dependeth (next to God's favour) on the labour and industry of man."

But Mr Locke had a much clearer apprehension of this doctrine. In his Essay on Civil Government, published in 1689, he has entered into a lengthened, discriminating, and able analysis to show that it is from labour that the products of the earth derive almost all their value. "Let any one consider," says he, "what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, ninetenths are the effects of labour; nay, if we will rightly consider things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.

"There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature have furnished as liberally as any other people with the materials of plenty; i. e. a fruitful soil apt to produce in abundance what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniences we enjoy; and the

king of a large and fruitful territory there feeds, lodges, and is worse clad than a day-labourer in England.

"To make this a little clear, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life through their several progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much of their value they receive from human industry. Bread, wine, and cloth, are things of daily use, and great plenty; yet, notwithstanding, acorns, water, and leaves, or skins, must be our bread, drink, and clothing, did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities; for whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is solely owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us; which how much they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world; and the ground which produces the materials is scarce to be reckoned on as any, or, at most, but a very small part of it; so little, that even amongst us, land that is wholly left to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing.

"An acre of land that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the

I

same husbandry, would do the like, are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value (utility.) But yet, the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year is worth L.5, and from the other possibly not worth one penny; if all the profits an Indian received from it were to be valued and sold here, at least, may truly say, not 15%-'Tis labour, then, which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing: 'Tis to that we owe the greatest part of its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of good land, which lies waste, is all the effect of labour. For 'tis not merely the ploughman's pains, the reaper's and thrasher's toil, and the baker's sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat, the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who fitted and framed the timber employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being seed to be sown, to its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an effect of that. Nature and the earth furnishing only the almost worthless materials as in themselves. -'Twould be a strange catalogue of things that industry provided and made use of about every loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them. Iron, wood, leather, barks, timber, stone, brick, coals, lime, cloth, dyeing-drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in

the ship that brought away the commodities made use of by any of the workmen, to any part of the work; all which, it would be almost impossible, at least too long to reckon up."*

Had Mr Locke carried his analysis a little further, he could not have failed to perceive that neither water, leaves, skins, nor any of the spontaneous productions of nature, have any value, except what they owe to the labour required to appropriate them. The value of water to a man placed on the bank of a river depends on the labour necessary to raise it from the river to his lips; and its value, when carried ten or twenty miles off, is equally dependent on the labour necessary to convey it there. All the rude products, and all the productive powers and capacities of nature, are gratuitously offered to man. Nature is not niggardly or parsimonious. She nei

*

Of Civil Government, Book II. § 40, 41, 42, and 43. This is a very remarkable passage. It contains a far more distinct and comprehensive statement of the fundamental doctrine, that labour is the constituent principle of value, than is to be found in any other writer previous to Dr Smith, or than is to be found even in the Wealth of Nations. But Mr Locke does not seem to have been sufficiently aware of the real value of the principle he had elucidated, and has not deduced from it any important practical conclusion. On the contrary, in his tract on Raising the Value of Money, published in 1691, he lays it down broadly that all taxes, howsoever imposed, must ultimately fall on the land; whereas, it is plain he ought, consistently with the above principle, to have shown that they would fall, not exclusively on the produce of land, but generally on produce of industry, or on all species of commodities.

ther demands nor receives an equivalent for her favours. An object which it does not require any portion of labour to appropriate or to adapt to our use, may be of the very highest utility; but, as it is the free gift of nature, it is utterly impossible it can be possessed of the smallest value.*

"Si je retranche," to use a striking illustration of this doctrine given by M. Canard, “de ma montre, par la pensée, tous les travaux qui lui ont été successivement appliquées, il ne restera que quelques

*

Bishop Berkeley entertained very just opinions respecting the source of wealth. In his Querist, published in 1735, he asks," Whether it were not wrong to suppose land itself to be wealth? And whether the industry of the people is not first to be considered, as that which constitutes wealth, which makes even land and silver to be wealth, neither of which would have any value, but as means and motives to industry?

"Whether, in the wastes of America, a man might not possess twenty miles square of land, and yet want his dinner, or a coat to his back."-Querist, Numbers 38 and 39.

M. Say appears to think (Discours Preliminaire, p. 37.) that Galiani was the first who showed, in his treatise Della Moneta, published in 1750, that labour was the only source of wealth. But the passages now laid before the reader prove the erroneousness of this opinion. Galiani has entered into no analysis or argument to prove the correctness of his statement; and, as it appears from other parts of his work, that he was well acquainted with Mr Locke's Tracts on Money, a suspicion naturally arises that he had seen the Essay on Civil Government, and that he was really indebted to it for a knowledge of this principle. This suspicion derives strength from the circumstance of Galiani being still less aware than Mr Locke of the value of the discovery.-See Trattato Della Moneta, p. 39, ediz. 1780.