a few, and the economical atmosphere was tainted with slavery. A slave-holding community never developes the mechanical arts, except to some small extent in the direction of military engines. And the reason is obvious. The most powerful cause towards the production of comparative wealth, is the impulse towards procuring the greatest possible results with the least possible expenditure of labour. But such a motive cannot be present when the mass of the community is deprived of all discretion over their labour and the fruits of their toil. Still more absolutely does a system of slavery prevent that division of labour by which labour is rendered most effective. Bad government differs from a state of slavery only in degree. The purpose of government, economically considered, is that of effecting certain services, which could not be rendered at all by individual action or voluntary combination, or could not by such action be effected so discreetly or so justly. If, however, a government transcends its functions, which are analogous to those of the division of labour, if it becomes one-sided, partial, negligent, or rapacious, if it fails to protect persons and property, and turns what activity it possesses to the interest of the ruler only and his dependents, all the evils of slavery ensue. Capital cannot be accumulated, the division of labour is prevented, the motives of production itself are ultimately destroyed, infinite moral and social evils ensue, and the community afflicted by such a scourge ultimately relapses into barbarism, and the country becomes a desert. Such is the history of the downfall of that prosperity which once characterised Asia Minor, the eastern parts of Central Asia, Egypt, and the coast of Northern Africa. Less in their effect, but similar, have been those interferences with private action which have characterised the policy of most modern governments. The trading monopolies of the time of Elizabeth and James I.; the privileges of corporate towns and guilds; taxes on occupations, restrictions upon adaptation-as are some patents; restrictions on localities or markets; taxes on articles of prime necessity with a view to furthering home production, and the whole machinery of protection and bounties; taxes on exports; hindrances put on the free circulation of capital and labour by usury laws and parochial settlements, and a host of other prohibitions and impediments, have seriously impaired, and will as long as they are persisted in seriously impair, the productive energies of those who are made subject to them.

threatened. But by parity of reasoning, all limitations laid by testament or grant of dead persons on the acts or powers of the living are hindrances to economical progress. They diminish the disposition towards improvement, because they diminish the fulness of the property possessed by individuals, as well as hinder alienation into the hands of those who have more capital with which to improve, and more inclination to do so.

A third condition is that the freedom of action should presume that individuals are the best judges of their own interests, and that therefore, as they ought not to be hindered, so they should not be helped. In other words, the rule of government should be in economical matters, laissez-faire. The reason is obvious. The inductions of the wisest government are generalities inapplicable to individuals, because circumstances are ever shifting, and therefore to be interpreted by an estimate of particular needs. Hence, primâ facie, the protection afforded to a nascent commerce by military display or force is radically bad, just as we now admit that the military defence of the colonies for the purpose of securing colonial markets was a delusion. Not indeed that the rule of laissezfaire is without exception. There are cases in which government is justified in interposing. An administration may tax a community in order to confer a great public benefit, as by making roads, or in order to secure large moral and material progress, as in compelling education, or to further the highest and best developements of art and science. But in these and similar cases, the defence of government interference is to be found in the facts that the voluntary association of individuals is incompetent to achieve these results, or that, the community not being yet alive to the worth of the service, and therefore exhibiting no demand, the government is justified in taking the initiative, and leaving the declaration of indemnity for such an invasion of private right to the subsequent judgment of a more enlightened and competent community.

the division of labour is the width of the market, it is clear that governmental regulations tending towards protection are in effect hindrances to the most powerful among the causes of comparative wealth.

