table, and they were hired, I believe, by the half 
 year. The master and servant often worked toge- 
 ther, and young men not finding themselves home- 
 less, did not marry so improvidently. A far stronger 
 chasm has been introduced between the farmer and 
 the labourer, than existed when farms were smaller, 
 and in the absence of small farms and small free- 
 holds it becomes practically impossible for a labourer 
 ever to rise into a higher position or even to secure 
 himself in his own. 
 
 The Economic remedies applicable to such a 
 state seem to resolve themselves into two classes ; 
 those which enable the labourer to become a little 
 
COTTIER POPULATIONS. 333 
 
 freeholder, and those which give him associated 
 rights, only to be forfeited by misconduct. I must 
 speak of the two separately. 
 
 a. FREEHOLDS. 
 
 When we see a people of cottiers and very small 
 farmers, like the Irish, struggling on in alternate 
 idleness and hard work, notoriously industrious 
 whenever they are likely to reap the reward them- 
 selves, I cannot understand how any one can 
 doubt that it would be a great elevation to these 
 men to be converted into freeholders. It is absurd 
 to dilate on the inconveniences of very small free- 
 holds : the evils of them all exist already in the 
 most exaggerated form, without any way of escape, 
 except death or emigration. For such a people 
 there is but one natural step upward, to become 
 freeholders. The most direct mode of effecting 
 this, if the case be urgent, is a clear public right ; 
 viz., to enact, as was done in Prussia and in Hungary, 
 that the actual holders shall retain their places, 
 subject only to a moderate quitrent. As to old 
 arrears, which are generally caused by the rents 
 being too high, it would be cheaper to pay them 
 once for all out of the imperial treasury, than be at 
 the expense of keeping up armies in Ireland. But 
 if the case is less urgent, and such a measure is 
 thought extreme, the next in stringency (and one 
 which at any rate ought in my judgment to be en- 
 forced in that country) is, to command every land- 
 holder to sell to every cottier on the estate who 
 
334 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 desires it, land, not more than (I will say) two acres ; 
 the price being set and a reasonable site adjudged 
 by a free jury. The testimony of the neighbours 
 should suffice to prove it to be freehold, and no 
 lawyer's writ should be allowed to intrude. 
 
 Of course such an enactment would bring no 
 immediate relief to the poorest. But many who 
 now hide their money would then suddenly be 
 found able to buy, and the nation would gain a 
 large addition to its independent classes. A little 
 yeomanry would in a few years be formed; and 
 these would have more sympathy with the poor 
 around than the landlords can have. The notorious 
 right of purchase, and the example of the yeomen 
 would stimulate the poorest to exertion, in hope of 
 emulating them. From such a measure I could 
 hope the gradual tranquillizing of Ireland, and a 
 consequent flowing in of English capital. To make 
 one step onward would be something for such a 
 country, and it is not requisite to prove that a 
 system of small freeholds is of all the very best. 
 
 In any case, for England as well as Ireland, it 
 is an obvious duty to the poor to remove all the 
 artficial impediments to the sale of land. These 
 consist principally in the expense of legal deeds 
 or instruments of conveyance, and uncertainties of 
 title. As it is in great measure lawyers who have 
 tied the knot, so lawyers must aid us in untying it. 
 The Stamp Tax indeed may be modified; but I 
 believe the great thing needed is to return to a less 
 artificial system of law: to allow titles to rest 
 
OLD ENGLISH YEOMANRY. 335 
 
 safely on notorious possession for sixty years, and 
 accept the testimony of neighbours as sufficient 
 evidence of sale, exploding everything technical 
 and unintelligible to men of ordinary good sense. 
 We do not assert that to have many small free- 
 holds is desirable for a nation. My own belief is, 
 that it would be very evil to have a multitude of 
 them together, unmixed with other elements. But 
 we ought to let them have fair play, and not extir- 
 pate them by heavy fines. Let it be further ob- 
 served, that by "small freeholds" something dif- 
 ferent would be meant in England and in Ireland. 
 The Cumberland farmer who cultivated his own 
 farm, had perhaps from 50 to 150 acres. This 
 would have a very different economic result from a 
 freehold of 2 or 3 acres. On a Cumberland farm 
 cattle can be kept and the soil improved as in Bel- 
 gium ; nor has any one a right to say that the 
 cultivation would not be as perfect as in the 
 largest farms. If it will be in some sense less 
 economic, that is a thing to be judged of by trial. 
 The market itself must decide, not the governing 
 power. 
 
 Some have asked, Why have the Cumberland 
 " statesmen " to so great an extent died out? and 
 indeed it would be well to ascertain why all over 
 England the yeomanry have been so exterminated. 
 There are those, with whom the small number of 
 the freeholders of England is a favourite topic for 
 attacking the aristocracy and the whole social 
 system : yet surely, whatever the sins of the aris- 
 
336 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tocracy and of the law, it cannot be said that there 
 is any want of protection to freeholders, or that 
 they have in the last 150 years been troubled by ex- 
 ceptive taxation. The indirect taxation may have 
 made freeholders less able to purchase foreign 
 luxuries, but it has surely had no tendency to oust 
 them from their property. They can only have 
 been ejected by their own will or by their own 
 vices. Many, I have heard, kept up the old- 
 fashioned drunkenness, in common with other 
 habits of a past century, longer than the rest of 
 the community ; and this has sensibly aided in 
 their ruin. Others have been attracted by the 
 more splendid gains of trade, to desire to sell their 
 land. A farmer has only a steady business, and is 
 apt to envy the rapidly growing riches of a trader, 
 without being able to value his occasional great 
 losses. The same development of trade so en- 
 riched many individuals, as to excite a great covet- 
 ing after land ; and so many wealthy persons have 
 been found to offer large prices to the little free- 
 holders, that they have not been able to resist the 
 bait. They have converted their land into moneyed 
 capital, and gone to swell the ranks of traders. 
 At any rate, they have not been plundered ; and if 
 there has been a fault it is their own. This past 
 history however implies, that until there is a great 
 change of public sentiment, the class of yeomen is 
 not likely to be restored in England. Nothing 
 would more aid towards it, than a reinvigorating of 
 the Shire-motes and Hundred-motes, which would 
 
METAYER CULTURE IN IRELAND. 837 
 
 make the yeomanry feel themselves to be citizens 
 with public responsibility. 
 
 0. METAYER CULTURE. 
 
 But I must now briefly notice the other topic ; 
 that of imparting to the peasants associated 
 rights. There are some rights, which in every cir- 
 cumstance they ought to have, as members of a 
 village ; but from my narrow limits I pass by these, 
 as half-political. Assuming however that the most 
 economic cultivation is found to be that of a farm 
 large enough to need peasant labour, or at any rate, 
 that this is a system which has taken hold, and can- 
 not be exterminated, the question is, how will it 
 attain its best state ? For this end, the labourer 
 surely ought to have an interest in making the crop 
 as good as possible, and ought not to fear dis- 
 missal from any other cause than his own bad 
 conduct. The metayer system of Italy at once 
 suggests itself; but it will be at disadvantage here, 
 because our farmer is liable to heavy and increasing 
 rent. If his rent were converted into a fixed and 
 very small quit rent, such as is the government tax 
 on the Continent, then there would be much more* 
 
 * No one can read such addresses as those of the Essex Farmers, 
 without seeing, that, whatever Economists may say, English farm rent 
 is not always paid out of " surplus." The farmers look on rent as 
 something necessary, and when hard pressed, talk first of lowering 
 wages. Rents are now twice or three times what they were a 
 century ago, for which increase the landlords have generally given 
 nothing. 
 
 Q 
 
338 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to be divided between him and the labourers : but 
 while the landlord can extract out of the farmer all 
 that competition will yield, the effect is, to reduce 
 all our soils to the level of the worst, and decree 
 that the whole agricultural population shall be no 
 better off on good soil than on the most barren 
 which is cultivated. This unnatural and unjust 
 state of things exceedingly increases the difficulty 
 of our problem. 
 
