raw material, and a previously accumulated stock of food and clothing, the workman cannot bestow his labor to advantage, -cannot, in fact, work at all.

Even if it were granted, that all the wealth of a nation could be distributed equally among all the people, and that the stock of it, by obliging all to labor alike, would for ever remain equal to all their wants, and no more improbable supposition could be framed,—it is certain that this would be no real improvement of their condition. "Those who have never known freedom from anxiety as to the means of subsistence," says J. S. Mill, "are apt to overrate what is gained for positive enjoy ment by the mere absence of that uncertainty. The necessaries of life, when they have always been secure for the whole of life, are scarcely more a subject of consciousness, or a source of happiness, than the elements. There is little attractive in a monotonous routine, without vicissitudes, but without excitement, a life spent in the enforced observance of an external rule, and performance of a prescribed task; in which labor would be devoid of its chief sweetener, the thought that every effort tells perceptibly on the laborer's own interests or on those of some one with whom he identifies himself; in which no one could by his own exertions improve his condition, or that of the objects of his private affections; in which no one's way of life, occupations, or movements would depend on choice, but each would be the slave of all ;- a social system in which identity of education and pursuits would impress on all the same unvarying type of character, to the destruction of that multiform development of human nature, those manifold unlikenesses, that diversity of tastes and talents, and variety of intellectual points of view, which, by presenting to each innumerable notions that he could not have conceived of himself, are the great stimulus to intellect and the main-spring of mental and moral progression. The perfection of social arrangements would be, to secure to all persons complete independence and freedom of action, subject to no restriction but that of not doing injury to others; but the scheme which we are considering -(that of an equal partition of wealth and of labor) - abrogates this freedom entirely, and places every action of every member of the community under command."

The rate of wages in any country is determined by the com

petition of the laborers with the capitalists. Which shall have the advantage in the competition will depend on the relative numbers of the two parties, and will be in an inverse ratio to these numbers. In England, certainly, the capitalists have the advantage; their immense accumulations, and the fewness of those who can compete with them when compared with the vast number of those who subsist entirely upon wages, enable them generally to dictate their own terms, and to keep wages at the lowest point which will supply the workmen with the necessaries of life. In this country, it is quite as certain that the laborers have the advantage; most of them have a little capital of their own, on which they could subsist for a time, or, owing to the great demand for labor, they can find work in other establishments, perhaps in other trades. Here, frequently, it is not the employer who discharges the workman or the domestic, but the workman or the domestic who discharges the employer.

Many kinds of production can be successfully kept up only upon a large scale; for the larger the enterprise, the further the division of labor may be carried. In order to keep such enterprises in motion, capital must be aggregated in large masses. In England, the great inequality of the distribution of wealth allows such enterprises to be managed by individuals; in most cases, a large manufacturing establishment is owned either by one person, or by a firm which embraces but a few partners. In the United States, from the comparative paucity of large private fortunes, such an establishment is generally formed and conducted by a joint-stock company, which is comparatively a modern invention, but one that, from its democratic character, is peculiarly suited to this country, and to the wants of the age. Many small capitalists, by clubbing their means, can successfully compete with men of vast fortune,- an undertaking which would otherwise be a hopeless one, as the great capitalist can live through reverses of trade, commercial crises, and casualties, which would ruin one who had little or nothing in reserve. So consonant are these joint-stock companies to the genius of our institutions and to the circumstances of the country, that they have multiplied with astonishing rapidity. They have survived even the necessity which called them forth; for as large private fortunes have sprung up with the

