re-adoption of the policy of the Eden treaty of 1786, which stopped the circulation, and thus produced the Revolution. Division of property among the children being provided for by law, it has been hence inferred that the country would become a "great rabbit-warren"- population multiplying with such rapidity as effectually to repress all power of accumulation. Contrary, however, to such predictions, numbers increase but slowly -the process of division moving but little faster. Forty years since, the number of portions of land, town and city lots included, was 10,083,751. Twenty years later, it was 10,893,528-giving an increase of about eight per cent., much of which might be accounted for by the growth of towns and cities, and the consequent division of acres into building-lots. Four years later, in 1842, it had attained the number of 11,511,841-giving a considerable increase; attended, however, with precisely the circumstances. that everywhere else attend division. a great advance in the price of land and labor. The rapidity of circulation increases steadily, with extraordinary increase in the productiveness of agriculture. "In the last thirty years," says a distinguished economist, "France has realised a progress of admirable rapidity- her population having everywhere grown-her cities having increased-and activity and comfort having been everywhere produced. These consequences concur in the creation of new wants-facilitating the efforts of the agriculturist, and modifying the direction of his labors. Not only has he been compelled to extend the culture of roots and kitchen vegetables, with a view to supply the demands of an increasing population, but also that of the plants required by an extended industry. The more the plants which require the hoe, and the finer vegetables requiring both skill and labor, have taken their places by the side of the earlier plants— the more la petite culture has been encouraged the more it has rewarded those engaged in their production. It has truly," as he adds, "been said, that it keeps pace with the growth of ease among the people, and with the creation of our manufactures." The first and most oppressive of all taxes being that of transportation, the tendency of agriculture towards improvement is always in the direct ratio of the emancipation of the PASSY: Des Systèmes de Culture, Paris, 1852, p. 66. land from its payment that emancipation being to be effected only by the creation of a market near at hand. § 8. In the days of Alfred, landed property was equally divided among the children of the English landholder. The Norman conquest bringing with it the exclusive rights of primogeniture before the lapse of half a century the circulation of property in the soil, as the reader has seen, had almost ceased. Wealth and population, however, growing, we find a gradual tendency towards its re-establishment at times exhibiting itself in the form of acts of Parliament; at others, in the adoption of rules of court facilitating the abolition of entails — the result of which may, perhaps, be seen in the number of small proprietors living in the days of Adam Smith. Until then, however, nearly all the English tendencies had been towards the removal of restrictions upon the domestic circulation the right of citizens to leave the kingdom having remained untouched, until a few years prior to the publication of the Wealth of Nations. From that time forward, however, all the tendencies were in an opposite direction-the prohibition of emigration having been followed up by various laws prohibiting English mechanics from furnishing other nations with machinery, by means of which their products might be enabled to circulate among themselves, freed from the necessity for being carried to English mills, or for passing through the hands of English merchants, or English workmen. Stoppage of circulation abroad, was thus to be produced by a stoppage of that at home; and, so far as that object could be attained by help of human laws, the close of the century saw the work already done. Seven-and-thirty years before, the war of 1756 had been succeeded by the peace of Paris - having in its course established the British power in India, and doubled the mortgage upon the land and labor of the kingdom-the national debt having grown from 72 to 146 millions. The class of annuitants had, therefore, increased in due proportion to the growth of admirals, generals, and traders - all of whom desired that labor might be cheap, and man of little value. All of them, too, profited for the moment by stoppage of the circulation — the slower the motion of society, the larger being the proportion borne by their incomes to that of the community at large. The new debt made a great addition to the amount required to be seized on its passage from the producer to the consumer thus augmenting the proportion borne by floating to fixed capital, to the disadvantage of both land and labor. - The war of 1793 now following, the close of the century witnessed another duplication of the amount requiring to be so seized the interest on the debt having been swelled from £10,000,000 to £20,000,000. Now it was, that the effect of want of circulation of labor and its products became obvious in the vast increase of pauperism, the scarcity of food, the consolidation of the land, and the invention of the monstrous, unchristian, and unphilosophical doctrine of over-population. Corn, potatoes, and turnips increasing only arithmetically, while man, according to Mr. Malthus, increased geometrically, it seemed to him that wars, pestilences, and famines, must have been provided by the Creator for the correction of that first want of man's nature which prompts to association with his kind, and leads to the contraction of that obligation which, above all others, tends to the development of the best feelings of the heart—involving, as it does, a necessity for providing