POLITICAL ECONOMY.

CHAPTER I.

WEALTH AND ITS TRANSMUTATIONS: THE AIMS, THE LIMITATIONS, AND THE ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY : THE LAISSEZFAIRE, OR LET-ALONE PRINCIPLE.

THE most obvious, though certainly not the most important, difference between a civilized community and a nation of savages consists in the vastly greater abundance, possessed by the former, of all the means of comfort and enjoyment. These means, including the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, are chiefly material objects, such as manufactured goods, articles of food and clothing, ships and buildings, the useful and the precious metals, tools and machines, and ornaments, or things designed to gratify the taste and the senses. Some, however, are immaterial, and yet are just as much objects of desire, just as much objects of barter and sale, as cloth and bread. The legal knowledge and acumen of a lawyer, for instance, the vocal powers of a remarkable singer, the mimetic talent of an actor, all command a price in the market quite as readily as any goods in a shop. When an occasion arises, we buy the services of a lawyer or a physician, just as we buy a ticket to a concert, or an instrument of music for a drawingroom.*

* Many Political Economists exclude immaterial products from their definition of wealth, because the labor which is devoted to such products "ends in immediate cnjoyment, without any increase of the accumulated stock of permanent means of enjoyment." "When a tailor makes a coat and sells it," argues Mr. J. S. Mill, "there is a transfer of the price from the customer to the tailor, and a coat besides, which did not previously exist; but what is gained by an actor is a mere transfer from the spectator's funds to his, leaving no article of wealth for the spectator's in

Now, the aggregate of all these things, whether material or immaterial, which contribute to comfort and enjoyment, which cannot be obtained or produced without more or less labor, and which are objects of frequent barter and sale, is what we usually call WEALTH; and individuals or nations are denominated rich or poor, according to the abundance or scarcity of these articles which they possess, or have at their immediate disposal.

Two questions may be asked respecting the production of these articles-1. By what mechanical processes are they manufactured or obtained? To answer this query is the business of a man of practical science or an artisan, of a chemist, a mechanic, or a farmer; as Political Economists, we have nothing to do with it. But (2.) we may ask, On what principles do men readily exchange these articles for each other; and what motives, what general laws, regulate their production, distribution, and consumption? Political Economy undertakes to answer this question, and is therefore properly considered as one of the Moral Sciences. It depends, quite as much as Politics and Ethics, upon the principles of the human mind. It is quite as possible to reduce to general laws the habits and dispositions of men, so far as they are manifested in their efforts for the acquisition of wealth, as it is to develop, from observation and consciousness, the laws of our moral constitution. Political Economy begins with the supposition that man is disposed to accumulate wealth beyond what is necessary for the immediate gratification of his wants, and that this disposition, in the great majority of cases, is, in fact, unbounded; that man's inclination to labor is mainly controlled by this desire; that he is constantly competing with his fellows in this attempt to gain wealth; and that he is sagacious enough to see what branches of industry are most profitable, and eager enough to engage in them, so that

demnification." We reply, that the purchaser obtains only a gratification of desire in either case. From the coat, he has moderate enjoyment prolonged for some months; but he might do without it, and work in his shirt-sleeves. From the theatre, he has keen enjoyment, that lasts only a few hours; and he may prefer such pleasure to the luxury of additional clothing. It is inconsistent to give the name of wealth to what pleases our palates for a moment, and deny it to what gives keener pleasure to our ears. The characteristic of all wealth is, directly or indirectly, to satisfy some want, or gratify some desire. Food which is ready to be eaten is wealth, just as much as the knives and forks with which we eat it; though the former is devoured at once, and there is an end of it, while the latter may remain in daily use for years.

competition regularly tends to bring wages, profits, and prices tó a level. The science, then, is more closely allied with the Philosophy of Mind than with Natural History, or the Physical Sciences. It has been called Catallactics, or "the Science of Exchanges " and, agreeably to this notion, man himself has been defined to be an animal that makes exchanges; "as no other, even of those animals which, in other points, make the nearest approach to rationality, has, to all appearance, the least notion of bartering, or in any way exchanging one object for another."