Another cause is the accumulation of capital. It will be necessary to say a few words about capital and its functions, as this important term was passed over under its proper head with a very slight notice. The proceeds of labour are divided into three portions, that which is consumed for the enjoyment of the possessor, that which is employed for future production, and that which is reserved or hoarded for contingencies. In so far as the profits of labour are expended on mere enjoyment, i.e. on such gratifications as have neither directly nor indirectly any bearing on future production, the expenditure is mere consumption. The second kind of employment is, properly speaking, the function of capital; and the hoard or reserve, though not used productively, is an important resource when occasion arises. It is clear that all capital is the result of saving, i. e. it must consist of objects in demand, which are in excess of the wants or the desires of its possessor, and it is also clear, that in order to be effective, it must be consumed in some direction which shall be distinct from the immediate possessor of it. Further it must be consumed in the maintenance of labour, for the employment of capital is always with a view to profit, and profit, like every other kind of wealth, can be induced only by labour exercised upon materials and their properties. Hence the capital of a country represents all the saving which is employed in the maintenance of labour, and the increase of the capital of any country is relative to the amount which is annually accumulated over and above that which is expended in the maintenance of labour. If the expenditure were exactly tantamount to the charges incurred, so that an absolute balance were struck every year, the community would neither progress or retrograde; if it were in excess, capital would suffer diminution; if it were less, capital would accumulate. The absolute balance seems to have been almost struck in Holland at the close of the last century; the retrogression appears to have characterised Spain for the two and a half centuries following the reign of Charles V.; and the state of progress has been manifest in this country for the last 300 years, and is still more notably a feature in the growth of the United States. Capital, too, is divided into circulating capital and fixed capital. These terms are unfortunately rather ambiguous, but they are meant to distinguish those employments in which the capital changes its form and cannot be recovered in the same shape after it has discharged a single office, from those in which the same product is competent to perform a large number of operations. Thus the seed sown for a future crop is circulating capital, whereas the labour expended on the drainage of land or the building of

houses is fixed. Money is a form of fixed capital, and the more thoroughly it is fixed, the larger will be the number of operations it is made to effect, or, in other words, the more will it circulate. Capital, moreover, is not, as we have seen before, money or even implements, but virtually food and necessaries for labour; i.e. money and implements are objects in which capital is fixed, and the former is a general credit, a power by which food and necessaries may be to a moral certainty attained, but it is clearly only as a purchasing power that it can be called capital; and instruments are capital embodied in a fixed form. The amount of capital possessed by a community, is the measure of the means by which the community can be stimulated to labour. Thus, as we have seen before [DEMAND], there may be an urgent call for the products of labour, but unless capital be present, in order that labour already existent may be called into activity, the demand will not be met by a corresponding supply; or, to quote Mr. Mill's adage, 'demand for commodities is not demand for labour.'

The effects of abundant capital on the progress of national wealth are, first, that it insures continuity of occupation; i. e. it enables producers to wait for the market. In countries where capital is scanty, and the mechanic or farm labourer is also the dealer, the price of commodities fluctuates largely, and yet is on the average high, because the producer has to take into account the suspension of his labour and the risks of the market. Such a state of things is inconvenient to both parties. It is an evil to the producer, because, while he is alternating between abundant employment and forced indolence, he is often obliged to suffer the loss of a forced sale. It is an inconvenience to the consumer, because he is exposed to great fluctuations in price, whereas nothing is more advantageous to both parties than the reduction of the oscillations of price to a minimum amount. Hence it is, or rather was, that when farmers occupied small holdings with scanty capital, they constantly lost all the benefit of the market from the necessity put upon them of selling in order to realise. When, however, a dealer is possessed of sufficient capital, he is able to tide over a bad time or low rates, and, by waiting for the market, to avoid loss and equalise prices. Again, the existence of abundant capital renders it possible that labour should cooperate. Great undertakings can be carried out only by large capitals, because the benefits of the division of labour, and with them of diminished cost of production, can be attained only by strictly apportioning the kind of work to be done to each labourer who can do it most cheaply.

A third cause of comparative wealth will become operative in the adjustment of the elements of production, and in the readiness with which they can circulate, i.e. be transferred to the centres in which they can be most profitably employed. These elements are labour and capital, and to these may be added,

under certain reservations, public and private credit. Labour may be in excess or defect, not, that is to say, temporarily, but permanently. When it is in excess, we have the state of overpopulation and the evils which can be remedied only by emigration on a vast scale, as in Ireland during the last twenty years. When it is in defect, there may be a great loss of capital. Such a loss occurred in the first colonisation of Western Australia, when it went under the name of the Swan River settlement. Here a vast amount of capital was exported, but in consequence of the fact that labour was deficient, and that no pains were taken by any municipal regulations to prevent the labour then present from being dispersed, the colony came utterly to ruin. At all times, indeed, labour moves more slowly than any other economical value, and therefore no legislative impediment should be put in its But in this country the motive energies of labour have been inconceivably crippled by the law of parochial settlement. Had it not been that the industry of the north of England always demanded more labour than was supplied, and that therefore immigration has gone on towards the manufacturing districts, unimpeded by alarms as to the contingency of pauperism, the degradation of the English labourer would have been complete. As it is, the manufacturing districts have formed a sort of half-way house to America and the colonies, and a means of relieving to some extent the excess of population. And though it will be long before the habitual helplessness of the agricultural labourer induced by the system of settlement is removed, there is reason to think that since the system is all but expunged from the statute book, labour will circulate with greater rapidity than before. [PAUPERISM.]

way.

