ruined and restored man whose tale we have just told, but in the case of thriving tradesmen all around us, who were once servants. But if the labourer, or the great body of labourers were to imagine that they could obtain such a proportion of the capital of a civilized country except as exchangers, the store would instantly vanish. They might perhaps divide by force the crops in barns and the clothes in warehouses-but there would be no more crops or clothes. The principle upon which all accumulation depends, that of security of property, being destroyed, the accumulation would be destroyed. Whatever tends to make the state of society insecure, tends to prevent the employment of capital. In despotic countries, that insecurity is produced by the tyranny of one. In other countries, where the people, having been misgoverned, are badly educated, that insecurity is produced by the tyranny of many. In either case, the bulk of the people themselves are the first to suffer, whether by the outrages of a tyrant, or by their own outrages. They prevent labour by driving away to other channels the funds which support labour. In some eastern countries, where, when a man becomes rich, his property is seized upon by the one tyrant, nobody dares to avow that he has any property. Capital is not employed; it is hidden and the people who have capital live not upon its profits, but by the diminution of the capital itself. In the very earliest times we hear of concealed riches. In the book of Job those who "long for death" are said to "dig for it more than for hid treasures." The tales of the east are full of allusions to money buried and money dug up. The poor woodman, in making up his miserable faggot, discovers a trap-door, and becomes rich. In India, where the rule of Mohammedan princes was usually one of tyranny, even now the search after treasure goes on. The popular mind is filled with the old traditions; and so men dream of bags of gold to be discovered in caves and places of desolation, and they forthwith dig, till hope is banished, and the real treasure is found in systematic industry. It was the same in the feudal times in England, when the lord tyrannized over his vassals, and no property was safe but in the hands of the strongest. In those times people who had treasure buried it. Who thinks of burying treasure now in England? In the plays and story-books which depict the manners of our early times, we constantly read of people finding bags of money. We never find bags of money now, except when a very old hoard, hidden in some time of national trouble, comes to light. So little time ago as the reign of Charles II. we read of the Secretary to the Admiralty going down from London to his country house, with all his money in his carriage, to bury it in his garden. What Samuel Pepys records of his doings with his own money, was a natural consequence of the practices of a previous time. He also chronicles, in several places of his curious diary, his laborious searches, day by day, for 70007. hid in butter firkins in the cellars of the Tower of London. Why is money not hidden and not sought for now? Because people have security for the employment of it, and by the employment of it in creating new produce the nation's stock of capital goes on hourly increasing. When we read in Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England," that the concealment of treasure-trove, or found treasure, from the king, is a misdemeanour punishable by fine and imprisonment, and that it was formerly a capital offence, we at once see that this is a law no longer for our time; and we learn from this instance, as from many others, how the progress of civilization silently repeals laws which belong to another condition of the people. When we look at the nature of the accumulated wealth of society, it is easy to see that the poorest member of it who dedicates himself to profitable labour is in a certain sense rich-rich, as compared with the unproductive and therefore poor individuals of any uncivilized tribe. The very scaffolding, if we may so express it, of the social structure, and the moral forces by which that structure was reared, and is upheld, are to him riches. To be rich is to possess the means of supplying our wants-to be poor is to be destitute of those means. Riches do not consist only of money and lands, of stores of food or clothing, of machines and tools. The particular knowledge of any art-the general understanding of the laws of nature-the habit from experience of doing any work in the readiest way-the facility of communicating ideas by written languagethe enjoyment of institutions conceived in the spirit of social improvement-the use of the general conveniences of civilized life, such as roads-these advantages, which the poorest man in England possesses or may possess, constitute individual property. They are means for the supply of wants, which in themselves are essentially more valuable for obtaining his full share of what is appropriated, than if all the productive powers of nature were unappropriated, and if, consequently, these great elements of civilization did not exist. Society obtains its almost unlimited command over riches by the increase and preservation of knowledge, and by the division of employments, including union of power. In his double capacity of a consumer and producer, the humblest man has the full benefit of these means of wealth—of these great instruments by which the productive power of labour is carried to its highest point. But if these common advantages, these public means of society, offering so many important agents to the individual. for the gratification of his wants, alone are worth more to him than all the precarious power of the savage state-how incomparably greater are his advantages when we consider the wonderful accumulations, in the form of private wealth, which are ready to be exchanged with the labour of all those who are in a condition to add to the store. It has been truly said by M. Say, a French economist, "It is a great misfortune to be poor, but it is a much greater misfortune for the poor man to be surrounded only with other poor like himself." The reason is obvious. The productive power of labour can be carried but a very little way without accumulation of capital. In a highly civilized country, capital is heaped up on every side by ages of toil and perseverance. A succession, during a long series of years, of small advantages to individuals unceasingly renewed and carried forward by the principle of exchanges, has produced this prodigious amount of the aggregate capital of a country whose civilization is of ancient date. This accumulation of the means of existence, and of all that makes existence comfortable, is principally resulting from the labours of those who have gone before us. It is a stock which was beyond their own immediate wants, and which was not extinguished with their lives. It is our capital. It has been produced by labour alone, physical and mental. It can be kept up only by the same power which has created it, carried to the highest point of productiveness by the arrangements of society. QUESTIONS UPON CHAPTER IV. 1. Give an example of the power, in civilized life, of the principle of exchange. 2. What is the cause that only an exchanger can exist, except as a beggar, in civilized life? 3. What are the causes that make universal appropriation a general advantage? 4. What is the public effect of an accumulation of private savings in savings-banks? 5. What is the effect of the new industry stimulated by an accumulation of savings? 6. What would be the result if the power to produce and the disposition to consume were equal? 7. What is the first operation in a newly settled country? 8. Enumerate the most obvious features of the accumulation of a highly civilized country. 9. What are the general effects of the natural laws of exchange? 10. What results from the destruction of security of property? 11. What class is the first to suffer by the insecurity of property? 12. What is the effect of the insecurity of property in despotic countries? 13. Why is money not hidden now? 14. What advantages constitute individual property? 15. How does society obtain its almost unlimited command over riches? CHAP. V. Common Interests of Capital and Labour. 45 CHAPTER V. Common interests of Capital and Labour-Labour directed by Accumulation -Capital enhanced by Labour Balance of rights and duties Relation of demand and supply Money exchanges value of money. Intrinsic and representative HERE is an old proverb, that "When two men ride on THERE one horse, one man must ride behind." Capital and Labour are, as we think, destined to perform a journey together to the end of time. We have shown how they proceed on this journey. We have shown that, although Labour is the parent of all wealth, its struggles for the conversion of the rude supplies of nature into objects of utility are most feeble in their effects till they are assisted by accumulation. Before the joint interests of Labour and Capital were at all understood, they kept separate; when they only began to be understood, as we shall show, they were constantly pulling different ways, instead of giving “a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether;" and even now, when these interests in many respects are still imperfectly understood, they occasionally quarrel about the conditions upon which they will continue to travel in company. In the very outset of the journey, Labour, doubtless, took the lead. In the dim morning of society Labour was up and stirring before Capital was awake. Labour did not then ride; he travelled slowly on foot through very dirty ways. Capital, at length, as slowly followed after, through the same mire, but at an humble distance from his parent. But when Capital grew into strength, he saw that there were quicker and more agreeable modes of travelling for both than Labour had found out. He procured that fleet and untiring horse Ex |