too, must comprehend the creation of the immaterial products which industry is exerted to acquire, as well as those which are material: without this, they cannot be applied to the regulation of human conduct. Unless these sources and these indirect agents are included, we might overlook the important effects which they have in procuring our subsistence; we might, in thus drawing conclusions from too narrow data, erroneously infer that immaterial objects have no effect in the production of material objects, and absurdly discourage an application to study and the pursuits of science, on the ground of their being useless in the creation of wealth, and as lessening the number of persons, or the time, that would otherwise be employed directly in the acquisition of material riches. And again, if national industry is to be applied solely to the production of material wealth, we might suffer many severe privations, we might essentially deteriorate our condition, and endanger both our existence here and our happiness hereafter, through want of the immaterial products of labour.

Another objection to the term wealth may be stated. In the definition of this term before given, it is essential to every article of wealth that it require some exertion or labour to procure; and hence it seems natural to estimate the article higher or lower, in proportion to the degree of exertion or labour required in its acquisition. If then it were admitted that the whole subject of our inquiries relates to such things, and if the difficulty of acquisition be the quality on which the estimate of wealth is to be formed, the toil which a want of skill, or which unfavourable circumstances, may impose on the inhabitants of a country, must be taken to account in the computation of their wealth, and added, as though it increased the sum. For instance, when, in a newly-peopled country, fertile land exists in such abundance that every person may take and cultivate as much as he pleases, it forms no portion of the wealth of the people; but when the country becomes fully peopled, and good land scarce, then, according to such reasoning, it forms an important source of national wealth; and the more so in proportion to its scarcity, and the sterility of other lands, since labour or value is the standard at which it is to be rated. But men of common under

standing conceive that an abundance, rather than a scarcity, of fertile land constitutes national wealth; and that ease and affluence are better than toil and privation. In thus computing the wealth, or the sources of wealth, of a country, from the degree of its labour and destitution, political reasonings surpass our comprehension, "results are elicited the most unexpected, and certainly the most opposite to all experience." What would have been the estimate which economists would have formed of the wealth of the people of Israel, while fed by manna in the wilderness? They must have been accounted miserably poor, since their whole subsistence required no labour in the acquisition, beyond that of picking it up from the ground. It could therefore scarcely have entered into the computation of their wealth; and if it had, its value must have been rated so low as to be next to nothing. In this use of the term wealth in a sense so opposite to what it naturally conveys, and in this mode of estimating its amount, the contradiction which is implied is manifest, and it would be absurd to expect any thing to result but the strangest misconceptions, and the most palpable errors.

Again, according to the writers on political economy, its investigations extend only to objects possessing exchangeable value. Now, though the objects which supply our wants and wishes, and which for the most part are articles of wealth, are usually possessed of exchangeable value, yet this quality is not essential to them, much less a quality which is by any means permanent. It is, indeed, of the most fluctuating nature in its degree, and is sometimes altogether lost. Articles even of the first necessity, and which require labour to procure, are not, under all circumstances, possessed of value. Food is sometimes destitute of value, as we frequently see in an overstocked market in fish, fruits, and other articles of a highly perishable nature. If in any community every one should be supplied with as much food as he could consume while it continued fresh, and more food should be offered, of no better. quality than the rest, it would evidently possess no exchangeable value, because every person being fully supplied, no one would part with any thing of value in exchange for more. Thus articles which may be highly useful in their properties, and

which have been procured at the expense of labour, may, under such circumstances, possess no exchangeable value. Value in exchange is dependent on the distribution of objects, and the relation of their supply to the demand. The supply must bear a certain relation to the demand; there must be both the power and the inclination to purchase, as well as the wish to sell, in order to confer exchangeable value.

