distant millers. The wood, or the coal, will give as much heat and the iron ore will make iron of equal strength. He therefore proposes to his neighbors that they shall, once for all, unite together and build a stack through which to pass the ore and the coal, the laborers in which will eat the corn that now they are obliged to carry to the distant market thus terminating, at

once and for ever, the necessity for so much transportation.

The iron now obtained, he next suggests that steam can as well be made to spin and weave cotton in their own neighborhood, as in any other; that stone, lumber, and lime, are abundant all that is required, for economizing the daily labor of transportation, being, that they should, once for all, club together to put up a house, and to bring from abroad a little machinery, and the skill required for working it. Further, he says to them : We are, ourselves, unemployed for more than half our time, and, as regards our children, they are almost wholly so. Though unfit for the labors of the field, they yet could well perform the lighter work of tending the operations of a mill. Again, the minds of our people are undeveloped. Let us have them taught, and in a brief time obtaining machinists of our own it may be, that we shall be enabled to teach those among whom we now must seek for knowledge. We waste, daily, the powers of earth and air, for want of little machines that would enable us to use them; we waste the faculties of our people, because there is no demand for them; we waste their time and our own, for want of combination; we waste the major part of the products of our land in feeding the horses and men who carry the rest to market -exhausting the soil, because the market for its products is so distant. Let us, then, once for all, combine for the purpose of putting a stop to all this waste. With every step we make in that direction, we shall offer new inducements for carpenters and eating the

masons, printers and teachers, to come among us

food that now we are forced to carry to the distant market; with each, the faculties of our people will become more and more developed enabling us more and more to perfect the various processes by means of which to obtain command over steam and other natural forces. With each, there will be an increase of commerce among ourselves, attended by diminution of our dependence on the trader, and an increase of power to command VOL. III. - 5

his services in case of need. The more numerous the differences among us, the more rapid will be the motion of the societary machine, the greater will be the economy of labor, the smaller will be the value of commodities, and the greater that of man.

Such were the objects sought to be attained by Colbert, to whom France was indebted for the system since so steadily carried out; that, to which she owes it, that she has "covered herself with machinery and mills" that "her collieries, her furnaces, and her workshops of every description, have grown to an enormous extent, and out of all proportion to what existed eighty years since" * that the value of her land has so immensely increased that the power of the laborer to command supplies of food has doubled, where it has not trebled—and that she herself is now so powerful.

Directly the reverse of this, as the reader will readily see, is the doctrine lying at the foundation of the system that would make of Britain the workshop of the world; that, for the maintenance of which, we are taught that man begins everywhere with the richest soils all old communities being required to resort to poorer ones, with daily diminution in the demand for labor. To the farmers and planters of Brazil and the United States it says "Cultivate your rich soils, and leave us to our poor ones. Labor being cheap with us, we can manufacture more cheaply than you can do. Do not, therefore, once for all, build mills or furnaces; continue year after year to expend your labors in carrying produce back and forth; continue to exhaust your land; continue to have no combination of effort among yourselves; and you will grow rich. The time, however, will arrive when you will be forced to cultivate the poor soils, and then you will be troubled with over-population. Wages falling you may then be enabled to accumulate the capital required for cntering into competition with us; that is, the poorer you become, the greater will be your power."

Such is the doctrine of the school that is based upon the idea of trade being the first pursuit of man; that, by help of which the system has thus far been carried out. It is one which cannot stand against the facts everywhere established, that man always commences with the poorer soils; that it is only with the growth of

* Du Revenu Foncier, p. 107.

the power of association and combination that the richer ones are brought into activity; that, to have combination, there must be differences of employment, tending to the development of the individual faculties; and that, where such differences are not found, the whole course of man is towards the exhaustion of the land first cultivated - towards diminution in its value, and increase in that of all the commodities required for his use and towards his enslavement by nature and by his fellow-man. Under that system it is that Ireland wastes, weekly, more labor than would, if applied once for all, give her machinery enabling her to make a domestic market for all her food and all her labor; that Portugal and Turkey waste, daily, more muscular and intellectual power than would, if applied once for all, give them machinery for making all the cloth they now consume; that Jamaica has been exhausted; and that India has seen her people condemned to remain idle, when they would desire to be employed-to relinquish her rich soils, and retire to poor ones-to abandon cities in which once lived hundreds of thousands of poor; but industrious and happy, men-foregoing all the advantages of commerce, and becoming dependent altogether on the chances of trade.

