[Autobiography, p. 27 (Pop. ed. p. 15).]

[Ibid. p. 60 (Pop. ed. p. 34).]

[Ibid. p. 62 (Pop. ed. p. 36).]

[Ibid. p. 119 (Pop. ed. p. 68).]

[Autobiography, p. 101 (Pop. ed. p. 58).]

[Ibid. p. 242 (Pop. ed. p. 139).]

[Ibid. p. 247 (Pop. ed. p. 142).]

[Political Economy. Book iv. chap. vi. § 2.]

[Autobiography, p. 246 (Pop. ed. p. 141).]

[Ibid. p. 243 (Pop. ed. p. 139).]

[Ibid. p. 128 (Pop. ed. p. 73).]

[Reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions. Series I.]

[Dissertations and Discussions, I. p. 452.]

[Ibid. p. 425.]

[Ibid. p. 426.]

[Ibid. p. 453.]

[Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, A Criticism: with personal recollections, p. 56.]

[Ibid. p. 57 n.]

[L. Lévy-Bruhl, Lettres Inédites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte (Paris, 1899), p. 2. Writing to Comte, Mill naturally employs Comtean phraseology, and speaks of “ma sortie definitive de la section benthamiste de l'école revolutionnaire.”]

[Bain, J. S. Mill, p. 63.]

[Cf. Bain, p. 72.]

[Cours de Philosophie Positive, vol. iv. (1839), pp. 412 seq.]

[Ibid. pp. 318 seq.]

[Ibid. pp. 264–79.]

[Mill's Logic, book vi. chaps. 6, 10.]

[Ibid. ii. p. 472 (ed. 3).

[Ibid. ii. pp. 480–1.]

[Mill's Logic, ii. p. 486.]

[Reprinted in Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844).]

[Logic, ii. pp. 476–7.]

[Ibid. ii. p. 441.]

[Ibid. ii. p. 486.]

[Ibid. ii. p. 487.]

[Bain, pp. 78–9.]

[Besides Bain's account, Mill's letters to Comte, printed by Lévy-Bruhl, pp. 260, 285, are of interest.]

[Lévy-Bruhl, p. 308.]

[P. 235 (Pop. ed. p. 135).]

[Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, ii. 161.]

[Unsettled Questions, p. 149.]

[Autobiography, p. 236 (Pop. ed. p. 135).]

[Book ii. chap. 4.]

[Book iv, chap. 1.]

[See the concluding paragraphs in the Preliminary Remarks, and book ii, chap. i. § 1.]

[P. 246 (Pop. ed. p. 141).]

[Autobiography, p. 234 (Pop. ed. p. 134).]

[April 3, 1844. Translated from the French text in Lévy-Bruhl, p. 309.]

[May 1, 1844. Ibid. p. 314. The original French should be consulted. It is impossible in a free rendering to give all the nuances of the original.]

[June 6, 1844. Ibid. p. 322.]

[July 22, 1844. Ibid. p. 338.]

[The original Preface remained unchanged throughout the subsequent editions. But each of the later editions during the author's lifetime contained an addition peculiar to itself, either a new paragraph subjoined to the original preface or a further preface. These are reprinted in the present edition.]

[The English translations in the People's edition have similarly been substituted for the originals in this, Students', edition, but none of the quotations have been omitted.]

[This example has been followed in the present, Students', edition.]

The last in the author's lifetime; [and to the subsequent eighth and ninth Library editions].

[See, however, pp. 934, 936.]

The present state of the discussion may be learnt from a review (by the author) of Mr. Thornton's work “On Labour,” in the Fortnightly Review of May and June, 1869, and from Mr. Thornton's reply to that review in the second edition of his very instructive book. [See Appendix O. The Wages Fund Doctrine.]

[See Appendix A. The Mercantile System.]

[1st ed. (1848) “about”; 5th ed. (1862) “almost.”]

[Paragraph added in 6th ed. (1865).]

Infra, book i. chap. iii.

[See Appendix B. The Definition of Wealth.]

[Parenthesis added in 6th ed. (1865).]

[So since 2nd ed. (1849). In the 1st ed. (1848) the text ran: “Russia and Hungary are,” &c.]

[See Appendix C. The Types of Society.]

This essential and primary law of man's power over nature was, I believe, first illustrated and made prominent as a fundamental principle of Political Economy, in the first chapter of Mr. [James] Mill's Elements.

The able and friendly reviewer of this treatise in the Edinburgh Review (October 1848) conceives the distinction between materials and implements rather differently: proposing to consider as materials “all the things which, after having undergone the change implied in production, are themselves matter of exchange,” and as implements (or instruments) “the things which are employed in producing that change, but do not themselves become part of the exchangeable result.” According to these definitions, the fuel consumed in a manufactory would be considered, not as a material, but as an instrument. This use of the terms accords better than that proposed in the text with the primitive physical meaning of the word “material”; but the distinction on which it is grounded is one almost irrelevant to political economy.

Some authorities look upon it as an essential element in the idea of wealth, that it should be capable not solely of being accumulated but of being transferred; and inasmuch as the valuable qualities, and even the productive capacities, of a human being, cannot be detached from him and passed to some one else, they deny to these the appellation of wealth, and to the labour expended in acquiring them the name of productive labour. It seems to me, however, that the skill of an artisan (for instance) being both a desirable possession, and one of a certain durability (not to say productive even of national wealth), there is no better reason for refusing to it the title of wealth because it is attached to a man, than to a coalpit or manufactory because they are attached to a place. Besides, if the skill itself cannot be parted with to a purchaser, the use of it may; if it cannot be sold, it can be hired; and it may be, and is, sold outright in all countries whose laws permit that the man himself should be sold along with it. Its defect of transferability does not result from a natural but from a legal and moral obstacle.

The human being himself (as formerly observed) I do not class as wealth. He is the purpose for which wealth exists. But his acquired capacities, which exist only as means, and have been called into existence by labour, fall rightly, as it seems to me, within that designation.

Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. Essay III. On the words Productive and Unproductive.

[“The bankrupt states of North America” in all editions until the 7th (1871). “It remains to be shown whether England,” &e., remained two lines below until the 5th ed. (1862).]

[See Appendix D. Productive and Unproductive.]

[See Appendix E. The Definition of Capital.]

An exception must be admitted when the industry created or upheld by the restrictive law belongs to the class of what are called domestic manufactures. These being carried on by persons already fed—by labouring families, in the intervals of other employment—no transfer of capital to the occupation is necessary to its being undertaken, beyond the value of the materials and tools, which is often inconsiderable. If, therefore, a protecting duty causes this occupation to be carried on, when it otherwise would not, there is in this case a real increase of the production of the country.

In order to render our theoretical proposition invulnerable, this peculiar case must be allowed for; but it does not touch the practical doctrine of free trade. Domestic manufactures cannot, from the very nature of things, require protection, since the subsistence of the labourers being provided from other sources, the price of the product, however much it may be reduced, is nearly all clear gain. If, therefore, the domestic producers retire from the competition, it is never from necessity, but because the product is not worth the labour it costs, in the opinion of the best judges, those who enjoy the one and undergo the other. They prefer the sacrifice of buying their clothing to the labour of making it. They will not continue their labour unless society will give them more for it, than in their own opinion its product is worth.

For example, Mr. Malthus, Dr. Chalmers, M. de Sismondi.

