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agree very well, however, with Dr. Johnson's apology for the custom of primogeniture, when he said that it had the merit of making "only one fool in a family." Nor is it quite consistent with what Mr. McCulloch himself remarks in another connection, that, "if you would develop all the native resources of a man's mind, you must make him aware of his inferiority in relation to others, and inspire him with a determination to rise to the same or a higher level”; and that "it is not to those placed by their fortunes at the head of society, but to those in its humbler walks who have raised themselves to eminence, that mankind are indebted for the greater number of those inventions and improvements which have made such vast additions to the sum of human happiness." But we do not need to discuss the merits of aristocratic rule in the abstract; the practical question is, whether the blessings it confers upon the country at large are enough to make up for the misery which it entails upon the lower classes; whether the support of the dignity and influence of a House of Lords is a fair offset for an Irish famine and exodus, and for seven millions sterling annually expended on the English poor. Doubtless, it is desirable to have a body of fifty thousand wealthy landed proprietors in the state, many of whom are accomplished gentlemen and fit to be hereditary legislators; but they cannot be had without bringing with them over a million of paupers every year, and reducing the rate of wages, on which half of the nation are entirely dependent, to the lowest point that will sustain life on the poorest and scantiest fare.

But it is feared that the motive for accumulation will not be strong enough, if it is not stimulated by a sight of the splendor and luxury in which the great landlords live, and of the influence and consideration which they enjoy. To this Mr. Mill's answer seems sufficient, that, "in America, there are few or no great hereditary fortunes; yet industrial energy and the ardor of accumulation are not supposed to be particularly backward in that part of the world." Economists generally make a great mistake, when they put so much stress upon the necessity of keeping up the incentives for people to get rich. Human nature requires no urging in this respect. Wealth is coveted originally, no doubt, for some ulterior motive, — for the enjoyments that it will bring; but it soon comes to be loved

for its own sake, the passion and the habit of money-making leading to the sacrifice of every object for which riches at first seemed desirable. The certain and undisturbed possession of a fortune for one's own lifetime is motive enough for exertion; we do not believe that the springs of industry and economy would be sensibly relaxed, if a man's power over his wealth should cease entirely at his death, the state then dividing it equally, as in France, among his children.

However this may be, Mr. McCulloch is wrong in supposing that the sight of great estates tied up perpetually in the same families, is so effectual a stimulus to industry, as if the same amount of wealth were more equally distributed, and passed frequently from hand to hand, the alternations of fortune being frequent, and the chance to every individual of being successful sooner or later being consequently increased. To induce men to buy tickets in a lottery, there must not only be great prizes in the wheel, but some chance, however small, of drawing one within a definite period. Every lawyer who begins practice, may hope one day to become Lord Chancellor, for as that splendid office is not handed down by hereditary descent, some member of the bar must obtain it; and this hope, slight as it is, is one of the springs which keep up the activity and learning of the profession. But a country gentleman with a thousand a year, sees no possibility of his becoming a Duke of Buccleuch with an income two hundred times as great; and therefore the country gentleman usually does nothing but hunt foxes and go to Newmarket. To take great estates out of the market, as was done in Scotland, tying them up for ever in the same families, making alienation, division, —and, we may add, improvement, alike impossible, is in fact to lessen the number of the prizes of industry, and so far, while rendering one man improvident, wasteful, and idle, to lessen the hopes and deaden the exertions of all others. Go to the other end of society, and you find the same cause working out similar results. What hope has an Irish cottier, a Tipperary boy, exert himself as he may, of ever obtaining more generous fare than buttermilk and sodden potatoes? and who can wonder that, without such hope, he should become the reckless, lazy, and quarrelsome beggar that he is? What encouragement is it to him, that, from the door of his mud

cabin, he can see the magnificent but deserted abode of his absentee landlord, who comes over, once in a year or two, to look after his Irish estates, which yield him an income of £20,000 a year? It shows the almost indomitable energy of the English character, that the sight of these extremes of opulence and misery descending in the same lines from one generation to another, the accident of birth alone determining who shall continue in them through life, has not long ago extinguished ambition and effort, and rendered society torpid and motionless. In the learned professions, indeed, and in manufactures and trade, there is some room for changes of fortune, and therefore some incitement to activity. But even here, the deadening influence of a fixed hereditary transmission of employment and social condition is felt. I have heard of one family in London which has sold tea at retail, on the same stand, through five generations. The institution of castes among the Hindoos affords the only parallel to such a social state, though even the Pariahs might compassionate "the irretrievable helotism of the working classes" in Great Britain.

This comparison of an aristocratic and a republican polity, of a system of laws which favors the aggregation of property, with one which aims at its distribution, is not instituted in any boastful spirit; for it is not the character of our people, but of our social and political institutions, that we wish to defend. No comparison could be a fairer one; for the two systems are represented as acting upon two equally enlightened and industrious nations, who are mainly of the same blood, and speak the same language, and whose respective situations are as nearly alike as those of two great nations ever can be. Too great stress has been placed by English economists upon the advantage that Americans enjoy in their abundance of fertile territory; the immense colonial dominion, and greater wealth of England, go far towards balancing this supposed advantage. Many of the British colonies afford ample proof, that the inhabitants of a country do not rapidly increase in numbers and opulence merely because they are abundantly supplied with the necessaries of life. In the character of the people and of the institutions which they live under, and not in any imaginary or real advantages or drawbacks of territory, soil, and climate, are found the true causes of national decay and national prosper

ity. Capital and land are not mere instruments for the production of wealth, in which light alone they are too frequently regarded by economists; they are also necessary means for the support and happiness of the whole nation; and in this capacity, like rain and other fertilizing agents for the soil, they produce the more effect the more evenly they are distributed.

Foreigners who satirize that eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, which seems to them a prominent trait in the American character, either overlook or forget the great liberality with which this wealth is here expended for public objects. Rapid alternations of fortune do not lead to contracted views of the use of riches, or to penurious habits; we may be a speculating, but we are not a miserly people. A fortune which has been speedily won, and is liable to be quite as speedily lost, is usually held very freely, or with an open hand, while it is in the individual's possession; that which has been slowly amassed from very small savings, and by the practice of rigid economy through a long period of years, is commonly hoarded with a jealous and sordid care. In a country like England, if the founder of such a fortune has had any other motive than a mere love of pelf, it is, probably, that his hard-earned wealth might be held undivided and inalienable in his own family through future generations. An object so remote as this seldom enters the mind of an American, and if it did, he would see but little chance of its attainment; he is more likely to covet immediate applause, and the transmission of his name with honor to posterity, through the endowment of a public institution or the furtherance of some scheme of general utility. The most natural and sensible way of deriving personal gratification from newly acquired wealth, and of making a show of it in the eyes of the world, is to give largely to public charities. The sums which are contributed here by individuals for the support of schools, colleges, churches, missions, hospitals, and institutions of science and beneficence, put to shame the official liberality of the oldest and wealthiest governments in Europe. A New England button-maker, the architect of his own fortune, endows most munificently an academy, and founds two or three college professorships, during his lifetime, scorning to make only a tardy provision for

them in his will, out of wealth which cannot be carried beyond the grave. The benefactions of the inhabitants of Boston alone, a city which had a population of only 25,000 in 1800, though it is now about six times as large, amounted, during the first half of the present century, to over six millions of dollars. And it is a remark which can be very easily verified, that the most numerous and magnificent gifts and bequests are made, not by men who have inherited their fortunes, but by those who have amassed them by their own exertions.

THE END.

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