Bacon and Smith on the law of entail Perpetuities forbidden in law, established in fact How English estates are kept together This custom worse than perpetual entail Evils of Scotch perpetual entails removed in part Two causes of increased burdens on Irish estates Commission for the sale of Irish encumbered estates Amount of sales under this commission Results of the depopulation of the rural districts . Benefits of the American law of inheritance . Wealth creates wealth, poverty generates poverty Natural limit to excessive accumulation The English law chills exertion. Preponderance of misery in Great Britain Great estates deaden exertion everywhere PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. CHAPTER I. WEALTH AND ITS TRANSMUTATIONS. THE most obvious, though certainly not the most important, difference between a civilized community and a nation of savages consists in the vastly greater abundance, possessed by the former, of all the means of comfort and enjoyment. These means, including the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, are chiefly material objects, such as manufactured goods, articles of food and clothing, ships and buildings, the useful and the precious metals, tools and machines, and ornaments, or things designed to gratify the taste and the senses. Some, however, are immaterial, and yet are just as much objects of desire, just as much objects of barter and sale, as cloth and bread. The legal knowledge and acumen of a lawyer, for instance, the vocal powers of a remarkable singer, the mimetic talent of an actor, the practised hand of an ingenious and thoroughly-trained artisan, all command a price in the market quite as readily as any goods in a shop. When an occasion arises, we buy the services of a lawyer or a physician, just as we buy a ticket to a concert, or an instrument of music for a drawing-room.* Many Political Economists exclude immaterial products from their definition of wealth, because the labor which is devoted to such products "ends in immediate enjoyment, without any increase of the accumulated stock of permanent means of Now, the aggregate of all these things, whether material or immaterial, which contribute to comfort and enjoyment, and which are objects of frequent barter and sale, is what we usually call WEALTH; and individuals or nations are denominated rich or poor, according to the abundance or scarcity of these articles which they possess, or have at their immediate disposal. Two questions, we are told, may be asked respecting the production of these articles:-1. By what mechanical processes are they manufactured or obtained? To answer this query, is the business of a man of practical science or an artisan, of a chemist, a mechanic, or a farmer; as Political Economists, we have nothing to do with it. But (2.) we may ask, On what principles do men readily exchange these articles for each other, and what motives, what general laws, regulate their production, distribution, and consumption? Political Economy undertakes to answer this question, and is therefore properly considered as one of the Moral Sciences. It depends, quite as much as Politics and Ethics, upon the principles of the human mind. It is quite as possible to re enjoyment." The man who makes a fiddle, they say, is a productive laborer, because his work remains as a permanent addition to the stock of things from which men derive pleasure; but he who only plays upon the fiddle, though, like Paganini, he earns £1,000 in a single evening, adds nothing to the wealth of the community. We answer, that the characteristic of all wealth is, directly or indirectly, to satisfy some want or gratify some desire. The fiddle is but an indirect means to this end; it would gratify nobody, — it would not increase our store of valuables, — if the skill of the practised musician could not extract sweet sounds from it. The time during which the pleasure endures, or the number of occasions on which it may be repeated, is a point of no importance, except so far as it may determine the amount, or quantity, of the wealth which has been created. Food which is ready to be eaten is wealth, just as much as the knives and forks with which we eat it; though the former is devoured at once, and there is an end of it, while the latter may remain in daily use for a year or more. "When a tailor makes a coat and sells it," argues Mr. J. S. Mill, "there is a transfer of the price from the customer to the tailor, and a coat besides, which did not previously exist; but what is gained by an actor is a mere transfer from the spectator's funds to his, leaving no article of wealth for the spectator's indemnifica tion." We reply, that the purchaser obtains only a gratification of desire in either From the coat, he has moderate enjoyment prolonged for some months; but he might do without it, and work in his shirt-sleeves. From the theatre, he has keen enjoyment, that lasts only a few hours; and he may prefer such pleasure to the luxury of additional clothing. It is inconsistent to give the name of wealth to what pleases our palates for a moment, and deny it to what gives keener pleasure to our ears. case. duce to general laws the habits and dispositions of men, so far as they are manifested in their efforts for the acquisition of wealth, as it is to develop, from observation and consciousness, the laws of our moral constitution. Political Economy begins with the supposition, that man is disposed to accumulate wealth beyond what is necessary for the immediate gratification of his wants, and that this disposition, in the great majority of cases, is in fact unbounded; that man's inclination to labor is mainly controlled by this desire; that he is constantly competing with his fellows in this attempt to gain wealth; and that he is sagacious enough to see what branches of industry are most profitable, and eager enough to engage in them, so that competition regularly tends to bring wages, profits, and prices to a level. The science, then, is more closely allied with the Philosophy of Mind, than with Natural History, or the physical sciences. It has been called Catallactics, or "the Science of Exchanges"; and, agreeably to this notion, man himself has been defined to be, an animal that makes exchanges; "as no other, even of those animals which, in other points, make the nearest approach to rationality, has, to all appearance, the least notion of bartering, or in any way exchanging one object for another." With regard to the articles that constitute wealth, we observe that far the larger portion of them are perishable, or quickly consumable. Some of them, like the immaterial products, are consumed at the instant that they are produced; others, like articles of food, last a little longer, but perish if not quickly used. The fashion and the fabric of manufactured goods soon decay and pass away, the former being often more short-lived than the latter. Tools and machinery wear out; houses and other buildings need constant repair, and, at stated intervals, must be wholly renewed. Hardly anything but the solid land itself-the great God-given, food-producing machine is permanent; and the exchangeable value even of the land, (the only quality of it which we have to consider in this science,) quickly diminishes, and almost wholly disappears, if it be not kept up by the constant application of labor and capital, or by the continued prosperity of the community who live upon it. The best situated land in a populous city may be worth $30 or $40 a square foot; but if the other articles |