It is worth while to direct attention to several circumstances which to a certain extent diminish the detriment caused to the general wealth by the prodigality of individuals, or raise up a compensation, more or less ample, as a consequence of the detriment itself. One of these is, that spendthrifts do not usually succeed in consuming all they spend. Their habitual carelessness as to expenditure causes them to be cheated and robbed on all quarters, often by persons of frugal habits. Large accumulations are continually made by the agents, stewards, and even domestic servants, of improvident persons of fortune; and they pay much higher prices for all purchases than people of careful habits, which accounts for their being popular as customers. They are, therefore, actually not able to get into their possession and destroy a quantity of wealth by any means equivalent to the fortune which they dissipate. Much of it is merely transferred to others, by whom a part may be saved. Another thing to be observed is, that the prodigality of some may reduce others to a forced economy. Suppose a sudden demand for some article of luxury, caused by the caprice of a prodigal, which not having been calculated on beforehand, there has been no increase of the usual supply. The price will rise; and may rise beyond the means or the inclinations of some of the habitual consumers, who may in consequence forego their accustomed indulgence, and save the amount. If they do not, but continue to expend as great a value as before on the commodity, the dealers in it obtain, for only the same quantity of the article, a return increased by the whole of what the spendthrift has paid; and thus the amount which he loses is transferred bodily to them, and may be added to their capital: his increased personal consumption being made up by the privations of the other purchasers, who have obtained less than usual of their accustomed gratification for the same equivalent. On the other hand, a counter-process must be going on somewhere, since the prodigal must have diminished his purchases in some other quarter to balance the augmentation in this; he has perhaps called in funds employed in sustaining productive labour, and the dealers in subsistence and in the instruments of production have had commodities left on their hands, or have received, for the usual amount of commodities, a less than usual return. But such losses of income or capital, by industrious persons except when of extraordinary amount, are generally made up by increased pinching and privation; so that the capital of the community may not be, on the whole, impaired, and the prodigal may have had his self-indulgence at the expense not of the permanent resources, but of the temporary pleasures and comforts of others. For in every case the community are poorer by what any one spends, unless others are in consequence led to curtail their spending. There are yet other and more recondite ways in which the profusion of some may bring about its compensation in the extra savings of others; but these can only be considered in that part of the Fourth Book, which treats of the limiting principle to the accumulation of capital.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that war abstracts from productive employment not only capital, but likewise labourers; that the funds withdrawn from the remuneration of productive labourers are partly employed in paying the same or other individuals for unproductive labour; and that by this portion of its effects war expenditure acts in precisely the opposite manner to that which Dr. Chalmers points out, and, so far as it goes, directly counteracts the effects described in the text. So far as labourers are taken from production, to man the army and navy, the labouring classes are not damaged, the capitalists are not benefited; and the general produce of the country is diminished, by war expenditure. Accordingly, Dr. Chalmers's doctrine, though true of this country, is wholly inapplicable to countries differently circumstanced; to France, for example, during the Napoleon wars. At that period the draught on the labouring population of France, for a long series of years, was enormous, while the funds which supported the war were mostly supplied by contributions levied on the countries overrun by the French arms, a very small proportion alone consisting of French capital. In France, accordingly, the wages of labour did not fall, but rose; the employers of labour were not benefited, but injured; while the wealth of the country was impaired by the suspension or total loss of so vast an amount of its productive labour. In England all this was reversed. England employed comparatively few additional soldiers and sailors of her own, while she diverted hundreds of millions of capital from productive employment, to supply munitions of war and support armies for her Continental allies. Consequently, as shown in the text, her labourers suffered, her capitalists prospered, and her permanent productive resources did not fall off.

Infra, book iv, chaps. iv, v.

[This sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the original text: “So that the capital cannot be dispensed with—the purchasers can.”]

[The rest of this paragraph replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the original text: “I am desirous of impressing on the reader that a demand for commodities does not in any manner constitute a demand for labour, but only determines into a particular channel a portion, more or less considerable, of the demand already existing. It determines that a part of the labour and capital of the community shall be employed in producing certain things instead of other things. The demand for labour is constituted solely by the funds directly set apart for the use of labourers.”]

[In the 2nd ed. (1849) there was here inserted “a different mode of stating the argument.” In the 3rd ed. (1852) this became the long footnote of this section; and five new paragraphs were inserted at this point.]

[This paragraph was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[1849] The following case, which presents the argument in a somewhat different shape, may serve for still further illustration.

Suppose that a rich individual, A, expends a certain amount daily in wages or alms, which, as soon as received, is expended and consumed, in the form of coarse food, by the receivers. A dies, leaving his property to B, who discontinues this item of expenditure, and expends in lieu of it the same sum each day in delicacies for his own table. I have chosen this supposition, in order that the two cases may be similar in all their circumstances, except that which is the subject of comparison. In order not to obscure the essential facts of the case by exhibiting them through the hazy medium of a money transaction, let us further suppose that A, and B after him, are landlords of the estate on which both the food consumed by the recipients of A's disbursements, and the articles of luxury supplied for B's table, are produced; and that their rent is paid to them in kind, they giving previous notice what description of produce they shall require. The question is, whether B's expenditure gives as much employment or as much food to his poorer neighbours as A's gave.

From the case as stated, it seems to follow that while A lived, that portion of his income which he expended in wages or alms, would be drawn by him from the farm in the shape of food for labourers, and would be used as such; while B, who came after him, would require, instead of this, an equivalent value in expensive articles of food, to be consumed in his own household: that the farmer, therefore, would, under B's regime, produce that much less, of ordinary food, and more of expensive delicacies, for each day of the year than was produced in A's time, and that there would be that amount less of food shared, throughout the year, among the labouring and poorer classes. This is what would be conformable to the principles laid down in the text. Those who think differently, must, on the other hand, suppose that the luxuries required by B would be produced, not instead of, but in addition to, the food previously supplied to A's labourers, and that the aggregate produce of the country would be increased in amount. But when it is asked, how this double production would be effected—how the farmer, whose capital and labour were already fully employed, would be enabled to supply the new wants of B, without producing less of other things; the only mode which presents itself is, that he should first produce the food, and then, giving that food to the labourers whom A formerly fed, should by means of their labour, produce the luxuries wanted by B. This, accordingly, when the objectors are hard pressed, appears to be really their meaning. But it is an obvious answer, that, on this supposition, B must wait for his luxuries till the second year, and they are wanted this year. By the original hypothesis, he consumes his luxurious dinner day by day, pari passu with the rations of bread and potatoes formerly served out by A to his labourers. There is not time to feed the labourers first, and supply B afterwards: he and they cannot both have their wants ministered to: he can only satisfy his own demand for commodities, by leaving as much of theirs, as was formerly supplied from that fund, unsatisfied.

It may, indeed, be rejoined by an objector, that since, on the present showing, time is the only thing wanting to render the expenditure of B consistent with as large an employment to labour as was given by A, why may we not suppose that B postpones his increased consumption of personal luxuries until they can be furnished to him by the labour of the persons whom A employed? In that case, it may be said, he would employ and feed as much labour as his predecessors. Undoubtedly he would; but why? Because his income would be expended in exactly the same manner as his predecessor's; it would be expended in wages. A reserved from his personal consumption a fund which he paid away directly to labourers; B does the same, only instead of paying it to them himself, he leaves it in the hands of the farmer who pays it to them for him. On this supposition, B, in the first year, neither expending the amount, as far as he is personally concerned, in A's manner nor in his own, really saves that portion of his income, and lends it to the farmer. And if, in subsequent years, confining himself within the year's income, he leaves the farmer in arrears to that amount, it becomes an additional capital, with which the farmer may permanently employ and feed A's labourers. Nobody pretends that such a change as this, a change from spending an income in wages of labour to saving it for investment, deprives any labourers of employment. What is affirmed to have that effect is, the change from hiring labourers to buying commodities for personal use; as represented by our original hypothesis.

