who would keep up corn laws and other restrictions on the importation of food, that they may be able to exact higher rents than could else be paid, and live in a more splendid style than they could else afford, just such parents to the industrious classes, as have been here described; except, indeed, that there are a thousand collateral and complicated hardships attendant upon the actual national wrong, which the supposed family wrong does not reach.

We ought to be independent of all foreign countries for our supplies of food, say the landlords. But can we make this country also independent of all foreign countries for markets for all its manufactures? If not, we cannot, without crying dishonesty to the labourer, use means (effecting the exchangeable value of labour) to make this country independent of foreign countries for its supplies of food. We have hitherto talked of reciprocal protection, (that is reciprocal robbery,) and "all the same thing to the labourer," etc. and attempted to legislate, as though we had the power of realizing an equal pressure in the artificial scale of prices.

But we seem to have lost sight of one glaring fact, which, while our territory is limited, must upset the balance of any restrictive system; namely, that while we have no surplus, over our own consumption, of the produce of land, we have an immense surplus, over our own consumption, of the produce

of labour, that is of manufactures. Therefore, to protect, nominally, every thing in the home market, is in fact to protect, really, nothing but rents-for, as to agricultural labour, and agricultural profits, they must always suffer with, that is be brought to a level by manufacturing labour, and manufacturing profits.* The option, therefore, of establishing an arbitrary scale of prices, can never rest with us, until our Parliament has the same authority ove rthe markets in which the surplus of our labour, that is, of our manufacture must be sold, if sold at all, that it has in the market in which it compels us to buy our bread, at an artificial price.

But, though Parliament can control price, it cannot control prices! Though it can heap one scale, it cannot put a feather into the other! Buying and selling, therefore, under such necessarily one-sided restrictive laws, is a mere mockery.

As well might legislating landowners levy their arbitrary demands at once, as our ministers of peace and love do their tithes, by the point of the sword, as, like Brennus of old, fling the sword of power into the scale, to enhance the weight of the gold demanded! A majority of a house of landlords, throwing out a bill for the abolition of the corn laws, is merely a modern repetition of the insolent Gaul's "Væ victis."t

* See Torrens, on Wages and Combination.

"Woe to the conquered!"

CHAPTER III.

ON THE SOURCES OF NATIONAL WEALTH.

There is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious. The idle every where consume a great part of it; according to the proportions in which it is divided between these two orders, its value must increase or diminish.-Adam Smith.

WHAT are the sources of a nation's wealth?

The most important are, first, the marketable value, in the market of the world, of the natural productions of its soil, over and above the cost of production. Secondly, the value added by its labour to raw material, home or foreign, over and above the cost of the raw material, whether imported or produced at home; and the cost of preparing the finished goods for, and bringing them to, market. Thirdly, the amount of its profitably employed capital. Fourthly, the productiveness of the field on which the capital is sown.

If a nation devote its soil to the production of an article which, in the market of the world, would

not sell for the cost of production, does its land continue to be a source of national wealth?

Certainly not. On the contrary, it becomes a cause of national loss, by inducing an outlay of capital and of labour, which are never replaced.

Under such circumstances, what portion of the produce of the soil, is justly due to the landlord as rent?

No portion! he having rendered himself not only a pauper, but a bankrupt debtor, by a misuse of his own property, in which misuse a portion of the property of others is involved.

What national wealth, or national property, remains to a nation so circumstanced?

The proportion of productive labour which its population can furnish, which its capital can set in motion, and for the productions of which a market can be found. If, therefore, we would have such a nation prosper, we must inquire what are the best means of supplying, sustaining, and stimulating its productive industry.

Do we supply productive industry while we endeavour to check population, or to encourage emigration? Certainly not.* Do we sustain productive industry while we tax bread, meat, butter, cheese, tea, sugar, and beer? Certainly not. Do we

* While a free trade in corn is refused, emigration, like bleeding in acute inflammation, may possibly be a necessary sacrifice to urgent circumstances: but it is still a sacrifice.

stimulate productive industry, while we deny to the labourer the hope of securing, by his utmost exertions, even the necessaries, much less the comforts and decencies, of life? Most certainly not. What wealth is lost to the whole nation ?

That accumulation of the creations of labour, which goes in artificial prices to a foreign monopolist, whether in the shape of a greater quantity of printed calico, Birmingham hardware, or gold pieces.

What wealth is utterly lost, not only to the nation in which the error is committed, but to the whole world?

Whatever is the surplus cost of any forced production, over and above what the same production could be procured for, from any other country.

Under what circumstances will the extreme folly, and sinful waste of such forced production, be persisted in, when found to be a loss?

When protections are granted to monopolists; without which false support, forced production, if tried once, would not be resorted to a second time, for the best of reasons, because the whole of the dead loss, would fall upon the projectors of the idle scheme, of course, on those who held the power in their own hands, of stopping the losing game.

When protection screens the unwise producer, from the loss incurred by his imprudent production, on whom does the loss fall?

Most unjustly on the consumer, who, however