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growth of national opulence, the owners of them have preferred to distribute their capital by taking stock in many of these associations, rather than to concentrate it upon one undertaking. The risk of a sweeping calamity is thus materially diminished. I know of nothing more irrational than the common prejudice against such corporations. They are true savings' banks, in which the common laborer not infrequently invests his modest savings, and shares the gains of his wealthy employer, instead of being crushed by competition with him. It is not unusual, I believe, for operatives to hold stock in the very manufactories in which they work for wages. At any rate, the savings' bank, to which they first confide the fruits of their economy, often invests them in such stock. These corporations allow persons of very moderate means to participate in enterprises which, in other countries, are conducted exclusively by the rich. The occasional failure of one of them does not bankrupt many of the stockholders, whose property, invested in other ways, is left untouched; and as this seems a hardship to the creditor who has lost a portion of his debt, he is apt to declaim against those who are rich, and still do not pay what they owe. But his accusation is unjust; he who allows such an institution to become indebted to him, trusts it on account of the largeness of its capital, and its supposed solvency. It is the same thing for him, whether he trusts an individual or a corporation, the ground of his confidence, in either case, being his knowledge of the fact that the person or the corporation began business, perhaps, with half a million of capital, and he knows not that this capital has been wasted or lost. If he prefers, he may trust an individual who is supposed to be worth only $50,000, instead of a corporation reckoned at ten times that sum. If he chooses the latter course, he trusts the corporation, not the stockholders; he deliberately prefers the joint-stock security to the security offered by individuals; and, consequently, has no reason to complain if the latter do not pay him.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY OF POPULATION CONSIDERED AND REFUTED.

THE laws of Political Economy, for the most part, it has been remarked, are inferences from the general fact, that individuals compete with each other in the pursuit of wealth. Rents, profits, wages, prices, are determined by competition; and as we are able to foresee what the effects of competition will be, we can show how these things will vary under given circumstances. Thus, profits tend to an equality in all employments, because capitalists compete with each other, and will withdraw their capital from a business which is less profitable, to invest it in one which is more so; this influx of capital into the more lucrative employment soon reduces the rate of profit in it to a level with the profits in other employments. The price of an article, of which there is a given quantity in the market, is determined by the demand for it, that is, by the competition of the buyers. And this demand, again, regulates the future supply of that article; for as the competition of the buyers becomes warm, the price is enhanced, the profits of those who produce the article are increased, more capital is attracted into the employment, the supply is enlarged, and the price falls again.

These principles are sufficiently obvious, and if there were not exceptional cases, if their application was not modified and restricted by a crowd of circumstances, political economy might be called a demonstrative, or even an intuitive, science. Its maxims might all be taken for granted, and men would act upon them without giving themselves the trouble of enunciating them in an abstract form. But there are numerous exceptions and modifying circumstances, which need to be carefully considered; and in this chapter I propose to examine the most important of them.

There are two things the supply of which is not regulated by the demand; and they are two very important things, —

namely, land and population. Our wants and our desires do not, in these two cases, create, or even tend to create, the means of satisfying them; those means are wholly beyond our control. We cannot increase the quantity of surface of the habitable globe; we cannot, at will, either enlarge the population, or put limits to its growth, except by transgressing the moral laws which guard the sanctity of human life. It is conceivable that the well-being of a community may be greatly affected by these two inexorable facts. With all its labor and ingenuity, it cannot materially enlarge the limits of its territory, except by robbing its neighbors; it may reclaim a little land from the waters along the margin of a river, a lake, or an ocean; but it is obvious that its power in this respect is restricted within very narrow limits. And if its population should begin to waste away, or to increase with undue and inconvenient rapidity, the will of a monarch or the wishes of a people would not suffice to arrest either its decline or its growth. Still they are dependent for food upon the products of the land, the amount of which products must finally be limited by the extent of surface of the earth;-I say, must finally be so limited, because improvements in agriculture, the discovery of new means of increasing the product of a given surface of ground, may continually push the limit farther off, and open the way almost for an indefinite increase of the present population of the globe.

Yet on this possible or conceivable increase of the numbers of mankind, united with the fact that the cultivable surface of the earth is determined by fixed boundaries, which cannot be overleaped, is founded the celebrated theory of Mr. Malthus, and the doctrines which that theory is usually made to support. We are not at liberty to put aside the discussion of this theory, as if it were, what at first sight it appears to be, a mere speculation, which can have no practical importance except in a contingency certainly very remote, and which may never be realized. It is dwelt upon and applied by nearly all the English economists as if it were a truth of great moment, immediate in its bearings, and fruitful in results. The whole subject of political economy is colored with it; it affects the doctrine. of rent, profits, and wages, and leads to inferences in respect to each of them, which otherwise would be immediately rejected.