 Lord Wallscourt in Ireland has introduced on his 
 estates a system fundamentally identical with that 
 of the m6tayer, which he represents as highly suc- 
 cessful, although it does not appear whether he 
 advances capital; which might seem essential to its 
 success. He wrote in 1846: "I have tried my 
 plan for 17 years and have found it to answer much 
 beyond my hopes ; inasmuch as it completely iden- 
 tifies the workmen with the success of the farm, 
 besides giving me full liberty to travel on the Con- 
 tinent for a year 'at a time; and on my return I 
 have always found that the farm had prospered." 
 Lord Wallscourt's practice is, to reckon a labourer 
 to have invested 100 in his farm for every 5 a 
 year which he receives as wages. This tariff could 
 only be endurable where wages are, as in Ireland, 
 exceedingly low ; there is no intrinsic propriety in 
 the 5 per cent. The important principle is, that 
 the labourer's remuneration is not wholly in money, 
 but partly depends on the sale of the crop; and 
 this involves that he is engaged by the year. Lord 
 Wallscourt's language clearly implies that there is 
 
METAYERS IN ENGLAND ? 839 
 
 no farmer between him and the peasants ; if so, his 
 position is closely similar to that of the metayer 
 landlord; and if he has not advanced capital, he 
 has applied the scheme to disadvantage, as far as 
 the cultivators are concerned. Indeed, no reason 
 is apparent, why it should not he successful to an 
 English farmer, who of course would then advance 
 less capital than now. Take especially the case of 
 one who is not rich ; who cannot afford the heavy 
 drain of wages for repeated hoeings and other im- 
 portant applications of labour. If he were to en- 
 gage with his men for small ordinary wages, but 
 gave to divide among them (I will say) one-twen- 
 tieth of the produce, they would make their 
 children turn out and help, and would zealously 
 employ their own odd minutes to use the hoe, or to 
 put in manure, or whatever else would increase the 
 yield; or again, to tend the cattle and otherwise 
 cherish the farm. Such voluntary exertions would 
 in most circumstances add more than one-twentieth 
 to the value in selling. At the present moment our 
 farmers are sorely pressed in paying money-wages : 
 even those who are rich are shrinking at the risk. 
 Now therefore, peculiarly, might seem to be the time 
 for attempting such a compromise, which the pea- 
 sants would probably accept lest they be forced to 
 submit to lower wages without the accompanying 
 boon. If any farmer attempted it, even without a 
 law of Commandite, it is hard to believe that incon- 
 veniences from this source would be allowed to vex 
 him or the peasants. 
 
340 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 I have said nearly all that I see available to our 
 difficulties. Public opinion is slow and inflexible, 
 peculiarly among agriculturists; nor have I any 
 expectations of speedy improvement. Indeed, no 
 part of the English people has much power of 
 imagination, or is able to learn new truth, except in 
 connection with public events and measures. The 
 public are now converted to the doctrine of free 
 importation of food : it had long and long before 
 been argumentatively demonstrated ; yet they would 
 have remained unconvinced for another century, 
 had not hostile tariffs persecuted our manufacturers 
 and the potato-rot terrified our statesmen. Perhaps 
 until the easy classes are alarmed, they will not 
 look deeply into our social state. They will be 
 satisfied to see in the streets young girls trying to 
 sell single nosegays or lucifer-boxes or pincushions. 
 nay, acting as streetsweepers ; and to hear that 
 thousands of men rise every morning in London, 
 not knowing whence they are to be fed till night. 
 Until some dreadful explosion takes place, such as 
 Paris has more than once of late exhibited, few of 
 us understand the phrase now familiar to French 
 statistics, the dangerous classes. Kickbuming in 
 England, as streetburning in Constantinople, is the 
 only language by which our peasants tell their dis- 
 satisfaction : for there is no folkmote to listen to 
 them. 
 
 Yet it is not useless, when many ardent persons 
 are preaching a Procrustean system which they call 
 Socialism, it is not useless to point out other courses 
 
FREEMEN MUST HELP THEMSELVES. 341 
 
 by which an amelioration of our state may be 
 hoped : for if we only acknowledge and lament evil, 
 and from caution or from a desire " not to commit 
 oneself" we refrain from pointing to remedies, those 
 who are bold and confident in their promises hurry 
 off sensitive minds into their cause however un- 
 sound. 
 
 Finally, I beg you to understand, that I regard 
 a Parliamentary remedy for Pauperism as absurd as 
 a royal road to learning. To our Parliament one 
 has nearly to say, what Demosthenes said to the 
 Athenians : " Make no more laws, for you have too 
 many; but rescind many of those which exist." 
 The greatest and best Acts done in the last century, 
 are mere repeals of unreasonable or unrighteous 
 Statutes. Such repeals are still urgently needed, to 
 restore Englishmen the rights which they once had : 
 after this, each county and each town, each class of 
 industrial organization, must fight with and con- 
 quer its own special difficulties. Indeed concerning 
 the specialities of any trade, I should feel it absurd 
 to speak confidently. All that I venture to assert 
 consists in great moral principles, such as: that 
 those who are associated in labour ought to have 
 moral union and joint interest, as permanent as 
 possible, and that they should be able to exact their 
 own remedies within their own sphere, instead of 
 waiting on a distant, slow, unversatile centralization. 
 Whether anything which I have thrown out in 
 detail, will anywhere prove feasible, agriculturists 
 
342 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and manufacturers must themselves find out : but if 
 they persist in crying to Parliament to increase 
 their gains, they will (as always hitherto) reap dis- 
 appointment and loss, and if their prayers are heard, 
 sow the seeds of infinite evils. 
 
 G. Woodfall and Son, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London. 
 
LONDON, 142, STRAND, 
 April 15^, 1851. 
 
 A LIST 
 
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 LECTUBES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. By FRANCIS 
 
 WILLIAM NEWMAN, Author of the " History of the Hebrew Monarchy," 
 " The Soul," " Phases of Faith," &c. Post 8vo, cloth. In the Press. 
 
 CHEISTIAN ASPECTS OF FAITH AND DUTY. IMS- 
 
 courses by JOHN JAMES TAYLER, B.A. Post 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 THE CEEED OF CHEISTENDOM ; Its Foundations and 
 Superstructure. By WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG. 8vo, cloth, 10*. 6d. 
 
 Contents. Inspiration of the Scriptures Authorship and Authority of 
 the Pentateuch and the Old Testament Canon generally The Prophecies 
 Theism of the Jews Impure and Progressive Origin of the Gospels 
 Fidelity of the Gospel History The Limits of Apostolic Wisdom and 
 Authority Miracles Resurrection of Jesus Is Christianity a revealed 
 Religion ? Christian Eclecticism The Great Enigma. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE COTTON AND C'OMMRCE OF INDIA considered 
 
 in relation to the Interests of Great Britain ; with Remarks on Railway 
 Conminnu'tition in the Bombay Presidency. By JOHN CHAPMAN, 
 Founder and late Manager of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway 
 Company. 8vo, cloth, 12s. 
 
 " Promises to be one of the most useful 
 In -ati-os that have been furnished on this 
 important subject ..... It is distin- 
 guished by a close and logical style, coupled 
 with an accuracy of detail which will, in a 
 great measure, render it a text-book." 
 Time*, .Jan. , 1851. 
 
 " This book will go far to forestall the 
 inquiries to be instituted by Mr. Alexander 
 Mackay for the Manchester Chamber of 
 Commerce. . . . Mr. Chapman examines 
 the subject in detail and gives ample rea- 
 sons for his deductions. ... His work is 
 marked, too, by sound good sense, akin to 
 the highest wisdom of the statesman. The 
 author has given to the public the most 
 complete book we have for some time met 
 with on any subject." Economist, 
 
 Mr. Chapman's great practical know- 
 e and experience of the subjects upon 
 which he treats has enabled him to col- 
 lect an amount of information, founded 
 upon facts, such as we believe has never 
 before been laid before the public. The all- 
 important questions of supply, production, 
 and prices of cotton in India, as well as the 
 commercial and financial questions con- 
 nected with it, are most ably treated." 
 Morning Chronicle. 
 
