of comfort, decidedly inferior to many of the lower animals. The first step in the progress of society is made when man learns to hunt wild animals, to feed himself with their flesh, and to clothe himself with their skins. But labour, when confined to the chace, is extremely barren and unproductive. Tribes of hunters, like beasts of prey, whom they are justly said to resemble closely in their habits and modes of subsistence, are but thinly scattered over the surface of the countries which they occupy; and notwithstanding the fewness of their numbers, any unusual deficiency in the supply of game never fails to reduce them to the extremity of want. The second step in the progress of society is made when the tribes of hunters and fishers learn to supply their labour, like the ancient Scythians and modern Tartars, to the domestication of wild animals and the rearing of flocks. The subsistence of herdsmen and shepherds is much less precarious than that of hunters, but they are almost entirely destitute of all those comforts and elegancies which give to civilised life its chief value. The third and most decisive step in the progress of civilization-in the great art of producing the necessaries and conveniences of life-is made when the wandering tribes of hunters and shepherds renounce their migratory habits, and become agriculturists and manufacturers. It is then, properly speaking, that man, shaking off that indolence which is natural to him, begins fully to avail himself of his productive powers. He then becomes laborious, and, by a necessary consequence, his wants are then, for the first time, fully supplied, and he acquires an extensive command over the articles necessary for his comfort as well as for his subsistence.

The importance of labour in the production of wealth was very clearly perceived both by Hobbes and Locke. At the commencement of the 24th chapter* of the Leviathan, published in 1651, Hobbes says, 'The nutrition of a commonwealth consisteth in the plenty and distribution of materials conducing to life. As for the plenty of matter, it is a thing limited by nature to those commodities which, from (the two breasts of our common mother) land and sea, God usually either freely giveth, or for labour selleth to mankind. For the matter of this nutriment, consisting in animals, vegetables, minerals, God hath freely laid them before us, in or near to the face of the earth; so as there needeth no more but the labour and industry of receiving them. Insomuch that plenty 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

*Of the Nutrition and Procreation of a Commonwealth.

'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, nine-tenths 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 has furnished as liberally as any other people with the materials of plenty ; ¿, 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 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 £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, Į

may truly say, not Tob.-'Tis labour, then, which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth anything: '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 neither 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.†

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.

† 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?

'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 grains de minérai placées dans l'interieur de la terre d'ou on les a tirés, et ou ils n'ont acune valeur. De même si je decompose le pain que je mange, et que j'en retranche successivement tous les travaux successifs qu'il a reçus, il ne restera que quelques tiges d'herbes graminées, eparses dans des deserts incultes, et sans aucune valeur.' Principes d'Economie Politique, p. 6.

It is to labour, therefore, and to labour only, that man owes every thing possessed of exchangeable value. Labour is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage-that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields-that has covered the earth with cities and the ocean with ships-that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.

This fundamental principle once established, it necessarily follows, that the great practical problem involved in that part of the science of Political Economy which treats of the production of wealth, must resolve itself into a discussion of the means whereby labour may be rendered most efficient, or whereby the greatest amount of necessary, useful, and desirable products may be obtained with the least possible quantity of labour. Every measure that has any tendency to add to the power of labour, or to reduce the cost of the commodities produced by its agency, must add proportionally to our power of obtaining wealth and riches; while every measure or regulation that has any tendency to waste labour, or to raise the co of producing commodities, must equally lessen this power. This, then, is the simple and decisive test by which we are to judge of the expediency of every measure affecting the wealth of the country, and of the value of every invention. If they render labour more productive-if they have a tendency to reduce the exchangeable value of commodities, to render them more easily obtainable, and to bring them within the command of a greater portion of society, they must be advantageous; but if their tendency be different they must as certainly be disadvantageous. Considered in this point of view, that great branch of the science of Political Economy which treats of the production of wealth, will be found to be abundantly simple, and easily understood.

'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 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 Locke of the value of the discovery.-See Trattato Della Moneta, p. 39, ediz. 1780.

Labour, according as it is applied to the raising of raw produce-to the fashioning of that raw produce, when raised, into articles of utility, convenience or ornament-or to the conveyance of raw and wrought produce from one country and place to another-is said to be agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial. An acquaintance with the particular processes, and most advantageous methods, of applying labour in each of these grand departments of industry, forms the peculiar and appropriate study of the agriculturist, manufacturer, and merchant. It is not consistent with the objects of the political economist to enter into the details of particular businesses and professions. He confines himself to an investigation of the means by which labour in general may be rendered most productive, and how its powers may be increased in all the departments of industry.

SECTION II.-Means by which the Productive Powers of Labour are increased.-1. Security of Property.-2. Division of Employments among Individuals.-3. Accumulation and Employment of Capital. -4. Division of Employments among Different Countries, or Commerce.-Money.

THE most careless and inattentive observer of the progress of mankind from poverty to affluence must have early perceived that there are three circumstances, without whose conjoint existence and cooperation they could never have emerged from barbarism. The first, and most indispensable, is the security of property, or a lively and well founded conviction in the mind of every individual that he will be allowed to dispose at pleasure of the fruits of his labour. The second is the introduction of exchange or barter, and the consequent appropriation of particular individuals to particular employments. And the third is the accumulation and employment of the produce of previous labour, or, as it is more commonly termed, of capital, or stock. All the improvements that have ever been made, or that ever can be made, in the great art of producing the necessaries, comforts, and conveniences of human life, must be classed under some one or other of these three heads. It is, therefore, indispensable that principles, so important, and which lie at the very bottom of the science, should be well understood.

I. SECURITY OF PROPERTY.-Security of property is the first and most indispensable requisite to the production of wealth. Its utility in this respect is, indeed, so obvious and striking, that it has been more or less respected in every country, and in the earliest and rudest periods of society. All have been impressed with the reasonableness of the maxim which teaches that those who sow ought to be permitted to reap-that the labour of a man's body and the work of his hands are to be considered as exclusively his own. No savage horde has ever