it is by no means so to lay out, in a way productive of utility or amusement, so much as may be not disproportionate to the circumstances of the individual. There is a regular gradation of the ratio of capital so vested by individuals respectively, from the rude furniture of the poor man's hovel, up to the costly ornaments and dazzling jewels of the wealthy. When a nation is rich, the poorest family in it possesses a capital of this kind, not indeed of any great amount, but still enough to satisfy moderate and limited desires. The prevalence of general wealth in a community is more strongly indicated by meeting universally with some useful and agreeable household conveniences in the dwellings of the inferior ranks, than by the splendid palaces and costly magnificence of a few favourites of fortune, or by the casual display of diamonds and finery, we sometimes see brought together in a large city, where the whole wealth of the place is often exhibited at one view, at a fete or a theatre of public resort; but which, after all, are a mere trifle, compared with the aggregate value of the household articles of a great people.

The component items of a capital, producing bare utility or amusement, are liable to wear and tear, though in a very slight degree; and if that wear and tear be not made good out of the savings of annual revenue, there is a gradual dissipation and reduction of capital.

This remark may appear trifling; yet how many peopl think they are living upon their revenue, when they are at the same time partially consuming their capital! Suppose, for instance, a man is proprietor of the house he lives in; if the house be calculated to last 100 years, and have cost 100,000 fr. in the building, it costs the proprietor or his heirs 1000 fr. per annum, exclusive of the interest upon the original cost, otherwise the whole capital will be extinguished, or nearly so, by the end of 100 years. The same reasoning is applicable to every other item of capital devoted to the production of utility or pleasure; to a side-board, a jewel, every imaginable object, in short, that comes under the same denomination.

And vice versa, when annual revenue, arising from whatever source, is encroached upon for the purpose of enlarging the capital devoted to the production of useful or agreeable objects, there is an actual increase of capital and of fortune, though none of revenue.

Capital of this class, like all other capital without exception, is formed by the partial accumulations of annual products. There is no other way of acquiring capital, but by personal accumulation, or by succession to accumulation of others. Wherefore, the reader is referred on this head to Chap. 11, where I have treated of the accumulation of capital.

A public edifice, a bridge, a highway, are savings or accumulations of revenue, devoted to the formation of a capital, whose returns are an immaterial product consumed by the public at large. If the construction of the bridge or highway,

added to the purchase of the ground it stands upon, have cost a million of francs, the use the public makes of it may be estimated to cost 50,000 fr. per annum.

There are some immaterial products, towards which the land is a principal contributor. Such is the pleasure derived from a park or pleasure-garden. The pleasure is afforded by the continual and daily agency of the natural object, and ís consumed as fast as produced. A ground yielding pleasure must, therefore, not be confounded with ground lying waste or in fallow. Wherein again appears the analogy of land to capital, of which, as we have seen, some part is productive of immaterial products, and some part is altogether inactive.

Gardens and pleasure grounds have generally cost some expense in embellishment; in which case, capital and land unite their agency to yield an immaterial product.

Some pleasure-grounds yield likewise timber and pasturage: these are productive of both classes of products. The oldfashioned gardens in France yielded no material product; those of modern times are somewhat improved in this particular, and would be more so, if culinary herbs and fruit-trees were oftener introduced. Doubtless it would be harsh to find fault with a proprietor in easy circumstances, for appropriating part of his freehold to the mere purpose of amusement. The delightful moments he there passes with his family around him, "the wholesome exercise he takes, the spirits he inhales, are among the most valuable and substantial blessings of life. By all means, then, let him lay out his ground as he likes, and give full scope to his taste, or even caprice; but if caprice can be directed to an useful end, if he can derive profit without abridging enjoyment, his garden will have additional merit, and present a two-fold source of delight to the eye of the statesman and the philosopher.

I have seen some few gardens possessed of this double faculty of production; whence, although the lime, horse-chestnut, and sycamore trees, and others of the ornamental kind, were by no means excluded, any more than the lawns and the parterres; yet at the same time the fruit-trees, decked in the bloom of vernal promise, or weighed down by the maturity of autumnal wealth, added a variety and richness of colouring to the other local beauties. The advantages of distance and position were attended to without violating the convenience of division

If it entail a further charge of 1000 fr. for annual repairs and mainte. nance, the public consumption of pleasure or utility may be set down at 51,000 fr. per annum. This is the only way of taking the account, with a view to compare the advantage derived by the payers of public taxes, with the sacrifices imposed on them for the acquisition of such conveniences. In the case put above, the public will be a gainer, if the outlay of 51,000 fr. have effected an annual saving in the charge of national production, or, what is the same thing, an annual increase of the national product, of still larger amount. In the contrary supposition, the national administration will have led the nation into a losing concern.

and inclosure. The beds and borders, planted with vegetables, were not provokingly straight, regular, or uniform, but harmonized with the undulations of the surface, and of vegetation of larger growth; and the walks were so disposed as to serve both for pleasure and cultivation. Every thing was arranged with a view to ornament, even to the vine-trelliced well for filling the watering-pots. The whole, in short, was so ordered, as if designed to impress the conviction, that utility and beauty are by no means incompatible, and that pleasure may grow up by the side of wealth.

A whole country may, in like manner, grow rich even upon its ornamental possessions. Were trees planted wherever they could thrive without injury to other products,* besides the accession of beauty and salubrity, and the additional moisture attracted by the multiplication of timber-trees, the value of the timber alone would, in a country of much extent, amount to something considerable.

