CHAPTER XXXIV.

"And Roland, sir," said I; "how did he take it?"

"With all the indignation of a proud unreasonable man. More indignant,

poor fellow, for me than himself. And so did he wound and gall me by

what he said of Ellinor,--and so did he rage against me because I

would not share his rage,--that again we quarrelled. We parted, and

did not meet for many years. We came into sudden possession of our

little fortunes. His he devoted (as you may know) to the purchase of

the old ruins, and the commission in the army, which had always been

his dream--and so went his way, wrathful. My share gave me an excuse

for indolence,--it satisfied all my wants; and when my old tutor died,

and his young child became my ward, and, somehow or other, from my

ward my wife, it allowed me to resign my fellowship, and live amongst

my books--still as a book myself. One comfort, long before my

marriage, I had conceived; and that, too, Roland has since said was

comfort to him. Ellinor became an heiress--her poor brother died; and

all of the estate that did not pass in the male line devolved on her.

That fortune made a gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage.

For Ellinor, poor and portionless, in spite of her rank, I could have

worked, striven, slaved. But Ellinor RICH! it would have crushed me.

This was a comfort. But still, still the past--that perpetual aching

sense of something that had seemed the essential of life withdrawn

from life, evermore, evermore. What was left was not sorrow, it was a

void. Had I lived more with men, and less with dreams and books, I

should have made my nature large enough to bear the loss of a single

passion. But in solitude we shrink up. No plant so much as man needs

the sun and the air. I comprehend now why most of our best and wisest

men have lived in capitals; and therefore again I say, that one

scholar in a family is enough. Confiding in your sound heart and

strong honour, I turn you thus betimes on the world. Have I done

wrong? Prove that I have not, my child. Do you know what a very good

man has said--Listen and follow my precept, not example.

"The state of the world is such, and so much depends on action, that

every thing seems to say aloud to every man, 'Do something--do it--do

it!'"[3] I was profoundly touched, and I rose refreshed and hopeful,

when suddenly the door opened, and who or what in the world should come

in; but certainly he, she, it, or they, shall not come into this

chapter!--On that point I am resolved. No, my dear young lady, I am

extremely flattered;--I feel for your curiosity; but really not a

peep--not one! And yet--well then, if you will have it, and look so

coaxingly--who, or what I say, should come in abrupt, unexpected--taking

away one's breath, not giving one time to say, "By your leave, or with

your leave," but making one's mouth stand open with surprise, and one's

eyes fix in a big round stupid stare, but--

THE END OF THE CHAPTER.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests--the hieroglyph

generally known to the well educated.

[2] LUCIAN, _The Dream of Micyllus_.

[3] _Remains of the Rev. Richard Cecil_, p. 349.

POLITICAL ECONOMY, BY J. S. MILL.[4]

In the old feud between the man of experience and the man of theory,

it sometimes happens that the former obtains a triumph by the mere

activity of the latter. Cases have been known where the theorist, in

the clarifying and perfecting his own theory, has argued himself round

to those very truths which his empirical antagonist had held to with a

firm though less reasoning faith. He stood to his post; the stream of

knowledge seemed to be flowing past him, and those who floated on it

laughed at his stationary figure as they left him behind. Nevertheless

he stood still; and by-and-by this meandering stream, with the busy

crew that navigated it, after many a turn and many a curve, have

returned to the very spot where he had made his obstinate halt.

This has been illustrated, and we venture to say will be illustrated

still further, in the progress of the science of political economy.

The man of experience has been taunted for his obstinacy and blindness

in adhering to something which he called common sense and matter of

fact; and behold! the scientific economist, in the course of his own

theorising, is returning to those very positions from which he has

been endeavouring to drive his opponent. The present work of Mr J. S.

Mill, the latest and most complete exposition of the most advanced

doctrines of the political economists, manifests, on more than one

occasion, this _retrograde progress_,--demolishing, on the ground of

still more scientific principles--the value of which time, however,

must test--those arguments by which his scientific predecessors had

attempted to mislead the man of experience or of empirical knowledge.

When, moreover, we consider, that the errors of the political

economist are not allowed to remain mere errors of theory, but are

pushed forward into practice, thrust immediately into the vital

interests of the community, we must admit that never was the man of

experience and common sense more fully justified in holding back and

looking long before he yielded assent to his new teachers. Stranger

paradoxes were never broached than some that have lived their day in

this science; and paradoxes as they were, they claimed immediately

their share of influence in our legislative measures. A learned

professor, a luminary of the science, demonstrated that absenteeism

could have nothing whatever to do with the poverty of Ireland. So the

Greek sophist demonstrated that Achilles could never catch the

tortoise. But the Greek was the more reasonable of the two: he

required of no one to stake his fortune on the issue of the race. The

professor of political economy not only teaches his sophism--he would

have us _back his tortoise_.

Although it has been our irksome task to oppose the application to

practice of half-formed theories, ill made up, and most dangerously

incomplete, yet we surely need not say that we take a genuine interest

in the approximation to a sound and trustworthy state of the science

of political economy. That, notwithstanding its obliquities, the new

science has rendered a substantial service to mankind, and is

calculated, when thoroughly understood, to render still greater

service--that it embraces topics of the widest and most permanent

interest, and that intellects of the highest order have been worthily

occupied in their investigation--this, let no strain of observation in

which from time to time we have indulged, be thought to deny or

controvert. To explain the complicate machinery of a modern commercial

state, is assuredly one of the most useful tasks, and by no means the

most easy, to which a reflective mind could address itself. When Adam

Smith, leaving the arena of metaphysical inquiry, in which he had

honourably distinguished himself, turned his analytic powers to the

examination of the common-place yet intricate affairs of that

commercial community in which he lived, he acted in the same

enlightened spirit which led Bacon to demand of philosophy, that she

should leave listening to the echoes of the school-room, and walk

abroad into nature, amongst things and realities. The author of _The

Wealth of Nations_, like him of the _Novum Organum_, struck out a new

path of wisely utilitarian thinking. If the one led philosophy into

the real world of nature and her daily phenomena, the other conducted

her into a world still more novel to her footsteps--the world of

commerce, of buying and selling, of manufacture and exchange. It may,

indeed, be said of both these men, that in their leading and most

valuable tenets, they were but announcing the claims of common sense;

and that, in doing this, they had from time to time, and in utterances

more or less distinct, been anticipated by others. But the cause of

common sense is, after all, the very last which obtains a fair and

potent advocacy; and the philosophy of one age is always destined, if

it be true, to become the common sense of succeeding ages; and it

detracts very little from the merit of an eminent writer who has been

the means of impressing any great truth upon the minds of men, either

at home or abroad, that others had obtained a view of it also, and

given to it an imperfect and less effective enunciation. Let due

honour, therefore, be paid to our countryman Adam Smith, the founder,

on this side of the Channel at least, of the science of political

economy--honour to him who turned a most keen intellect, sharpened by

those metaphysical studies for which his fragmentary Essays, as well

as and still more than his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, prove him to

have been eminently qualified--turned it from these captivating

subtleties to inquiries into the causes, actually in operation, of the

prosperity of a commercial people. He left these regions of mazy

labyrinthine thought, which, if not as beautiful as the enchanted

gardens in which Tasso imprisoned his knight, are, to a certain order

of spirits, quite as ensnaring, to look into the mystery of bills of

exchange, of systems of banking, customs, and the currency. Be it

admitted at once, and ungrudgingly, that Adam Smith and some of his

successors have done a substantial service in assisting to explain the

machinery of society--the organisation, so to speak, of a commercial

body. Until this is done, and done thoroughly, no proposed measure of

legislation, and no course of conduct voluntarily adopted by the

people, can be seen in all its bearings; the true causes of the most

immediate and pressing evils can never be certainly known, and, of

course, the efficient remedies can never be applied. Our main

quarrel--though we have many--with the political economists is on this

ground--that, having constructed a theory explanatory of the _wealth_

of nations, they have wished to enforce this upon our legislature, as

if it had embraced all the causes which conspire to the _wellbeing_ of

nations; as if wealth and wellbeing were synonymous. Having determined

the state of things best fitted to procure, in general, the greatest

aggregate amount of riches, they have proceeded to deal with a people

as if it were a corporate body, whose sole object was to increase the

total amount of its possessions. They have overlooked the equally

vital questions concerning the distribution of these possessions, and

of the _various employments_ of mankind. Full of their leading idea,

and accustomed to abstractions and generalities, they forget the

_individual_, and appear to treat their subject as if the aggregate

wealth of a community were to be enjoyed in some aggregate manner, and

a sum-total of possessions would represent the comforts and enjoyments

of its several members. To know what measures tend to increase the

national wealth is undoubtedly of great importance, but it is not

_all_; the theory of riches, or of commerce, is not the theory of

society.

As political economy arose with a metaphysician, and has been

prosecuted by men of the same abstract turn of mind, it very soon

aspired to the philosophical character of a science. It laid down its

_laws_. But it has not always been seen that the harmonious and

systematic form it has been able to assume was owing to an arbitrary

division of social topics, which in their nature, and in their

operation on human welfare, are inextricably combined. They laid down

laws, which could only be considered such by obstinately refusing to

look beyond a certain number of isolated facts; and they persisted in

governing mankind according to laws obtained by this imperfect

generalisation.

With regard to the main doctrine of the political economists, that of

free-trade--their advocacy of unfettered industry, whether working for

the home or foreign market--one sees plainly that there is a truth

here. Looking at the matter abstractedly from other considerations,

what doctrine could be more reasonable or more benign than that which

instructs the separate communities of mankind to throw aside all

commercial jealousies, all unnecessary heartburnings--to throw down

their barriers, their custom-houses, their preventive stations--to let

the commerce and industry of the world be free, so that the peace of

the world, as well as the wealth of nations, would be secured and

advanced? What better doctrine could be taught than this? Did not

Fenelon, mildest and best of archbishops, reasoning from the dictates

of his own Christian conscience, arrive at the same conclusion as the

philosophical economist? What better, we repeat, could be taught than

a doctrine which tends to make all nations as one people, and the most

wealthy people possible? But hold a while. Take the microscope, and

deign to look somewhat closer at the little interests of the many

little men that constitute a nation. Condescend to inquire, before you

change the currents of wealth and industry, (though to increase both,)

into what hands the wealth is to flow, and what the class of labourers

you diminish or multiply. Industry free! Good. But is the capitalist

to be permitted, at all times, to gather round him and his machinery

what multitudes of workmen he pleases--workmen who are to breed up

families dependent for their subsistence on the success of some

gigantic and hazardous enterprise? Is he to be allowed, under all

circumstances, to do this, and give the state no guarantee for the

lives of these men and women and children, but what it obtains from

his perhaps too sanguine calculations of his own profit and loss? Is

it any consolation that he bankrupts himself in ruining others, and

adding immensely to a pauper population? Commerce free! Good. It will

increase your imports, and multiply by an advantageous exchange the

products of your industry. But what if your measure to promote this

freedom of commerce foster a mode of industry at home essentially of a

precarious nature, and attended with fearful political and social

dangers, at the expense of other modes of industry of a more

permanent, stable, peaceful character--must nothing still be heard of

but free commerce? Must the utmost amount of products, at all hazard,

be obtained, whatever the mode of industry that earn it, or the fate

of those called into existence by the overgrown manufacture you

encourage? Is it no matter how won, or who enjoys? Is the only

question that the wealth be there? What if England, by carrying out,

without pause or exception, the doctrine of free-trade, should

aggravate the most alarming symptoms of her present social

condition--must this _law_ of the political economist be still, with

unmitigated strictness, urged upon her? She pleads for exception, for

delay; but the political economist will not see the grounds of her

plea--will not recognise her reasons for exception: full of his

partial science, which has been made to occupy too large a portion of

his field of vision, he _cannot_ see them.