In our illustration we have supposed no buying and selling, or use of money. But the case as we have put it, corresponds with actual fact in everything except the details of the mechanism. The whole of any country is virtually a single farm and manufactory, from which every member of the community draws his appointed share of the produce, having a certain number of counters, called pounds sterling, put into his hands, which, at his convenience, he brings back and exchanges for such goods as he prefers, up to the limit of the amount. He does not, as in our imaginary case, give notice beforehand what things he shall require; but the dealers and producers are quite capable of finding it out by observation, and any change in the demand is promptly followed by an adaptation of the supply to it. If a consumer changes from paying away a part of his income in wages, to spending it that same day (not some subsequent and distant day) in things for his own consumption, and perseveres in this altered practice until production has had time to adapt itself to the alteration of demand, there will from that time be less food and other articles for the use of labourers, produced in the country, by exactly the value of the extra luxuries now demanded; and the labourers, as a class, will be worse off by the precise amount.

[This paragraph was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[“Not a labourer” was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[See Appendix F. Fundamental Propositions on Capital.]

Infra, book ii. chap. xvi. On Rent.

[So altered in 2nd ed. (1849) from the original: “this may not, and often will not, be the case.”]

[The first two sentences of this paragraph were inserted in the 2nd ed. (1849), and the subsequent sentences slightly changed in form.]

[1865] The clearing away of the small farmers in the North of Scotland, within the present century, was, however, a case of it; and Ireland, since the potato famine and the repeal of the corn laws, is another. The remarkable decrease which has lately attracted notice in the gross produce of Irish agriculture, is, to all appearance, partly attributable to the diversion of land from maintaining human labourers to feeding cattle; and it could not have taken place without the removal of a large part of the Irish population by emigration or death. We have thus two recent instances, in which what was regarded as an agricultural improvement, has diminished the power of the country to support its population. The effect, however, of all the improvements due to modern science is to increase, or at all events, not to diminish, the gross produce.

Infra, book iv. chap. v.

[From the 4th ed. (1857) a long passage was omitted at this point. This originally ran as follows:

“In this last quality the English, and perhaps the Anglo-Americans, appear at present to surpass every other people. This efficiency of labour is connected with their whole character; with their defects, as much as with their good qualities. The majority of Englishmen and Americans have no life but in their work; that alone stands between them and ennui. Either from original temperament, climate, or want of development, they are too deficient in senses to enjoy mere existence in repose; and scarcely any pleasure or amusement is pleasure or amusement to them. Except, therefore, those who are alive to some of the nobler interests of humanity (a small minority in all countries), they have little to distract their attention from work, or to divide the dominion over them with the one propensity which is the passion of those who have no other, and the satisfaction of which comprises all that they imagine of success in life—the desire of growing richer, and getting on in the world. This last characteristic belongs chiefly to those who are in a condition superior to day labourers; but the absence of any taste for amusement, or enjoyment of repose, is common to all classes. Whether from this or any other cause, the national steadiness and persistency of labour extends to the most improvident of the English working classes—those who never think of saving, or improving their condition. It has become the habit of the country; and life in England is more governed by habit, and less by personal inclination and will, than in any other country, except perhaps China or Japan. The effect is, that where hard labour is the thing required, there are no labourers like the English; though in natural intelligence, and even in manual dexterity, they have many superiors.

“Energy of labour, though not an unqualified good, nor one which it is desirable to nourish at the expense of other valuable attributes of human nature, is yet, in a certain measure, a necessary condition,” &c.

In the 3rd ed. (1852) the characterisation had been made to apply to the English alone, and the passage began thus: “This last quality is the principal industrial excellence of the English people.” After “a small minority in all countries,” had been inserted “and particularly so in this;” and for “no labourers like the English” had been substituted “no better labourers than the English.”]

[The three preceding sentences originally ran as follows: “As much as the industrial spirit required to be stimulated in their case, so much does it require to be moderated in such countries as England and the United States. There, it is not the desire of wealth...; required. Every real improvement in the character of the English or Americans, whether it consist in giving them higher aspirations, or only more numerous and better pleasures, must necessarily moderate the all-engrossing torment of their industrialism; must diminish, therefore, so far as it depends on that cause alone, the aggregate productiveness of their labour. There is no need, however, that it should diminish that strenuous and business-like application to the matter in hand, which is one of their most precious characteristics.”

In the 3rd ed. (1852) they were modified to make the description apply to England only, and “the best English workmen;” and in the 4th (1857) “the ardour of their devotion to the pursuit of wealth” was substituted for “the all-engrossing torment of their industrialism.”

Then followed in the original the following quotation and comments, omitted in the 3rd ed.:

“‘Whoever’ (says Mr. Laing, Notes of a Traveller, p. 290) ‘looks into the social economy of an English or Scotch manufacturing district, in which the population has become thoroughly imbued with the spirit of productiveness, will observe that it is not merely the expertness, despatch, and skill of the operative himself, that are concerned in the prodigious amount of his production in a given time, but the labourer who wheels coal to his fire, the girl who makes ready his breakfast, the whole population, in short, from the potboy who brings his beer, to the banker who keeps his employer's cash, are inspired with the same alert spirit, are in fact working to his hand with the same quickness and punctuality as he works himself. English workmen taken to the Continent always complain that they cannot get on with their work as at home, because of the slow, unpunctual, pipe-in-mouth working habits of those who have to work to their hands, and on whom their own activity and productiveness mainly depend.’

“Foreigners are generally quite unaware that to these qualities in English industry the wealth and power which they seek to emulate are in reality owing, and not to the ‘ships, colonies, and commerce’ which these qualities have called into being, and which, even if annihilated, would leave England the richest country in the world. An Englishman, of almost every class, is the most efficient of all labourers, because, to use a common phrase, his heart is in his work. But it is surely quite possible to put heart into his work without being incapable of putting it into anything else.”]

The whole evidence of this intelligent and experienced employer of labour is deserving of attention; as well as much testimony on similar points by other witnesses, contained in the same volume.

[This comment was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[This statement took the place in the 3rd ed. (1852) of the sentence: “Nor are the greatest outward precautions; comparable in efficacy to the monitor within.”]

Some minor instances noticed by Mr. Babbage may be cited in further illustration of the waste occasioned to society through the inability of its members to trust one another.

“The cost to the purchaser is the price he pays for any article, added to the cost of verifying the fact of its having that degree of goodness for which he contracts. In some cases the goodness of the article is evident on mere inspection; and in those cases there is not much difference of price at different shops. The goodness of loaf sugar, for instance, can be discerned almost at a glance; and the consequence is that the price is so uniform, and the profit upon it so small, that no grocer is at all anxious to sell it; whilst on the other hand, tea, of which it is exceedingly difficult to judge, and which can be adulterated by mixture so as to deceive the skill even of a practised eye, has a great variety of different prices, and is that article which every grocer is most anxious to sell to his customers. The difficulty and expense of verification are in some instances so great, as to justify the deviation from well-established principles. Thus, it is a general maxim that Government can purchase any article at a cheaper rate than that at which they can manufacture it themselves. But it has, nevertheless, been considered more economical to build extensive flour-mills (such as those at Deptford), and to grind their own corn, than to verify each sack of purchased flour, and to employ persons in devising methods of detecting the new modes of adulteration which might be continually resorted to.” A similar want of confidence might deprive a nation, such as the United States, of a large export trade in flour.