It is obvious, that conclusions deduced from a process of reasoning cannot extend further than their premises; and, consequently, that the reasonings of political economists, proceeding as they do on nothing but objects of wealth, can have reference in their conclusions only to the means of promoting material wealth beyond this, they must be wholly inconclusive and inapplicable. To suppose that any measures they point out as promoting national wealth are unquestionably good in themselves, and proper for adoption, would be going further than the premises warrant; for this wealth might, possibly, be produced at the expense of the health, the indispensable comforts, or the morals of the people. And, hence, in all their conclusions, a still further inquiry remains to be prosecuted, to ascertain whether, on the whole, and taking every circumstance into consideration, the rules they advocate are really beneficial. It is evident, that riches acquired by the sacrifice of the health, the comforts, or the morals of a people, are to be deprecated rather than encouraged; and we cannot but concur in the justice of the remark which has been made, that "as the miser accumulates wealth which he has not the heart to spend, so the political economist inquires into the means of increasing general wealth without paying sufficient regard to its only real use, the increase of general happiness.”

Thus, if it were admitted that the term wealth comprises the whole subject and object of economical investigation, it is plain we should be in danger of being led into error. In fact, the adoption of this term has been the real occasion that these investigations have sometimes afforded conclusions not only unsatisfactory in themselves, but opposed to every-day experience; as well as being the occasion of numerous misconceptions, which, in all probability, would have been avoided, had

their premises been made more extensive, and their proper subject and object more distinctly perceived and recognised.

For example, had the objects of the direction of social industry been considered the same as those of the direction of individual industry, and the inquiries of economists, the same as the labours of the people, been devoted to the acquisition of the necessaries and conveniences of life, the satisfaction. of human wants, and the gratification of human wishes, it would never have been supposed that wealth, money, or riches are the only things requisite. Again, had such been the case, it would never have been supposed that the objects of social industry must be limited to such things as possess value in exchangean accidental circumstance, sometimes found with, and sometimes without, things essential to our subsistence, our comfort, and welfare. But, commencing with the proposition that wealth is the only thing needful, this error in theory has led to lamentable consequences in practice. Wealth is estimated and compared by its value in money; and hence probably arose the error of conceiving that wealth consisted in money. This error has been so long and so fully exposed, as hardly to call for the observation, that it was confounding the measure with the things measured. Money undoubtedly performs a highly useful part in the business of life; it forms an important item of individual and national wealth; but the quantity of it which exists, and which is sufficient for every useful purpose, is very small in comparison with all the other iten s of our property together. Money will serve neither for food, for clothing, for fuel, nor for lodging; it is itself neither a necessary nor a convenience of life, neither an article of use nor of ornament, and a forcible increase of it could add nothing to the comforts of the people. To the use of the term wealth, however, coupled with the error of substituting money for it, are to be attributed the false principles of the mercantile system, so baneful as they have proved in their consequences in practice. To the same use of the term, and estimating and confounding it with value, is attributable much of the abstruseness, ambiguity, and misconception to be found in the writings of more recent authors. Like other false positions, it has had the effect of mystifying the science, and, as

the inevitable result of mystification, of leading to vicious conclusions,

Again the writers on political economy have distinguished labour as of two kinds-that which is productive, and that which is unproductive of wealth. This distinction owes its origin to the idea that the production and accumulation of wealth are the true objects of economic policy. From this idea it naturally followed, that those labours which added nothing to material wealth were accounted of inferior value, or even as mischievous applications of industry, by drawing off from the more beneficial employments those exertions which otherwise might have been occupied directly in adding to the public wealth. It has been well observed, that this distinction "bears a hard and hostile aspect" to those labours which more than any other conduce to the advancement of all the highest and best interests of man, both as regards his present and his future state of existence. The uselessness and inconvenience of the employment of the terms productive and unproductive labour, and the misapprehensions to which they are apt to lead, are now generally admitted. But, if it were otherwise, it would be unnecessary on the present occcasion either to make this distinction in our inquiries, or to state at large the reasons for its disuse; and simply because it is not wealth that forms our subject, nor amassing of riches our whole object. In our view, every kind of industry which contributes directly or indirectly to the supply of our wants or the gratification of our wishes, is deserving of examination, whether or not it contributes to the production of objects which may be characterized as objects of wealth: if it contributes simply to our pleasure, and nothing further, this is sufficient to bring it within the scope of our inquiries.

As, therefore, it is not wealth alone that constitutes the subject and object of economical policy, since this term does not embrace all the objects of inquiry proper to the subject, we come to the question, what are the proper subjects and objects of this science?

We answer, our subjects are the labour, land, and stock possessed by the individual members of a community. These are