England, by a series of well-known mechanical inventions, extended in

a surprising manner her manufacture of cotton, and with it her foreign

commerce in this article. It is unnecessary to repeat figures that we

have given before, or which may be found in any statistical tables.

Enough that her operations here have been on a quite gigantic scale.

Recollect that _this_ is the channel into which must run the industry

and capital which your measures of free-trade may drive from their old

accustomed course. Look for a moment at the nature of this species of

industry, and ask whether it would be wise to foster and augment it at

the expense of other more ordinary and less precarious modes of

earning a subsistence. An enormous population is brought together,

educated, so far as their industrial habits are concerned, in no

independent labour, but taught merely to perform a part in the great

machinery of a cotton-mill, themselves a part of that machinery, and

trusting, they and their families, for their necessary bread, to the

successful sale of the great stock of goods, the annual amount of

which they are annually increasing. Although the home market may

absorb the greatest portion of these goods, yet the foreign market

takes so considerable a share, that any derangement of the external

commerce throws a large number of this densely-congregated multitude

out of employment. Is there nothing peculiarly hazardous in this

condition of things? Granted that nothing can, or ought to be done to

restrain the enterprising capitalist from speculating too freely with

the lives of men, is it a state of things to be aggravated? Now, at

this juncture comes the apostle of free-trade, and demands (for

illustration's sake) that French boots and shoes be admitted

duty-free. He employs the well-known, and, to its own legitimate

extent, unanswerable argument of the political economist. He tells us

that, by so doing, we shall purchase better and cheaper boots and

shoes, and sell more of our cotton; that, in short, by manufacturing

more cotton goods, in which we marvellously excel, we shall procure

better boots and shoes than by the old process of making them

ourselves. We are evidently the gainers. Let us see the gain. The

gentleman pays something less for his shoes, and is somewhat more

luxuriously shod. The owner of the cotton-mill, too, finds that trade

is _looking up_. To balance this, we have so many shoemakers driven

from their employment--the very steady one of making shoes for their

own countrymen--and added to the number of men working at cotton-mills

for the foreign market,--a mode of industry which we know, by painful

experience, to be precarious in the extreme. We describe the

superfluous shoemaker as going over directly to the artisans of the

factory: we say nothing of the miseries of the _middle passage_;

though in truth this transition is accomplished with pain and

difficulty, and after much struggle, and is rather done in the second

generation than the first, it being rather the children of the

shoemaker that are added to the population of the factory than the

shoemaker himself.

We see here that the mere calculation of profit and loss, such as it

might figure in a debtor and creditor account, would justify the

extreme advocate of free-trade. But there are, surely, other

considerations which may properly rank a little higher than such a

tradesman's balance of profit and loss; we are surely allowed to

follow our inquiries a little further, and ask who is enriched, and

how? and what branch of industry is promoted, and what destroyed or

curtailed? It is not our object here to contend against what is called

the factory system--we accept it with its evil and its good; we are

not calling for measures directly hostile to it; but we certainly

should exclaim against the sacrifice of a branch of household, stable,

permanent industry, to be compensated by an increase in this already

enormous system of factory labour, which, together with much good,

brings with it so dreadfully precarious a condition of thousands and

tens of thousands of men. The political economist has proved that

free-trade is the condition under which the industry of man, so far as

the amount of its products is concerned, can be exercised with the

greatest advantage: he has established this principle; it is an

important one, and we thank him for its lucid exposition; but he shall

be no legislator of ours until he has learned to submit his principle

to wise exceptions, until he has learned to estimate the first

necessity of steady and well-remunerated employment to the labourer,

until he is prepared, in short, to give their due weight to other

considerations besides that of multiplying the gross products of human

industry.

We have been viewing the question of free-trade from the position of

an opulent manufacturing people--from the position of England, in

short--and we see that there may be ground even here for exception.

But the case is much stronger, and the claim for exception still

plainer, which might be made out by a less opulent nation, desirous of

fostering its own rising manufactures. These wisely refuse a

reciprocity of free-trade measures. Even on the mere ground of the

increase of national wealth, and without considering the advantage

derived from a variety of employments, and a _due_ admixture of a

manufacturing population, they are fully justified in their protective

policy. The economist will tell them that they deprive themselves of

the opportunity of purchasing cheaper and better goods than they can

produce. We admit that, for a season, they must forego an advantage of

this description; but at the end of a few years how will the account

stand? If the protective duty has fostered a home manufactory that

would not otherwise have existed, (and this is an assumption which the

political economist himself is compelled to admit,) then is there in

that country a new industry--then amongst that people is there more

_labour_ and less idleness, and therefore more of the fruits of

labour. It has created for itself what it otherwise would have had to

purchase with its corn and oil.

The political economists love an extreme case. In order to test the

universality of the principle of free-trade, we give them the

following:--There is a little island somewhere in the Pacific, and it

grows corn, and grapes, and the cotton plant. Two or three great ships

come annually to this island, bringing a store of Manchester goods,

and taking away a portion of the corn and the wine. But the wise men

of the island meet and say, Let us learn to make our own cotton into

stuff for raiment; so shall we have clothes without parting with our

corn and wine. Would the people of the island be very foolish if they

consented to wear, for a time, a much coarser raiment, in order that

they might practise this new industry, and thus provide themselves

with raiment, and keep their provender? We suppose that the same

unequal distribution of property is found in our island as in the rest

of the world--that there are rich and poor. Now, when a people

exchanges its articles of food for articles of clothing, it rarely, if

ever, parts with what, _to the whole of the people_, is a superfluous

quantity of food. Those who own large portions of the land have a

superfluity of produce, which they exchange for other articles either

at home or abroad; but probably no people ever grew a greater quantity

of corn, or other grain for food, than it could very willingly have

consumed itself, could we conceive it distributed amongst all who had

mouths to consume, and half-filled stomachs to stow it away in. Judge,

therefore, whether our little island would not, in a few years, be

much better off for refusing the visit of the great ships, and setting

to work to weave its own cotton into garments. The political

economists always talk of so much labour diverted from one employment

to another; they seem to have forgotten that there is such a thing as

so much idleness converted into so much labour.

In the work of John Stuart Mill, to which we have now to call the

attention of our readers, the science of political economy has

received its latest and most complete exposition. Nor, as the title

itself will inform us, is the work limited to a formal enunciation of

abstract principles, (as was the case with the brief compendium of Mr

Mill, senior,) but it proceeds to apply those principles to the

discussion of some of the most vital and momentous questions with

which public opinion is at present occupied. There are things in these

volumes, as may easily be conceived, in which we do not concur--views

are supported, on some subjects, to which we have been long and

notoriously opposed; but there is, in the exposition of its tenets, so

accurate a statement, so severe and lucid a reasoning, and, withal, so

genuine and manly an interest in the great cause of humanity, that we

cannot hesitate a moment in awarding to it a high rank amongst the

sterling literature of our country. This magazine has never been

slow--it has been second to none--in its hearty recognition of great

talent and ability, from whatever quarter of the political horizon

these have made their appearance. We were amongst the first to give

notice to all whom it concerned of the addition to the students' shelf

of the profound and elaborate work, _The System of Logic_, by the

same author. The present is a work of more general interest, yet it

has the same severe character. In this, as in his logic, the author

has sacrificed nothing deemed by him essential to his task, to the

desire of being popular, or the fear of being pronounced _dry_--the

word of most complete condemnation in the present day. Dry, however,

no person who takes an interest in the actual condition and prospects

of society, can possibly find the greater portion of this work. For,

as we have already intimated, that which honourably distinguishes it

from other professed treatises of political economy is the perpetual,

earnest, never-forgotten interest, which accompanies the writer

throughout, in the great questions at present mooted with respect to

the social condition of man. Mr Mill very wisely refused to limit

himself to the mere abstract principles of his science; he descends

from them, sometimes as from a vantage ground, into the discussions

which most concern and agitate the public mind at the present day;

and, if his conclusions are not always, or even generally, such as we

can wholly coincide with, there is so penetrating an intelligence in

his remarks, and so grave and serious a philanthropy pervading his

book, that it would be impossible for the most complete opponent of

the work not to rise a gainer from its perusal. From what else can we

gain, if not from intercourse with a keen, and full, and sincere mind,

whether we have to struggle with it, or to acquiesce in its guidance?

There are passages in this work, didactic as its style generally is,

which have had on us all the effect of the most thrilling eloquence,

from the fine admixture of severe reasoning and earnestness of

feeling.

For instance--to give at once an idea of the more elevated tone this

utilitarian science has assumed in the work of Mr Mill--it is no

little novelty to hear a political economist speak in the following

manner of the mere elements of national wealth. The author has been

discoursing on that stationary state to which all opulent nations are

supposed to tend, wherein, by the diminution of profits, there is

little means and no temptation to further accumulation of capital:--

"I cannot," he says, "regard the stationary state of capital

and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally

manifested towards it by political economists, of the old

school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the

whole, a very considerable improvement on our present

condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life

held out by those who think that the normal state of human

beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling,

crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which

form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable

lot of humankind, or any thing but one of the disagreeable

symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress. The

northern and middle states of America are a specimen of this

stage of civilisation in very favourable circumstances;

having apparently got rid of all social injustices and

inequalities that affect persons of Caucasian race and of the

male sex, while the proportion of population to capital and

land is such as to insure abundance to every able-bodied

member of the community who does not forfeit it by

misconduct. They have the six points of Chartism, and no

poverty; and all that these advantages do for them is, that

the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to

dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters.

This is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists

to come will feel any very eager desire to assist in

realising....

"That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment by

the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the

struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating

the others into better things, is undoubtedly more desirable

than that they should rust and stagnate. While minds are

coarse, they require coarse stimuli, and let them have them.

In the mean time, those who do not accept the present very

early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be

excused for being comparatively indifferent to the kind of

economical progress which usually excites the congratulations

of politicians--the mere increase of production and

accumulation. For the safety of national independence, it is

essential that a country should not fall much behind its

neighbours in these things. But in themselves they are of

little importance, so long as either the increase of

population, or any thing else, prevents the mass of the

people from reaping any part of the benefit of them. I know

not why it should be matter of congratulation, that persons

who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have

doubled their means of consuming things which give little or

no pleasure, except as representative of wealth; or that

numbers of individuals should pass over every year from the

middle classes into a richer class, or from the class of the

occupied rich to that of the unoccupied. It is only in the

backward countries of the world that increased production is

still an important object; in those most advanced, what is

economically needed is a better distribution, of which an

indispensable means is a stricter restraint on population.