 " Written by an intelligent, painstaking, 
 and well-informed gentleman ...... 
 
 Nothing can be more correct than his 
 
 ledge 
 which 
 
 views, so far as they extend, his survey 
 and character of districts, his conclusions 
 as to the supply the earth can yield, and 
 his assertion that the cost of transit is with 
 Indian cotton the first and ruling element 
 of price." Daily News. 
 
 " Mr. Chapman's work is only appreci- 
 able in the fulness of its value and merits 
 by those who are interested in one or other 
 branch of his subject. Full of data for 
 reasoning, replete with facts to which the 
 most implicit credit may be attached, and 
 free from any political bias, the volume is 
 that rara, if not incognita ar/.s, a truth- 
 ful blue book, a volume of statistics not 
 cooked up to meet a theory or defend a 
 practice." Britannia. 
 
 " A most valuable volume." Home 
 News. 
 
 " The arrangement is clear, and the 
 treatment of the subject in all cases mas- 
 terly." Indian News. 
 
 " An extremely valuable work, and will, 
 we have no doubt, claim a large share of 
 public attention from the large amount of 
 information it contains, and the careful con- 
 scientious manner in which the investiga- 
 tion of the subject has been conducted." 
 Anti-Slarery Reporter. 
 
 "This is a comprehensive, practical, 
 careful, and temperate investigation," &c. 
 Indian Mail. 
 
 THE BISHOP'S WIFE : A Tale of the Papacy. Translated from 
 the German of LEOPOLD SCHEFER. With a Historical Notice of the 
 Life and Times of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), to which it relates. 
 By Mrs. J. R. STODART. Fcap. 8vo, 4s. 
 
 " To restore the so-called pur it </ and 
 extend the power of the Church was the 
 great object of Hildebrand's long and active 
 life, and one of the means he employed 
 was to enforce the celibacy of the Clergy, 
 and compel those who were married (of 
 whom at that time there were many) to 
 repudiate their wives, and disgrace them 
 and their offspring. On an incident sup- 
 
 posed to have 
 his decree, mingl 
 
 j nated from enforcing 
 I with an incident in the 
 
 Pope's life, Leopold Schefer has founded 
 
 the present tale. 
 
 Though it might 
 
 have been acceptable at all times as an 
 Historical Novel, referring to a very inte- 
 resting period in the progress of society, 
 and to a very interestinc event of that 
 period, it is doubly acceptable now? and 
 will have a wide circulation." Economist. 
 " This able and elegant translation of a 
 popular German work is apt to the times. 
 ... It has stirring and even thrilling 
 
 incidents; and of more than equal value 
 with the book itself, is Mrs. Stodart's own 
 full and well-written ' Historical Notice ' 
 of the times and events to which it relates." 
 Scotsman. 
 
 " A tale of great temporary interest." 
 North British Mail. 
 
 " There is a peculiar vividness about the 
 manner in which the topographical features 
 of Rome are preserved ; and to those who 
 are familiar with the localities, a perusal 
 of the ' Bishop's Wife' will be almost like 
 a fresh visit to the City of the Seven Hills. 
 . . . . The historical dissertation pos- 
 sesses an interest far beyond that which 
 frequently belongs to works of much greater 
 pretensions; and as it has reference to a 
 period anterior to that which is treated by 
 Ranke, it will probably have the additional 
 charm of freshness to many readers." 
 Edinburgh Witness, 
 
 A HISTOEICAL ANALYSIS OF CHRISTIAN CIVILI- 
 
 ZATION. By L. RAYMOND DE VERICOUR. In 1 vol. post 8vo, cloth, 
 price 10s. Gd. 
 
 "It is succinct, clearly -written, and I "A useful book of historical reference, 
 may be called a manual of European his- being well filled with facts and dates." 
 tory." Economist. \ Westminster Itecietv. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 SOCIAL STATICS ; or, the Conditions essential to Human Happi- 
 ness Specified, and the First of them Developed. By HERBERT SPEN- 
 8vo, cloth, 125. 
 
 the rights of men in society. The book will 
 mark an epoch in the literature of scientific 
 morality." Economist. 
 
 " We remember no work on ethics, 
 since that of Spinoza, to be compared with 
 it in the simplicity of its premises, and the 
 logical rigour with which a complete sys- 
 tem of scientific ethics is evolved from 
 
 CER. 
 
 " It is the most eloquent, the most 
 interesting, the most clearly expressed and 
 logically reasoned work, with vie^ys the 
 most original, that has appeared in the 
 science of social polity." Literary Ga- 
 zette. 
 
 " The author of the present work is no 
 ordinary thinker, and no ordinary writer ; 
 and he gives, in language that sparkles 
 with beauties and reasoning, at once novel 
 and elaborate, precise and logical, a very 
 comprehensive and complete exposition of 
 
 them. This is high 
 deliberately." Leader. 
 
 we give it 
 
 A very interesting and beautifully 
 logical work.' 'Nonconformist. 
 
 LETTEBS ON THE LAWS OF MAN'S NATUEE 
 
 and Development. By H. G. ATKINSON and HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 Post 8vo, cloth, 9s. 
 
 whatever reception they might have from 
 the world." Critic. 
 
 " A curious and valuable contribution to 
 psychological science, and we regard it 
 with interest, as containing the best and 
 fullest development of the new theories of 
 mesmerism, clairvoyance, and the kindred 
 hypotheses. The book is replete with pro- 
 found reflections thrown out incidentally, 
 is distinguished by a peculiar elegance of 
 style, and in the hands of a calm and 
 philosophical theologian may serve as a 
 useful precis of the most formidable diffi- 
 culties he has to contend against in the 
 present day." Weekly News. 
 
 " The Letters are "remarkable for the 
 analytical powers which characterize them, 
 and will be eagerly read by all those who 
 appreciate the value of the assertion, that 
 ' The proper study of mankind is man.' 
 The range of reading which they embody 
 is no less extensive than the sincerity as 
 well as depth of thought and earnestness 
 in the search after truth which are their 
 principal features. Without affectation or 
 pedantry, faults arrived at by 59 easy a 
 transition, they are marked by simplicity 
 of diction, by an ease and grace of lan- 
 guage and expression that gives to a sub- 
 ject, for the most part intricate and per- 
 plexing, an inexpressible charm." Weekly 
 Dispatch. 
 
 " Of the many remarkable facts related 
 in this book we can say little now. What 
 rather strikes us is the elevating influence 
 of an acknowledgement of mystery in any 
 form at all. In spite of all that we have 
 said, there is a tone in Mr. Atkinson's 
 thoughts far above those of most of us who 
 live in slavery to daily experience. The 
 world is awful to him truth is sacred. 
 However wildly he has wandered in search 
 of it, truth is all for which he cares to live. 
 If he is dogmatic, he is not vain; if he is 
 drying up the fountain of life, yet to him 
 life is holy. He does not care for fame, 
 for wealth, for rank, for reputation, for 
 anything, except to find truth and to live 
 beautifully by it ; and all this because he 
 feels the unknown and terrible forces which 
 are busy at the work and woof of the mar- 
 vellous existence." Frazer's Magazine. 
 
 " A book from the reasonings and con- 
 clusions of which we are bound to express 
 our entire dissent, but to which it is im- 
 possible to deny the rare merit of strictest 
 honesty of purpose, as an investigation 
 into a subject of the highest importance, 
 upon which the wisest of us is almost 
 entirely ignorant, begun with a sincere 
 desire to penetrate the mystery and ascer- 
 tain the truth, pursued with a brave resolve 
 to shrink from no results to which that 
 inquiry might lead, and to state them, 
 
 SOCIAL ASPECTS. By JOHN STORES SMITH, author of Mirabeau, 
 a Life History." Post 8vo, cloth, price 6s. 
 
 ings, unsparing in its exposures yet full 
 of wisdom, and pervaded by an earnest 
 loving spirit. The author sees things as 
 they are too sad and too real for silence 
 
 "This work isthe production of a thought- 
 ful mind, and of an ardent and earnest 
 spirit, and is well deserving of a perusal in 
 extenso by all those who reflect on so so- 
 lemn and important a theme as the future 
 destiny of their native country." Morn- 
 ing Chronicle. 
 