Again: “Some years since, a mode of preparing old clover and trefoil seeds by a process called doctoring became so prevalent as to excite the attention of the House of Commons. It appeared in evidence before a Committee, that the old seed of the white clover was doctored by first wetting it slightly, and then drying it by the fumes of burning sulphur; and that the red clover seed had its colour improved by shaking it in a sack with a small quantity of indigo; but this being detected after a time, the doctors then used a preparation of logwood, fined by a little copperas, and sometimes by verdigris; thus at once improving the appearance of the old seed, and diminishing, if not destroying, its vegetative power, already enfeebled by age. Supposing no injury had resulted to good seed so prepared, it was proved that, from the improved appearance, the market price would be enhanced by this process from five to twenty-five shillings a hundred-weight. But the greatest evil arose from the circumstances of these processes rendering old and worthless seed equal in appearance to the best. One witness had tried some doctored seed, and found that not above one grain in a hundred grew, and that those which did vegetate died away afterwards; whilst about eighty or ninety per cent of good seed usually grows. The seed so treated was sold to retail dealers in the country, who of course endeavoured to purchase at the cheapest rate, and from them it got into the hands of the farmers, neither of these classes being capable of distinguishing the fraudulent from the genuine seed. Many cultivators in consequence diminished their consumption of the articles, and others were obliged to pay a higher price to those who had skill to distinguish the mixed seed, and who had integrity and character to prevent them from dealing in it.”

The same writer states that Irish flax, though in natural quality inferior to none, sells, or did lately sell, in the market at a penny to twopence per pound less than foreign or British flax; part of the difference arising from negligence in its preparation, but part from the cause mentioned in the evidence of Mr. Corry, many years Secretary to the Irish Linen Board: “The owners of the flax, who are almost always people in the lower classes of life, believe that they can best advance their own interests by imposing on the buyers. Flax being sold by weight, various expedients are used to increase it; and every expedient is injurious, particularly the damping of it; a very common practice, which makes the flax afterwards heat. The inside of every bundle (and the bundles all vary in bulk) is often full of pebbles, or dirt of various kinds, to increase the weight. In this state it is purchased and exported to Great Britain.”

It was given in evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons that the lace trade at Nottingham had greatly fallen off, from the making of fraudulent and bad articles: that “a kind of lace called single-press was manufactured,” (I still quote Mr. Babbage,) “which although good to the eye, became nearly spoiled in washing by the slipping of the threads; that not one person in a thousand could distinguish the difference between single-press and double-press lace; that even workmen and manufacturers were obliged to employ a magnifying-glass for that purpose; and that in another similar article, called warp-lace, such aid was essential.”

Note to Wakefield's edition of Adam Smith, vol. i. p. 26.

Supra, pp. 79–90.

[“Now” was omitted before “rapid” in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Say, Cours d'Economie Politique Pratique, vol. i. p. 340.

It is a remarkable proof of the economy of labour occasioned by this minute division of occupations, that an article, the production of which is the result of such a multitude of manual operations, can be sold for a trifling sum.

Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 3rd edition, p. 201.

“In astronomical observations, the senses of the operator are rendered so acute by habit, that he can estimate differences of time to the tenth of a second; and adjust his measuring instrument to graduations of which five thousand occupy only an inch. It is the same throughout the commonest processes of manufacture. A child who fastens on the heads of pins will repeat an operation requiring several distinct motions of the muscles one hundred times a minute for several successive hours. In a recent Manchester paper it was stated that a peculiar sort of twist or ‘gimp,’ which cost three shillings making when first introduced, was now manufactured for one penny; and this not, as usually, by the invention of a new machine, but solely through the increased dexterity of the workman.”—Edinburgh Review for January 1849, p. 81.

Page 171.

Statement of some New Principles on the subject of Political Economy, by John Rae (Boston, U.S.), p. 164. [Sociological Theory of Capital (1905), p. 102. See infra, p. 165 n.]

[See Appendix G. Division and Combination of Labour.]

Page 214 et seqq.

Supra, chap. vi.

[This paragraph was added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[1852] The observations in the text may hereafter require some degree of modification from inventions such as the steam plough and the reaping machine. The effect, however, of these improvements on the relative advantages of large and small farms, will not depend on the efficiency of the instruments, but on their costliness. I see no reason to expect that this will be such as to make them inaccessible to small farmers, or combinations of small farmers.

[This reference to steam threshing machines was inserted in the 5th ed. (1862); and “until lately” in the reference to Ireland, infra, p. 149.]

Prize Essay on The Management of Landed Property in Ireland, by William Blacker (1837), p. 23.

“The number of beasts fed on a farm of which the whole is arable land,” (says the elaborate and intelligent treatise on Flemish Husbandry, from personal observation and the best sources, published in the Library of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,) “is surprising to those who are not acquainted with the mode in which the food is prepared for the cattle. A beast for every three acres of land is a common proportion, and in very small occupations, where much spade husbandry is used, the proportion is still greater. After comparing the accounts given in a variety of places and situations of the average quantity of milk which a cow gives when fed in the stall, the result is, that it greatly exceeds that of our best dairy farms, and the quantity of butter made from a given quantity of milk is also greater. It appears astonishing that the occupier of only ten or twelve acres of light arable land should be able to maintain four or five cows, but the fact is notorious in the Wacs country.” (pp. 59, 60.)

This subject is treated very intelligently in the work of M. Passy, Des Systèmes de Culture et de leur Influence sur l'Economie Sociale, one of the most impartial discussions, as between the two systems, which has yet appeared in France.

“Without doubt it is England that, on an equal surface, feeds the greatest number of animals; Holland and some parts of Lombardy can alone vie with her in this respect: but is this a consequence of the mode of cultivation, and have not climate and local situation a share in producing it? Of this I think there can be no doubt. In fact, whatever may have been said, wherever large and small cultivation meet in the same place, the latter, though it cannot support as many sheep, possesses, all things considered, the greatest quantity of manure-producing animals.

“In Belgium, for example, the two provinces of smallest farms are Antwerp and East Flanders, and they possess on an average for every 100 hectares (250 acres) of cultivated land, 74 horned cattle and 14 sheep. The two provinces where we find the large farms are Namur and Hainaut, and they average, for every 100 hectares of cultivated ground, only 30 horned cattle and 45 sheep. Reckoning, as is the custom, ten sheep as equal to one head of horned cattle, we find in the first case, the equivalent of 76 beasts to maintain the fecundity of the soil; in the latter case less than 35, a difference which must be called enormous. (See the statistical documents published by the Minister of the Interior.) The abundance of animals, in the parts of Belgium which are most subdivided, is nearly as great as in England. Calculating the number in England in proportion only to the cultivated ground, there are for each 100 hectares, 65 horned cattle and nearly 260 sheep, together equal to 91 of the former, being only an excess of 15. It should besides be remembered, that in Belgium stall feeding being continued nearly the whole year, hardly any of the manure is lost, while in England grazing in the open fields diminishes considerably the quantity which can be completely utilized.

“Again, in the Department of the Nord, the arrondissements which have the smallest farms support the greatest quantity of animals. While the arrondissements of Lille and Hazebrouek, besides a greater number of horses, maintain the equivalent of 52 and 46 head of horned cattle, those of Dunkirk and Avesnes, where the farms are larger, produce the equivalent of only 44 and 40 head. (See the statistics of France published by the Minister of Commerce.)

“A similar examination extended to other portions of France would yield similar results. In the immediate neighbourhood of towns, no doubt, the small farmers, having no difficulty in purchasing manure, do not maintain animals: but, as a general rule, the kind of cultivation which takes most out of the ground must be that which is obliged to be most active in renewing its fertility. Assuredly the small farms cannot have numerous flocks of sheep, and this is an inconvenience; but they support more horned cattle than the large farms. To do so is a necessity they cannot escape from, in any country where the demands of consumers require their existence: if they could not fulfil this condition, they must perish.

