only to work, but to save. Now, the greatest of all encouragements to frugality is the sure prospect that our savings will contribute largely to our comfort, will elevate our position in society, and add to the estimation in which we are held in the community and to the power which we actually wield. No man will practise self-denial for nothing; take away the chance of using his accumulations to advantage, and every one, to use the popular phrase, will spend as he goes. It is not enough to prove to the laborer that what he does not spend to-day he will be able to spend to-morrow. There is some hazard, at least, that he may lose it before the morrow comes; and if an equal amount of enjoyment can be had with it now, he will be apt to secure that enjoyment as soon as possible. But when he sees that the enjoyment, if postponed, may be considerably increased, he will be anxious to save; and this anxiety will be greater in proportion to the probable rate of increase, and to the comforts and immunities which the use of the accumulation may bring. The greater the consideration and influence which attend the possession of wealth, the greater will be the temptation to amass wealth.

What has been called "the effective desire of accumulation," says Mr. Mill," is of unequal strength, not only according to the varieties of individual character, but to the general state of society and civilization.” "All circumstances, which increase the probability of the provision we make for futurity being enjoyed by ourselves or others, tend to give strength to the effective desire of accumulation. Thus, a healthy climate or occupation, by increasing the probability of life, has a tendency to add to this desire. When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. In the West Indies, New Orleans, the East Indies, the expenditure of the inhabitants is profuse. War and pestilence have always waste and luxury among the evils that follow in their train."

Improvidence may also proceed from intellectual as well as moral causes. "Individuals and communities of a very low state of intelligence," says Mr. Mill, "are always improvident. A certain measure of intellectual development seems necessary to enable absent things, and especially things future, to act with any force

on the imagination and will. The effect of want of interest in others in diminishing accumulation will be admitted, if we consider how much saving at present takes place which has for its object the interest of others rather than of ourselves; the education of children, their advancement in life, the future interests of other personal connections, the desire of promoting, by the bestowal of money or time, objects of public or private usefulness. If mankind generally were in the state of mind to which some approach was seen in the declining period of the Roman empire, caring nothing for their heirs, as well as nothing for their friends, the public, or any object which survived them, -they would seldom deny themselves any indulgence for the sake of saving, beyond what was necessary for their own future years; which they would place in life annuities, or some other form which would make its existence and their lives terminate together."

The various stages of civilization depend upon, or are the consequence of, the varying strength of this desire of accumulation. The remnants of Indian tribes which are found in villages upon the banks of the lower St. Lawrence are surrounded by circumstances which ought to secure to them all the comforts of life, and which would enable others to amass wealth. They have abundance of fertile land, already cleared from the forest, and manure in heaps lies beside their huts. Yet such are their apathy and improvidence that they often suffer extreme want; and from the privations thus endured, with occasional intemperance, their number is rapidly diminishing. Yet their apathy does not arise from aversion to labor; for they are industrious enough when the reward of toil is immediate. They are successful in hunting and fishing, and they work with ardor when employed as boatmen on the St. Lawrence. They will even till the ground, if the returns from such labor are speedy and large; they will raise Indian corn, which grows and ripens quickly in Canada, and yields perhaps a hundred-fold. But they have not foresight enough to fence their fields, and hence, when the situation is exposed to the incursions of cattle, the culture is abandoned.

In

Nearly as low, in respect to foresight and prudence, are the emancipated negroes of Hayti and the British West Indies. a tropical climate, where little clothing or shelter is needed, and

where the ground is so fertile that the labor of a few weeks will supply sustenance for a year, they are content to gain little more than the necessaries of a merely animal existence. The ease with which life is supported fosters indolence, feebleness, gayety, and insouciance; and even when the people pretend to labor, their work is scarcely worth paying for. "In the sugar-mills," we are told, "from twenty to thirty men and women are employed to do what five American operatives would do much better in the same time with the aid of such labor-saving agencies as would suggest themselves at once to an intelligent mind"; and "this is but one of the thousand ways in which labor is squandered on this island." The people might supply themselves with all the luxuries of the earth; but they are content to live in a swinish abundance of the grossest necessaries, to be fat and shining, and to sing, chatter, and bask in the sun.

