see a growing dependence on floating capital, attended by a decline in the value of labor and land; while in Belgium and Germany we see the proportion of movable capital diminishing, the value of labor and land meanwhile growing with great rapidity.

The policy of these United States having usually tended to the exhaustion of the land and the dispersion of their people, it has, as a rule, been adverse to the creation of fixed property. Again and again have mills and furnaces been built, and mines been sunk; but only to produce the ruin of those by whom such works have been created. Nowhere is so much capital applied to education; but nowhere has there been exhibited a more pertinacious determination to prevent the application of the faculties thus developed to any pursuit other than those of law, medicine, speculation, and trade. As a consequence, the unfixed property is to the fixed as 3 to 5; being a larger proportion than in any other community claiming to rank as civilized.

§ 3. We are told, however, that "it is only by means of saving that fortunes are created or increased."

Were this so, we should look for the most rapid increase of capital to those countries in which saving is most practised ; yet is it precisely there that it grows most slowly. The Irish laborer is noted for his saving habits, as are the Laplander and the Hindoo. In early English and Scotch history we see families saving a supply of food, because of the uncertainty of getting more. In India, sovereigns save large sums of money by way of providing against any deficiency of revenue. The Castilian saves his food in a silo; and the savage of the West in a cache. The mistress of the house saves water in a cistern, when the supply is uncertain; but ceases to do so when the river is made to find the way to the ocean through her own and her neighbor's dwellings.

It is where there is least circulation that saving is most resorted to, and there the waste is greatest. Societary motion then scarcely at all exists, the faculties remain latent for want of demand for their employment, and all must seek to save if they would continue to live. Circulation being

established, capital rapidly accumulates, the demand for physical or mental power stimulates the faculties that had been latent, and every increase in that demand causes an increase in the value of man, and in the rapidity of the growth of wealth.

The construction of a railroad increases capital, because, by diminishing the waste attendant on effecting changes of place, it gives a money value to land. The woollens-mill does the same, because it enables the farmers to send their wool and corn to market in the form of cloth. The opening of a mine, and the erection of a furnace, give value to land and labor by creating that diversity of employment which causes rapidity of circulation, this rapidity, in its turn, causing still more rapid increase of capital.

To obtain

§ 4. To acquire power over nature being the great object of man, the more it is attained, the less is the value of the commodities he needs, and the greater is his own. power there must be association. The great obstacle to association being the necessity for effecting changes of place, the more this is removed the greater is not only man's present power, but his capacity for further progress.

The spring being distant, he calls to his aid the jug, the cask, the wagon, each diminishing the value of water; until with the growth of population he is enabled, once for all, to construct an aqueduct and make water cheap as air.

The Indian path being bad, he determines, once for all, to make a road; this is followed by the turnpike, the canal, the railroad; each in turn facilitating the construction of its more perfect successor, until merchandise is at length transported at so small a cost that land and labor are immensely increased in value.

The school-house being distant, his children must either dispense with education or waste much time upon the road. He proposes, therefore, to his neighbors, that they shall, once for all, give their time to the construction of a school-house; and now instruction declines so much in value that ten times as many children can profit by it.

The market being distant, he is taxed daily for the cost of sending his wool and corn to be exchanged for iron. He therefore proposes to his neighbors that they shall, once for all, unite to build a furnace, the laborers in which may eat the corn which they now carry to a distant market, thus terminating, at once and forever, the necessity for transportation.

Iron being obtained, he next suggests that steam can as well be made to spin and weave cotton in their own neighborhood as elsewhere; all that is required being that should, once for all, join to put up a house, and to b

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 our children are almost entirely so. Though unfit for the labors of the field, they could perform the lighter work of tending the operations of a mill. Again, the minds of our people remain undeveloped; let us have them taught, and we shall soon obtain machinists of our own. 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 great part of our produce in feeding the horses and men who carry the rest to market, exhausting the soil, because that market is so distant. Let us then, once for all, combine to stop this waste. With every step we make in this direction we shall offer new inducements for carpenters and masons, printers and teachers, to come and eat the food which we now carry to a distant market, and we shall be enabled to improve our machinery. Commerce thus will increase among us, with increase in the societary motion, and in the value and the happiness of man."

