or other; for even the most helpless invalid, confined his whole life to a single posture, might yet have done many ' things which had such an effect. But all men are non-labourers during a part of their lives. They are so during the period of infancy at least, when they are supported by the willing bounty of parents, and generally some time likewise in old age, when children have again the privilege of paying back the sacred duty of gratitude and affection. Besides, during periods of sickness, recreation, and accidental intervals of employment, men are occasionally non-labourers, when the wealth which they consume must either be derived from their land or capital, or must be acquired from other people, in whatever manner.

*

In general, however, it may be affirmed, that most men of all ranks and classes are engaged during the greater part of their lives in useful labour of some sort or other, and either do something which contributes to production directly, or assist in the administration of public affairs-of justice and government; which last-mentioned occupation is indeed peculiarly the province of this third class of persons, a great proportion of whom is always found employed in this way; nor is any thing more usual than to observe the individuals of this class emulating all others in assiduous industry,—relinquishing all ease and indulgence, or exclusive pursuit of private pleasure, and giving up their time, and their labour, and their talents to the calls of public duty,-sometimes honourably, for a just and adequate remuneration or reward; and in other cases gratuitously, without fee or recompense, save that which they derive from the consciousness of their own virtuous conduct.+

Their own previous savings, it is to be remembered, come under the denomination of capital as well as the accumulations inherited or derived from others.

+ In what is here said I would not be understood as alluding to

And certainly no class of persons can have a higher interest, or more cogent motives to promote, by every means in their power, the public prosperity than this class; and more particularly the landlords, seeing that every increase of wealth and population increases the value of their possessions. The landlords are indeed the natural nobles and magistrates of the country; and all offices of a public nature, as well as the cultivation of the arts and sciences, though free to all in a free country, belong in a more especial manner to the class of capitalists who can command the leisure and other means so conducive, and even, generally speaking, indispensable to the successful or advantageous prosecution of such avocations. Nor are those to be condemned who follow none of these pursuits. They injure no one who, possessing the means, seek only in an innocent manner to attain happiness; and if they arrive at their object without any other particular employments, they will by no means be unprofitable members of the community. They will not have lived in vain. Nay, as it is human happiness which is the great end and aim of all our earthly labours, and as the happiness of the community is made up of the happiness of individuals, it follows as a necessary consequence, that such members or persons as arrive at that end by the shortest road are, as members of the community simply taken, the most profitable of all.

This will perhaps be the more readily admitted when it is understood that the direct benefits accruing from capital, in

the "unpaid magistracy of England," or as approving of or recommending that system; on the contrary, I think that the evil consequences of it are but too apparent. The judges and administrators of public justice ought to be paid for their trouble from the highest to the lowest; but there are thousands of other ways in which the industry and self-devotedness of the landlords and capitalists may find seope and opportunity to display itself.

9

the shape of profit or interest. to the proprietors, do not comprise or exhaust the whole of the advantages which flow from it; but that, on the contrary, a great part of those advantages is reaped in an indirect manner by the whole community, and by every individual in it from the highest to the lowest, in consequence of that diminution in the cost of production, and consequently in the price of commodities, which must always arise from every new increase and new investment of capital. For, besides that every addition to capital necessarily creates and establishes a new and additional fund, in the shape of profit or interest for the maintenance of non-labourers, it also enables those who employ it and pay that interest to carry on their business to better advantage, and to bring their commodities either better or cheaper to market ;—that is, it enables them to make greater gains themselves, and to supply the market with cheaper goods, than they could have done without its assistance, at the same time that it enables them to pay also the stipulated interest. But, as this is a point of the very highest and vital importance in the standing controversy between capital and labour, or in regard to the effects or services of the one and the other in the work of production, and as the illustration of it, therefore, forms one of the leading objects of the present work, it will be proper in this place to endeavour to go to the bottom of that question; this, therefore, I shall endeavour to do with all brevity in the following section, leaving the fuller discussion of it to other opportunities which will occur hereafter, and where the further illustrations may be introduced with greater advantage. Before concluding the present section, however, I should still farther observe, in connexion with the preceding statements, that every increase of capital, whilst it produces all the effects that have been stated, increases at the same time the rent of land by diminishing the difficulty or expense of cultivation, and bringing into tillage the inferior

soils or portions of land more inconveniently situated with regard to the market, or more inaccessible to the great masses of the population, than those which could previously have been cultivated. For it is by the increase of capital, and not, as has been erroneously and absurdly maintained, by the degradation of the labourer, that cultivation and improvement is naturally extended to the inferior soils and more distant parts of the country.*

And thus it will be found, that every increase of capital, whilst it benefits the non-labourer directly by maintaining him at his ease without labour, benefits at the same time all the other classes of the community indirectly, the landproprietors by increasing the rent of their land, and the labourers by reducing the cost and price of commodities, which all persons must necessarily consume and purchase.

SECTION II.

OF THE MANNER IN WHICH CAPITAL IMPROVES THE CON DITION OF THE LABOURING CLASS.

THE utility of capital, and the advantages which arise from it to the country in which it abounds, are obvious, and are

It is easy to see how the increase of capital, and its investment in the shape of a canal, road, or the like, should ultimately produce an addition to the rent of land. For although, at first, by lowering the cost and price of corn in the most populous places or great markets, it might take as much from the rent of the contiguous lands as it should add to those at a distance, still, ultimately, the former would necessarily regain what they had lost as soon as the price of corn should rise to nearly its former level, which it would speedily do in consequence of the increase of population which would naturally fol

indeed almost universally acknowledged; but the manner in which the labouring classes of people, and the whole community, including both those who are and those who are not endowed with any portion of capital themselves, are made to participate indirectly in the wealth which capital creates, is not so apparent, and has never yet been distinctly shown, or even so much as directly noticed, in so far as I am acquainted, by any foregoing writer. Yet it is by means of capitals which they do not themselves possess, and by their effects in diminishing the price and increasing the abundance of goods, that the poorest individual or labourer that lives in a wealthy, and populous, and civilized or wellgoverned country, is commonly supplied with comforts, conveniences, and necessaries, which surpass, in a measure which is altogether incalculable, any thing which his own unassisted efforts could obtain for him, though he were al

low upon the low price; and then the whole rent paid for the latter (that is, for the more distant lands) would be a clear addition to the aggregate fund of rent. And the truth is, that every increase of capital has a tendency to produce the effect stated in the text, however invested, although the manner in which that effect is produced is not always so apparent or obvious as in the case of a road or canal.

In regard to the utility or desirableness of an increase of rent, I shall only remark here, that where it is brought about by the increase of capital, and not by the degradation of the labourer, it is clearly a good; as, without bearing injuriously on any persons, it creates an addition to the fund for the maintenance of non-labourers.

The appropriation or individual possession of the land, it is always to be remembered, is a condition which is evidently and absolutely indispensable to its proper cultivation or improvement as well as to the increase or accumulation of capital upon it and the rent, which always increases and can alone increase with increasing wealth and population, is the effect, not the cause, of a high price of corn, as has been demonstrated by Dr Smith, and by many persons after him; all which will be more particularly explained hereafter in the proper place. See chap. vii. of the 2d Book.

D