Again, accumulation is rapid when the rate of profits is large. If this rate is so high that the accumulated savings of a few years may be made to produce an income equal to that from which those savings were made, then the prospect of being released altogether from the necessity of labor will stimulate the habit of frugality to the utmost. The average rate of profits in this country is at least twice as large as in Great Britain; for the interest of money here averages over six per cent, while the English Government funds yield but three per cent, and the ordinary rate for short loans often falls below that point. But the rate of profits on capital considerably exceeds the rate of interest on money; for he who borrows capital undertakes the risk and care of employing it to advantage; and, of course, he who lends his capital, because unwilling to take that risk and care on himself, will not expect so high a rate for it as he might obtain by using it himself. When a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal will be given for the use of it; but still not so much but that something shall remain to compensate one for the skill and industry that are required to use it to advantage. The average rate of profits in this country may be estimated at twelve per cent a year, while the corresponding rate in England is but six per cent. In this country, then, by postponing the period of consumption or enjoyment for a little over six years, the amount of that enjoyment may be doubled. In England, in order to double the enjoyment, abstinence must be practised for twelve

years. It is obvious, then, that where there is the most need of capital, the temptation to accumulate it is strongest, the rate of profits being high, and its growth is most rapid.

In Holland, nearly two centuries ago, after a period of almost unequalled commercial prosperity, the rate of interest fell to about two per cent, the rate of profits suffered a corresponding reduction, and, as a necessary consequence, the growth of capital almost wholly ceased. Holland, in point of commercial and manufacturing enterprise, has been in a stationary, if not a declining state, for about two centuries. The springs of industry are not relaxed, for the people are still sober and laborious; but they lack the energy and the thirst for gain, which caused them, in the seventeenth century, to dot the surface of the globe all over with Dutch colonies. Few will practise abstinence and try to amass wealth when the rate of profit is but little over four per cent.

The rate of interest in England, in Henry VIII.'s time, was limited to ten per cent, which implies that it had been higher. Under James I. it was reduced to eight, and after the Restoration of the Stuarts, to six per cent. Forty years afterwards, it was again reduced to five, and a continuance of the same causes, as we have seen, has now brought it down to three per cent. But for the enlarged intercourse with foreign lands, which has tempted English capitalists of late years to embark their funds in enterprises abroad,—in Mexican mines, in Continental and American railroads, in Austrian and Russian funds, and in United States stocks,—it is probable that the interest of money and the profits of stock would, ere now, have sunk to that low point at which the desire to accumulate ceases altogether.

True, "there would be adequate motives for a certain amount of saving," as Mr. Mill remarks, "even if capital yielded no profit. There would be an inducement to lay by in good times a provision for bad; to reserve something for sickness and infirmity, or as a means of leisure and independence in the latter part of life, or a help to children in the outset of it. Savings, however, which have only these ends in view have not much tendency to increase the amount of capital already in existence. These motives only prompt each person to save at one period of life what he purposes to consume at another, or what will be consumed by his children before they can completely provide for themselves." "There are always

some persons in whom the effective desire of accumulation is above the average, and to whom less than the ordinary minimum rate of profit is a sufficient inducement to save; but these merely step into the place of others whose taste for expense and indulgence is beyond the average, and who, instead of saving, perhaps even dissipate what they have received."

The hope of elevating one's condition in the world tends more effectually to increase the national wealth in proportion as it affects a larger number of the people. In most civilized countries, the bulk of the population are poor, their daily wages hardly sufficing to buy their daily bread. Their savings, if it is possible for them to make any, must be in very small sums; and the inducement for them to be frugal must depend on the possibility of immediately investing such small sums to advantage. One of the great improvements of modern civilization consists in the means afforded, the machinery contrived, for collecting these driblets of wealth, and bringing them together into large reservoirs, whence they issue in abundant streams, giving efficiency and fertility to labor throughout the land. The water which falls in drops upon the desert sinks through the sand, and leaves the ground arid and barren as before; but when collected in great tanks and cisterns it turns some portion of that desert into a garden. A century or two ago, if the laboring part of the population made any savings, they were in the form of little hoards of silver or gold, hid in an old stocking, or buried in the garden. But because the money thus stored was unproductive, and yielded no interest, and because it was always at hand when the owner was for a moment tempted to some indulgence and consequent expense, the number and amount of such hoards were always small. Now, through the multiplication of the branches of retail trade and the lesser mechanic arts, and through joint-stock corporations and savings' banks, the first half-eagle which the laboring man or woman saves from the month's wages is profitably invested, and, by the end of the year, is increased by the twentieth part of itself. When this saving has reached a very moderate amount, it can be made to accumulate at compound interest, and thus to double itself in twelve years. In many cases, it soon comes to be used by the owner himself as capital; that is, it is invested in the purchase of tools or machinery, or a small stock in trade; and it may then