NATIONAL WEALTH, INDIVIDUAL WEALTH, LUXURY AND ECONOMY.
It is a common theory with political economists, that national wealth
is but the sum of individual wealth, and that as individual wealth
increases, national wealth increases, _pari passu_.
We think this theory false and pernicious, and the more so because it is
plausible.
All profit-bearing possessions or capital, tend to exonerate their
owners from labor, and to throw the labor that supports society on a
part only of its members. Now, as almost all wealth is the product of
labor, this diminution of labor diminishes wealth, or, at least,
increases poverty, by placing heavier burdens on the laboring class.
This, however, is a very small part of the evil effects of individual
wealth. Society requires it of the rich to live according to their
income, to fare sumptuously, to have costly dress, furniture, equipage,
houses, &c., and to keep many servants.
Their incomes are spent in luxuries, and thousands of laborers are taken
off from the production of necessaries to produce those luxuries, or to
wait on their owners. Thus, the burden of the support of society, so
far as the ordinary comforts and necessaries of life are concerned, are
thrown on fewer and fewer, as private wealth and luxury increase. It
requires a thousand pauper laborers to sustain one millionaire, and
without them his capital will produce no profit. This accounts for the
great numbers and excessive poverty of the mass in England. Half the
boasted capital of England, probably two-thirds of it, is but a mortgage
of the bones and sinews of the laborers, now and forever, to the
capitalists. The national debt, stocks of all kinds, money at interest,
and indeed all debts, represent this sort of private wealth, which is
national poverty.
Sumptuous houses, parks, and all establishments that are costly to
sustain and keep up, and do not facilitate, but check the production of
necessaries, are also part of private wealth, and of national poverty.
Four-fifths of the private wealth of England, and half of that of our
Northeast, is a severe tax on labor, and a constant preventive of the
accumulation of national wealth.
Private wealth at the South consists chiefly in negro laborers, and
improvements of land, that increase its productive capacities. Fine
enclosures, improved stock, good granaries, and machines and implements
for farming, comfortable negro cabins, good orchards, &c., are as
strictly a part of national, as of individual wealth. Not so with the
costly private dwellings in our Northern cities. The expense of
building, of repairing, of furnishing, and of keeping servants for their
owners or tenants, is a constant drawback from productive industry,
increases the burdens of the laboring poor, and diminishes national
wealth. The poverty-stricken fields of New England are the necessary
consequence of the luxurious expenditure in her cities. Yet that luxury
is no part of national wealth, but a constant tax on it, whilst unproved
farms constitute almost three-fourths of all her real wealth, for they
feed and clothe mankind.
This is a most interesting subject; one which we have not mastered, or,
if we had, this work on which we are engaged is not the proper one for
its full discussion and exposition. We merely throw out a few
suggestions for the consideration of the thinking and ingenuous. If we
are right, luxury is the greatest sin against society; economy and
industry, the chiefest of social virtues.