“The following are particulars, the exactness of which is fully attested by the excellence of the work from which I extract them, the statistics of the commune of Vensat (department of Puy de Dôme), lately published by Dr. Jusseraud, mayor of the commune. They are the more valuable, as they throw full light on the nature of the changes which the extension of small farming has, in that district, produced in the number and kind of animals by whose manure the productiveness of the soil is kept up and increased. The commune consists of 1612 hectares, divided into 4600 parcelles, owned by 591 proprietors, and of this extent 1466 hectares are under cultivation. In 1790, seventeen farms occupied two-thirds of the whole, and twenty others the remainder. Since then the land has been much divided, and the subdivision is now extreme. What has been the effect on the quantity of cattle? A considerable increase. In 1790 there were only about 300 horned cattle, and from 1800 to 2000 sheep; there are now 676 of the former and only 533 of the latter. Thus 1300 sheep have been replaced by 376 oxen and cows, and (all things taken into account) the quantity of manure has increased in the ratio of 490 to 729, or more than 48 per cent, not to mention that the animals being now stronger and better fed, yield a much greater contribution than formerly to the fertilization of the ground.

“Such is the testimony of facts on the point. It is not true, then, that small farming feeds fewer animals than large; on the contrary, local circumstances being the same, it feeds a greater number: and this is only what might have been presumed; for, requiring more from the soil, it is obliged to take greater pains for keeping up its productiveness. All the other reproaches cast upon small farming, when collated one by one with facts justly appreciated, will be seen to be no better founded, and to have been made only because the countries compared with one another were differently situated in respect to the general causes of agricultural prosperity.” (pp. 116–120.)

See pp. 352 and 353 of a French translation published at Brussels in 1839, by M. Fred. de Kemmeter, of Ghent.

“In the department of the Nord,” says M. Passy, “a farm of 20 hectares (50 acres) produces in calves, dairy produce, poultry, and eggs, a value of sometimes 1000 francs (£40) a year: which, deducting expenses, is an addition to the net produce of 15 to 20 francs per hectare.” Des Systèmes de Culture, p. 114.

[1857] During the interval between the census of 1851 and that of 1856, the increase of the population of Paris alone exceeded the aggregate increase of all France: while nearly all the other large towns likewise showed an increase.

[This and the following paragraph were added in the 5th ed. (1862).]

Economie Rurale de la France depuis 1789. Par M. Léonce de Lavergne, Membre de l'Institut et de la Société Centrale d'Agriculture de France. 2mo éd. p. 59.

[See Appendix H. Large and Small Farming.]

[1865] This has been disputed; but the highest estimate I have seen of the term which population requires for doubling itself in the United States, independently of immigrants and of their progeny—that of Mr. Carey—does not exceed thirty years.

[1852] One of these theories, that of Mr. Doubleday, may be thought to require a passing notice, because it has of late obtained some followers, and because it derives a semblance of support from the general analogies of organic life. This theory maintains that the fecundity of the human animal, and of all other living beings, is in inverse proportion to the quantity of nutriment: that an underfed population multiplies rapidly, but that all classes in comfortable circumstances are, by a physiological law, so unprolific, as seldom to keep up their numbers without being recruited from a poorer class. There is no doubt that a positive excess of nutriment, in animals as well as in fruit trees, is unfavourable to reproduction; and it is quite possible, though by no means proved, that the physiological conditions of fecundity may exist in the greatest degree when the supply of food is somewhat stinted. But any one who might be inclined to draw from this, even if admitted, conclusions at variance with the principles of Mr. Malthus, needs only be invited to look through a volume of the Peerage, and observe the enormous families, almost universal in that class; or call to mind the large families of the English clergy, and generally of the middle classes of England.

[1865] It is, besides, well remarked by Mr. Carey, that, to be consistent with Mr. Doubleday's theory, the increase of the population of the United States, apart from immigration, ought to be one of the slowest on record.

[1865] Mr. Carey has a theory of his own, also grounded on a physiological truth, that the total sum of nutriment received by an organized body directs itself in largest proportion to the parts of the system which are most used; from which he anticipates a diminution in the fecundity of human beings, not through more abundant feeding, but through the greater use of their brains incident to an advanced civilization. There is considerable plausibility in this speculation, and experience may hereafter confirm it. But the change in the human constitution which it supposes, if ever realized, will conduce to the expected effect rather by rendering physical self-restraint easier, than by dispensing with its necessity; since the most rapid known rate of multiplication is quite compatible with a very sparing employment of the multiplying power.

[1865] Mr. Carey expatiates on the absurdity of supposing that matter tends to assume the highest form of organization, the human, at a more rapid rate than it assumes the lower forms, which compose human food; that human beings multiply faster than turnips and cabbages. But the limit to the increase of mankind, according to the doctrine of Mr. Malthus, does not depend on the power of increase of turnips and cabbages, but on the limited quantity of the land on which they can be grown. So long as the quantity of land is practically unlimited, which it is in the United States, and food, consequently, can be increased at the highest rate which is natural to it, mankind also may, without augmented difficulty in obtaining subsistence, increase at their highest rate. When Mr. Carey can show, not that turnips and cabbages, but that the soil itself, or the nutritive elements contained in it, tend naturally to multiply, and that too at a rate exceeding the most rapid possible increase of mankind, he will have said something to the purpose. Till then, this part at least of his argument may be considered as non-existent.

[So from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original second clause of the sentence ran: “There is always an immense residuary power behind, ready to start into activity as soon as the pressure which restrained it is taken off.”]

[See Appendix I. Population.]

This treatise is an example, such as not unfrequently presents itself, how much more depends on accident, than on the qualities of a book, in determining its reception. Had it appeared at a suitable time, and been favoured by circumstances, it would have had every requisite for great success. The author, a Scotchman settled in the United States, unites much knowledge, an original vein of thought, a considerable turn for philosophic generalities, and a manner of exposition and illustration calculated to make ideas tell not only for what they are worth, but for more than they are worth, and which sometimes, I think, has that effect in the writer's own mind. The principal fault of the book is the position of antagonism in which, with the controversial spirit apt to be found in those who have new thoughts on old subjects, he has placed himself towards Adam Smith. I call this a fault, (though I think many of the criticisms just, and some of them far-seeing,) because there is much less real difference of opinion than might be supposed from Dr. Rae's animadversions; and because what he has found vulnerable in his great predecessor is chiefly the “human too much” in his premises; the portion of them that is over and above what was either required or is actually used for the establishment of his conclusions. [A re-arranged reprint of John Rae's New Principles of Political Economy (1834) has been edited by Professor Mixter, and published (1905) under the title The Sociological Theory of Capital.]

Rae, p. 123 [ed. Mixter, p. 57].

Rae, p. 136 [ed. Mixter, p. 71].

Rae, p. 140 [ed. Mixter, p. 76].

Rae, pp. 151–5 [ed. Mixter, pp. 88–92].

[From the 6th ed. (1865) was first omitted the following explanatory clause of the original: “as soon, in fact, as men have applied themselves to cultivation with any energy, and have brought to it any tolerable tools.”]

Letters from America, by John Robert Godley, vol. i. p. 42, See also Lyell's Travels in America, vol. ii. p. 83,

[The account of Carey's argument, occupying this and the next two paragraphs, took the place in the 6th ed. (1865) of the brief paragraph referring, without mentioning any name, to the assertion that “the returns from land are greater in an advanced, than in an early, stage of cultivation—when much capital, than when little, is applied to agriculture.]

Ireland may be alleged as an exception; a large fraction of the entire soil of that country being still [1865] incapable of cultivation for want of drainage. But though Ireland is an old country, unfortunate social and political circumstances have kept it a poor and backward one. Neither is it at all certain that the bogs of Ireland, if drained and brought under tillage, would take their place along with Mr. Carey's fertile river bottoms, or among any but the poorer soils.

[See Appendix J. The Law of Diminishing Return.]

[In the 6th ed. (1865) “rather” replaced the original “very.”]

