capital to the wealth which is produced by the use of the one and the exertion of the other. This question, however it may be disguised, is really at the bottom of most others of a general kind relating to property; and it will never be ended or settled until the subject be thoroughly investigated and probed to the bottom, and until either party be convinced, on grounds of argument and reason, that full justice is done to them.

Although it seems to be one of the most obvious things imaginable, that, in all advanced periods of society, capital is at least as potent in its effects as labour in the production of wealth; yet the labourers have been flattered and persuaded that they produce all;* whilst the capitalists, on the other hand, not contented with their proper and just advantages, as being the possessors and proprietors of capital, and with the profit naturally and fairly arising from it, have combined and established laws of preference and favour-laws of restriction, monopoly, and exclusion—which increase that profit beyond its legitimate bounds, and really trench upon the rights of the labourers, not only as limiting unnecessarily and partially, and consequently unjustly, the

The Ricardo economists maintain that "labour is the only source of wealth !”—(See Macculloch's Principles of Political Economy.) "The labour of the country," says Mr Ricardo himself, in his pamphlet on Protection to Agriculture, " constitutes its only real source of wealth ;"—and the whole of the first chapter of his Principles of Political Economy consists of an elaborate, though indirect attempt to prove that labour produces all, as if capital produced nothing, and was not a "real" source of wealth also! It is truly astonishing that this doctrine should have been maintained till this time of day in a country where the effects of capital are so remarkably conspicuous. This most mischievous and fundamental error will, it is hoped, be found fully refuted in the following work. See in particular upon this subject chap. v. sec. 2, chap. vii. sec. 4, and chap. ix. sec. 3, of the First Book.

field for their exertions, but in various other ways preventing those exertions from being crowned with that ample and adequate remuneration which would naturally and necessarily reward them under a different and juster system.

Practical politicians are accustomed to treat this question with much contempt, and think they do enough when they 66 put down" its overt results. But it is not in this manner it will ever be finally or satisfactorily settled. The labourers are too numerous and powerful a body to be dealt unjustly by when they are made fully aware of their rights; and their means of information, and consequently their power, are increasing much too rapidly to give room for any hopes that they will allow the question to rest unresolved, or that they will be satisfied without full and complete justice.

"The improved education of the labouring classes," says a very able writer* and advocate of the labourers, "ought, in the present question, to have great weight with statesmen, and with the community at large. The schools, which are everywhere established, or are establishing, for their instruction, make it impossible for the greatest visionary to suppose that any class of men can much longer be kept in ignorance of the PRINCIPLES on which societies are formed and governed. Mechanics' Institutions will teach men the moral as well as the physical sciences. They excite a disposition to probe all things to the bottom, and supply the means of carrying research into every branch of knowledge. He must be a very blind statesman who does not see, in this, indications of a more extensive change in the frame of society than has ever yet been made. This change will not be effected by violence, and cannot be counteracted by force. No Holy Alliance can put down the quiet insurrection by which know

* A writer, however, whom we shall have occasion strongly to controvert in the following work, (see chap. ix. sect. 3, of Book i.) but whom, nevertheless, we perfectly agree with here.

ledge will subvert whatever is not founded in justice and truth. The interest of the different classes of labourers who are now first beginning to think and act as a body, in opposition to the other classes among whom, with themselves, the produce of the earth is distributed, and who are now only for the first time beginning to acquire as extensive a knowledge of the principles of government as those who rule, is too deeply implicated by these principles to allow them to stop short in their career of inquiry. They may care nothing about the curious researches of the geologist, or the elaborate classification of the botanist, but they will assuredly ascertain WHY they only, of all the classes of society, have always been involved in poverty and distress. They will not stop short of any ultimate truth; and they have experienced too few of the advantages of society to make them feel satisfied with the present order of things. The mind is rather invigorated than enfeebled by the labour of the hands; and they will carry forward their investigations undelayed by the pedantry of learning, and undiverted by the fastidiousness of taste. By casting aside the prejudices which fetter the minds of those who have benefited by their degradation, they have every thing to hope. On the other hand, they are the sufferers by these prejudices, and have every thing to dread from their continuance. Having no reason to love those institutions which limit the reward of labour, whatever may be its produce, to a bare subsistence, they will not spare them, whenever they see the hollowness of the claims made on their respect. As the labourers acquire knowledge, the foundations of the social edifice will be dug up from the deep beds into which they were laid in times past, they will be curiously handled and closely examined, and they will not be restored unless they were originally laid in justice, and unless justice commands their preservation.'

• Labour defended against the Claims of Capital, &c., by a Labourer, pp. 30, 31. (London, 1825.)

Dr Smith himself was not, it must be admitted, wholly free from error in his treatment of the question between the labourers and capitalists. He does not indeed treat that question directly, but, speaking of "the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people," of "servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds," he says incidentally, "it is but equity that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged;*" meaning evidently, from the context, that the labourers alone feed, clothe, and lodge "the whole body of the people,”—an error which, though incidental, (and the position maintained therefore not probably deliberately or well considered,) is not the less likely, if unnoticed, to be attended with bad effects, and is by far the most important oversight that is to be discovered in the Wealth of Nations. For this position would seem to imply that capital is of no use, and affords no assistance in the work of feeding, clothing, and lodging the people !—a position which, if put in this shape, would at once have shown the importance of the fallacy which lurked in that apparently harmless sentence; and Dr Smith would at once have granted that the present generation of labourers could not FEED the people as well as they are now fed, if no capital had been expended and accumulated upon the land, or no farm-buildings, no fences, no drains, or other improvements, calculated to assist the labourer and increase the produce, had been made upon it previously to the present day. He would have granted that the existing generation of labourers could not CLOTHE the people as well as they are now clothed, if there were no cotton-mills, weaving-looms, or other machinery of any kind in existence :-and, lastly, he would have granted

that the existing generation of labourers could not LODGE the people as well as they are now lodged, if no houses had been built in former times, and left to the present proprietors and occupiers, or if, just when the present labourers came to be able to work, all the towns, villages, and houses throughout the country had been swept into ruins! And yet to admit these obvious truths is wholly to give up the portentous doctrine that the labourers alone feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, and at once to destroy the inference which must otherwise have been founded upon it, to the prejudice of the capitalists. To talk of equity as demanding that the labourers should receive a "share of the produce of their own labour" will never be satisfactory; why should they not receive the whole of its produce? The error lies in supposing that labour produces all,—that the whole of the produce of labour and capital arises from the exertions of the labourers, independently of the capital with which they work, and are assisted.

The capitalists have indeed always appeared to decline looking into the bottom of this question, as if afraid they should discover in it nothing to their advantage; but there are, in truth, no real grounds for any apprehensions on this head; and they will never enjoy their wealth in confidence and quiet till they discard this slavish and groundless fear, and meet their adversaries, as they may very safely do, on the fair field of argument and reason.

The labourers must be informed, and made to understand, that they do not produce all wherever they take the assistance of capital; and the capitalists lending that assistance must be equally instructed that whilst each should be free to demand what he pleases for his particular contribution or portion of capital, no individual, or body of men, can have right to exclude or interdict others from coming forward with their portions or capitals also, in open and

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