With regard to the articles that constitute wealth, we observe that far the larger portion of them are perishable, or quickly consumable. Some of them, like the immaterial products, are consumed at the instant that they are produced; others, like articles of food, last a little longer, but perish if not quickly used. The fashion and the fabric of manufactured goods soon decay and pass away, the former being often more short-lived than the latter. Tools and machinery wear out; houses and other buildings need constant repair, and, at stated intervals, must be wholly renewed. Hardly anything but the solid land itself -- the great God-given, food-producing machine-is permanent; and the exchangeable value even of the land (the only quality of it which we have to consider in this science) quickly diminishes, and almost wholly disappears, if it be not kept up by the constant application of labor and capital, or by the continued prosperity of the community who live upon it. The best-situated land in a populous city may be worth $60 or $70 a square foot; but if the other articles which constitute the wealth of that city-the ships in her harbor and the goods in her shops were not perpetually renewed, the land would deteriorate in value with great rapidity; and if the city should become, in respect to population and business, a small and decaying village, the land might not be worth $ 40 an acre.

Wealth, then, must be perpetually renewed, or it quickly disappears. The stock of national wealth is like the flesh, blood, and bones of a man's body, which are in a state of constant flux and renovation. Physiologists tell us that our bodies are entirely renewed about once in seven years; but the riches of an opulent community are not so long-lived even as this. Let labor universally cease, let every man, woman, and child rest with folded arms, or do nothing but eat, drink, and be merry, and those riches would

melt and waste like snow under a July sun. National wealth, then, may be more fitly compared to a given portion or section of the waters of a running stream. The water is always changing, yet, in one sense, is always the same, so long as the supply from above is maintained; but if the springs in the upper country should be dried up, the efflux below would soon drain the channel.

And here is one proof, among a thousand others, of the folly and ignorance of those who cry out against the institution of property, and call for an equal distribution of all the wealth of a community among all its members. "Riches have wings" in a far more immediate and practical sense than these people are aware of. They always talk as if the national wealth was a fixed and imperishable quantity, like the land, the sunlight, and the air; and as if, unlike these, it was monopolized by a few, though really sufficient for the wants of all. Their blunder is as great as would be that of an ignorant rustic, who, after visiting the market of a populous city on the Mondays of two successive weeks, and observing that the stalls presented almost precisely the same array of meats and vegetables, in the same order, should conclude that there had been no change, and that, as here was a permanent stock of food enough for all, while some families in the city were suffering from hunger, a general and equal distribution of this stock, without compensation to the owners, should be ordered, under the idea that it would make any future want of provision impossible. The possibility that this great store might all be consumed in one day; that the dealers, deterred by this spoliation, might not supply the market at all on the next day; and that many indigent families, suddenly finding all their wants supplied without any effort on their part, would give up labor altogether, would never occur to him.

"This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital," says Mr. J. S. Mill, "affords the explanation of what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the movable wealth existing in it; all the inhabitants are ruined, and yet, in a few years after, everything is much as it was before. This vis medicatrix naturæ has been a subject of sterile astonish

ment, or has been cited to exemplify the wonderful strength of the principle of saving, which can repair such enormous losses in so brief an interval. There is nothing at all wonderful in the matter. What the enemy have destroyed would have been destroyed, in a little time, by the inhabitants themselves; the wealth which they so rapidly reproduce would have needed to be reproduced, and would have been reproduced, in any case, and probably in as short an interval. Nothing is changed, except that, during the reproduction, they have not now the advantage of consuming what had been produced previously. The possibility of a rapid repair of their disasters mainly depends on whether the country has been depopulated. If its effective population have not been extirpated at the time, and are not starved afterwards, [and if their exertions are not paralyzed by the dread of a similar quickly recurring calamity,] then, with the same skill and knowledge which they had before, with their land and its permanent improvements undestroyed, and the more durable buildings probably unimpaired, or only partially injured, they have nearly all the requisites for their former amount of production. If there is as much of food left to them, or of valuables to buy food, as enables them, by any amount of privation, to remain alive and in working condition, they will, in a short time, have raised as great a produce, and acquired collectively as great wealth and as great a capital, as before, by the mere continuance of that ordinary amount of exertion which they are accustomed to employ in their occupations. Nor does this evince any strength in the principle of saving, in the popular sense of the term; since what takes place is not intentional abstinence, but involuntary privation."

This pregnant truth, that the whole stock of national wealth is in a constant and rapid process of consumption and reproduction, is generally lost sight of, because we see that the fortunes of individuals, the aggregate of which constitutes the national stock, are comparatively permanent, and, as it seems, do not need to be perpetually renewed. If once raised considerably above a mere competence, and then "invested," as the phrase goes, with ordinary care and judgment, a man's property will continue apparently without change, all the while yielding its regular income or inHow can this fact be reconciled with the principles that have just been stated respecting the nature of all wealth? The

crease.