[The qualifying clause “notwithstanding . . population” was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[So from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran: “so unexampled a degree as to double the productive power of labour.”]

[This one sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following passage of the original text: “If, indeed, the release of the corn trade from restriction had produced, or should still produce, a sudden cheapening of food, this, like any other sudden improvement in the arts of life, would throw the natural tendency of affairs a stage or two further back, but without at all altering its course. There would be more for everybody in the first instance; but this more would begin immediately and continue always to grow less, so long as population went on increasing, unaccompanied by other events of a countervailing tendency.

“Whether the repeal of the corn laws is likely, even temporarily, to give any considerable increase of margin for population to fill up, it would be premature as yet to attempt to decide. All the elements of the question have been thrown into temporary disorder by the consequences of bad harvests and of the potatoe failure. But as far as can be foreseen, there seems little reason to expect an importation of the customary articles of food either so great in itself, or capable of such rapid increase, as to interfere much with the operation of the general law.”]

[The reference to Ireland (“and though... scheme”) was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[So from the 6th ed. (1865). The original ran: “There is no probability that even under the most enlightened arrangements a permanent stream, &c.”]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran: “But howsoever... things, those limits exist; there are ultimate laws, which we did not make, which we cannot alter, and to which we can only conform.”]

[The concluding words of this sentence were added in the 3rd ed., and “general” was deleted before “consent.” In the next sentence the keeping of property was made to depend on “the permission” and not on “the will” of society.]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). In the original, “the plausible remedy.” ]

[Here followed in the original text the following passage: “Owenism, or Socialism, in this country, and Communism on the continent, are the most prevailing forms of the doctrine. These suppose a democratic government of the industry and funds of society, and an equal division of the fruits. In the more elaborate and refined form of the same scheme, which obtained a temporary celebrity under the name of St. Simonism, the administering authority was supposed to be a monarchy or aristocracy, not of birth but of capacity; the remuneration of each member of the community being by salary, proportioned to the importance of the services supposed to be rendered by each to the general body.”

This was replaced in the 2nd ed. (1849) by the present reference to “the late revolutions in Europe,” and by the following paragraph, dividing “the assailants of the principle of individual property” into two classes. The present form, however, of the clause beginning “Nor is this attention” dates from the 3rd ed. (1852). In the 2nd it ran: “This attention is not likely to diminish; attacks on the institution of property being, in the existing state of human intellect, a natural expression of the discontent of all those classes on whom, in whatever manner, the present constitution of society bears hardly: and it is a safe prediction that, unless the progress of the human mind can be checked, such speculations will never cease, until the laws of property are freed from whatever portion of injustice they contain, and until whatever is well grounded in the opinions and legitimate in the aims of its assailants is adopted into the framework of society.” ]

[The whole of this section was rewritten in the 3rd ed. (1852), with the aid of some passages from the 2nd ed. (1849), for the reason stated in the Preface to the 3rd edition. The present first paragraph of § 4 was added, and the next paragraph modified by the omission of the assertion that the arguments of § 3 while “not applicable to St. Simonism” were, to his mind, “conclusive against Communism.” For the original text of § 3 see Appendix K. Mill§s earlier and later writings on Socialism.]

[The last sentence of this paragraph (“The impossibility of foreseeing and prescribing the exact mode in which its difficulties should be dealt with, does not prove that it may not be the best and the ultimate form of human society”) was omitted in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[The words “which are now,” i.e. 1852, “very numerous, and in some cases very successful” were omitted in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[The next sentence of the original was omitted in the 3rd ed. (1852). “Society, thus constituted, would wear as diversified a face as it does now; would be still fuller of interest and excitement, would hold out even more abundant stimulus to individual exertion, and would nourish, it is to be feared, even more of rivalries and of animosities than at present.” ]

[The account of Fourierism, in this and the next three paragraphs, was added in the 2nd ed. (1849).]

[The remainder of the paragraph as it now stands dates from the 3rd ed. 1852). In the 2nd ed. (1849) the paragraph went on from “influenced” as follows: “All persons would have a prospect of deriving individual advantage from every degree of labour, of abstinence, and of talent, which they individually exercised. The impediments to success would not be in the principles of the system, but in the unmanageable nature of its machinery. Before large bodies of human beings could be fit to live together in such close union, and still more, before they would be capable of adjusting, by peaceful arrangement among themselves, the relative claims of every class or kind of labour and talent, and of every individual in every class, a vast improvement in human character must be presupposed. When it is considered that each person who would have a voice in this adjustment would be a party interested in it, in every sense of the term—that each would be called on to take part by vote in fixing both the relative remuneration, and the relative estimation, of himself as compared with all other labourers, and of his own class of labour or talent as compared with all others; the degree of disinterestedness and of freedom from vanity and irritability which would be required in such a community from every individual in it, would be such as is now only found in the élite of humanity: while if those qualities fell much short of the required standard, either the adjustment could not be made at all, or, if made by a majority, would engender jealousies and disappointments destructive of the internal harmony on which the whole working of the system avowedly depends. These, it is true, are difficulties, not impossibilities; and the Fourierists, who alone among Socialists are in a great degree alive to the true conditions of the problem which they undertake to solve, are not without ways and means of contending against these. With every advance in education and improvement, their system tends to become less impracticable, and the very attempt to make it succeed would cultivate, in those making the attempt, many of the virtues which it requires. But we have only yet considered the case of a single Fourierist community. When we remember that the communities themselves are to be the constituent units of an organised whole, (otherwise competition would rage as actively between rival communities as it now does between individual merchants or manufacturers,) and that nothing less would be requisite for the complete success of the scheme than the organisation from a single centre of the whole industry of a nation, and even of the world; we may, without attempting to limit the ultimate capabilities of human nature, affirm, that the political economist, for a considerable time to come, will be chiefly concerned with the conditions of existence and progress belonging to a society founded on private property and individual competition; and that, rude as is the manner in which those two principles apportion reward to exertion and to merit, they must form the basis of the principal improvements which can for the present be looked for in the economical condition of humanity.”

Then began a new section: “And those improvements will be found to be far more considerable than the adherents of the various Socialist systems are willing to allow. Whatever may be the merit or demerit of their own schemes of society, they have hitherto shown themselves extremely ill acquainted with the economical laws of the existing social system; and have, in consequence, habitually assumed as necessary effects of competition, evils which are by no means inevitably attendant on it. It is from the influence of this erroneous interpretation of existing facts, that many Socialists of high principles and attainments are led to regard the competitive system as radically incompatible with the economical well-being of the mass.

“The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial,” &c., as now, supra, p. 208, and the remainder of that paragraph.

The chapter ended with the following paragraph, of which the first sentence was retained later (supra, p. 209): “We are as yet too ignorant either of what individual agency in its best form, or Socialism in its best form, can accomplish, to be qualified to decide which of the two will be the ultimate form of human society. In the present stage of human improvement at least, it is not (I conceive) the subversion of the system of individual property that should be aimed at, but the improvement of it, and the participation of every member of the community in its benefits. Far, however, from looking upon the various classes of Socialists with any approach to disrespect, I honour the intentions of almost all who are publicly known in that character, the acquirements and talents of several, and I regard them, taken collectively, as one of the most valuable elements of human improvement now existing; both from the impulse they give to the reconsideration and discussion of all the most important questions, and from the ideas they have contributed to many; ideas from which the most advanced supporters of the existing order of society have still much to learn.” ]

[See Appendix K, Mill' earlier and later writings on Socialism, and Appendix L, The later history of Socialism.]

[This was added in the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran: “The labour and abstinence of some former person, who, by gift or contract, transferred his claims to the present capitalist.” ]

[This and the next two sentences were added in the 3rd ed.]