 " A work of whose merits we can hardly 
 speak too highly." Literary Gazette. 
 
 " This book has awakened in us many 
 painful thoughts and intense feelings. It 
 is fearfully true passionate in its upbraid- 
 
 and courageously tells of them with stern 
 
 and honest truth We receive with 
 
 pleasure a work so free from polite lisp- 
 ings, pretty theorizings, and canting pro- 
 gressionisms ; speaking, as it does, earnest 
 truth, fearlessly but in love." Noncon- 
 formist. 
 
 EELIGIOUS SCEPTICISM AND INFIDELITY: their 
 
 History, Cause, Cure, and Mission. By JOHN ALFRED LANGFORD. 
 Post 8vo, cloth, 5s. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECT, as exemplified in 
 
 the Religious Developments of the Greeks and Hebrews. By R. W 
 
 MACKAY, M. A. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth, price 24s 
 "Mr. Mackay brings forward in support 
 of his views an amount of erudition which 
 will prove formidable to his antagonists. 
 Most of the best German editions of the 
 Greek and Latin classics seem to be per- 
 fectly familiar to the author, who knows 
 
 luciiy liiuuiuu LU nit; UULIILM, wuu jv.mjvra 
 
 well how to wield such ponderous mate- 
 
 rials The account of the theosophy 
 
 of Aristotle, given in the first volume, is 
 evidently the production of a master of the 
 subject." Ath( 
 
 ghty style 
 f thought 
 
 The Progress of the Intellect' is in- 
 comparably the most important contribu- 
 tion yet made by any English writer to 
 views first broadly put forth by rationalistic 
 German theologians. He has widened their 
 basis given them freer scope and larger 
 aims supported them by stores of as 
 various and accumulated learning, and 
 imparted to them all the dignity which can 
 be derived from a sober and weigh' 
 of writing, and from processes o 
 to which imagination and reason contribute 
 in almost equal degrees. This is unusual 
 praise; but it is due to unusual powers; 
 and to be offered to Mr. Mackay quite apart 
 from any agreement in the tendency 
 object of his treatise. We will not e' 
 say that we have read it with sufficient care 
 or critical guidance to be entitled to offer 
 an opinion on the soundness of its criticism 
 or reasoning, or on the truth or falsehood 
 of its particular conclusions, or, indeed, 
 on anything but its manifest labour and 
 patience, the rare and indisputable monu- 
 ments of knowledge which we find in it, 
 and the surprising range of method it in- 
 cludeslogical, philosophical, and imagi- 
 native. Xot many books have at any time 
 been published with such irresistible claims 
 
 or 
 even 
 
 to attention in these respects ; in our own 
 day we remember none." Exam i// ft: 
 
 " Over the vast area of cloud-land, 
 bounded on one side by the wars of the 
 Christians, and on the other by the last 
 book of the Odyssey, he has thrown the 
 penetrating electric lightof modern science, 
 and found a meaning for every fable ana 
 every phantom by which the mysterious 
 region is haunted." Atlas. 
 
 r ' All the views are justified by authorities. 
 The work embraces many important sub- 
 jects included in and suggested by the reli- 
 gious theories of the Greeks and Hebrews : 
 and from this minute accuracy will be a 
 storehouse for arguments and facts for 
 those disposed to attack the theories, if not 
 for those who have an interest in defending 
 them. For a book so full of learning it is 
 remarkably well written." Economist, 
 
 " The work before us exhibits an in- 
 dustry of research which reminds us of 
 Cudworth, and for which, in recent litera- 
 ture, we must seek a parallel in Germany 
 rather than in England, while its philo- 
 sophy and aims are at once lofty and 
 practical. Scattered through its more 
 abstruse disquisitions are found passages of 
 pre-eminent beauty gems into which are 
 abs9rbed the finest rays of intelligence and 
 feeling. We believe Mr. Mackay's work 
 is unique in its kind .... The analysis 
 and history of the theory of mediation, 
 from its earliest mythical embodiments, 
 are admirable, both from their panoramic 
 breadth and their richness in illustrative 
 details. We can only recommend the 
 reader to resort himself to this treasury of 
 mingled thought and learning," West- 
 minster Review, Jan. 1, 1851. 
 
 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT AND CENTRALIZATION: 
 
 The characteristics of each, and its Practical Tendencies as affect- 
 ing social, moral, and political welfare and progress : including com- 
 prehensive outlines of the English Constitution. By J. TOULMIN 
 SMITH. Post 8vo, cloth, 85. Qd. 
 
 " This is a valuable, because a thought- vernment and centralization will be found 
 ful, treatise upon one of the general sub- j chapters of the soundest practical philo- 
 jects of theoretical and practical politics. ' sophy ; every page bearing the marks of 
 No one in all probability will give an abso- profound and practical thought." 
 lute assent to all its conclusions, but the I " The chapters on the crown, and on 
 reader of Mr. Smith's volume will in any \ common law, and statute law, display a 
 case be induced to give more weight to the ! thorough knowledge of constitutional 
 important principle insisted on." Tait's and history, and a vast body of learnin 
 
 important princip' 
 Magazine. 
 
 " This is a book, therefore, of immediate 
 interest, and one well worthy of the most 
 studious consideration of every reformer ; 
 but it is also the only complete and correct 
 
 ly of learning is 
 brought forward for popular information 
 without the least parade or pedantry." 
 
 " Mr. Toulmin Smith has made a most 
 valuable contribution to English literature ; 
 for he has given the people a true account 
 
 exposition we have of our political system ; of their once glorious constitution ; more 
 and we mistake much if it does not take its than that, he has given them a book replete 
 place in literature as our standard text-book | with the soundest and most practical views 
 
 of the constitution.' 
 " The special chapters on local self go- 
 
 | of political plu'losophy." Weekly News. 
 
 NORICA J or, Tales of Niirnberg from the Olden Time. After a Manu- 
 script of the 16th Century. Translated from the German of AUGUST 
 HAGEN. Fcp. 8vo. 
 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT ART AMONG THE GREEKS, 
 
 By JOHN WINCKELMANN. From the German, by G. H. LODGE. Demy 
 8vo, cloth, with illustrations, price 12s. 
 
 " That Winckelmann was well fitted for 
 the task of writing a History of Ancient 
 Art, no one can deny who is acquainted with 
 his profound learning and genius. . . . 
 He undoubtedly possessed in the highest 
 degree the po\yer of appreciating artistic 
 skill wherever it was met with, but never 
 more so than when seen in the garb of an- 
 tiquity The work is of 'no 
 
 common order,' and a careful study of the 
 great principles embodied in it must neces- 
 sarily tend to form a pure, correct, and 
 elevated taste." Eclectic lieview. 
 
 " The work is throughout lucid, and free 
 from the pedantry of technicality. Its 
 clearness cpnstitutes its great charm. It 
 does not discuss any one subject at great 
 length, but aims at a general view of Art, 
 with attention to its minute developments. 
 It is, if we may use the phrase, a Grammar 
 of Greek Art, a sine qua non to all who 
 would thoroughly investigate its language 
 of form." Literary World. 
 
 "Winckelman is a standard writer to 
 whom most students of art have been more 
 
 or less indebted. He possessed extensive 
 information, a refined taste, and great zeal. 
 His style is plain, direct, and specific, so 
 that you are never at a loss for his meaning. 
 Some very good outlines, representing fine 
 types of Ancient Greek Art, illustrate the 
 text, and the volume is got up in a style 
 worthy of its subject." Spectator. 
 
 "To all lovers of art this volume will 
 furnish the most necessary and safe guide 
 in studying the pure principles of nature 
 
 and beauty in creative art We 
 
 cannot wish better to English art than for 
 a wide circulation of this invaluable work." 
 Standard of Freedom. 
 