for the support of wife and children. -- Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo next united in the effort to establish the fact, that the supply of food must always be in the inverse ratio of population being abundant when numbers are small, and scarce when numbers are great. A scattered people could, as they told their readers, cultivate the richest soils - the swamps and river bottoms; but a numerous one must resort to the poorer ones those, therefore, of the hills. The power of making "savings," and thus accumulating capital, must steadily diminish-producing a necessity for having thousands to "die of want." The "constantly increasing sterility of the soils" being the difficulty with which man has everywhere to contend, he must, of necessity, become, from year to year, more and more the slave of nature, and of his fellow-man. Following out this view, it came next to be asserted that the capital and labor employed in carrying commodities, "and dividing them into minute portions so as to fit them for the wants of the consumer, were really as productive as if employed in agriculture and manufactures"-perhaps, indeed, even more so, "lands of the best quality being soon exhausted,” while of the steam-engines and ships "the last would be as efficient in producing commodities and saving labor as the first."* We have here the glorification of trade, the obstacle standing in the way of commerce; and this now becoming the received doctrine of the English school, we need feel no surprise at seeing that every step thereafter made, tended in the same direction, that of increasing the trading power, and further arresting the circulation. From that time to the present, British history is a constant record of efforts at increasing the proportion borne by floating to fixed capital-being precisely the phenomenon of declining civilization. The more ships needed the larger the quantity of merchandise kept passing on the road-the longer the time elapsing between production and consumption and the slower, consequently, the circulation between the man who raises the food and him who requires to eat it-the greater, as it is held, must be the prosperity of all. As a necessary result, the land becomes more and more consolidated the little proprietor disappearing and the hired laborer taking his place the trader and the annuitant becoming more and more masters of the people—and a state of war becoming more the habitual condition of the community. The necessity for arresting the property produced, on its passage to him by whom it should be consumed, and thus providing for the support of fleets and armies, becomes, therefore, more urgent, from year to year.† * MCCULLOCH, Principles, p. 166. The manner in which the circulation of land is being arrested, as land itself is monopolized, is well exhibited in the following passage from a leading English journal: "The entangled interests in land which have grown up under the present system of settlements and entails, the enormous extent of the encumbrances by which land is affected, and the total absence of knowledge how to manage an estate on the part of most of the proprietors, have rendered the ownership of land in England little more than nominal. In a similar, though more extreme and aggravated, case in Ireland, the decisive remedy of the Encumbered Estates' Commission was found necessary, and is likely to prove most effectual; and there can be no doubt that something of the same kind, in substance, if not in form, will be soon found to be necessary in England, for the purpose of disentangling land from the trammels and fetters which at Increase in the ratio of fixed capital is attended with growing power of association, increased development of individuality, and rapidly augmenting steadiness in the movement of the societary machine the base of which widens, as the apex rises in the air. Increase in the ratio of floating capital produces the reverse effects- the power of association declining, and the base of society becoming less, with declining steadiness of movement, and diminishing power of accumulation. Frequent monetary revolutions producing uncertainty in the demand for labor and labor's products, the rich are thus made richer, while those who have physical or mental force to sell are deprived of bread. At no time past, have individual fortunes been so great as at the present moment. Never have the workmen of England more entirely failed, than in their recent efforts to obtain an increase of wages proportioned to the augmented cost of various necessaries of life. Inequality grows daily the separation between the highest and lowest portions of society becoming more complete, as land becomes more and more consolidated, and more and more burthened with mortgages, entails, and settlements. The policy of the country being based upon the cheapening of raw materials, and those materials being always low in price in barbarous countries, the reader will readily see that every step in that direction leads towards barbarism. It is, therefore, but natural, that the country which pursues that policy, should be the one to give birth to the unchristian and unphilosophical doctrines of the Ricardo-Malthusian school. § 9. The road to civilization lies in the direction of the approximation of the prices of raw materials and finished products -that being always accompanied by a rise in the prices of labor and land an increase in the proportion borne by fixed to floating capital-and an increase in the rapidity of circulation. Such being the case, a policy based upon cheapening the raw materials of manufactures- food, wool, and labor *-should tend towards barbarism and slavery: that it does so, the reader will be satisfied in an examination of the following diagram: present limit its productive powers within such comparatively narrow bounds." -Economist, 1852, p. 645. * See ante, vol. i. p. 239. |