7. What does the labourer receive in exchange for that additional value? 8. Give examples of the inconveniences of a rude mode of exchange. 9. What is necessary to freedom of exchange? 10. What is the first right of the labourer? 11. What of the capitalist? 12. Upon what are these rights built? 13. What is the effect on production of an absence of the security and freedom of capital and labour? 14. Upon what are the laws of production founded? 15. Give instances of the mutual influence of demand and supply. 16. What are the advantages of a money payment over a payment in kind? 17. What is represented by the real value of money? 18. What gives a representative value to money? 19. Why would not uncoined metal represent a definite value? 20. What is the great use of coined metal? CHAPTER VI. Importance of capital to the profitable employment of labour- - Contrast between the prodigal and the prudent man: the Dukes of Buckingham and Bridgewater-Making good for trade-Unprofitable consumption—War against capital in the middle ages - Evils of corporate privileges Condition of the people under Henry VIII. IF we have succeeded in making our meaning clear, by stating a general truth, not in an abstract form, but as brought out by various instances of the modes in which it is exhibited, we shall have led the reader to the conclusion that accumulation, or capital, is absolutely essential to the profitable employment of labour; and that the greater the accumulation the greater the extent of that profitable employment. This truth, however, has been denied altogether by some speculative writers;—and, what is more important, has been practically denied by the conduct of nations and individuals in the earlier state of society,—and is still denied by existing prejudices, derived from the current maxims of former days of ignorance and half-knowledge. With the speculative writers we have little to do. When Rousseau, for instance, advises governments not to secure property to its possessors, but to deprive them of all means of accumulating, it is sufficient to know that the same writer advocated the savage state, in which there should be no property, in preference to the social, which is founded on appropriation. Knowing this, and being convinced that the savage state, with imperfect appropriation, is one of extreme wretchedness, we may safely leave such opinions to work their own cure. For it is not likely that any individual, however disposed to think that accumulation is an evil, would desire, by destroying accumulation, to pass into the condition, described by John Tanner, of a constant encounter with hunger in its most terrific forms: and seeing, therefore, the fallacy of such an opinion, he will also see that, if he partially destroys accumulation, he equally impedes production, and equally destroys his share in the productive power of capital and labour working together for a common good in the social state. But, without going the length of wishing to destroy capital, there are many who think that accumulation is a positive evil, and that consumption is a positive benefit: and, therefore, that economy is an evil, and waste a benefit. The course of a prodigal man is by many still viewed with considerable admiration. He sits up all night in frantic riot--he consumes whatever can stimulate his satiated appetite-he is waited upon by a crowd of unproductive and equally riotous retainers-he breaks and destroys everything around him with an unsparing hand-he rides his horses to death in the most extravagant attempts to wrestle with time and space; and when he has spent all his substance in these excesses, and dies an outcast and a beggar, he is said to have been a hearty fellow, and to have “made good for trade." When, on the contrary, a man of fortune economizes his revenue-lives like a virtuous and reasonable being, whose first duty is the cultivation of his understanding-eats and drinks with regard to his health-keeps no more retainers than are sufficient for his proper comfort and decency-breaks and destroys nothing-has respect to the inferior animals, as well from motives of prudence as of mercy-and dies without a mortgage on his lands; he is said to have been a stingy fellow who did not know how to "circulate his money." To "circulate money," to "make good for trade," in the once common meaning of the terms, is for one to consume unprofitably what, if economized, would have stimulated production in a way that would have enabled hundreds, instead of one, to consume profitably. Let us offer two historical examples of these two opposite modes of making good for trade, and circulating money. The Duke of Buckingham, "having been possessed of about 50,000l. a year, died in 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the utmost misery.' ""* After a life of the most wanton riot, which exhausted all his princely resources, he was left at the last hour, under circumstances which are well described in the following lines by Pope : "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half huug, No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, Contrast the course of this unhappy man with that of the Duke of Bridgewater, who devoted his property to really "making good for trade," by constructing the great canals which connect Manchester with the coal countries and with Liverpool. The Duke of Buckingham lived in a round of sensual folly: the Duke of Bridgewater limited his personal expenditure to 400l. a year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility. The one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockeys; the other called into action the labour of thousands, and employed in the direction of that labour the skill of Brindley, one of the greatest engineers that any country has produced. The one died without a penny, loaded with debt, leaving no trace behind him but the ruin which his waste had produced the other bequeathed almost the largest property in Europe to his descendants, and opened a channel for industry which afforded, and still affords, employment to thousands. *Ruffhead's Pope. sumer. When a mob amused themselves by breaking windows, as was once a common recreation on an illumination night, by way of showing the amount of popular intelligence, some were apt to say they have "made good for trade." Is it not evident that the capital which was represented by the unbroken windows was really so much destroyed of the national riches when the windows were broken?-for if the windows had remained unbroken, the capital would have remained to stimulate the production of some new object of utility. The glaziers, indeed, replaced the windows; but there having been a destruction of windows, there must have been a necessary retrenchment in some other outlay, that would have afforded a benefit to the conDoubtless, when the glazier is called into activity by a mob breaking windows, some other trade suffers; for the man who has to pay for the broken windows must retrench somewhere, and, if he has less to lay out, some other person has less to lay out. The glass-maker, probably, makes more glass at the moment; but he does so to exchange with the capital that would otherwise have gone to the maker of clothes or of furniture: and, there being an absolute destruction of the funds for the maintenance of labour, by an unnecessary destruction of what former labour has produced, trade generally is injured to the extent of the destruction. Some now say that a fire makes good for trade. The only difference of evil between the fire which destroys a house, and the mob which breaks the windows, is, that the fire absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a hundred to one when compared with the mob. Some say that war makes good for trade. The only difference of pecuniary evil (the moral evils admit of no comparison) between the fire and the war is, that the war absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade or labour, in the proportion of a million to a hundred when compared with the fire. If the incessant energy of production were constantly repressed by mobs, and fires, and wars, the end would be that consumption would altogether exceed |