 "The mixture of the philosopher and 
 artist in Winckelrnan's mind gave it at 
 once an ele 
 ledge, whic 
 
 ince, penetration, and know- 
 Itted nim to a marvel for the 
 
 task he undertook. . . . Such a work ought 
 to be in the library of every artist and man 
 of taste, a_nd even the most general reader 
 will find in it much to instruct, and much 
 to interest him." Atlas. 
 
 THE ARTIST'S MARRIED LIFE: BEING THAT OF ALBERT 
 
 DURER. For devout Disciples of the Arts, Prudent Maidens, as well 
 as for the Profit and Instruction of all Christendom, given to the light. 
 Translated from the German of LEOPOLD SCHEFER, by Mrs. J. R. 
 STODART. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo, ornamental binding, 6s. 
 
 "The work reminds us of the happiest 
 
 efforts of Tieck The design is to 
 
 show how, in spite of every obstacle, genius 
 will manifest itself to the world, and give 
 shape and substance to its beautiful dreams 
 
 and fancies It is a very pure and 
 
 delightful composition, is tastefully pro- 
 duced in an antique style, and retains in 
 the translation all the peculiarities (without 
 which the book would lose half its merit) 
 of German thought and idiom." Bri- 
 tannia. 
 
 " Simply then we assure our readers that 
 we have been much pleased with this work. 
 The narrative portion is well conceived, 
 and completely illustrates the author's 
 moral ; while it is interspersed with many 
 passages which are full of beauty and 
 pathos." Inquirer. 
 
 CORNELIA. A Novel, in 1 vol. post 
 
 "It is the worthy aim of the novelist to 
 show that even the trials of genius are part 
 of its education that its very wounds are 
 furrows for its harvest. . . . No one, indeed, 
 would have a right to expect from the 
 author of the 'Laienbrevier ' (see Ath. No. 
 437) such a stern and forcible picture of old 
 times and trials as a Meinhold can give- 
 still less the wire-drawn sentimentalities of 
 a Halm-Halm; but pure thoughts high 
 morals tender feelings might be looked 
 
 for The merits of this story consist 
 
 in its fine purpose, and its thoughtful, and 
 for the most part just, exposition of man's 
 inner life. To those who, chiefly appre- 
 ciating such qualities, can dispense with 
 
 the 
 
 mg su 
 stimu 
 
 laiits of incident and passion, 
 
 the book before us will not be unaccept- 
 able." Atheneeum. 
 
 HEARTS IN MORTMAIN, AND 
 
 8vo, price 10s. 6d. 
 
 " To come to such writings as ' Hearts in 
 Mortmain, and Cornelia' after the anxieties 
 and roughness of our worldly struggle, is 
 like bathing in fresh waters after the dust 
 
 and heat of bodily exertion To a 
 
 peculiar and attractive grace theyjoin con- 
 siderable dramatic power, and one or two 
 of the characters are conceived and exe- 
 cuted with real genius." Prospective 
 Review. 
 
 " Both stories contain matter of thought 
 and reflection which would set up a dozen 
 common-place circulating library produc- 
 tions." Examiner. 
 
 "It is not often now-a-days that two 
 works of such a rare degree of excellence 
 in their class are to be found in one volume ; 
 
 it is rarer still to find two works, each of 
 which contains matter for two volumes,, 
 bound up in these times in one cover." 
 Observer. 
 
 "The above is an extremely pleasing 
 book. The first story is written in the anti- 
 quated form of letters, but its simplicity 
 and good taste redeem it from the tedious- 
 ness and appearance of egotism which gene- 
 rally attend that style of composition." 
 Economist. 
 
 " Well written and interesting." Daily 
 News. 
 
 " Two very pleasing and elegant novels. 
 Some passages display descriptive powers 
 of a high order." Britannia. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 J'HASKS OF FAITH, OR PASSAGES FROM THE HISTORY t)F 
 
 MY CREED. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, Author of " The 
 History of the Hebrew Monarchy," " The Soul : her Sorrows and her 
 Aspirations." Post 8vo, cloth, 6s. 
 
 "Upsides a style of remarkable fascina- 
 tion, from its perfect simplicity and the 
 absence of all thought of writing, the lite- 
 rary character of this book arises from its 
 display of the writer's mind, and the narra- 
 tive of his struggles In addition to 
 
 the religious and metaphysical interest, it 
 contains some more tangible biographical 
 matter, in incidental pictures 9f the writer's 
 career, and glimpses of the alienations and 
 social persecutions he underwent in conse- 
 quence of his o ' 
 
 seeking the truth, and conquering for itself, 
 bit by trit, the right to pronounce dogmati- 
 cally on that which it had heretofore ac- 
 cepted traditionally, we see reflected, as in 
 a mirror, the history of the last few centu- 
 ries. Modern spiritualism has reason to be 
 deeply grateful to Mr. Newman: his learn- 
 ing, his piety, his courage, his candour, 
 and his thorough mastery of his subject, 
 render his alliance doubly precious to the 
 cause." The Leader. 
 
 Mr. Newman is a master of style, and 
 
 uence of his opinions." Spectator. " Mr. Newman is a master of style, and 
 
 " The book altogether is a most remark- his book, written in plain and nervous 
 able book, and is destined, we think, to i English, treats of too important a subject 
 acquire all the notoriety which was attained ! to fail in commanding the attention of all 
 a few years since by the ' Vestiges of Crea- ' thinking men, and particularly of all the 
 tion,' and to produce a more lasting effect." I ministers of religion." Economist. 
 Weekly News. "As a narrative of the various doubts 
 
 " No work in our experience has yet been and misgivings that beset a religious mind 
 published so capable of grasping the mind i when compelled by conviction to deviate 
 of the reader and carrying him through from the ortlwdox views, and as a history 
 the tortuous labyrinth of religious contro- j of the conclusions arrived at by an intelli- 
 versy ; no work so energetically clearing i gent and educated mind, with the reasons 
 the subject of all its ambiguities and sophis- | and steps by which such conclusions were 
 tications; no work so capable of making a i gained, this work is most interesting and 
 
 path for the new reformation to tread se- 
 curely on. In this history of the conflicts 
 of a deeply religious mind, courageously 
 
 of great importance." Morning Adver- 
 tiser. 
 
 NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS. 
 
 THM SOUL: HER SORROWS AND HER ASPIRATIONS. An 
 
 Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, as the basis of Theo- 
 logy. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, formerly Fellow of Balliol 
 College, Oxford, and Author of " A History of the Hebrew Monarchy." 
 
 ympathy. 
 ife of Chr 
 
 Post 8vo, cloth, Qs. 
 
 " The spirit throughout has our warmest 
 .It contains more of the genuine 
 istianity, than half the books that 
 are coldly elaborated in its defence. The 
 charm of the volume is the tone of faithful- 
 ness and sincerity which it breathes the 
 evidences which it affords in every page, of 
 being drawn direct from the fountains of 
 conviction." Prospective Review. 
 
 "On the great ability of the author we 
 
 need not comment. The force with which 
 he puts his arguments, whether for good 
 or for evil, is obvious on every page." 
 Literary Gazette. 
 
 " We have seldom met with so much preg- 
 nant and suggestive matter in a small com- 
 pass, as in 
 
 gges 
 this 
 
 remarkable volume. It is 
 distinguished by a force of thought and 
 freshness of feeling, rare in the treatment 
 of religious subjects." Inquirer. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY, from the Administra- 
 tion of Samuel to the Babylonish Captivity. By FRANCIS WILLIAM 
 XKWMAN, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Author of 
 " The Soul : her Sorrows and her Aspirations," &c. 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. 
 
 "It is truly refreshing to find Jewish 
 history treated, as in the volume before us, 
 according to the rules of sound criticism, 
 
 and good sense The publication of 
 
 such a work will form an epoch in biblical 
 literature in this country." Inquirer. 
 
 "The Author has brought a very acute 
 mind, familiar with knowledge that is 
 beyond the range of ordinary scholarship, 
 to the task of combining and interpreting 
 the antique and fragmentary records which 
 
 contain the only materials for his work." 
 