An excess or defect of capital may characterise the economical condition of a country. When capital is in excess, the problematical stationary state of economists is induced. We say problematical, for though there is no doubt that such a state of things marked the Dutch trade of the last century, the causes are manifestly to be found in the utter defiance of common sense which disfigured the commercial policy of Holland. In order to maintain prices, the Dutch curtailed the supply of such tropical products as were derived from their possessions. But they could not limit the competitors for a share in the profits of the business which they carried on, and they could not wholly prevent a trade carried on outside their monopoly. As a consequence, profits sank to a very low rate, so low indeed that capital could hardly be accumulated in proportion to expenditure. But when such notions are exploded, and it is understood that a low rate of profit on each sale may mean an aggregate high rate of profit by the extension of demand among consumers, it does not seem likely that such a state of things is near enough for anyone to find it worth speculating about.

Credit is not wealth, but a power by which

wealth may be utilised. It is a moral force, operating in the fullest way and with the best results when it is justly accorded, by the fact that it enables the fullest use to be made of accumulations. The world will always possess borrowers and lenders. The more of both classes, the more trustworthy are the former. Again, it is impossible that all transactions, except at a great waste of power, should be simultaneously liquidated, and thus trade is impossible or scanty without mutual credit. This credit may be public or private. The credit of a government is the means by which it can negotiate loans, and depends entirely on the responsibility to which the executive is liable, and the fulness with which it is exposed to public opinion. Private credit is that of traders, and may be, indeed commonly is, far higher than that of administrations. Now as credit is measured by the rate of interest or discount, and as profit is the excess of price over the cost of production plus the rate of interest, it will be clear that deficient credit is an absolute bar to production, or at any rate to comparative profit.

A fourth cause of comparative wealth is found in the habitual standard of comfort which labourers enjoy, or, as Mr. Jones calls it, the habit of secondary wants. Demand is the stimulant to industry, other conditions being fulfilled. But demand will not be operative among the mass of the community unless they provide to themselves some standard of living from which they will not voluntarily depart. But a high standard of comfort indicates a progressive state, and a large margin of voluntary expenditure enjoyed by the working classes is at once evidence of their industrial capacity and a pledge of their procuring an increasing share in the distribution of profits. [POPULATION.]

A fifth cause lies in the spread of moral and intellectual education. The existence of a criminal population implies the subsistence of a certain class by a violent abstraction from property and profits. Not only is crime a loss proportionate to the injury inflicted, but it leads to insecurity, entails large expense in protection to persons and property, with the charges of legal procedure, and the maintenance of a large class of professional advocates. So in a less degree, but from similar causes, trades have been lost by the want of trustworthy persons, or by the frauds of producers; and the accumulation of capital is constantly checked by the want of safe objects in which the investment of profits may be made, and by the risk of peculation, embezzlement, or criminal negligence. So in common mechanical trades, overlookers are necessary in order to secure the employers of labour against fraud, and the expense of the product is enhanced by the need of watching against dishonesty. Again, the ignorance of fundamental economical laws is a serious hindrance to the productiveness of labour. The effect of imprudent marriages, of the consequent charge on the labour fund by the maintenance of the poor out of the rates, and of frequent strikes,

POLLEN

with that of trees undecapitated and left in their native luxuriance. In the time of Evelyn the term pollard appears to have been applied chiefly to trees which were lopped or deprived of their side branches, excepting a few at top, leaving the tree standing like a naked pole. Examples of this kind of pollard are frequent among the hedgerow elms in the neighbourhood of London and in Devonshire. The decapitated tree, now called a pollard, was in Evelyn's time called a dottard.