Levelling institutions, either of a just or an unjust kind,

cannot alone accomplish it; they may lower the heights of

society, but they cannot raise the depths."--(Vol. ii. p.

308.)

It will be already seen, from even this brief extract, that the too

rapid increase of population presents itself to Mr Mill as the chief,

or one of the chief obstacles to human improvement. Without attempting

to repeat all that we have at different times urged upon this head, we

may at once say here that, in the first place, we never denied, or

dreamt of denying, that it was one of the first and most imperative

duties of every human being, to be assured that he could provide for a

family before he called one into existence. This has been at all times

a plain, unquestionable duty, though it has not at all times been

clearly understood as such. But, in the second place, we have combated

the Malthusian alarm, precisely because we believe that the moral

checks to population will be found a sufficient balance to the

physical law of increase. We have repudiated the idea that there is,

in the shape of the law of population, a constant enemy to human

improvement, convinced that this law will be found to be in perfect

harmony with all other laws that regulate the destiny of man. A

certain pressure of population on the means of subsistence has been

always recognised as an element necessary to the progress of

society--especially at that early stage when bare subsistence is the

sole motive for industry. When not only to live, but to live well,

becomes the ruling motive of men, then come into play the various

moral checks arising from prudence, vanity, and duty. But the mere

thinness of population will not, in the first place, induce a high

standard of comfortable subsistence. It is a delusion to suppose that

the low standard of comfort and enjoyment prevailing amongst the

multitude is the result of excessive population. If Neapolitan

lazzaroni are contented with macaroni and sunshine, it matters not

whether their numbers are five hundred or five thousand, they will

labour for nothing beyond their macaroni. We would challenge the

political economist to prove that in England, at this present time, or

in any country of Europe, the prevailing standard of comfort amongst

the working classes has been permanently determined by the amount of

population. This standard is slowly rising, from better education,

mechanical inventions, and other causes, and _it_ will ultimately

control the increase of population. That wages occasionally suffer a

lamentable depression, owing to the numbers of any one class of

workmen, is a fact which does not touch the point at issue. We say

that, whether a population be dense or rare, you must first excite, by

education and the example of a higher class, a certain taste for

comfort, for a cleanly and orderly mode of life, amongst the mass of

labouring men; that until this taste is called forth, it would be in

vain to offer high wages, for men would only work one half the week,

and spend the other half in idleness and coarse intemperance; and

that, this taste once called forth, there will be no fear of the class

of men who possess it being permanently degraded by over-population,

unless the excess of population were derived from some neighbouring

country, unhappily far behind it in the race of civilisation.

We now continue our quotation.

"There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old

countries, for an immense increase of population, supposing

the arts of life to go on improving and capital to increase.

But, although it may be innocuous, I confess I see very

little reason for desiring it. The density of population

necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest

degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social

intercourse, has, in all the more populous countries, been

attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be

amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man

to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his

species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very

poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is

essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and

solitude, in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is

the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only

good for the individual, but which society could ill do

without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the

world, with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of

nature--with every rood of land brought into cultivation

which is capable of growing food for human beings--every

flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up--all quadrupeds

or birds, which are not domesticated for man's use,

exterminated as his rivals for food--every hedgerow or

superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where

a shrub or flower could grow, without being eradicated as a

weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must

lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to

things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population

would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it

to support a larger, but not a better or a happier

population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that

they will be content to be stationary long before necessity

compels them to it.

"It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a stationary

condition of capital and population implies no stationary

state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as

ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social

progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and

much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased

to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial

arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated,

with this sole difference--that, instead of serving no

purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements

would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging

labour. Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical

inventions yet made have lightened the daily toil of any

human being. They have enabled a greater population to live

the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased

number of manufacturers and others to make large fortunes.

They have increased the comforts of the middle classes; but

they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in

human destiny which it is in their nature and in their

futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just

institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the

deliberate guidance of a judicious foresight, can the

conquests made from the powers of nature, by the intellect

and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common

property of the species, and the means of improving and

elevating the universal lot."--(Vol. ii. p. 311.)

These are not the times when truth is to be withheld because it is

disagreeable. There is a morality connected with wealth, its uses and

abuses, not enough taught, certainly not enough understood. The rich

man, who will not learn that there is a _duty_ inseparable from his

riches, is no better fitted for the times that are coming down upon

us, than the poor man who has not learned that patience is a duty

peculiarly imposed upon him, and that the ruin of others, and the

general panic which his violence may create, will inevitably add to

the hardships and privations he already has to endure. If society

demands of the poor man that he endure these evils of his lot, rather

than desperately bring down ruin upon all, himself included; surely

society must also demand of the rich man that he make the best use

possible of his wealth, so that his weaker brother be not driven to

madness and despair. It demands of him that he exert himself manfully

for that safety of the whole in which he has so much more evident an

interest. For, be it known--prescribe whatever remedies you will,

political, moral, or religious--that it is by securing a certain

indispensable amount of wellbeing to the multitude of mankind that the

only security can be found for the social fabric, for life, and

property, and civilisation. If men are allowed to sink into a

wretchedness that savours of despair, it is in vain that you show them

the ruins of the nation, and themselves involved in those ruins. What

interest have they any longer in the preservation of your boasted

state of civilisation? What to them how soon it be all a ruin? You

have lost all hold of them as reasonable beings. As well preach to the

winds as to men thoroughly and bitterly discontented. Those,

therefore, to whom wealth, or station, or intelligence, has given

power of any kind, must do their utmost to prevent large masses of

mankind from sinking into this condition. If they will not learn this

duty from the Christian teaching of their church, they must learn it

from the stern exposition of the economist and the politician.

Political economists have some of them wasted much time, and produced

no little ennui, by unprofitable discussions on the definition of

terms. These Mr Mill wisely spares us: an accurate writer, by a

cautious use of ordinary expressions, will make his meaning more

evident and precise than he will be able to do by any laboured

definitions, or the introduction of purely technical terms. Such have

been the discussions on the strict limits of the science of political

economy, and the propriety of the title it has so long borne; whether

intellectual efforts shall be classed amongst productive or

unproductive labour, and the precise and invariable meaning to be

given to such terms as _wealth_, _value_, and the like. These will

generally be found to be unprofitable controversies, tending more to

confusion of ideas than to precision of language. Let a writer think

steadily and clearly upon his subject, and ordinary language will be

faithful to him; distinctions between the several meanings of the same

term will be made as they are wanted. He who _begins_ by making such

distinctions is only laying a snare for his own feet; he will hamper

himself and perplex his reader. And with regard especially to the

range of topics which an author thinks fit to embrace in his treatise

upon this science, surely he may permit himself some liberty of

choice, without resolving to mete out new boundaries to which all who

follow him are to conform. If M. Dunoyer, for instance, in his able

and, in many respects, valuable work, _De la Liberte du Travail_,

chooses to write a treatise which embraces in fact the whole of human

life, all the energies and activities of man, mental as well as

physical, he could surely have done this without assailing old

distinctions and old titles with so needless a violence. Of what avail

to call in the etymologist at this time of day, to determine the

meaning, or criticise the application of so familiar a term as

political economy?[5]

But there is another class of discussions which, although to the

general reader, who is mostly an impatient one, they will appear at

first sight to be of a purely technical character, must not be so

hastily dismissed. These will be often found to have a direct bearing

on the most important questions that can occupy the mind of the

statesman. They are in fact explanatory of that great machine, a

commercial society, upon which he has to practise--which he has to

keep in order, or to learn to leave alone--and therefore as necessary

a branch of knowledge to him as anatomy or physiology to one who

undertakes to medicine the body. Such are some of the intricate

discussions which concern the nature of _capital_--a subject to which

we shall in the first place and at once turn our attention. It is a

subject which Mr Mill has treated throughout in a most masterly

manner. We may safely say, that there is now no other work to which a

student could be properly directed for obtaining a complete insight

into all the intricacies of this great branch of political economy.

The exposition lies scattered, indeed, through the two volumes; he

must read the entire work to obtain it. This scattering of the several

parts of a subject is inevitable in treating such a science as

political economy, where every topic has to be discussed in relation

to every other topic. We do not think that Mr Mill has been

particularly happy in his arrangement of topics, but, aware as we are

of the extreme difficulty, under such circumstances, of making _any

arrangement at all_, we forbear from any criticism. A man must write

himself out the best way he can; and the reader, after obtaining all

the materials put at his disposition, may pack them up in what

bundles may best suit his own convenience.

We must premise that on this subject--the nature and employment of

capital--there appears to be in one part of Mr Mill's exposition--not

an error--but a temporary forgetfulness of an old and familiar truth,

which ought to have found its place there. Its very familiarity has

occasioned it to be overlooked, in the keen inquiry after truth of a

more recondite nature. The part which the economists call

"unproductive consumption," the self-indulgent luxurious expenditure

of the rich--the part this plays in a system of society based on

individual effort and individual possession, is not fully stated.

He who spends his money, and lives to do little else, however idle he

may be himself, has always had the consolation that he was, at least,

setting other people to work. Mr Mill _seems_ to deny him utterly this

species of consolation; for in contending against a statement, made by

political economists as well as others, that unproductive consumption

is necessary, in a strictly _economical_ sense, to the employment of

the workmen, and as the indispensable relative to productive

consumption, or capital spent in industrial pursuits, he has

overlooked that _moral_ necessity there is, in the present system of

things, that there should be those who spend to enjoy, as well as

those who lay out their money for profit. "What supports and employs

productive labour," says Mr Mill, (Vol. i. p. 97,) "is the capital

expended in setting it to work, and not the demand of purchases for

the produce of the labour when completed. Demand for commodities is

not demand for labour. The demand for commodities determines in what

particular branch of production the labour and capital shall be

employed; it determines the _direction_ of the labour, but not the

more or less of the labour itself, or of the maintenance and payment

of the labour. That depends on the amount of the capital, or other

funds directly devoted to the sustenance and remuneration of labour."

Now, without a doubt, the man who purchases an article of luxury when

it is manufactured, does not employ labour in the same sense as the

manufacturer, who spends his wealth in supporting the artisan, and

finding him the requisites of his art, and who, after selling the

products of this industry, continues to spend the capital returned to

him, together with the profit he has made, in the further sustenance

of workmen. But it has been always understood, and the truth appears

to be almost too trite to insist on, that unless the unproductive

consumer were there to purchase, the capitalist would have had no

motive to employ his wealth in this manner; and, what is of equal

importance to bear in mind, unless the capitalist also calculated on

being, some future day, an unproductive consumer himself, he would

have no motive, by saving and toiling, to increase his wealth.

The necessity for a certain amount of unproductive consumption is not

a necessity in the nature of things. All men might, if they chose, be

saving, might spend upon themselves only what is needful for comfort,

and set apart the residue of their funds for the employment of labour,

not, of course, in the production of articles of luxury, for which

there would be no purchasers, but for such articles as the labourers

themselves, now paid from such ample stores, might be consumers of.