The object here sought is, in the words of an eminent French economist, M. de Fontenay, that of “suppressing, by means of a certain quantity of labor once performed, a certain portion of current labor and annual expense that would otherwise re-appear periodically, and for an indefinite period of time."

Such was the object sought by Colbert, to whom France has been indebted for the system which has increased to an enormous extent her collieries, furnaces, and workshops, raised so greatly the value of her land, and doubled, or even trebled, the power of her laborers to command supplies of food.

Directly the reverse of this, as the reader sees, 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 on the rich soils, old communities being forced 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,

Inills and furnaces; continue year after year to expend 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 entering into competition with us; that is, the poorer you become, the greater will be your power." Such is the doctrine that is based upon the idea of trade being the first pursuit of man. Under this system, Ireland wastes, weekly, more labor than would, if applied once for all, give her the machinery that would enable her to make a domestic market for all her food and all her labor; Portugal and Turkey waste daily more muscular and intellectual power than would, if applied once for all, give their people machinery for making all the cloth they now consume. Under it, India

has seen her children condemned to remain idle when they would desire to work; to relinquish their rich soils, and permit their cities to go to ruin; to forego the advantages of domestic commerce, and become dependent altogether on the chances of trade with a people distant from them and seeking only to live at their expense.

§ 5. The error above referred to, in regard to the source to which we must look for the power of accumulation, presents itself in this Wealth of Nations, in which we find ourselves assured by Dr. Smith that "parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of increase of capital." It is, however, merely the reduction into words of the general idea prevailing among the much degraded portions of the human race.

Man seeks to obtain power over nature, and as that end is more and more attained fortunes augment, and parsimony tends to pass away. Arkwright and Watt obtained power, by means of which they accumulated fortunes while doubling the value of the land of Britain. Was this the result of "saving ?" Chaptal, Fourcroy, and Berthollet, by mastering great natural forces, contributed largely to the vast increase in the landed capital of France. Morse, seizing the power to direct electricity, acquired fortune. Fulton taught mankind to apply steam to transportation, thus adding countless millions to the price of land. Scott and Goethe found wealth in the power to amuse their countrymen. What, in all these cases. savors of parsimony? Wealth, consisting in the power to direct the forces of nature, the more rapid its growth the

more does "parsimony," the feeling of the slave, tend to disappear from among the qualities of the being made in the image of his Creator,-MAN.

§ 6. The chief difficulty with which social science has had to contend, has been the want of clear definitions of the terms in use. Those furnished in the present work being, as it is believed, universally true, should cover the whole ground, removing the obstacles to a clear understanding of what was really meant by any writer who used the various terms. The whole may now thus be stated :

Utility is the measure of man's power over nature.

Value is the measure of nature's power over man, of the resistance she offers to the gratification of his desires.

Wealth consists in the power of man to command the always gratuitous service of nature.

Production consists in directing those forces to the service of man.

Capital is the instrument by help of which the work is done, whether existing in the form of land, ships, wagons, houses, mental or physical force.

Trade consists in the performance of exchanges for other persons, being the instrument used by

Commerce, which consists in the exchange of services, products, or ideas, by men, and with their fellow-men.

As the power of association grows utility increases, while values decline.

As the value of commodities declines, that of man increases, with increase in the development of individuality, and in the security of person and of property.

As person and property become more secure, men and capital tend to become more fixed, and a smaller proportion of both remains in the floating state.

As men and capital become fixed, and the powers of nature are more and more developed, there is increased tendency towards the creation of local centres, and towards the establishment of the same beautiful system by means of which the harmony of the universe is maintained.

As local centres increase in number and attraction the power of association steadily augments, with diminution in the necessity for the services of the trader, increase in the power of production, in the growth of capital, and in the rapidity of its circulation-with corresponding increase of

commerce.