powers of nature, such as steam, electricity, and mechanical and chemical agencies. This cheapness results from a more complete and extended dominion of man over nature. It is the gift of a beneficent Providence, to be wisely improved, and directed to the benefit of the masses.

I say, to be wisely improved and used; for even this cheapness is of itself but the raw material of national wealth and happiness. Alone, it will leave the masses of the people as miserable as it finds them. We know this by sad experience.

Of the four sorts of cheapness, therefore, the first is injurious to us, the second impossible, the third destructive, the fourth but a means to an end.

For the benefit of the masses, it is not enough to make things cheap, even in the best sense of the word. What is wanted is, to make them accessible, attainable, by the multitude. By making things cheap, you do machinery is a new and highly artificial thing. It will disturb the old and simple relations between the workman and his employer-to the injury of the workman, unless there be appropriate artificial regulations. Most justly does Mr. Mill complain that improved machinery has not yet lightened the toil of a single human being. It might be added, that as yet, instead of always benefiting the workman, it has too often injured his condition. At all events, nohow and nowhere does he (and he is THE NATION) get his full share of the benefit. Why? Because men are slow to perceive that the introduction of so artificial an element will necessitate other artificial arrangements. The Factory Act is a right beginning—but only a beginning. Modern machinery engrafted on the rude primitive relations between employers and employed, is the 'new piece on the old garment,' which will make the rent worse.

not necessarily make them accessible. Nay, there are some modes of making things cheap, which as we have seen will make them less accessible to the multitude than they were before.

What the masses want, is, the means of purchase. If the means of purchase be wholly absent, it is a matter of supreme indifference to them, whether things be dear or cheap. The only means of purchase which they possess are the wages of their labour. In a word, employment is their means of purchase.

You may have cheapness without full and various employment for the masses. That is cheapness, but without plenty. You may have full employment for the masses at good wages without cheapness; that may be competency or even plenty without cheapness. The aim of all good legislation should be to unite the two blessings, cheapness and plenty. But if, as often happens, in the imperfection of human affairs, you have to choose not only between two evils, but sometimes also between two good things, inconsistent with each other, which of the two is to be chosen-cheapness for the benefit of a few, or plenty for the benefit of ALL?

Undoubtedly, plenty. Then the study of every government, in order to produce plenty, permanent plenty, plenty widely diffused and extending to the masses, should be, the full and various employment of the people. The test of every measure ought to be, and used to be this.-Will it promote the employment of the people?

It has been already shewn, and on the authority of Adam Smith himself, that the production of articles at home which can be made or grown somewhat cheaper abroad, though it should not produce cheapness, does promote the employment of the people, does give them the means of purchase, does produce plenty-permanent plenty-plenty widely diffused-plenty extending every where to the masses of the population: and that the opposite policy, even under the most favourable circumstances, though it should and will create cheapness, will destroy the means of purchase, and introduce a real and spreading want.

We have already seen that Adam Smith himself declares and proves that foreign production, compared with domestic production, gives BUT ONE HALF THE

ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE NATIVE INDUSTRY OF THE COUNTRY.†

And this under favourable circumstances, and with reciprocity.

* Chapter IV.

+ It is not pretended that Adam Smith is everywhere consistent with himself on this subject. He certainly is not. For this admission alone destroys the theory of free-trde. Mr. Horner himself, speaking of

Smith, calls him a loose writer.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Free importation is the source of plenty; protection, of scarcity."

THERE are two sorts of plenty. One sort of plenty is a mere relative plenty, where there is more than individual consumers can buy and pay for. Such plenty as exists in an Irish market, where the starving poor eye wistfully, but in vain, the American flour and Indian meal. This spurious sort of plenty, free importations and one-sided free-trade may tend to create. For they diminish and destroy the means of purchase.

But another, and a much better sort of plenty, is an abundance, at once absolute and accessible. When there is as much as the masses want, combined with accessibility. When there is enough for the multitude, and the multitude can get at it and enjoy it.

This is the sort of plenty at which governments should aim. This is the only plenty by which the masses profit. But this plenty depends on the means of purchase enjoyed by the multitude; their means of purchase depend on their full and various employment;

their full and various employment, on their producing as much as possible at both ends of the exchange.

Production at both ends of the exchange creates at once, not mere relative plenty, but absolute abundance on both sides, and the means of purchase on both sides. If you produce on one side only, you sacrifice half your abundance; you are dependent on the capricious and variable extent of a foreign market, not under your own control; and you are subject to a periodical check and glut. Produce at both ends, and in due proportion, and what would otherwise cause a check and a glut, will but augment the means of purchase, as well as the overflowing and superabounding plenty. You have at once abundance combined with accessibility. An universal glut is, as M. Say has well demonstrated, an impossibility. Suppose that in this country, wheat, raw cotton, wool and timber, could be produced in abundance as unlimited as knives and pocket-handkerchiefs, who does not see that the consequence is, not a glut, but an enormous consumption, an immediate plenty and ease of circumstances, for the whole population all round?

Nay, suppose we had on the other side of us, no further distant than Ireland, another country as large as Ireland, unoccupied, able to grow not only wheat wool and timber enough, but cotton enough, and sugar enough, and all other tropical productions enough, to supply all our deficiencies. Again, there is at once the same immediate abundance, and ease of circumstances.