The social machine might still _go on_ under such a regime, and much

to the benefit of the labourer. The capitalists would find their

profits diminishing, it is true--they would be more rapidly

approaching that _minimum_ of profit, that stationary state, of which

we shall by-and-by have to speak; but this diminution of profits must,

at all events, sooner or later, take place, and depends ultimately, as

we shall have occasion to show, on higher laws, over which man has no

control. Men might, if they chose, be all saving, and all convert

superfluous wealth into capital; but need we add, men would never

choose any such thing. There is no necessity in the nature of things,

but there is a necessity in the moral nature of man for a certain

portion of this unproductive consumption. The good of others is not a

motive sufficiently strong to stimulate a man to any of the steady

pursuits of industry. When, therefore, his real wants are satisfied,

it must be the gratification of fictitious wants that induces him to

toil and accumulate, or to part with any thing he has, by way of

barter or exchange. From the time when the rude possessor of the soil

consents to surrender a portion of his surplus produce for some

trinket or piece of gaudy apparel, to the present epoch, when men

consent to live frugally and toil hard during the first period of

life, in order that they or their children may afterwards live idly,

luxuriously, and ostentatiously, this same unproductive expenditure

has performed the part of essential stimulant to human industry. It is

not enough, therefore, to say, that it gives the _direction_ to a

certain portion of labour: it affords the stimulant that converts

idleness into industry, and saving into capital. A very much more

dignified being would man undoubtedly be, if desire for the general

good could replace, as a motive of industry, a selfish desire, which

is often no better than what we ridicule in the savage when he

manifests a most disproportionate anxiety, as it seems to us, for the

possession of glass beads, or a piece of painted calico. But to this

point in the cultivation of human reason we have, at all events, not

yet arrived. And let this be always borne in mind--in order that the

class of society designated as unproductive consumers may not fall

into unmerited odium--that others, who are using their wealth in the

direct and profitable employment of labour, are themselves desirous,

above all things, of taking their place in the class of unproductive

consumers, and are working for that very end.

"Every one can see," writes Mr Mill, "that if a benevolent government

possessed all the food, and all the implements and materials of the

community, it could exact productive labour from all to whom it

allowed a share in the food, and could be in no danger of wanting a

field for the employment of this productive labour, since, as long as

there was a single want unsaturated (which material objects could

supply) of any one individual, the labour of the community could be

turned to the production of something capable of satisfying that want.

Now, the individual possessors of capital, when they add to it by

fresh accumulations, are doing precisely the same thing which we

suppose to be done by our benevolent government."--(Vol. i. p. 83.)

Certainly the individual capitalists could do the same as the

benevolent government, if they had its benevolence. If there are any

political economists who teach otherwise, we hold them in error. We

wish only to add to the statement the old moral truth long ago

recognised, before political economy had a distinct place or name in

the world, that as man is constituted, or rather, as he has hitherto

demeaned himself, (for who knows what moral as well as other

reformations may take place?--the civilised man, such as we have him

at this day, postponing habitually the present enjoyment to the

future, is a creature of cultivation; and who can tell but that

advanced cultivation may make of man a being habitually acting for the

general good, in which general good he finds his own particular

interest sufficiently represented and provided for?)--that, as man has

hitherto acted, this same unproductive selfish expenditure is

indispensable as the motive to set that industry to work, which

ultimately distributes the real necessaries and rational comforts of

life to so many thousands.

Having, in justice to the class of unproductive consumers, brought out

this homely truth, which, in the scientific exposition of Mr Mill,

seemed in danger of being overlooked, we proceed to a branch of the

subject which, if it appears at first of a very technical and abstruse

description, is yet capable of very important applications. One of the

most striking facts relating to the nature of capital is the tendency

of profits, in wealthy and populous countries, to diminish as the

amount of capital increases--a tendency to arrive at a certain

_minimum_ beyond which there would be no motive for saving, and little

possibility of accumulating. This tendency Mr Mill explains as being

the result, not of what has been somewhat vaguely called the

competition of capital, over-production, or general glut in the

market, but, in reality, of the physical laws of nature--of the simple

fact that the products of the soil cannot be indefinitely multiplied.

Manufacturing industry must be ultimately limited by the supply of

the raw material it fashions, which is furnished by the soil, and the

supply of food for the artisan, furnished also by the soil; it

therefore is subjected, as well as agricultural industry, to the

limits which have been set to the productiveness of the earth. Now,

without seeking for any definite ratio, such as might be expressed in

numbers, between the labour and ingenuity of man and the products of

the soil, it may be stated as a simple fact, which admits of no

dispute, that after the land has been fairly cultivated, additional

labour and additional cost yield but a small proportionate return.

"The limitation to production from the properties of the

soil," writes our author, "is not like the obstacle opposed

by a wall, which stands immovable in one particular spot, and

offers no hindrance to motion, short of stopping it entirely.

We may rather compare it to a highly elastic and extensible

band, which is hardly ever so violently stretched that it

could not possibly be stretched any more; yet the pressure of

which is felt long before the final limit is reached, and

felt more severely the nearer that limit is approached.

"After a certain, and not very advanced stage in the progress

of agriculture--as soon, in fact, as men have applied

themselves to cultivation with any energy, and have brought

to it any tolerable tools--from that time it is the law of

production from the land, that, in any given state of

agricultural skill and knowledge, by increasing the labour

the produce is not increased in an equal degree; doubling the

labour does not double the produce; or, to express the same

thing in other words, every increase of produce is obtained

by a more than proportional increase in the application of

labour to the land.

"This general law of agricultural industry is the most

important proposition in political economy. Were the law

different, nearly all the phenomena of the production and

distribution of wealth would be other than they are. The most

fundamental errors, which still prevail on our subject,

result from not perceiving this law at work underneath the

more superficial agencies on which attention fixes itself;

but mistaking these agencies for the ultimate causes of

effects of which they may influence the form and mode, but of

which it alone determines the essence."--(Vol. i. p. 212.)

It is to this physical law, underlying, as it were, the commercial and

industrial energies of man, that we must finally attribute that

gradual diminution of profits, observable in advanced and opulent

countries. This is popularly attributed, we believe, and has been

assigned, by some political economists, to over-production; to a

general glut of the market, or, in other words, a preponderance of

supply over demand. Over-production in this or that article may very

easily, for a time, take place; but general over-production, a general

over-balance in the supply, and deficiency in the demand, may be

demonstrated to be impossible.

The simple but convincing argument against a general glut or

over-balance between supply and demand, which we believe Mr Mill

senior first originated, is this,--that as each producer produces in

order to part with his produce--in order, in fact, to exchange, to

purchase, he must necessarily bring into the market a demand

equivalent to the supply he furnishes. "All sellers," as our present

author expresses it, "are _ex vi termini_ buyers. Could we suddenly

double the productive powers of the country, we should double the

supply of commodities in every market; but we should, by the same

stroke, double the purchasing power. Every body would bring a double

demand as well as supply; every body would be able to buy twice as

much, because every one would have twice as much to offer in

exchange."--(Vol. ii. p. 91.) Of certain articles, there may, of

course, be a superfluity; of certain others a deficiency; but such a

thing as a general over-balance between supply and demand cannot take

place.

The argument, if it laid claim to a sort of mathematical precision,

might be open to an ingenious cavil. The exchange of commodities, it

might be said, is effected through the instrumentality of money; now,

it is one of the peculiar advantages of money that it enables the

vender to sell at one time and purchase at another; it gives him a

command over future markets; it enables him to postpone indefinitely

one half of the operation of barter. Men who come into a market,

wishing to dispose of their commodities _now_, but not intending to

select what commodity they shall take in exchange, till some future

time, postponing indefinitely the other half of the operation of

barter, and seeking only for money, for that _token_ which will give

them or their children a claim on subsequent markets--do _not_ bring

with them a demand equivalent to their supply.

The answer to the objection lets us more fully into the real facts of

the case. Those only who wished to sell their produce in order to

_hoard_, would fall under the description of men who bring a present

supply into the market, postponing indefinitely their demand. But the

producer is almost always a man desirous of increasing his wealth--he

does not hoard; he immediately lays out his capital in some productive

manner, in the purchase of food for labourers, and of the raw

materials of industry. But these articles, it happens, cannot be

supplied to him with the increasing abundance he demands; and thus we

fall back upon the ultimate law to which we have alluded. The

manufacturer finds, that every additional demand he makes for these is

supplied at a greater cost. What has limited the profits of the

agricultural capitalist limits his profits also. He cannot sell his

goods at the accustomed advantage. He exclaims that there is a glut in

the market. What he takes for a glut is a deficiency. It is quite

natural and permissible, however, that this phenomenon of the

diminution of profits should be spoken of as the result of a

superabundance of capital, provided only it be understood _why_ the

later accumulations of capital fail to bring the same return as the

earlier.

A simple law of nature, therefore, is the true cause of this

commercial phenomenon. Countries, after a certain progress in the

career of wealth, must cease to accumulate;--the diminished profit on

capital affording no longer any motive for frugality and toil;--and

they arrive at what may be called the stationary state. "When a

country," says Mr Mill, "has long possessed a large production, and a

large net income to make savings from, and when, therefore, the means

have long existed of making a great annual addition to capital, (the

country not having, like America, a large reserve of fertile land

still unused,) it is one of the characteristics of such a country,

that the rate of profit is habitually within, as it were, a hand's

breadth of the minimum, and the country, therefore, on the very verge

of the stationary state. By this, I do not mean that this state is

likely, in any of the great countries of Europe, to be soon actually

reached, or that capital does not still yield a profit considerably

greater than what is barely sufficient to induce the people of these

countries to save and accumulate. My meaning is, that it would require

but a short time to reduce profits to the minimum, if capital

continued to increase at its present rate, and no circumstances having

a tendency to raise the rate of profit occurred in the mean

time."--(Vol. ii. p. 287.)

Mr Mill then states what are the counteracting circumstances which

arrest this downward tendency of profits. He mentions the waste of

capital in periods of over-trading and rash speculation, the

expenditure of an unproductive kind, and the perpetual overflow of

capital into colonies and foreign countries, to seek higher profits

than can be obtained at home. This last has a twofold operation. "In

the first place, it does what a fire, or an inundation, or a

commercial crisis, would have done,--it carries off a part of the

increase of capital from which the reduction of profits proceeds.

Secondly, the capital so carried off is not lost, but is chiefly

employed either in founding colonies, which become large exporters of

cheap agricultural produce, or in extending, and perhaps improving,

the agriculture of older communities. It is to the emigration of

English capital that we have chiefly to look for keeping up a supply

of cheap food and cheap materials of clothing, proportional to the

increase of our population; thus enabling an increasing capital to

find employment in the country, without reduction of profit, in

producing manufactured articles with which to pay for this supply of

raw produce. Thus, the exportation of capital is an agent of great

efficacy in extending the field of employment for that which remains;

and it may be said truly that, up to a certain point, the more capital

we send away, the more we shall possess and be able to retain at

home."--(Vol. ii. p. 297.)

This last observation we have quoted is well deserving of attention.

It is an instance of what we mentioned in the outset, of the science

correcting as it advances its own errors. What follows is a still more

striking instance, and still more worthy of attention. It occurs in

the chapter entitled,--_Consequences of the tendency of profits to a

minimum_. To such observations we have wished to draw the especial

attention of our readers, but could not do so till the previous

exposition had been gone through.