 Prospectiv 
 
 "This book must be regarded, we think, 
 as the most valuable contribution ever made 
 in the English Language to our means of un- 
 derstanding that portion of Hebrew History 
 
 to which it relates 
 
 The Author has 
 
 not the common superstitious reverence for 
 the Bible, but he shows everywhere a large, 
 humane, and Christian spirit." Massa- 
 chusetts Quarterly Bevien: 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE LIFE OF JESUS, CRITICALLY EXAMINED, By Dr. DAVID 
 
 FBIEDBICH STRAUSS. 3 vols. 8vo, 11. 16s., cloth.. 
 
 "The extraordinary merit of this book 
 
 Strauss's dialectic dexterity, his 
 
 forensic coolness, the even polish of his 
 style, present him to us as the accomplished 
 pleader, too completely master of his work 
 to feel the temptation to unfair advantage 
 
 or unseemly temper We can testify 
 
 that the translator has achieved a very tough 
 work with remarkable spirit and fidelity. 
 The author, though indeed a good writer, 
 could hardly have spoken better had his 
 country and language been English. The 
 work has evidently fallen into the hands 
 of one who has not only effective command 
 of both languages, but a familiarity with 
 the subject-matter of theological criticism, 
 and an initiation into its technical phraseo- 
 logy." Westminster and Foreign Quar- 
 terly Review, 1847. 
 
 " Whoever reads these volumes without 
 any reference to the German, must be 
 pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiom- 
 atic, and harmonious force of the English 
 style. But he will be still more satisfied 
 when, on turning to the original, he finds 
 that the rendering is word for word, thought 
 for thought, and sentence for sentence. In 
 preparing so beautiful a rendering as the 
 present, the difficulties can have been 
 neither few nor small in the way of pre- 
 serving, in various parts of the work, the 
 exactness of the translation, combined with 
 that uniform harmony and clearness of 
 style, which impart to the volumes before 
 
 us the air and spirit of an original. A 
 modest and kindly care for his reader's con- 
 venience has induced the translator often 
 to supply the rendering into English of a 
 Greek quotation, where there was no cor- 
 responding rendering into German in the 
 original. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as 
 he does in the notice, which he writes for 
 this English edition, that as far as he has 
 examined it, the translation is, "et accu- 
 rata et perspicua.' "Prospective Review. 
 "In regard to learning, acuteness, and 
 sagacious conjectures, the work resembles 
 Niebuhr's ' History of Rome.' The general 
 manner of treating the subject and ar- 
 
 expression direct, and the author's open- 
 ness in referring to his sources of informa- 
 tion, and stating his conclusions in all their 
 simplicity, is candid and exemplary .... 
 It not only surpasses all its predecessors of 
 its kind in learning, acuteness, and thorough 
 investigation, but it is marked by a serious 
 and earnest spirit." Christian Examiner. 
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 of candour, gentleness, and modesty one 
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 ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. FIRST SEEIES. 
 
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 1T\LY: PAST AND PRESENT, Or, General Views of its History, 
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 does not merely possess an interest similar 
 to that of contemporary works; it supplies 
 a desideratum, and is well adapted to aid 
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 "The work is admirable^ useful, instruc 
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 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 
 
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 POPULAR CHRISTIANITY : Its Transition State and probable 
 Development. By FREDERICK FOXTON, A.B., formerly of Pembroke 
 College, Oxford, and perpetual Curate of Stoke Prior and Docklow, 
 Herefordshire. Cloth, 65. 
 
 "Few writers are bolder, but his manner 
 is singularly considerate towards the very 
 opinions that he combats his language 
 singularly calm and measured. He is 
 evidently a man who has his purpose 
 sincerely at heart, and indulges in no 
 writing for effect. But what most distin- 
 guishes him from many with whom he 
 may be compared is, the positiveness of 
 his doctrine. A prototype for his volume 
 may be found in that of the American, 
 Theodore Parker the 'Discourse of Reli- 
 gion.' There is a great coincidence in the 
 train of ideas. Parker is more copious 
 and eloquent, but Foxton is far more 
 definite, and comprehensible in 
 
 explicit 
 his mea 
 
 is meaning." Spectator. 
 " He has a penetration into the spiritual 
 desires and wants of the age possible only 
 to one who partakes of them, and he has 
 uttered the most prophetic fact of our 
 ' , with a force of convic- 
 ves confidence, that the 
 
 religious condition, w 
 tion which itself gives 
 
 fact is as he sees it. His book appears to 
 us to contain many just and profound 
 views of the religious character of the 
 present age, and its indications of pro- 
 gress. He often touches a deep and fruit- 
 ful truth with a power and fulness that 
 leave nothing to be desired." Prospective 
 Kevierv, Nov. 1849. 
 
 " It contains many passages that show a 
 warm appreciation of the moral beauty of 
 Christianity, written with considerable 
 power." Inqu irer. 
 
 " . . . . with earnestness and eloquence." 
 Critic. 
 
 " We must refer our readers to the work 
 itself, which is most ably written, and 
 evinces a spirit at once earnest, enlight- 
 ened, and liberal ; in a small compass he 
 presents a most lucid exposition of views, 
 many of them original, and supported by 
 arguments which cannot fail to create a 
 deep sensation in the religious world." 
 Observer. 
 
MB. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 THE CATHOLIC SERIES continued. 
 
 SEVEN LEC TUBES. By RALPH 
 
 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 WALDO EMERSON. Cloth, 5s. 
 
 " Mr. Emerson's book is for us rather j by a stern philosophy from the depths of 
 strange than pleasing. Like Mr. Carlyle, the heart/' Weekly Nates. 
 he strains after effect by quaint phrase- | " There is more practical sense and 
 ology the novelty will gain him admirers ' wisdom to be found in it (this Book) than 
 and readers. At the same time there is j in any of the Books he has given to the 
 
 good sterling stuff in him; already pos- I world, since his first When Emer- 
 
 sessing a great name in his own country, son keeps within his depth, he scatters 
 and being well known to the reading world j about him a great deal of true wisdom, 
 of Europe, his present work, speaking of' mingled with much genuine poetry. There 
 men and things with which we are familiar, is also a merit in him which it would be 
 will extend his fame. It is more real and ungrateful not to acknowledge ; he has 
 material than his former volumes; more j made others think; he has directed the 
 pointedly written, more terse and pithy, ' minds of thousands to loftier exercises 
 contains many new views, and is on the than they had known before ; he has 
 whole both a good and a readable book." stimulated the reflective faculties of mul- 
 Economist. titudes, and thus led to inquiry, and 
 
 "There are many sentences that glitter ; inquiry certainly will conduct to truth." 
 and sparkle like crystals in the sunlight; Critic. 
 and many thoughts, which seem invoked ! 
 
 MEMOIR OF JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. By WIL- 
 
 LIAM SMITH. Second Edition, enlarged. Cloth, 4s. 6d. 
 
 in philosophical discussion since the time 
 
 of Luther . 
 true or false 
 
 . . Fichte's opinions may be 
 but his character as a thinker 
 
 can be slightly valued only by such as 
 know it ill ; and as a man, approved by 
 action and suffering, in his life and in his 
 death, he ranks with a class of men who 
 were common only in better ages than 
 ours." State of German Literature, by 
 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " A Life of Fichte, full of noble- 
 ness and instruction, of grand purpose, 
 
 tender feeling, and brave effort ! 
 
 the compilation of which is executed with 
 great judgment and fidelity." Prospec- 
 tive Review. 
 
 "We state Fichte's character as it is 
 known and admitted by men of all parties 
 among the Germans, when we say that so 
 robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so loi'ty, 
 massive, and immoveable, has not mingled | 
 
 THE WxlY TOWAEDS THE BLESSED LIFE ; or, The 
 
 Doctrine of Religion. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated by 
 WILLIAM SMITH. Cloth', 6s. 
 
