he was surrounded. He created nothing; he only gave his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured the things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned; when he did obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley-he changed its place; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a lining for his bed-he changed its form. Change of form and change of place are the beginning and end of all human labour; and the Moskito Indian only employed the same principle for the supply of his wants which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the channels of manufactures or commerce. But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the condition of the man without any accumulation of former labour-that is, of the man without any capital about him-was only in the second stage in which the power of labour can be exercised, and in which it is comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured-he laboured with accumulation—but he laboured without that other power which gives the last and highest direction to profitable labour. Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human life :— 1. There shall be Labour. The man thrown upon a desert island without accumulation, the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind, were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded command of the spontaneous productions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as compared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end. The second condition in the production of utility is- 2. That there shall be accumulation of former labour, or Capital. Without accumulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the lowest in the scale of animal existence. The reason is cbvious. Man requires some accumulation to aid his natural powers of labouring; for he is not provided with instruments of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadrupeds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Providence which presides over such manifold contrivances. He must, therefore, to work profitably, accumulate instruments of work. But he must do more, even in the unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty to direct his industry as he pleases, uncontrolled by the rights of other men. He must accumulate stores of covering and of shelter. He must have a hut and a bed of skins, which are all accumulations, or capital. He must, further, have a stock of food, which stock, being the most essential for human wants, is called provisions, or things! provided. He would require this provision against the accidents which may occur to his own health, and the obstacles of weather, which may prevent him from fishing or hunting. The lowest savages have some stores. Many of the inferior animals display an equal care to provide for the exigencies of the future. But still, all such labour is extremely limited. When a man is occupied only in providing immediately for his own wants-doing everything for himself, consuming nothing but what he produces himself, his labour must have a very narrow range. The supply of the lowest necessities of our nature can only be attended to, and these must be very ill supplied. The Moskito Indian had fish, and goat's flesh, and a rude hut, and a girdle of skins; and his power of obtaining this wealth was insured to him by the absence of other individuals who would have been his competitors for what the island spontaneously produced. Had other Indians landed in numbers on the island, and had each set about procuring everything for himself, as the active Moskito did, they would have soon approached the point of starvation; and then each would have begun to plunder from the other, unless they had found out the principle that would have given them all plenty. There wanted, then, another power to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction, besides that of accumulation. It is a power which can only exist where man is social, as it is his nature to be ;— and where the principles of civilization are in a certain degree developed. It is, indeed, the beginning and the end of all civilization. It is itself civilization, partial or complete. It is the last and most important condition in the production of useful commodities— 3. That there shall be exchanges. There can be no exchanges without accumulation-there can be no accumulation without labour. Exchange is that step beyond the constant labour and the partial accumulation of the lower animals, which makes man the lord of the world. QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER I. 1. If a man, brought up in civilized life, were to be cast upon a desert land what would his state be? 2. Why would it be helpless and wretched? 3. What would be the first condition of his lot? 4. Mention some instances of anything approaching to such a state. 5. How did Peter the Wild Boy and the Savage of Aveyron differ from a civilized man cast upon a desert land? 6. Mention an instance of a man left upon a desert land in a less helpless condition than the former instance. 7. In what did his advantages consist? 8. What gave him the power to labour profitably? 9. What are the beginning and end of all human labour? 10. What meant by utility? 11. What is the first condition necessary for the production of utility? 12. Why is this a necessary condition? 13. Which of the instances given fulfilled this first condition? 14. What is the second condition in the production of utility? 15. Why is this a necessary condition ? 16. Which of the instances given fulfilled this second condition? 17. What is labour under these two conditions only? 18. Why is it limited? 19. If other Indians had joined the Moskito Indian in his island and had each procured everything for himself, what would have happened? 20. What other power was wanted to give the labour of the Indian a profitable direction? 21. What is the beginning and the end of all civilization? CHAPTER II. Society a system of exchanges-Security of individual property the principle of exchange-Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe-Imperfect appropriation and unprofitable labour. SOCIETY, both in its rudest form and in its most refined and complicated relations, is nothing but a system of Exchanges. An exchange is a transaction in which both the parties who make the exchange are benefited; and, consequently, society is a state presenting an uninterrupted succession of advantages for all its members. Every time that we make a free exchange we have a greater desire for the thing which we receive than for the thing which we give;—and the person with whom we make the exchange has a greater desire for that which we offer him than for that which he offers us. When one gives his labour for wages, it is because he has a higher estimation of the wages than of the profitless ease and freedom of remaining unemployed; and, on the contrary, the employer who purchases his labour feels that he shall be more benefited by the results of that labour than by retaining the capital which he exchanges for it. In a simple state of society, when one man exchanges a measure of wheat for the measure of wine which another man possesses, it is evident that the one has got a greater store of wheat than he desires to consume himself, and that the other, in the same way, has got a greater store of wine;-the one exchanges something to eat for something to drink, and the other something to drink for something to eat. In a refined state of society, when money represents the value of the exchanges, the exchange between the abundance beyond the wants of the possessor of one commodity and of another is just as |