"The theory of the effect of accumulation on profits, laid

down in the preceding chapter, materially alters many of the

practical conclusions which might otherwise be supposed to

follow from the general principles of political economy, and

which were, indeed, long admitted as true by the highest

authorities on the subject.

"It must greatly abate, or, rather, altogether destroy, in

countries where profits are low, the immense importance which

used to be attached, by political economists, to the effects

which an event or a measure of government might have in

adding to, or subtracting from, the capital of the country.

We have now seen that the lowness of profits is a proof that

the spirit of accumulation is so active, and that the

increase of capital has proceeded at so rapid a rate, as to

outstrip the two counter agencies, improvements in

production, and increased supply of cheap necessaries from

abroad: and that unless a considerable portion of the annual

increase of capital were either periodically destroyed, or

exported for foreign investment, the country would speedily

attain the point at which further accumulation would cease,

or at least spontaneously slacken, so as no longer to

overpass the march of invention in the arts which produce the

necessaries of life. In such a state of things as this, a

sudden addition to the capital of the country, unaccompanied

by any increase of productive power, would be but of

transitory duration; since, by depressing profits and

interest, it would rather diminish, by a corresponding

amount, the savings which would be made from income in the

year or two following, or it would cause an equivalent amount

to be sent abroad, or to be wasted in rash speculations.

Neither, on the other hand, would a sudden abstraction of

capital, unless of inordinate amount, have any real effect in

impoverishing the country. After a few months or years there

would exist in the country just as much capital as if none

had been taken away. The abstraction, by raising profits and

interest, would give a fresh stimulus to the accumulative

principle, which would speedily fill up the vacuum. Probably,

indeed, the only effect that would ensue, would be that, for

some time afterwards, less capital would be exported, and

less thrown away in hazardous speculation.

"In the first place, then, this view of things greatly

weakens, in a wealthy and industrious country, the force of

the economical argument against the expenditure of public

money for really valuable, even though industrially

unproductive purposes. _If for any great object of justice or

philanthropic policy, such as the industrial regeneration of

Ireland, or a comprehensive measure of colonisation or of

public education, it were proposed to raise a large sum by

way of loan, politicians need not demur to the abstraction of

so much capital, as tending to dry up the permanent sources

of the country's wealth, and diminish the fund which supplies

the subsistence of the labouring population. The utmost

expense which could be requisite for any of these purposes,

would not, in all probability, deprive one labourer of

employment, or diminish the next year's production by one ell

of cloth or one bushel of grain._ In poor countries the

capital of the country requires the legislator's sedulous

care; he is bound to be most cautious in encroaching upon it,

and should favour to the utmost its accumulation at home, and

its introduction from abroad. But in rich, populous, and

highly cultivated countries, it is not capital which is the

deficient element, but fertile land; and what the legislator

should desire and promote, is not a greater aggregate saving,

but a greater return to saving, either by improved

cultivation, or by access to the produce of more fertile

lands in other parts of the globe. In such countries, the

government may take any moderate portion of the capital of

the country and convert it into revenue, without affecting

the national wealth; the whole being rather drawn from that

portion of the annual saving which would otherwise be sent

abroad, or being substracted from the unproductive

expenditure of individuals for the next year or two, since

every million sent makes room for another million to be

saved, before reaching the overflowing point. When the object

in view is worth the sacrifice of such an amount of the

expenditure that furnishes the daily enjoyment of the people,

the only well grounded economical objection against taking

the necessary funds directly from the capital, consists of

the inconveniences attending the process of raising a

revenue, by taxation, to pay the interest of a debt.

"_The same considerations enable us to throw aside, as

unworthy of regard, one of the common arguments against

emigration as a means of relief for the labouring class._

Emigration, it is said, can do no good to the labourers, if,

in order to defray the cost, as much must be taken away from

the capital of the country as from its population. That any

thing like this proportion could require to be abstracted

from capital for the purpose even of the most extensive

colonisation, few, I should think, would now assert; but even

on that untenable supposition, it is an error to suppose that

no benefit could be conferred on the labouring class. If

one-tenth of the labouring people of England were transferred

to the colonies, and along with them one-tenth of the

circulating capital of the country, either wages, or profits,

or both, would be greatly benefited by the diminished

pressure of capital and population upon the fertility of the

land. There would be a reduced demand for food; the inferior

arable lands would be thrown out of cultivation, and would

become pasture; the superior would be cultivated less highly,

but with a greater proportional return; food would be lowered

in price, and, though money wages would not rise, every

labourer would be considerably improved in circumstances--an

improvement which, if no increased stimulus to population and

fall of wages ensued, would be permanent; while, if there

did, profits would rise, and accumulation start forward so as

to repair the loss of capital. The landlords alone would

sustain some loss of income; and even they, only if

colonisation went to the length of actually diminishing

capital and population, but not if it merely carried off the

annual increase."--(Vol. ii. p. 999.)

Does not all this place the condition of England in a very striking

aspect before us? We have a country here so wealthy, so nearly

approaching that state where its accessions of capital can no longer

be profitably employed, that it wastes its funds in ruinous

speculations, building perhaps useless factories--and, if useless, how

mischievous!--that it sends its money abroad to construct foreign

railways, or throws it away upon South American republics. Yet the

people of this country is degraded and brutalised for want of

education, and it is threatened with political convulsions for want of

a good system of emigration; and you call for education, and you call

for colonisation, and the only obstacle that is opposed to you is--the

want of money! Shame upon England, if this be so! With all her

knowledge and civilisation, she will go down to ruin, rather than

give, in the shape of taxes, for the most necessary as well as

philanthropic purposes, that wealth which she can fling abroad or

waste at home with the most reckless prodigality.

Of late the Irish landlord has been very justly held up to public

reproof for the hard, unthinking, extortionate manner in which he has

been in the habit of dealing with the soil--or allowing certain

middlemen to deal with it--taking a famine-price for the

land--permitting the miserable cottiers to bid against each other,

instead of fixing an equitable rent, such as would finally have

secured to himself better and more profitable tenants. For his

thoughtlessness or cupidity, whichever it may be, both he and the

country at large are paying a severe penalty. But the Irish landlords

are not the only class that are to blame. That indiscriminate recoil

from all taxation, whatever be its object, which characterises the

upper and middling classes of society in England, is a sad blot in

their escutcheon.[6]

Before quitting this subject of capital, we must quote a passage

which occurs at an earlier part of the work, but which is in perfect

harmony with the strain of observations we have been calling attention

to. It serves to show and explain the elastic power there is in every

thoroughly industrious country to revive from any temporary loss, or

sacrifice, or calamity. Let but the people with their knowledge and

habits, the soil and a little food, remain, and there is no effort,

and no ruin or desolation from which it would not speedily recover.

Moreover, it is a passage of a certain popular interest, and we are

glad of the opportunity to relieve our pages by its quotation.

"Every thing which is produced is consumed; both what is

saved and what is said to be spent; and the former quite as

rapidly as the latter. All the ordinary forms of language

tend to disguise this. When men talk of the ancient wealth of

a country, of riches inherited from ancestors, and similar

expressions, the idea suggested is, that the riches so

transmitted were produced long ago, at the time when they are

said to have been first acquired, and that no portion of the

capital of the country was produced this year, except so much

as may have been this year added to the total amount. The

fact is far otherwise. The greater part, in value, of the

wealth now existing in England, has been produced by human

hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion

indeed of that large aggregate was in existence ten years

ago;--of the present productive capital of the country,

scarcely any part except farm-houses and factories, and a few

ships and machines; and even these would not in most cases

have survived so long, if fresh labour had not been employed

within that period in putting them in repair. The land

subsists, and the land is almost the only thing that

subsists. Every thing which is produced perishes, and most

things very quickly. Most kinds of capital are not fitted by

their nature to be long preserved. There are a few, and but a

few productions, capable of a very prolonged existence.

Westminster Abbey has lasted many centuries, with occasional

repairs; some ancient sculptures have existed above two

thousand years; the Pyramids perhaps double or treble that

time. But these were objects devoted to unproductive use. If

we except bridges and aqueducts, (to which may sometimes be

added tanks and embankments,) there are few instances of any

edifice applied to industrial purposes which has been of

great duration: such buildings do not hold out against wear

and tear, nor is it good economy to construct them of the

solidity necessary for permanency. Capital is kept in

existence from age to age, not by preservation, but by

perpetual reproduction: every part of it is used and

destroyed, generally very soon after it has been produced;

but those who consume it are employed meanwhile in producing

more. The growth of capital is similar to the growth of

population. Every individual who is born, dies, but in each

year the number born exceeds the number who die; the

population, therefore, always increases, although not one

person of those comprising it was alive until a very recent

date.

"This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital

affords the explanation of what has so often excited

wonder--the great rapidity with which countries recover from

a state of devastation; the disappearance in a short time of

all traces of the mischief done by earthquakes, of floods,

hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a

country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away

nearly all the movable wealth existing in it: all the

inhabitants are ruined; yet in a few years after, every thing

is much as it was before. This _vis medicatrix naturae_ has

been a subject of sterile astonishment, or has been cited to

exemplify the wonderful strength of the principle of saving,

which can repair such enormous losses in so brief an

interval. There is nothing at all wonderful in the matter.

What the enemy have destroyed would have been destroyed in a

little time by the inhabitants themselves; the wealth which

they so rapidly reproduce would have needed to be produced,

and would have been reproduced in any case, and probably in

as short an interval."--(Vol. i. p. 91.)

One of the most interesting portions of the work is that devoted to

questions touching the cultivation of the land--as whether large or

small farms are most advisable. Mr Mill appears to advocate the

latter, and enlarges much on the industry universally displayed by the

peasants of those countries who either cultivate land of their own, or

in which they have a certain and permanent interest. Additional value

is given to these chapters, from the bearing they are made to have on

the vexed questions of the causes and the remedies of the lamentable

state of that unhappy country, Ireland.

We remember well the impression made upon us on reading, some time,

ago, these passages in Sismondi's work which Mr Mill quotes on this

occasion, where the habits and life of the peasant proprietors of

Switzerland are so minutely, and apparently so faithfully described.

Coupling his description with what our own hasty observation had

taught us of this country, we were disposed to believe that nowhere,

and under no circumstances, does human life wear a more enviable

aspect than amongst these small proprietors, this rustic aristocracy

of Switzerland. But we regarded it, as we still do, as one of those

instances of _compensation_ so general in the moral world. All the

wealth of England could not purchase this sort of pastoral happiness.

At all events, only here and there such a primitive state of things

could exist. It was not necessary for our Norman ancestors to have

added manor to manor: a wealthy commercial state, which gives origin

to great fortunes, must inevitably give origin to large properties.

The same wealth which decides for us that the land shall be cultivated

in large farms, would also decide that it should be divided amongst

large proprietors. It is well to keep in mind that neither of these

facts is, to any material extent, owing to any peculiarity in the

history or the laws of England, but to its commercial opulence.