Following in the lead of France, the people of Northern Europe, generally, have protected themselves against this systemthe result being seen in the facts, that the prices of raw materials and finished commodities are there steadily approximating that gold flows rapidly in that the circulation of society becomes from day to day more rapid and that the proportion borne by fixed to floating capital is a constantly increasing one- all of these phenomena being evidences of advancing civilization, consequent upon the determination, once for all, to make the investments required for bringing the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus relieving the farmer from the wasting tax of transportation.

Guided, or governed, by England, Ireland, Turkey, Portugal, and the United States have refused to make the effort, once for all, to relieve themselves from that oppressive and daily recurring tax-the result being seen in the facts, that the prices of raw materials and finished products steadily recede from each otherthat gold flows regularly abroad that circulation becomes more languid — and that the proportion borne by floating capital to

that which is fixed is a constantly increasing one all of these phenomena being evidences of declining civilization.

§ 8. "The general industry of society," says Adam Smith, "never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of society can increase the quantity of industry in any direction beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a portion of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.”*

It would be difficult to find a passage in the Wealth of Nations tending more than this to the production of error in the modes of thought it being for that reason, probably, that it is so frequently quoted. The whole turns, as the reader perceives, upon the word "capital;" but to what description of capital does it refer? Not, certainly, to land and its improvements constituting so large a portion of the accumulated wealth of a nation. Neither is it to the labor-power daily produced by, and resulting from, the daily consumption of food; yet millions of human engines capable of physical and intellectual effort, are quite as much capital as hundreds of iron ones digesting coal and producing steam. Neither is it to money-that constituting always, according to Dr. Smith, "the most unprofitable part" of the capital of a nation; and it being quite unimportant whether the quantity be large or small, which could not be the case if "the general industry of society? were in any manner dependent thereupon. It could not be houses, mills, or ships, for these do not "employ" industry, but merely enable men to profit by the help of various forces of nature. There remains, then, nothing to be included under this head of "capital" but the trivial quantity of commodities remaining in a transition state, produced and yet unconsumedcotton, wool, flax, rags, coal, and other commodities - the total * Wealth of Nations, book 4, chap. ii.

value of which, in any well-organized and advancing society, will not exceed three per cent. of that of the land, labor, and other machinery employed in their production; whereas, in societies that are retrograding, it always bears a large proportion. The nearer the consumer to the producer, the less must it be, and the more rapid the tendency to new and increased production - the smaller must be the proportion of that capital to the whole- and the greater the tendency to increase in the value of labor and land; as is shown in all advancing countries. The more distant the consumer from the producer, the greater must be the quantity of the products of labor waiting for consumption the less must be the tendency towards increase of production — and the larger the proportion of that capital to the whole, as is shown in Virginia, Jamaica, Ireland, India, Turkey, and other declining countries. Wherever association exists, consumption is rapid, and the more it increases, the more promptly will consumption follow production, with daily and hourly increase in the power of accumulation. To enable men to associate, however, they must possess the power to increase their supplies of that machinery of composition, decomposition, and recomposition, called money; and that they cannot have, unless the balance of trade with other countries is such as to enable them to purchase it.

According to Dr. Smith, "parsimony, and not industry," is "the immediate cause of increase of capital" * an essential error that has been repeated by most economists from his time to the present hour. The generally prevalent idea among them is contained in the brief sentence "Les fortunes ne se forment, et n'augmentent, que par l'epargne" †-being merely the reduction into words, of ideas prevailing among the degraded portions of the human race.

Man seeks power to command and direct the forces of nature; and it is precisely as that power is obtained, that fortunes most. rapidly augment the miserly feeling above described then ceasing to exist. Arkwright and Watt obtained power, by means of which they accumulated fortunes for themselves-while doubling the value of all the land of Britain. Was this the result of "saving"?

* Wealth of Nations, book 4, chap. ii.

"Fortunes are created and increased only by means of saving.”—Journal des Economistes, October, 1854.