There is this advantage, in the cultivation of timber-trees, that they require no human industry beyond the first planting, after which nature is the sole agent of their production. But it is not enough merely to plant, we must check the desire of cutting down, until the weak and slender stalk, gradually imbibing the juices of the earth and atmosphere, shall, without the hand of cultivation, have acquired bulk and solidity, and spread its lofty foliage to the heavens.† The best that man can do for it is, to forget it for some years; and, even where it yields no annual product it will recompense his forbearance when arrived at maturity, by an ample supply of firing, and of timber for the carpenter, the joiner, and the wheel-wright.

In all ages, the love of trees and their cultivation has been strongly recommended by the best writers. The historian of Cyrus records, among his chief titles to renown, the merit of having planted all Asia Minor. In the United States, upon the birth of a daughter, the cultivator plants a little wood, to grow up with her, and to be her portion on the day of marriage. (1)

* In many countries, an exaggerated notion seems to prevail, of the damage done by timber-trees to other products of the soil; yet it should seem, that they rather enhance than diminish the revenue of the landholder; for we find those countries most productive, that are the best clothed with timber: witness Normandy, England, Belgium, and Lombardy.

The leaves of trees absorb the carbonic-acid gas floating in the atmosphere we breathe, and which is so injurious to respiration. When this gas is superabundant, it brings on asphyxia, and occasions death. On the contrary, vegetation increases the proportion of oxygen, which is the gas most favourable to respiration and to health. Ceteris paribus, those towns are the healthiest, which have the most open spaces covered with trees. It would be well to plant all our spacious quays.

(1) [The American cultivator might be said, with much greater semblance of truth, on the birth of a daughter, to cut down a little wood,' instead of planting one.] AMERICAN EDITOR.

Sully, whose views of policy were extremely enlightened, enriched most of the provinces of France with the plantation he directed. I have seen several, to which public gratitude still affixes his name; and they remind me of the saying of Addison, who was wont to exclaim, whenever he saw a plantation, "A useful man has passed this way."

As yet we have been taken up with the consideration of the agents essential to production; without whose agency mankind. would have no other subsistence or enjoyment, than the scanty and limited supply that nature affords spontaneously. We first investigated the mode in which these agents, each in its respective department, and all in concert, co-operate in the work of production, and have afterwards examined in detail the individual action of each, for the further elucidation of the subject. We must now proceed to examine the extrinsic and accidental causes, which act upon production, and clog or facilitate the exertion of productive agents.

CHAPTER XIV.

OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY.

Ir is the province of speculative philosophy to trace the origin of the right of property; of legislation to regulate its transfer; and of political science to devise the surest means of protecting that right. Political Economy views the right of property solely as the most powerful of all encouragements to the multiplication of wealth, and is satisfied with its actual stability, without inquiring about its origin or its safeguards. In fact, the legal inviolability of property is obviously a mere mockery, where the sovereign power is unable to make the laws respected, where it either practises robbery itself, or is impotent to repress it in others; or where possession is rendered perpetually insecure, by the intricacy of legislative enactments, and the subtleties of technical nicety. Nor can property be said to exist, where it is not matter of reality as well as of right. Then, and then only can the sources of production, land, capital, and industry, attain their utmost degree of fecundity.

The strength of an individual is so little, when opposed to that of the government he lives under, that the subject can have no security against the exactions and abuses of authority, except in those countries, where the guardianship of the laws is entrusted to the all-searching vigilance of a free press, and their violation checked by an efficient national representation.

There are some truths so completely self-evident, that demonstration is quite superfluous. This is one of that number. Who will attempt to deny, that the certainty of enjoying the fruits of one's land, capital and labour, is the most powerful inducement to render them productive? Or who is dull enough to doubt, that no one knows so well as the proprietor how to make the best use of his property? Yet how often in practice is that inviolability of property disregarded, which, in theory, is allowed by all to be so immensely advantageous? How often is it broken in upon for the most insignificant purposes; and its violation, that should naturally excite indignation, justified upon the most flimsy pretexts? so few persons are there who have a lively sense of any but a direct injury, or, with the most lively feelings, have firmness enough to act up to their sentiments. There is no security of property, where a despotic authority can possess itself of the property of the subject against his consent. Neither is there such security, where the consent is merely nominal and delusive. In England, the taxes are imposed by the national representation; if, then, the minister be in the possession of an absolute majority, whether by means of electioneering influence, or by the overwhelming patronage foolishly placed at his disposal, taxation would no longer be in reality imposed by the national representatives; the body bearing that name would, in effect, be the representatives of the minister; and the people of England would be forcibly subjected to the severest privations, to further projects that possibly might be every way injurious to them.

*

It is to be observed, that the right of property is equally invaded, by obstructing the free employment of the means of production, as by violently depriving the proprietor of the product of his land, capital, or industry; for the right of property, as defined by jurists, is the right of use, or even abuse. Thus, landed property is violated by arbitrarily prescribing tillage or plantation; or by interdicting particular modes of cultivation; the property of the capitalist is violated, by prohibiting particular ways of employing it; for instance, by interdicting large purchases of corn, directing all bullion to be carried to the mint, forbidding the proprietor to build on his own soil, or prescribing the form and requisites of the building. It is a further violation of the capitalist's property to prohibit any kind of industry, or to load it with duties amounting to prohibition, after he has once embarked his capital in that way. It is manifest, that a prohibition upon sugar would annihilate most of the capital of the sugar refiners, vested in furnaces, utensils, &c. &c.t

• Adam Smith has asserted, that the security afforded to property by the laws of England, has more than counteracted the repeated faults and blunders of its government. It may be doubted, whether he would now adhere to that opinion.

It would be vain to say to him, why not employ your works in some