Meanwhile we may be permitted to admire "the picture of unwearied

industry, and what may be called affectionate interest in the land;"

the patience, frugality, and prudence in entering into marriage, that

almost always characterise the class of small proprietors cultivating

their own soil. Our own yeomen, at that distant and almost fabulous

epoch when our country obtained the name of "merry England," were of

this description of men. We wish we had space to transfer to our pages

some of the extracts which our author has drawn together from French,

and German, and English writers, all showing the hearty, incessant,

and, as one author calls it, the "superhuman" industry of the peasant

proprietor.

A great number of such properties England cannot be expected to have;

there may, too, be reasons for not desiring their existence; but one

fact is placed beyond all controversy, both by the testimony of

travellers, and the known operations of the common feelings of our

nature, that they are the most indefatigable of all labourers. If you

wish to convert an idle and improvident man into an industrious and

frugal one, give him a piece of land of his own: the recipe _may_

fail; but if this does not reform him, nothing else will.

It is on the condition of Ireland, as we have intimated, that this

description of the peasant proprietor is made particularly to bear. To

substitute for the wretched cottier system, some system under which

the Irish peasant, having a substantial interest in the improvement of

the soil, would be placed under strong motives to industry and

providence, is the great remedy which Mr Mill proposes for the unhappy

state of that country.

The evils of the cottier system are notorious. A peasantry who have no

resource but the potato field, and who are multiplying as only utter

poverty can multiply, bid against each other for the possession of the

land. They promise rents they cannot possibly pay. They are

immediately and continually in debt; but being there upon the soil,

they can first feed themselves; this they do, and the rest, whatever

it may be, is for the landlord.

"In such a condition," writes Mr Mill, "what can a tenant

gain by any amount of industry or prudence, and what lose by

any recklessness? If the landlord at any time exerted his

full legal rights, the cottier would not be able even to

live. If by extra exertion he doubled the produce of his bit

of land, or if he prudently abstained from producing mouths

to eat it up, his only gain would be to have more left to pay

to his landlord, while, if he had twenty children, they would

still be fed first, and the landlord would only take what was

left. Almost alone among mankind, the Irish cottier is in

this condition,--that he can scarcely be either better or

worse off by any act of his own. If he was industrious or

prudent, nobody but his landlord would gain; if he is lazy or

intemperate, it is at his landlord's expense. A situation

more devoid of motives to either labour or self-command,

imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of free

human beings are taken away, and those of a slave not

substituted. He has nothing to hope and nothing to fear,

except being dispossessed of his holding; and against this he

protects himself by the _ultima ratio_ of a civil

war."--(Vol. i. p. 374)

That this system must be got rid of is admitted by all--but how? It is

often proposed to convert the cottiers into hired labourers; but

without entering upon (either to admit or controvert) the other

objections which Mr Mill makes to this plan, it is enough to say that

it is, at present, impracticable. "The conversion of cottiers into

hired labourers," he justly observes, "implies the introduction all

over Ireland of capitalist farmers, in lieu of the present small

tenants. These farmers, or their capital at least, must come from

England. But to induce capital to come in, the cottier population must

first be peaceably got rid of: in other words, that must be already

accomplished, which English capital is proposed as the means of

accomplishing." Besides which, it is the characteristic of the English

system of farming, that it employs the fewest number of labourers.

"Taking the number of Irish peasants in the square mile, and the

number of hired labourers in an equal space in the model counties of

Scotland or England, the former number is commonly computed to be

about three times the latter. Two-thirds, therefore, of the Irish

peasantry would be absolutely dispensed with. What is to be done with

them?... The people are there; and the problem is, not how to improve

the country, but how it can be improved by and for its present

inhabitants."

To wait till the English system of farming can be introduced into

Ireland is tantamount to resigning all attempt to improve the

condition of the people of that country. Something must be done to

prepare the way for the introduction of that system. There are several

schemes afloat for giving or extending a certain _tenant-right_ to the

peasantry. Into these we have not space to enter--for it would take

some to explain the several significations attached to this term

tenant-right. It is sufficient to say, that, whenever the term has any

really important signification, and under it any effective remedy is

proposed, it means this,--that the legislature should interfere

between the landlord and tenant, and assign an equitable rent, and an

equitable duration of the tenancy. Such an act of the legislature

might be perfectly justifiable, and might be found to be as

advantageous to the landlord as the tenant; for the former as much

needs to be protected from his own indolence or thoughtless cupidity,

as the latter from the desperate pressure of want. But we should, of

course, infinitely prefer that such an equitable arrangement between

these parties should be arrived at without the intervention of the

legislature; and we think it would be an indirect result of the scheme

which Mr Mill proposes, or rather advocates. He would begin the work

of reformation by forming a body of peasant proprietors on the waste

lands of Ireland. Carried out with due consideration to the rights of

property, we confess we can detect no objections to this plan. Some

differences of opinion, we believe, exist amongst the best judges as

to the nature of the soil in question, and its capability of being

reclaimed; and on this point we cannot profess to give an opinion:

but, so far as principles of legislation, or the objects in view are

concerned, we cordially approve of the scheme, though we cannot say

that we entertain the same sanguine view of it as the author before

us. It deserves a trial, in conjunction with other measures of relief,

when the temper of that misguided people shall admit of the

application, with any probability of success, of this class of

remedial measures.

We shall give the project as it is stated in the work before us. After

observing that it is not necessary that peasant properties should be

universal, in order to be useful, nor, indeed, desirous that they

should be universal, he thus proceeds:--

"It is enough, if there be land available on which to locate

so great a portion of the population, that the remaining area

of the country shall not be required to maintain greater

numbers than are compatible with large farming and hired

labour. For this purpose there is an obvious resource in the

waste lands, which are happily so extensive, and a large

portion of them so improveable, as to afford a means by

which, without making the present tenants proprietors, nearly

the whole surplus population might be converted into peasant

proprietors elsewhere. This plan has been strongly pressed

upon the public by several writers; but the first to bring it

prominently forward in England, was Mr William Thornton.[7]

"The detailed estimate of an irrefragable authority, Mr

Griffith, annexed to the Report of Lord Devon's Commission,

shows nearly a million and a half of acres reclaimable for

the spade or plough, some of them with the promise of great

fertility, and about two millions and a half more reclaimable

for pasture; the greater part being in most convenient

proximity to the principal masses of destitute population.

Besides these four millions of acres, there are above two

millions and a half, pronounced by Mr Griffith to be

unimprovable; but he is only speaking of reclamation for

profit: it is doubtful if there be any land, in a temperate

climate, which cannot be reclaimed and rendered productive by

labourers themselves under the inducement of a permanent

property. Confining ourselves to the one and a half millions

of arable first mentioned, it would furnish properties

averaging five acres each to three hundred thousand persons,

which, at the rate of five persons to a family--a rather low

rate for Ireland--answers to a population of fifteen hundred

thousand. Suppose such a number drafted off to a state of

independence and comfort, together with any moderate

additional relief of emigration, and the introduction of

English capital and farming over the remaining surface of

Ireland would cease to be chimerical.

"'The improvement of waste,' Mr Thornton observes, 'may

perhaps be thought to require a good deal of capital; but

capital is principally useful for its command of labour, and

the Irish peasantry have quite labour enough at their own

disposal. Their misfortune is that they have so much. Their

labour would not be worse applied because they worked for

themselves instead of for a pay-master. So far is large

capital from being indispensable for the cultivation of

barren tracts, that schemes of this kind, which could only

bring loss to a real speculator, are successfully achieved by

his penniless rival. A capitalist must have a certain return

for the money he lays out, but the poor man expends nothing

but his own superabundant labour, which would be valueless if

not so employed; so that his returns, however small, are all

clear profit. No man in his senses would ever have thought of

wasting money upon the original sand of the Pays de Waes; but

the hard-working boors who settled there two hundred years

ago, without any other stock than their industry, contrived

to enrich both themselves and the land, and indeed to make

the latter the richest in Europe.'

"'The profit of reclaiming waste land,' says the Digest of

Evidence to Lord Devon's Commission, 'will be best understood

from a practice not uncommon in Ireland, to which farmers

sometimes resort. This consists in giving the use of a small

portion of it to a poor cottier or herdsman for the first

three crops, after which this improved portion is given up to

the farmer, and a fresh piece of the waste land is taken on

the same terms by the cottier.' Well may the compiler say,

'Here we have the example of the very poorest class in

Ireland obtaining a livelihood by the cultivation of waste

land under the most discouraging and the least remunerative

circumstances that can well be imagined.'

"It is quite worthy of the spirit which pervades the wretched

attempts as yet made to do good to Ireland, that this

spectacle of the poorest of mankind making the land valuable

by their labour for the profit of other people who have done

nothing to assist them, does not at once strike Lord Devon

and his Commission as a thing which ought not to be. Mr

Thornton strongly urges the claims of common justice and

common sense.

"'The colonists ought to be allowed to retain permanent

possession of the spots reclaimed by them. To employ them as

labourers in bringing the land into a remunerative condition,

(see Report of Land Occupation Commissioners,) in order that

it may then be let to some one else, while they are sent to

shift for themselves where they can, may be an excellent mode

of enriching the landlord, but must eventually aggravate the

sufferings of the poor. It is probably because this plan has

been generally practised, that the reclamation of waste land

has hitherto done nothing for the benefit of the Irish

peasantry. If the latter are to derive any advantage from it,

such of them as may be located on the waste should receive

perpetual leases of their respective allotments--should be

made freeholders in fact, or at least perpetual tenants at a

quit-rent. Such an appropriation of waste land would, of

course, require that compensation should be made to all who

previously possessed any interest in it. But the value of a

legal interest in land which cannot be enclosed or cultivated

without permission of the legislature, can only be

proportionate to the actual yearly produce; and as land in a

natural state yields little or nothing, all legal claims upon

it might be bought up at a trifling expense, or might be

commuted for a very small annual payment to be made by the

settlers. Of the perfect competence of parliament to direct

some arrangement of this kind there can be no question. An

authority which compels individuals to part with their most

valued property on the slightest pretext of public

convenience, and permits railway projectors to throw down

family mansions and cut up favourite pleasure-grounds, need

not be very scrupulous about forcing the sale of boggy

meadows or mountain pastures, in order to obtain the means of

curing the destitution and misery of an entire people.'

"It would be desirable," continues Mr Mill, "and in most

cases necessary, that the tracts of land should be prepared

for the labours of the peasant by being drained and

intersected with roads, at the expense of government; the

interest of the sums so expended, and of compensation paid

for the existing rights to the waste land, being charged on

it, when reclaimed, as a perpetual quit-rent, redeemable at a

moderate number of years' purchase. The state would thus

incur no loss, while the advances made would give that

immediate employment to the surplus labour of Ireland, which,

if not given in this manner, will assuredly have to be given

in some other, not only less useful, but far less likely to

repay its cost. The millions lavished, during the famine, in

the almost nominal execution of useless works, without any

result but that of keeping the people alive, would, if

employed in a great operation in the waste lands, have been

quite as effectual for relieving immediate distress, and

would have laid the foundation, broad and deep, for something

really deserving the name of social improvement. But, as

usual, it was thought better to throw away money and exertion

in a beaten track, than to take the responsibility of the

most advantageous investment of them in an untrodden

one."--(Vol. i. p. 392.)

