Expansion of the currency not the cause of the evil Not money, but purchases, affect prices Purchases can be made to any extent without money. No limit to the expansion of credit C More imports obtained by lessening the price of exports Fallacious illustrations from extreme cases Nations, like individuals, must serve an apprenticeship Patents and copyrights are protective duties Consequent admission respecting a protective system THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY AS AFFECTED BY THE LAWS REGULATING THE SUCCESSION TO THE ESTATES OF PERSONS Inherited property not a natural right Systematic depopulation of the country Absenteeism and middlemen in Ireland Large estates make food dearer and wages lower Fearful proportion of laborers for hire in England Results of the depopulation of the rural districts Benefits of the American law of inheritance Wealth creates wealth, poverty generates poverty PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. CHAPTER I. WEALTH AND ITS TRANSMUTATIONS. THE most obvious, though certainly not the most important, difference between a civilized community and a nation of savages consists in the vastly greater abundance, possessed by the former, of all the means of comfort and enjoyment. These means, including the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, are chiefly material objects, such as manufactured goods, articles of food and clothing, ships and buildings, the useful and the precious metals, tools and machines, and ornaments, or things designed to gratify the taste and the senses. Some, however, are immaterial, and yet are just as much objects of desire, just as much objects of barter and sale, as cloth and bread. The legal knowledge and acumen of a lawyer, for instance, the vocal powers of a remarkable singer, the mimetic talent of an actor, the practised hand of an ingenious and thoroughly-trained artisan, all command a price in the market quite as readily as any goods in a shop. When an occasion. arises, we buy the services of a lawyer or a physician, just as we buy a ticket to a concert, or an instrument of music for a drawing-room.* Many Political Economists exclude immaterial products from their definition of wealth, because the labor which is devoted to such products "ends in immediate enjoyment, without any increase of the accumulated stock of permanent means of |