nations, by the creation of wealth that did not before exist." Laws which simply permit private persons to amass wealth, or which favor the aggregation of property in a few hands, without opening any new sources of national wealth, - as by favoring invention and discovery, and introducing new arts and new processes in those formerly established, are positively injurious. There has been an immense emigration from Great Britain and Ireland during the last eight years, and it has doubtless been much to the advantage of those who have joined in it; but who can question that their removal has been a serious loss to the country which they have abandoned, and if the drain should continue, and even increase, as it has done, that it would dry up all the sources of English strength and prosperity. Yet it is the opinion of the wisest English statesmen and economists, that nearly all the sufferings of Ireland, which have led to this unparalleled exodus of her people, might have been avoided if other manufactures than that of linen could have been established there, so as to provide employment for all classes of the population. But Irish manufactures, unluckily, with the single exception that has been mentioned, are of later date than those of England, and, without the shield of a protective tariff, have never been able to advance beyond a stage of sickly infancy. Ireland has been reserved as a market for English manufactures, and condemned to pay for them in agricultural products, while her own children were starving. Her present weakness and misery may justly be regarded as a consequence of free trade with her over-powerful neighbor.

"Invention," says Mr. Rae, "is the only power on earth that can be said to create. It enters as an essential element into the process of the increase of national wealth, because that process is a creation, not an acquisition. It does not necessarily enter into the process of the increase of individual wealth, because that may be simply an acquisition, not a creation. The assumption, therefore, that the two processes are perfectly similar, is incorrect." Hence, the most frequent cause of the increase of national wealth is the increase of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, and of the mechanical contrivances, with which the national labor is applied. Poland is not so rich a country as England, not on account of any defi

ciency of labor, for a Polish or Russian serf probably works as hard, and as many hours in the day, as an English artisan; but he does not work to so good purpose. His toil, being that of mere tillage, taxes his muscles, but not his brains. "When we are told that an individual this year employs in agriculture double the capital which he employed last year, the conception which most readily presents itself to us is, that he now farms double the land which he then farmed, owns double the number of horses, cattle, farming utensils, &c., and has double the number of barns and other necessary buildings. When we are told that a country has double the agricultural capital which it had a century ago, we cannot, of course, conceive that its farms are double the extent they then were; neither do we conceive that its farmers have simply double the number of barns and other buildings, of cattle, ploughs, harrows, and other farming utensils, which they then had. We conceive a change in the mode in which its fields. are laid out and tilled; in the form and qualities of the stock; in the construction of all the implements of husbandry; in the size and arrangement of the barns and other buildings; and that, through these changes, the national agricultural labor produces at least double the products it formerly did. It is this change necessarily involved in our conception of the process by which nations increase their capitals, and not necessarily involved in the process by which individuals increase their capitals, that constitutes the difference between them.”

This view is illustrated by the account already given (Chapter XVII.) of the necessary restrictions upon the growth of capital arising from the limitations of the field of employment. Even according to Ricardo's theory of rent and profits, the great preventive of a constant deterioration of the condition of society, arising from the diminished fertility of the soils to which it is compelled successively to resort, and from the consequent fall of profits, is the progress of improvement; and it matters not whether this improvement takes place through the invention of new processes and new machines, or the introduction of new arts and manufactures from abroad, the condition of the former being the offer of satisfactory rewards to the inventors,

* Rae's New Principles of Political Economy, p. 13.

and of the latter, a temporary safeguard of the introducers against foreign rivalry by a protective tariff. Here again I borrow the substance of an illustration from Mr. Rae. We are much richer than our fathers, because we have threshingmachines where they had only flails, power-looms where they had only hand-looms, reaping-machines where they had only sickles, &c. Now the wealth which can be accumulated in the form of flails, hand-looms, and sickles, is very limited, since no more of any of these implements can be profitably manufactured than are wanted for specific and limited purposes. On the other hand, the wealth which can exist in the form of threshing-machines, power-looms, and reaping-machines, is very considerable; -not unlimited, it is true, but vastly greater than the capital formerly vested in the simpler implements. Hence the efforts of the legislature can be profitably directed towards promoting the progress of science and art, and favoring the introduction of manufactures, which can be prosecuted only by complex and costly machinery. Government efforts are needed for these ends, because, as a general rule, inventors and pioneers in new enterprises are poorly compensated by the public.