We make no apology for the length of the above extract; the subject is

of great importance; but having stated the proposal in the words of

its principal author (if Mr Thornton can claim the distinction) and

its most distinguished advocate, we have nothing left but to express

our own wish that some such wide and general plan will at all events

meet with a fair trial, when the fitting time shall occur for making

the experiment.

Any of our readers into whose hands the work of Mr Mill has already

fallen, will be aware of the numerous topics on which it must excite

controversy or provoke discussion. Some of these topics we had marked

out for examination; but we have no space to enter upon a new subject,

and shall content ourselves with closing our notice with an extract or

two from what is the closing chapter of the work itself--_On the

Limits of the Province of Government_. His observations upon this

subject are so temperate and judicious, and conceived throughout in so

liberal and enlightened a spirit, that although there must always be a

_shade_ of difference between such a writer and ourselves, we should

have little hesitation in adopting almost the whole of the chapter. He

draws a very necessary distinction between the authoritative

interference of government, controlling and interdicting, and that

kind of intervention where a government, "leaving individuals free to

use their own means of pursuing any object of general interest, but

not trusting the object solely to their care, establishes, side by

side with their arrangements, an agency of its own for a like purpose.

Thus it is one thing to maintain a church establishment, and another

to refuse toleration to other religions, or to persons professing no

religion. It is one thing to provide schools or colleges, and another

to require that no person shall act as an instructor of youth without

a government license."

We like the tone of the following remark:--"Whatever theory we adopt

respecting the foundation of the social union, and under whatever

political institutions we live, there is a circle around every

individual human being which no government, be it that of one, of a

few, or of the many, ought to be permitted to overstep; there is a

part of the life of every person, who has come to years of discretion,

within which the individuality of that person ought to reign

uncontrolled, either by any other individual or the public

collectively. That there is, or ought to be, some space of human

existence thus entrenched round, and sacred from authoritative

intrusion, no one who professes the smallest regard to human freedom

or dignity will call in question."

"Many," he continues, "in latter times have been prone to

think that limitation of the powers of government is only

essential when the government itself is badly constituted;

when it does not represent the people, but is the organ of a

class, or a coalition of classes; and that a government of a

sufficiently popular constitution might be trusted with any

amount of power over the nation, since its power would be

only that of the nation over itself. This might be true, if

the nation, in such cases, did not practically mean a mere

majority of the nation, and if minorities only were capable

of oppressing, but not of being oppressed. Experience,

however, proves that the depositaries of power, who are mere

delegates of the people--that is, of a majority--are quite as

ready (when they think they can count upon popular support)

as any organs of oligarchy to assume arbitrary power, and

encroach unduly on the liberty of private life. The public

collectively is abundantly ready to impose, not only its

generally narrow views of its interests, but its abstract

opinions, and even its tastes, as laws binding upon

individuals; and our present civilisation tends so strongly

to make the power of persons acting in masses the only

substantial power in society, that there never was more

necessity for surrounding individual independence of thought,

speech, and conduct with the most powerful defences, in order

to maintain that originality of mind and individuality of

character, which are the only source of any real progress,

and of most of the qualities which make the human race much

superior to any herd of animals."

It is not the error which Conservative politicians are liable to

commit, to throw too large a share of the management of affairs into

the hands of a central power; they would, therefore, readily coincide

with Mr Mill, when he observes, that even if a government could

comprehend within itself the most eminent intellectual capacity and

active talent of the nation, it would not be the less desirable that

the conduct of a large portion of the affairs of society should be

left in the hands of the persons immediately interested in them. "The

business of life," he remarks, "is an essential part of the practical

education of a people; without which, book and school instruction,

though most necessary and salutary, does not suffice to qualify them

for conduct, and for the adaptation of means to ends.... A people

among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective

interest--who look habitually to their government to command or prompt

them in all matters of joint concern--who expect to have every thing

done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and

routine--have their faculties only half developed; their education is

defective in one of its most important branches."

We must conclude with the following extract, which is so extremely

applicable to the affairs of our neighbours, that we wish we could

make it heard from the tribune of their National Assembly.

"A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic

institutions in detail, but confined to the central

government, not only is not political freedom, but often

creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the

lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political

domination. In some countries, the desire of the people is

for not being tyrannised over, but in others, it is merely

for an equal chance to every body of tyrannising. Unhappily,

this last state of the desires is fully as natural to mankind

as the former, and in many of the conditions even of

civilised humanity, is far more largely exemplified. In

proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their

affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving

them to the government, their desires will turn to the

repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannising; while, in

proportion as all real initiative and direction resides in

the government, and individuals perpetually feel and act as

under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in

them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite

for place and power; diverting the intelligence and activity

of the country from its principal business to a wretched

competition for the selfish prizes and the petty vanities of

office."--(Vol. ii. p. 515.)

In quitting this work, we must again repeat that our task would be

endless if we entered upon every topic on which it provokes

discussion. On some of these we may take a future opportunity to

express ourselves. Amongst the subjects we had designed, had space

permitted, for some discussion, are certain heresies, as we think

them, regarding property in land; and some views, rather hinted at

than explained, on the position which the female sex ought to take in

society. In the extract we first made, the reader may have remarked

this singular expression. Speaking of the Americans, he says they have

"apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities that

affect persons of Caucasian race _and of the male sex_;" leaving it to

be inferred, that even in America there still remain certain social

injustices and inequalities affecting _the female sex_. There are many

inuendos scattered throughout the book of the same description, but we

nowhere gather a distinct view of the sort of reformation that is

called for. In a writer of another character these expressions would

be encountered only with ridicule; coming from Mr Mill, they excite

our surprise, and, in some measure, our curiosity.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Principles of Political Economy, with some of their applications

to Social Philosophy._ By JOHN STUART MILL. 2 vols.

[5] "Mais d'abord va-t-on designer cet ordre particulier

d'investigations par le nom d'economie politique? Quoi donc! Economie

politique, economie de la societe,--c'est a dire--production,

distribution, consommation des richesses? Mais c'est se moquer; on ne

traduit pas avec une liberte pareille. Il ne faut qu'ouvrir le premier

dictionnaire venu pour voir," &c.--DUNOYER, _De la Liberte du

Travail_.

[6] The discussions upon the income tax reveal a lamentable state of

public feeling on this subject. That this tax might have been more

equitably adjusted, every one but a Chancellor of the Exchequer will

admit. Those who have to insure their lives, or otherwise save a fund

out of their income for survivors, ought not to pay the same tax as

those who can enjoy the whole of their income. But no such

modification as this would have pacified discontent. One often heard

it said that the tax should fall exclusively on realised property. The

prosperous tradesman, with his income of some thousands a-year, was to

pay nothing; the poor widow, who draws her sixty pounds per annum from

her property in the funds, she was to pay the tax. Mr Mill, in

noticing this very equitable proposition, says--"Except the proposal

of applying a sponge to the national debt, no such palpable violation

of common honesty has found sufficient support in this country during

the present generation to be regarded within the domain of discussion.

It has not the palliation of a graduated property-tax, that of laying

the burthen on those best able to bear it; for 'realised property'

includes almost every provision made for those who are unable to work,

and consists, in great part, of extremely small fractions. I can

hardly conceive a more shameless pretension than that the major part

of the property of the country, that of merchants, manufacturers,

farmers, and shopkeepers, should be exempted from its share of

taxation; that these classes should only begin to pay their proportion

after retiring from business, and if they never retire, should be

excused from it altogether."--(Vol. ii. p. 355.)

[7] In a work entitled, _Over-Population and its Remedy_.

Life in the "Far West."

PART V.

The Mission of San Fernando is situated on a small river called Las

Animas, a branch of the Los Martires. The convent is built at the neck

of a large plain, at the point of influx of the stream from the broken

spurs of the sierra. The savanna is covered with luxuriant grass, kept

down, however, by the countless herds of cattle which pasture on it.

The banks of the creek are covered with a lofty growth of oak and

poplar, which near the Mission have been considerably thinned for the

purpose of affording fuel and building material for the increasing

settlement. The convent stands in the midst of a grove of fruit-trees,

its rude tower and cross peeping above them, and contrasting

picturesquely with the wildness of the surrounding scenery. Gardens

and orchards lie immediately in front of the building, and a vineyard

stretches away to the upland ridge of the valley. The huts of the

Indians are scattered here and there, built of stone and adobe,

sometimes thatched with flags and boughs, but comfortable enough. The

convent itself is a substantial building, of the style of architecture

characterising monastic edifices in most parts of the world. Loopholes

peer from its plastered walls, and on a flat portion of the roof a

comically mounted gingall or wall-piece, carrying a two-pound ball,

threatens the assailant in time of war. At one end of the oblong

building, a rough irregular arch of sun-burned bricks is surmounted by

a rude cross, under which hangs a small but deep-toned bell--the

wonder of the Indian peones, and highly venerated by the frayles

themselves, who received it as a present from a certain venerable

archbishop of Old Spain, and who, whilst guarding it with reverential

awe, tell wondrous tales of its adventures on the road to its present

abiding place.

Of late years the number of the canonical inmates of the convent has

been much reduced--there being but four priests now to do the duties

of the eleven who formerly inhabited it: Fray Augustin, a Capuchin of

due capacity of paunch, being at the head of the holy quartette.

Augustin is the conventual name of the reverend father, who fails not

to impress upon such casual visitants to that _ultima Thule_ as he

deems likely to appreciate the information, that, but for his

humility, he might add the sonorous appellations of Ignacio

Sabanal-Morales-y Fuentes--his family being of the best blood of Old

Castile, and known there since the days of Ruy Gomez--el

Campeador--possessing, moreover, half the "vega" of the Ebro, &c.,

where, had fate been propitious, he would now have been the sleek

superior of a rich capuchin convent, instead of vegetating, a

leather-clad frayle, in the wilds of California Alta.

Nevertheless, his lot is no bad one. With plenty of the best and

fattest meat to eat, whether of beef or venison, of bear or mountain

mutton; with good wine and brandy of home make, and plenty of it;

fruit of all climes in great abundance; wheaten or corn bread to suit

his palate; a tractable flock of natives to guide, and assisted in the

task by three brother shepherds; far from the strife of politics or

party--secure from hostile attack, (not quite, by-the-by,) and eating,

drinking, and sleeping away his time, one would think that Fray

Augustin Ignacio Sabanal-Morales-y Fuentes had little to trouble him,

and had no cause to regret even the vega of Castilian Ebro, held by

his family since the days of el Campeador.

One evening Fray Augustin sat upon an adobe bench, under the fig-tree

shadowing the porch of the Mission. He was dressed in a goat-skin

jerkin, softly and beautifully dressed, and descending to his hips,

under which his only covering--tell it not in Gath!--was a long linen

shirt, reaching to his knees, and lately procured from Puebla de los

Angeles, as a sacerdotal garment. Boots, stockings, or unmentionables,

he had none. A cigarito, of tobacco rolled in corn shuck, was

occasionally placed between his lips; whereupon huge clouds of smoke

rushed in columns from his mouth and nostrils. His face was of a golden

yellow colour, relieved by arched and very black eyebrows; his shaven

chin was of most respectable duplicity--his corporation of orthodox

dimensions. Several Indians and half-bred Mexican women were pounding

Indian corn on metates near at hand; whilst sundry beef-fed urchins of

whitey-brown complexion sported before the door, exhibiting, as they

passed Fray Augustin, a curious resemblance to the strongly marked

features of that worthy padre. They were probably his nieces and

nephews--a class of relations often possessed in numbers by priests and

monks.