Pollen (Lat. fine flour). In Botany, the pulverulent substance which fills the cells of the anthers of a plant, consisting of a multitude of hollow cases, of extreme minuteness, filled with a fluid holding very fine molecular matter in suspension. The latter is eventually discharged by the grains of pollen through their hollow tubes, and is supposed to be the spermatic fluid of a plant.

POLYCHROMY

vulgaris, cultivated in gardens for its variously coloured gay-looking flowers.

Polyarchy (Gr. τoλvaрxía). A word sometimes used by political writers in a sense opposed to monarchy: the government of many, whether a privileged class (aristocracy) or the people at large (democracy).

Polyargite. An altered form of Anorthite from Sweden.

Polybasite (Gr. τoλús, many, and Báris, base). A sulphantimonite of silver, in which part of the silver is replaced by copper, and part of the antimony by arsenic. It occurs in short, tabular, six-sided prisms, which are striated parallel to their bases, opaque, and of an iron-black colour by reflected light, but cherry-red in thin slices when viewed by transmitted light. It is found in the mines of Durango in Mexico, Freiberg in Saxony, Schemnitz in Hungary, and Przibram Bohemia. It has its name from the large quantity of silver present, compared with the other sulphides of that metal.

Polychrest (Gr. TоλúxpηOTOS).

in

A term

POLLUX. In Mineralogy, a rare mineral. A hydrated silicate of alumina, potash, and sola, remarkable for containing 34 per cent. of casium, according to recent analyses of M. F. Pisani. It is massive, colourless, and transparent, and like quartz in appearance. It is found in the granite of Elba associated with Castor.

POLLUX. In Mythology. [POLYDRUKES.] Polyadelphous (Gr. Toλús, and doeλpós, e brother). In Botany, this term is applied to flowers which have the stamens united into several distinct sets.

Polyandria (Gr. woλús, and avý, a man). The thirteenth class in the Linnæan system. It includes those plants the flowers of which have hypogynous stamens more than twenty in number.

Polyanthes (Gr. zoλvavohs, many-flowered). A favourite cultivated flower, quite distinct from the Polyanthus. The genus Polyanthes belongs to the Liliaceae, and its most familiar species is the Tuberose met with in our hothouses, and prized on account of the fragrance of its flowers. It is a perennial, with bulbtuberous stems, throwing up from the heart of leaves a tall flowering scape, which supports at top a short many-flowered spike of creamywhite highly fragrant flowers, the double forms of which are greatly prized. Large quantities are annually imported from Italy. It is recorded that in sultry evenings, after thunder, when the atmosphere was highly charged with electric fluid, the Tuberose has been observed to dart small sparks of lucid flame from such of its flowers as were fading.

Polyanthus (Gr. Toλvavens). An umbellate-flowered variety of the Primrose, Primula

Polychroilite (Gr. Toλús, many, xpoid, colour, and xi0os, stone). A silicate of alumina, with peroxide of iron and magnesia, from Krageröe in Norway.

Polychroite (Gr. Toλus, and xpoiá, colour). A term applied to the colouring matter of saffron, from the variety of colours which it exhibits when acted upon by various re-agents.

Polychromatic Acid (Gr. Tπоλνxρúμатos, many coloured). A compound resulting from the action of nitric acid upon aloes. When used as a dye-stuff it yields a variety of colours.

Polychromy (Gr. #рλúxpwμos, manycoloured). In Architecture and Sculpture, the art of decorating with many colours. It is now generally understood that the Greeks habitually coloured their architecture, the exterior of buildings as well as the interior; but that they also coloured their sculpture is not so generally admitted. That the practice, however, of colouring their statues was established among the Greeks of the most refined period, is quite certain. It is proved by passages in Plato, Pausanias, Lucian, Plutarch and other writers. Marble statues were coloured in encaustic, and statue painting was a distinct profession. The naked flesh itself was not commonly painted, but was stained with an encaustic varnish; the colouring was apparently generally confined to the hair, eyes, lips, the drapery, and the ornaments in general; sometimes the hair was gilded, and the eyes were not unfrequently of glass, with eyelashes of copper gilt. The celebrated Nicias was an ȧyarμáτwv ¿ykavoтhs, or statue painter, in his youth: he coloured some of the statues of Praxiteles. It is to this practice that Pliny refers when he speaks of the circumlitio of Nicias as applied to the statues of Praxiteles.