 WILLIAM YON HUMBOLDT'S LETTEES TO A FE- 
 
 MALE FRIEND. A Complete Edition. Translated from the Second 
 German Edition. By CATHERINE M. A. COUPER, Author of ' Visits 
 to Beechwood Farm," " Lucy's Half-Crown," &c. 2 vols., cloth, 10s. Gd. 
 
 " We cordially recommend these volumes 
 
 to the attention of our readers 
 
 The work is in every way worthy of the 
 character and experience of its distin- 
 guished author." Dally Neics. 
 
 " These admirable letters were, we believe, 
 first introduced to notice in England by 
 the * Athenaeum ; ' and perhaps no greater 
 boon was ever conferred upon the English 
 reader than in the publication of the two 
 volumes which contain this excellent trans- 
 lation of William Humboldt's portion of 
 a lengthened correspondence with his 
 temale friend." Westminster and Fo- 
 reign Quarterly Review. 
 
 "The beautiful series of W. Von Hum- 
 boldt's letters, now for the first time trans- 
 lated and published complete, possess not 
 
 only high intrinsic interest, but an interest 
 arising from the very striking circum- 
 stances in which they originated 
 
 We wish we had space to verify our re- 
 marks. But we should not know where to 
 begin, or where to end ; we have therefore 
 no alternative but to recommend the entire 
 book to careful perusal, and to promise a 
 continuance of occasional extracts into 
 our columns from the beauties of thought 
 and feeling with which it abounds." Mart' 
 Chester Examiner and Titiii's. 
 
 " It is the only complete collection of 
 these remarkable letters, which has yet 
 been published in English, and the transla- 
 tion is singularly perfect ; we have seldom 
 read such a rendering of German thoughts 
 into the English tongue." Critic. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 THE CATHOLIC SERlES-continued. 
 
 THE VOCATION OF MAN. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTK. 
 Translated from the German, by WILLIAM SMITH. Cloth, 4s. Qd. 
 
 "In the progress of my present work, I 
 have taken a deeper glance into religion 
 than ever I did before. In me the emotions 
 of the heart proceed only from perfect in- 
 telloetmil clearness; it cannot be but that 
 the clearness I have now attained on this 
 subject shall also take possession of my 
 heart." Fichte's Correspondence. 
 
 "' The Vocation of Man' is, as Fichte 
 truly says, intelligible to all readers who are 
 really able to understand a book at all ; 
 and us the history of the mind in its various 
 phases of doubt, knowledge, and faith, it is 
 of interest to all. A book of this stamp is 
 
 THE CHABACTEBISTICS 
 
 By JOHANX GOTTLIEB FICHTE. 
 LI AM SMITH. Cloth, 7*-. 
 
 " A noble and most notable acquisition 
 to the literature of England." Douglas 
 Jerrold's Weekly Paper. 
 
 " We accept these lectures as a true and 
 most admirable delineation of the present 
 age; and on this ground alone we should 
 bestow on them our heartiest recommend- 
 ation ; but it is because they teach us how 
 we may rise above the age that we bestow 
 on them our most emphatic praise. 
 
 sure to teach you much, because it excites 
 thought. If it rouses you to combat his 
 conclusions, it has done a good work ; for 
 in that very effort you are stirred to a con- 
 sideration of points which have hitherto 
 escaped your indolent acquiescence." 
 Foreign Quarterly. 
 
 "This is Fichte's most popular work, 
 and is every way remarkable." A this. 
 
 "It appears to us the boldest and most 
 emphatic attempt that has yet been made 
 to explain to man his restless and uncon- 
 querable desire to win the True and the 
 Eternal." Sentinel. 
 
 OF THE PBESENT AGE. 
 
 Translated from the German, by WIL - 
 
 " He makes us think, and perhaps more 
 sublimely than we have ever formerly 
 thought, but it is only in order that we 
 may the more nobly act. 
 
 "As a majestic and most stirring utter- 
 ance from the lips of the greatest German 
 prophet, we trust that the book will find a 
 response in many an English soul, and 
 potently help to regenerate English society." 
 -The Critic. 
 
 THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAB. By JOHANN GOTT- 
 LIEB FICHTE. Translated from the German, by WILLIAM SMITH. 
 Cloth, 2s. ; paper cover, Is. 6d. 
 
 " ' The Vocation of the Scholar ' i presented to the public in a very neat form. 
 
 1 .... No class needs an earnest and sincere 
 spirit more than the literary class : and 
 therefore the ' Vocation of the Scholar,' the 
 'Guide of the Human Race,' written in 
 Fichte's most earnest, most commanding 
 temper, will be welcomed in its English 
 dress by public writers, and be benehcial 
 to the cause of truth." Economist. 
 
 is distinguished by the same high moral 
 tone, and manly, vigorous expression which 
 characterize all Fichte's works in the Ger- 
 man, and is nothing lost in Mr. Smith's 
 clear, unembarrassed, and thoroughly Eng- 
 lish translation." Douglas Jerrol 
 Newspaper. 
 
 g- 
 d's 
 
 spa 
 
 We a 
 
 re glad to see this excellent trans- 
 lation of one of the best of Fichte's works 
 
 ON THE NATUBE OF THE SCHOLAB, AND ITS 
 
 MANIFESTATIONS. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated 
 from the German, by WILLIAM SMITH. Second Edition. Cloth, 3s. Gd. 
 
 This work must inevitably arrest the 
 
 " With great satisfaction we welcome 
 this first English translation of an author 
 who occupies the most exalted position as 
 a profound and original thinker; as an 
 irresistible orator in the cause of what lie 
 believed to be truth; as a thoroughly 
 honest and heroic man The appear- 
 ance of any of his works in our language 
 is, we believe, a perfect novelty. . . . These 
 orations are admirably fitted for their pur- 
 pose; so grand is the position taken by the 
 lecturer, and so irresistible their eloquence." 
 Examiner. 
 
 attention of the scientific physician, by the 
 grand spirituality of its doctrines, and the 
 pure morality it teaches. .... .Shall we be 
 
 presumptuous if we recommend these views 
 to our professional brethren? or if we say 
 to the enlightened, the thoughtful, the 
 
 serious, This if 
 Vocation? 
 
 you 
 We 
 
 be true scholars is 
 know not a higher 
 
 morality than this, or more noble principles 
 than these : they are full of truth." Jit- it is ft 
 tuul Foreign Medico- Chirurgicnl Hc 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC SERIES-conrtwwed. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AET. An Oration on the Relation of 
 the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated from the German of F. W. J. 
 VON SCHELLING, by A. JOHNSON. Is. paper cover ; Is. Gd. cloth. 
 
 "This excellent oration is an application 
 to art of Schelling's general philosophic 
 principles. Schelling takes the bold course, 
 and declares that what is ordinarily called 
 nature is not the summit of perfection, but 
 is only the inadequate manifestation of a 
 high idea, which it is the office of man to 
 penetrate. The true astronomer is not he 
 who notes down laws and causes which 
 were never revealed to sensuous organs, 
 and which are often opposed to the primd 
 facie influences of sensuous observers. 
 The true artist is not he who merely imi- 
 tates an isolated object in nature, but he 
 who can penetrate into the unseen essence 
 that lurks behind the visible crust, and 
 afterwards reproduce it in a visible form. 
 In the surrounding world means and ends 
 are clashed and jarred together; in the 
 
 work of art the heterogeneous is excluded, 
 and a unity is attained not to be found 
 elsewhere. Schelling, in his oration, chietiy, 
 not exclusively, regards the arts of painting 
 and sculpture; but his remarks will equally 
 apply to others, such as poetry and music. 
 This oration of Sclielling's deserves an 
 extensive perusal. The translation, with 
 the exception of a few trifling inaccuracies, 
 is admirably done by Mr. Johnson; and 
 we know of no work in our language 
 better suited to give a notion of the turn 
 which German philosophy took after it 
 abandoned the subjectivity of Kant and 
 Fichte. The notion will, of course, be a 
 faint one; but it is something to know the 
 latitude and longitude of a mental posi- 
 tion." Examiner. 
 