[Here was omitted in the 3rd ed. the following passage of the original: “It may be said, they do not meet on an equal footing: the capitalist, as the richer, can take advantage of the labourer' necessities, and make his conditions as he pleases. He could do so, undoubtedly, if he were but one. The capitalists collectively could do so, if they were not too numerous to combine, and act as a body. But, as things are, they have no such advantage. Where combination is impossible, the terms of the contract depend on competition, that is, on the amount of capital which the collective abstinence of society has provided, compared with the number of the labourers.” ]

[The next two sentences, down to the word “Ireland” replaced in the 2nd ed. (1849) the following passage of the original:

“A joint administration on account of the state would not make the fund go further, or afford better terms to the labourers, unless either by enforcing, on the society collectively, greater abstinence, or by limiting more strictly the number of the labouring population. It is impossible to increase the quotient that falls to the share of each labourer, without either augmenting the dividend, or diminishing the divisor.”

To the substituted passage, the words “and much... England” were added in the 3rd ed.]

[1862] See, for admirable illustrations of this and many kindred points, Mr. Maine' profound work on Ancient Law and its Relation to Modern Ideas.

[The rest of this paragraph replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following original text: “but from accident or negligence or worse causes he failed to do. Whether it would be possible, by means of a public administrator of intestate estates, to take cognizance of special claims and see justice done in detail, is a question of some difficulty into which I forbear to enter. I shall only consider what might with best reason be laid down as a general rule.” ]

[From the 3rd ed. (1852) was omitted the following passage of the original: “If any near relatives, known to be such, were in a state of indigence, a donation, or a small pension, according to circumstances, might, in case of intestacy, be assigned to them when the State appropriated the inheritance. This would be a justice, or a generosity, which they do not experience from the present law, since that gives all to the nearest collaterals, however great may be the necessities of those more distant.” ]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran “It is questionable whether,” &c.]

[From the 3rd ed. was here omitted the following passage of the original: “But however the case may be as to a mere provision, I hold that justice and expediency are wholly, against compelling anything beyond. That a person should be certain from childhood of succeeding to a large fortune independently of the good will and affection of any human being, is, unless under very favourable influences of other kinds, almost a fatal circumstance in his education.” ]

[1865] In the case of capital employed in the hands of the owner himself, in carrying on any of the operations of industry, there are strong grounds for leaving to him the power of bequeathing to one person the whole of the funds actually engaged in a single enterprise. It is well that he should be enabled to leave the enterprise under the control of whichever of his heirs he regards as best fitted to conduct it virtuously and efficiently: and the necessity (very frequent and inconvenient under the French law) would be thus obviated, of breaking up a manufacturing or commercial establishment at the death of its chief. In like manner, it should be allowed to a proprietor who leaves to one of his successors the moral burthen of keeping up an ancestral mansion and park or pleasure-ground, to bestow along with them as much other property as is required for their sufficient maintenance.

[“Over” was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

“Munificent bequests and donations for public purposes, whether charitable or educational, form a striking feature in the modern history of the United States, and especially of New England. Not only is it common for rich capitalists to leave by will a portion of their fortune towards the endowment of national institutions, but individuals during their lifetime make magnificent grants of money for the same objects. There is here no compulsory law for the equal partition of property among children, as in France, and on the other hand no custom of entail or primogeniture, as in England, so that the affluent feel themselves at liberty to share their wealth between their kindred and the public; it being impossible to found a family, and parents having frequently the happiness of seeing all their children well provided for and independent long before their death. I have seen a list of bequests and donations made during the last thirty years for the benefit of religious, charitable, and literary institutions in the state of Massachusetts alone, and they amounted to no less a sum than six millions of dollars, or more than a million sterling.‘—Lyell’ Travels in America, vol. i. p. 263.

[1852] In England, whoever leaves anything beyond trifling legacies for public or beneficent objects when he has any near relatives living, does so at the risk of being declared insane by a jury after his death, or at the least, of having the property wasted in a Chancery suit to set aside the will.

“What endowed man with intelligence and perseverance in labour, what made him direct all his efforts towards an end useful to his race, was the sentiment of perpetuity. The lands which the streams have deposited along their course are always the most fertile, but are also those which they menace with their inundations or corrupt by marshes. Under the guarantee of perpetuity men undertook long and painful labours to give the marshes an outlet, to erect embankments against inundations, to distribute by irrigation-channels fertilizing waters over the same fields which the same waters had condemned to sterility. Under the same guarantee, man, no longer contenting himself with the annual products of the earth, distinguished among the wild vegetation the perennial plants, shrubs, and trees which would be useful to him, improved them by culture, changed, it may almost be said, their very nature, and multiplied their amount. There are fruits which it required centuries of cultivation to bring to their present perfection, and others which have been introduced from the most remote regions. Men have opened the earth to a great depth to renew the soil, and fertilize it by the mixture of its parts and by contact with the air; they have fixed on the hillsides the soil which would have slid off, and have covered the face of the country with a vegetation everywhere abundant, and everywhere useful to the human race. Among their labours there are some of which the fruits can only be reaped at the end of ten or of twenty years; there are others by which their posterity will still benefit after several centuries. All have concurred in augmenting the productive force of nature, in giving to mankind a revenue infinitely more abundant, a revenue of which a considerable part is consumed by those who have no share in the ownership of the land, but who ‘would not have found a maintenance but for that appropriation of the soil’ by which they seem, at first sight, to have been disinherited.” —Sismondi, Etude sur l'Economie Politique, Troisième Essai, De la Richesse Territoriale.

[1862] I must beg the reader to bear in mind that this paragraph was written fifteen years ago. So wonderful are the changes, both moral and economical, taking place in our age, that, without perpetually re-writing a work like the present, it is impossible to keep up with them. [In ed. 1865, “eighteen years”; in ed. 1871, “more than twenty.” ]

[This, and the previous sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the original text: “Public reasons exist for its being appropriated. But if those reasons lost their force, the thing would be unjust.” ]

[In the 3rd ed. the following passage of the original was here omitted: “I do not pretend that occasions can often arise on which so drastic a measure would be fit to be taken into serious consideration. But even if this ultimate prerogative of the state should never require to be actually exercised, it ought nevertheless to be asserted, because the principle which permits the greater of two things permits the less, and though to do all which the principle would sanction should never be advisable, to do much less than all not only may be so, but often is so in a very high degree.” ]

[The parenthesis “(without which these acts would be nothing better than robbery)” was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[Parenthesis added in 5th ed. (1862).]

“The Norwegian return” (say the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry, to whom information was furnished from nearly every country in Europe and America by the ambassadors and consuls there) “states that at the last census in 1825, out of a population of 1,051,318 persons, there were 59,464 freeholders. As by 59,464 freeholders must be meant 59,464 heads of families, or about 300,000 individuals, the freeholders must form more than a fourth of the whole population. Mr. Macgregor states that in Denmark (by which Zealand and the adjoining islands are probably meant) out of a population of 926,110, the number of landed proprietors and farmers is 415,110, or nearly one-half. In Sleswick-Holstein, out of a population of 604,085, it is 196,017, or about one-third. The proportion of proprietors and farmers to the whole population is not given in Sweden; but the Stockholm return estimates the average quantity of land annexed to a labourer' habitation at from one to five acres; and though the Gottenburg return gives a lower estimate; it adds that the peasants possess much of the land. In Wurtemburg we are told that more than two-thirds of the labouring population are the proprietors of their own habitations, and that almost all own at least a garden of from three-quarters of an acre to an acre and a half.” In some of these statements, proprietors and farmers are not discriminated; but “all the returns concur in stating the number of day-labourers to be very small.” —(Preface to Foreign Communications, p. xxxviii.) As the general status of the labouring people, the condition of a workman for hire is [1848] almost peculiar to Great Britain.