"Individuals as well as nations," argues the same author, "acquire wealth from other sources than mere saving of revenue; skill is as necessary, and consequently as valuable, a cooperator with the industry of both, as either capital or parsimony; and therefore the expenditure which either may be called on to make, to attain the requisite skill, is very well bestowed. But though skill is valuable both to nations and to individuals, there are many circumstances that render it more so to the former than to the latter. In the first place, it is more durable." The skill of an individual dies with him, while that of the community endures as a permanent possession. "If it be worth while paying a considerable apprentice fee for the acquisition of an art which can be probably exercised only for twenty or thirty years, it must be better worth while to pay for one, the advantages derived from the possession of which may be retained for hundreds or thousands of years." Again, the future skilled labor of an individual cannot be mortgaged or sold, except the laborer sell himself along with it, a transaction which is not sanctioned in modern

times. "On the contrary, any portion of the future revenue yielded by the skilled industry of a nation may be sold, and consequently an addition to the national skill gives a proportional addition to the command of national resources, to meet any sudden emergency. The produce of the general industry of Great Britain stands mortgaged for a sum which it would have appeared, a century ago, utterly impossible to conceive that industry could sustain, because, a century ago, it was impossible to conceive the vast increase which has been made to the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it was then directed."

The considerations that have now been presented tend to show, that the tax imposed upon a community by any protective duty that falls short of a prohibition, is a very light one, as a considerable portion of it is paid by the foreign producers, and reappears in the additional price received for exports; that it keeps up the rate of wages, and enlarges the field for the employment of capital; that it prevents the business of agriculture from being so overdone as to render raw material the only article of export, and to depress the price of this so low that, though the people have a rude abundance of food and other mere necessaries, they are deprived of most of the comforts and elegances of life; that so far as the duty bears only upon articles of luxury and ostentation, the tax is really paid by nobody, but is a creation of public revenue out of a mere change in the fashions and tastes of the rich; that a protective system is needed only while the people are going through a period of apprenticeship in manufactures, and can be removed as soon as the necessary skill and experience have been obtained, when the cost of the commodities will be less than it would have been if the duty had never been imposed; and that its general effect is to stimulate invention, to multiply the productive arts, and to enlarge the sources of national opulence.

But on this great question between free trade and a protective policy, these arguments relating only to pecuniary loss or gain do not merit so much notice as the considerations which were mentioned in the eighth chapter of this work, respecting the devotion of the greater part of the people to

* Rae's New Principles of Political Economy, pp. 61, 62.

skilled or rude labor, and their consequent collection in towns and cities, or wide dispersion over the face of the country. Viewed in this light, I confess, the question seems to be one between progress in civilization and the arts, or a gradual return, I will not say to barbarism, but to that very imperfect stage of civilization which exists in all countries where the population are almost exclusively devoted to agriculture. The best legislative policy is that which will most effectually develop all the natural advantages of a country, whether mental or material. It is as wasteful, to say the least, to allow mechanical skill and inventive genius to remain unemployed, as it would be to permit water-power to run without turning mills, or mineral wealth to continue in the ore, or forests to wave where cotton and grain might grow luxuriantly. If the rude labor of husbandry is to form the principal employment of the people, the higher remuneration of skilled labor in the arts must be sacrificed; and this would be as bad economy as to turn our richest soils into sheep-pastures, or to feed cattle upon the finest wheat. The dispersion of the inhabitants over vast tracts of territory in the isolated pursuits of agriculture, the great majority of them being doomed to work which would not tax the mental resources of a Russian serf or a Feejee-Islander, must be fatal, not only to the growth of wealth, but to many of the higher interests of humanity. The hardships and privations of a life in the backwoods are a fearful drawback upon that bounty which confers as a free gift a homestead farm with a soil that reproduces the seed a hundredfold. To give full scope to all the varieties of taste, genius, and temperament; to foster inventive talent; to afford adequate encouragement to all the arts, whether mechanical, or those which are usually distinguished as the fine arts; to concentrate the people, or to bring as large a portion of them as possible within the sphere of the humanizing influences and larger means of mental culture and social improvement which can be found only in cities and large towns; - these are objects which deserve at least as much attention as the inquiry where we can purchase calicoes cheapest, or how great pecuniary sacrifice must be made before we can manufacture railroad iron for ourselves. I see not how these ends can be obtained in a country like ours, which is, so to speak, cursed