The three remaining brothers were absent from the Mission; Fray

Bernardo, hunting elk in the sierra; Fray Jose, gallivanting at Puebla

de los Angeles, ten days' journey distant; Fray Cristoval, lassoing

colts upon the plain. Augustin, thus left to his own resources, had

just eaten his vespertine frijolitos and chile colorado, and was

enjoying a post-coenal smoke of fragrant pouche under the shadow of

his own fig-tree.

Whilst thus employed, an Indian dressed in Mexican attire approached

him hat in hand, and, making a reverential bow, asked his directions

concerning domestic business of the Mission.

"Hola! friend Jose," cried Fray Augustin in a thick guttural voice,

"pensaba yo--I was thinking that it was very nearly this time three

years ago when those 'malditos Americanos' came by here and ran off

with so many of our cavallada."

"True, reverend father," answered the administrador, "just three years

ago, all but fifteen days: I remember it well. _Malditos sean_--curse

them!"

"How many did we kill, Jose?"

"Quizas moochos--a great many, I dare say. But they did not fight

fairly--charged right upon us, and gave us no time to do any thing.

They don't know how to fight, these Mericanos; come right at you,

before you can swing a lasso, hallooing like Indios Bravos."

"But, Jose, how many did they leave dead on the field?"

"Not one."

"And we?"

"Valgame Dios! thirteen dead, and many more wounded."

"That's it! Now if these savages come again, (and the Chemeguaba, who

came in yesterday, says he saw a large trail,) we must fight

adentro--within--outside is no go; for as you very properly say, Jose,

these Americans don't know how to fight, and kill us before--before we

can kill them. Vaya!"

At this moment there issued from the door of the Mission Don Antonio,

Velez Trueba, a Gachupin--that is, a native of Old Spain--a wizened

old hidalgo refugee, who had left the mother country on account of his

political opinions, which were stanchly Carlist, and had found his

way--how, he himself scarcely knew--from Mexico to San Francisco in

Upper California, where, having a most perfect contempt for every

thing Mexican, and hearing that in the Mission of San Fernando, far

away, were a couple of Spanish padres of "sangre regular," he had

started into the wilderness to ferret them out; and having escaped all

dangers on the route, (which, however, were hardly dangers to the Don,

who could not realise the idea of scalp-taking savages,) had arrived

with a whole skin at the Mission. There he was received with open arms

by his countryman Fray Augustin, who made him welcome to all the place

afforded, and there he harmlessly smoked away his time; his heart far

away on the banks of the Genil and in the grape-bearing vegas of his

beloved Andalusia, his withered cuerpo in the sierras of Upper

California. Don Antonio was the walking essence of a Spaniard of the

_ancien regime_. His family dated from the Flood, and with the

exception of sundry refreshing jets of Moorish blood, injected into

the Truebas during the Moorish epoch, no strange shoot was ever

engrafted on their genealogical tree. The marriages of the family were

ever confined to the family itself--never looking to fresh blood in a

station immediately below it, which was not hidalgueno; nor above,

since any thing higher in rank than the Trueba y Trueba family, _no

habia_, there was not.

Thus, in the male and female scions of the house, were plainly visible

the ill effects of breeding "in and in." The male Truebas were sadly

degenerate Dons, in body as in mind--compared to their ancestors of

Boabdil's day; and the senoritas of the name were all eyes, and eyes

alone, and hardly of such stamp as would have tempted that amorous

monarch to bestow a kingdom for a kiss, as ancient ballads tell.

"Duena de la negra toca,

Por un beso de tu boca,

Diera un reyno, Boabdil;

Y yo por ello, Cristiana,

Te diera de buena gana

Mil cielos, si fueran mil."

Come of such poor stock, and reared on tobacco smoke and "gazpacho,"

Don Antonio would not have shone, even amongst pigmy Mexicans, for

physical beauty. Five feet high, a frame-work of bones covered with a

skin of Andalusian tint, the Trueba stood erect and stiff in all the

consciousness of his "sangre regular." His features were handsome, but

entirely devoid of flesh, his upper lip was covered with a jet-black

mustache mixed with gray, his chin was bearded "like the pard." Every

one around him clad in deer and goat skin, our Don walked conspicuous

in shining suit of black--much the worse for wear, it must be

confessed--with beaver hat sadly battered, and round his body and over

his shoulder an unexceptionable "capa" of the amplest dimensions.

Asking, as he stepped over him, the pardon of an Indian urchin who

blocked the door, and bowing with punctilious politeness to the sturdy

mozas who were grinding corn, Don Antonio approached our friend

Augustin, who was discussing warlike matters with his administrador.

"Hola! Don Antonio, how do you find yourself, sir?"

"Perfectly well, and your very humble servant, reverend father; and

your worship also, I trust you are in good health?"

"_Sin novedad_--without novelty;" which, since it was one hour and a

half since our friends had separated to take their siestas, was not

impossible.

"Myself and the worthy Jose," continued Fray Augustin, "were speaking

of the vile invasion of a band of North American robbers, who three

years since fiercely assaulted this peaceful Mission, killing many of

its inoffensive inhabitants, wounding many more, and carrying off

several of our finest colts and most promising mules to their dens and

caves in the Rocky Mountains. Not with impunity, however, did they

effect this atrocity. Jose informs me that many of the assailants were

killed by my brave Indians. How many said you, Jose?"

"Quizas mo-o-ochos," answered the Indian.

"Yes, probably a great multitude," continued the padre; "but, unwarned

by such well-merited castigation, it has been reported to me by a

Chemeguaba mansito, that a band of these audacious marauders are now

on their road to repeat the offence, numbering many thousands, well

mounted and armed; and to oppose these white barbarians it behoves us

to make every preparation of defence."[8]

"There is no cause for alarm," answered the Andaluz. "I (tapping his

breast) have served in three wars: in that glorious one 'de la

Independencia,' when our glorious patriots drove the French like sheep

across the Pyrenees; in that equally glorious one of 1821; and in the

late magnanimous struggle for the legitimate rights of his majesty

Charles V., king of Spain, (doffing his hat,) whom God preserve. With

that right arm," cried the spirited Don, extending his shrivelled

member, "I have supported the throne of my kings--have fought for my

country, mowing down its enemies before me; and with it," vehemently

exclaimed the Gachupin, working himself into a perfect frenzy, "I

will slay these Norte Americanos, should they dare to show their

faces in my front. Adios, Don Augustin Ignacio Sabanal-Morales-y

Fuentes," he cried, doffing his hat with an earth-sweeping bow: "I go

to grind my sword. Till then adieu."

"A countryman of mine!" said the frayle, admiringly, to the

administrador. "With him by our side we need not to fear: neither

Norte Americanos, nor the devil himself, can harm us when he is by."

Whilst the Trueba sharpens his Tizona, and the priest puffs volumes of

smoke from his nose and mouth, let us introduce to the reader one of

the muchachitas, who knelt grinding corn on the metate, to make

tortillas for the evening meal. Juanita was a stout wench from Sonora,

of Mexican blood, hardly as dark as the other women who surrounded

her, and with a drop or two of the Old Spanish blood struggling with

the darker Indian tint to colour her plump cheeks. An enagua (a short

petticoat) of red serge, was confined round her waist by a gay band

ornamented with beads, and a chemisette covered the upper part of the

body, permitting, however, a prodigal display of her charms. Whilst

pounding sturdily at the corn, she laughed and joked with her

fellow-labourers upon the anticipated American attack, which appeared

to have but few terrors for her. "Que vengan," she exclaimed--"let

them come; they are only men, and will not molest us women. Besides, I

have seen these white men before--in my own country, and they are fine

fellows, very tall, and as white as the snow on the sierras. Let them

come, say I!"

"Only hear the girl!" cried another: "if these savages come, then will

they kill Pedrillo, and what will Juanita say to lose her sweetheart?"

"Pedrillo!" sneered the latter; "what care I for Pedrillo? Soy

Mejicana, yo--a Mexican girl am I, I'd have you know, and don't demean

me to look at a wild Indian. Not I, indeed, by my salvation! What I

say is, let the Norte Americanos come."

At this juncture Fray Augustin called for a glass of aguardiente,

which Juanita was despatched to bring, and, on presenting it, the

churchman facetiously inquired why she wished for the Americans,

adding, "Don't think they'll come here--no, no: here we are brave men,

and have Don Antonio with us, a noble fellow, well used to arms." As

the words were on his lips, the clattering of a horse's hoofs was

heard rattling across the loose stones and pebbles in the bed of the

river, and presently an Indian herder galloped up to the door of the

Mission, his horse covered with foam, and its sides bleeding from

spur-wounds.

"Oh, padre mio!" he cried, as soon as he caught sight of his

reverence, "vienen los Americanos--the Americans, the Americans are

upon us. Ave Maria purissima--more than ten thousand are at my heels!"

Up started the priest and shouted for the Don.

That hidalgo presently appeared, armed with the sword that had graced

his thigh in so many glorious encounters, the sword with which he had

mowed down the enemies of his country, and by whose aid he now

proposed to annihilate the American savages should they dare to appear

before him.

The alarm was instantly given; peones, vagueros hurried from the

plains; and milpas, warned by the deep-toned bell, which soon rung out

its sonorous alarum. A score of mounted Indians, armed with gun and

lasso, dashed off to bring intelligence of the enemy. The old gingall

on the roof was crammed with powder and bullets to the very muzzle, by

the frayle's own hand. Arms were brought and piled in the sala, ready

for use. The padre exhorted, the women screamed, the men grew pale and

nervous, and thronged within the walls. Don Antonio, the fiery

Andaluz, alone remained outside, flourishing his whetted sabre, and

roaring to the padre, who stood on the roof with lighted match, by the

side of his formidable cannon, not to be affrighted. "That he, the

Trueba, was there, with his Tizona, ready to defeat the devil himself

should he come on."

He was deaf to the entreaties of the priest to enter.

"Siempre en el frente--Ever in the van," he said, "was the war-cry of

the Truebas."

But now a cloud of dust was seen approaching from the plain, and

presently a score of horsemen dashed headlong towards the Mission. "El

enemigo," shouted Fray Augustin; and, without waiting to aim, he

clapped his match to the touch-hole of the gun, harmlessly pointed to

the sky, and crying out "in el nombre de Dios"--in God's name--as he

did so, was instantly knocked over and over by the recoil of the

piece, then was as instantly seized by some of the Indian garrison,

and forced through the trap-door into the building; whilst the

horsemen (who were his own scouts) galloped up with the intelligence

that the enemy was at hand, and in overwhelming force.

Thereupon the men were all mounted, and formed in a body before the

building, to the amount of more than fifty, well armed with guns or

bows and arrows. Here the gallant Don harangued them, and infusing

into their hearts a little of his own courage, they eagerly demanded

to be led against the enemy. Fray Augustin re-appeared on the roof,

gave them his blessing, advised them to give no quarter, and, with

slight misgivings, saw them ride off to the conflict.