 ESSAYS. BY B. W. EMEBSON. (Second Series.) With a 
 Notice by THOMAS CARLYLE. 3s. paper cover ; 3s. 6d. cloth. 
 
 " The difficulty we find in giving a proper 
 notice of this volume arises from the per- 
 vadingness of its excellence, and the com- 
 pression of its matter. With more learning 
 than Hazlitt, more perspicuity than Car- 
 lyle, more vigour and depth of thought 
 than Addison, and with as much originality 
 and fascination as any of them, this volume 
 is a brilliant addition to the Table Talk of 
 intellectual men, be they who or where 
 they may." Prospective Review. 
 
 " Mr. Emerson is not a common man, 
 and everything he writes contains sugges- 
 tive matter of much thought and earnest- 
 ness." Examiner. 
 
 "That Emerson is, in a high degree, 
 possessed of the faculty and vision ot the 
 seer, none can doubt who will earnestly 
 and with a kind and reverential spirit 
 peruse these nine Essays. He deals only 
 with the true and the eternal. His piercing 
 gaze at once shoots swiftly, surely, through 
 the outward and the superficial, to the 
 inmost causes and workings. Any one can 
 tell the time who looks on the face of the 
 clock, but he loves to lay bare the machinery 
 and show its moving principle. His words 
 and his thoughts are a fresh spring, that 
 invigorates the soul that is steeped therein. 
 His mind is ever dealing with the eternal; 
 and those who only live to exercise their 
 lower intellectual faculties, and desire only 
 new facts and new images, and those who 
 
 have not a feeling or an interest in the great 
 I question of mind and matter, eternity and 
 nature, will disregard him as unintelligible 
 and uninteresting, as they do Bacon and 
 Plato, and, indeed, philosophy itself." 
 Douc/las Jerrold's Magazine. 
 
 "Beyond social science, because beyond 
 and outside social existence, there lies the 
 science of self, the development of man in 
 his individual existence, within himself 
 and for himself. Of this latter science, 
 which may perhaps be called the philo- 
 sophy of individuality, Mr. Emerson is an 
 able apostle and interpreter." League. 
 
 "As regards the particular volume of 
 EMERSON before us, we think it an im- 
 provement upon the first series of essays. 
 The subjects are better chosen. They coine 
 home more to the experience of the mass 
 of mankind, and are consequently more 
 interesting. Their treatment also indicates 
 an artistic improvement in the composi- 
 tion." Spectator. 
 
 "All lovers of literature will read Mr. 
 Emerson's new volume, as the most of 
 them have read his former one; and if 
 correct taste, and sober views of life, and 
 such ideas on the higher subjects of thought 
 as we have been accustomed to account as 
 truths, are sometimes outraged, we at least 
 meet at every step with originality, imagi- 
 nation, and eloquence." I'nquirer. 
 
MR. CHAPMAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 THE CATHOLIC SERIES con tinned. 
 
 SEBMONS OF CONSOLATION. 
 
 D.D. 3s. cloth. 
 
 "This a really delightful volume, which 
 would gladly see producing its purify- 
 ing and elevating influences in all our 
 families." Inquirer. 
 
 " This beautiful volume we are sure will 
 
 By F. W. P. GREENWOOD, 
 
 meet with a grateful reception from all who 
 seek instruction on the topics most interest- 
 ing to a thoughtful mind. There are 
 twenty-seven sermons in the volume." 
 Christian Examiner. 
 
 SELF-CULTUBE. 
 
 cover : Is. cloth. 
 
 By WILT.TAM ELLERT CHAINING. 
 
 paper 
 
 THE CEITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS 
 
 OF THEODORE PARKER. Cloth, 6*. 
 
 " It will be seen from these extracts that 
 Theodore Parker is a writer of considerable 
 power and freshness, if not originality. Of 
 the school of Carlyle, or rather taking the 
 same German originals for his models, 
 Parker has a more sober style and a less 
 theatric taste. His composition wants the 
 grotesque animation and richness of Car- 
 lyle, but it is vivid, strong, and frequently 
 picturesque, with a tenderness that the 
 great Scotchman does not possess." Spec- 
 tator. 
 
 " Viewing him as a most useful, as well 
 as highly-gifted man, we cordially welcome 
 the appearance of an English reprint of 
 some of his best productions. The ' M iscel- 
 laneous' Pieces are characterised by the 
 peculiar eloquence which is without a 
 parallel in the works of English writers. 
 
 His language is almost entirely figurative : 
 the glories of nature are pressed into his 
 service, and convey his most careless 
 thought. This is the principal charm of 
 his writings; his eloquence is altogether 
 unlike that of the English orator or 
 essayist ; it partakes of the grandeur of the 
 forests in his native land; and we seem, 
 when listening to his speech, to hear the 
 music of the woods, the rustling of the 
 pine-trees, and the ringing of the wood- 
 man's axe. In this respect he resembles 
 Emerson ; but, unlike that celebrated man, 
 he never discourses audibly with himself, 
 in a language unknown to" the world he 
 is never obscure ; the stream, though deep, 
 reveals the glittering gems which cluster 
 so thickly on its bed." Inquirer. 
 
C|rtirtirjj.itiaii nf tjj? Cutljnlir i>nin 
 
 BY THE PRESS. 
 
 " The various works composing the ' Catholic Series,' should be known 
 to all lovers of literature, and may be recommended as calculated to in- 
 struct and elevate by the proposition of noble aims and the inculcation of 
 noble truths, furnishing reflective and cultivated minds with more whole- 
 some food than the nauseous trash which the popular tale- writers of the 
 day set before their readers." Morning Chronicle. 
 
 " Too much encouragement cannot be given to enterprising publication? 
 like the present. They are directly in the teeth of popular prejudice am 
 popular trash. They are addressed to the higher class of readers thos* 
 who think as well as read. They are works at which ordinary publishers 
 shudder as ' unsaleable,' but which are really capable of finding a verj 
 large public." Foreign Quarterly. 
 
 " The works already published embrace a great variety of subjects, am 
 display a great variety of talent. They are not exclusively, nor even chiefly 
 religious ; and they are from the pens of German, French, Amei'ican 
 as well as English authors. Without reference to the opinion which the;) . ; 
 contain, we may safely say that they are generally such as all men of fret 
 and philosophical minds would do well to know and ponder." Noncon- 
 formist. 
 
 " This series deserves attention, both for what it has already given, am 
 for what it promises." Taifs Magazine. 
 
 11 A series not intended to represent or maintain a form of opinion, bu 
 to bring together some of the works which do honour to our commoi 
 nature, by the genius they display, or by their ennobling tendency am 
 lofty aspirations." Inquirer. 
 
 " It is highly creditable to Mr. Chapman to find his name in connexior 
 with so much well-directed enterprise in the cause of German literatur* 
 and philosophy. He is the first publisher who seems to have proposed tc 
 himself the worthy object of introducing the English reader to the philo- 
 sophic mind of Germany, uninfluenced by the tradesman's distrust of the 
 marketable nature of the article. It is a very praiseworthy ambition ; and 
 we trust the public will justify his confidence. Nothing could be more un- 
 worthy than the attempt to discourage, and indeed punish, such unselfish 
 enterprise, by attaching a bad reputation for orthodoxy to everything con- 
 nected with German philosophy and theology. This is especially unworthy 
 in the ' student,' or the ' scholar,' to borrow Fichte's names, who should dis- 
 dain to set themselves the task of exciting, by their friction, a popular pre- 
 judice and clamour on matters on which the populace are no competent 
 judges, and have, indeed, no judgment of their own, and who should feel, 
 as men themselves devoted to thought, that what makes a good book is 
 not that it should gain its reader's acquiescence, but that it should multiply 
 his mental experience ; that it should acquaint him with the ideas which 
 philosophers and scholars, reared by a training different from their own, 
 have laboriously reached and devoutly entertain ; that, in a word, it should 
 enlarge his materials and his sympathies as a man and a thinker." Pro- 
 spective Review. 
 
 " A series of serious and manly publications." Economist. 
 
 ( ""ive*. 
 

 
 
 
 
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