The ancient law books of the Hindoos mention in some cases one-sixth, in others one-fourth of the produce, as a proper rent; but there is no evidence that the rules laid down in those books were, at any period of history, really acted upon.

[So since the 6th ed. (1865). The original (1848) ran: “though it seldom leaves him much more than a bare subsistence.” ]

[Substituted in the 3rd ed. (1852) for the original “very often.” ]

[Until the 4th ed. (1857) the text ran: “the bookselling trade is one of these... competition does not produce” &c.]

[The original text ran on: “and in those States of the American Union which receive a regular supply of negroes from other States.” These latter words were omitted from the 4th ed. (1857).]

[“Or of production” was added in the 3rd ed. (1852), and the following passage of the original omitted: “This” (i.e. slow growth of population) “cannot be from physical privation, for no slave-labourers are worse fed, clothed, or lodged, than the free peasantry of Ireland. The cause usually assigned is the great disproportion of the sexes which almost always exists where slaves are not bred but imported; this cannot however be the sole cause, as the negro population of our West India colonies continued nearly stationary, after the slave-trade to those colonies was suppressed. Whatever be the causes, a slave population is seldom a rapidly increasing one.” The text of the next sentence was slightly readjusted.]

[“Usually” replaced “always” in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[Until the 6th ed. (1865) the reference was vague: “in some countries it is.” In the 7th ed. (1871) “is” became “was.” ]

[This sentence was inserted in the 6th ed.]

Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation. By the Rev. Richard Jones. Page 50. [P. 43 of the reprint published in 1895 under the title Peasant Rents.]

“Schmalz, Economie Politique, French translation, vol. i. p. 66.”

“Vol. ii. p. 107.”

The Hungarian revolutionary government, during its brief existence, bestowed on that country one of the greatest benefits it could receive, and one which the tyranny that succeeded did not dare to take away: it freed the peasantry from what remained of the bondage of serfdom, the labour rents; decreeing compensation to the landlords at the expense of the state, and not at that of the liberated peasants.

Jones, pp. 53, 54. [Peasant Rents, pp. 46, 47.]

[“In all probability less,” until the 5th ed. (1862).]

[The rest of the paragraph as here found was written for the 6th ed. (1865). The original (1848) ran thus: “It will be curious to see how long the other nations possessing slave colonies will be content to remain behind England in a matter of such concernment both to justice, which decidedly is not at present a fashionable virtue, and to philanthropy, which certainly is so. Europe is far more inexcusable than America in tolerating an enormity, of which she could rid herself with so much greater case. I speak of negro-slavery, not of the servage of the Slavonic nations, who have not yet advanced beyond a state of civilization corresponding to the age of villenage in Western Europe, and can only be expected to emerge from it in the same gradual manner, however much accelerated by the salutary influence of the ideas of more advanced countries.”

To this, in the 2nd ed. (1849) was added the note: “Denmark has the honour of being the first Continental nation which followed the example of England; and the emancipation of the slaves was one of the earliest acts of the French Provisional Government. Still more recently, the progress of the American mind towards a determination to rid itself of this odious stain has been manifested by very gratifying symptoms.”

In the 3rd ed. (1852) the latter part of the reference to the Slavonic nations was made to read: “who, to all appearance, will be indebted for their liberation from this great evil to the influence of the ideas of the more advanced countries, rather than to the rapidity of their own progress in improvement.” In the note, “heroic and calumniated” was inserted before “French Provisional Government.” In the 5th ed. (1862) the second sentence of the note was replaced by “The Dutch Government is now seriously engaged in the same beneficent enterprise.” ]

In Mr. Wordsworth' little descriptive work on the scenery of the Lakes, he speaks of the upper part of the dales as having been for centuries “a perfect republic of shepherds and agriculturists, proprietors, for the most part, of the lands which they occupied and cultivated. The plough of each man was confined to the maintenance of his own family, or to the occasional accommodation of his neighbour. Two or three cows furnished each family with milk and cheese. The chapel was the only edifice that presided over these dwellings, the supreme head of this pure commonwealth; the members of which existed in the midst of a powerful empire, like an ideal society, or an organized community, whose constitution had been imposed and regulated by the mountains which protected it. Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire was here; but many of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land which they walked over and tilled had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of their name and blood... Corn was grown in these vales sufficient upon each estate to furnish bread for each family, no more. The storms and moisture of the climate induced them to sprinkle their upland property with outhouses of native stone, as places of shelter for their sheep, where in tempestuous weather, food was distributed to them. Every family spun from its own flock the wool with which it was clothed; a weaver was here and there found among them, and the rest of their wants was supplied by the produce of the yarn, which they carded and spun in their own houses, and carried to market either under their arms or more frequently on packhorses, a small train taking their way weekly down the valley, or over the mountains, to the most commodious town.” —A Description of the Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England, 3rd edit. pp. 50 to 53 and 63 to 65.

[Substituted in the 7th ed. (1871) for “wherever free from the curse of slavery.” ]

Etudes sur l'Economie Politique, Essai III.

And in another work (Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique, liv. iii. ch. 3,) he says: “When we traverse nearly the whole of Switzerland, and several provinces of France, Italy, and Germany, we need never ask, in looking at any piece of land, if it belongs to a peasant proprietor or to a farmer. The intelligent care, the enjoyments provided for the labourer, the adornment which the country has received from his hands, are clear indications of the former. It is true an oppressive government may destroy the comfort and brutify the intelligence which should be the result of property; taxation may abstract the best produce of the fields, the insolence of government officers may disturb the security of the peasant, the impossibility of obtaining justice against a powerful neighbour may sow discouragement in his mind, and in the fine country which has been given back to the administration of the King of Sardinia, the proprietor, equally with the day-labourer, wears the livery of indigence.” He was here speaking of Savoy, where the peasants were generally proprietors, and, according to authentic accounts, extremely miserable. But, as M. de Sismondi continues, “it is in vain to observe only one of the rules of political economy; it cannot by itself suffice to produce good; but at least it diminishes evil.”

Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, in 1830. By H. D. Inglis. Vol. i. ch. 2.

52. Ibid. ch. 8 and 10.

[1852] There have been considerable changes in the Poor Law administration and legislation of the Canton of Berne since the sentence in the text was written. But I am not sufficiently acquainted with the nature and operation of these changes to speak more particularly of them here.

“Eine an das unglaubliche gränzende Schuldenmasse” is the expression. (Historisch-geographisch-statistische Gemälde der Schweiz. Erster Theil. Der Kanton Zürich. Von Gerold Meyer von Knonau, 1834, pp. 80–81.) There are villages in Zurich, he adds, in which there is not a single property unmortgaged. It does not, however, follow that each individual proprietor is deeply involved because the aggregate mass of encumbrances is large. In the Canton of Schaffhausen, for instance, it is stated that the landed properties are almost all mortgaged, but rarely for more than one-half their registered value (Zwölfler Theil. Der Kanton Schaffhausen, von Edward Im-Thurn, 1840, p. 52), and the mortgages are often for the improvement and enlargement of the estate. (Siebenzehnter Theil. Der Kanton Thürgau, von J. A. Pupikofer, 1837, p. 209.)

Thürgau, p. 72.

[1852] Reichensperger (Die Agrarfrage) quoted by Mr. Kay (Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe,) observes, “that the parts of Europe where the most extensive and costly plans for watering the meadows and lands have been carried out in the greatest perfection, are those where the lands are very much subdivided, and are in the hands of small proprietors. He instances the plain round Valencia, several of the southern departments of France, particularly those of Vaucluse and Bouches du Rhône, Lombardy, Tuscany, the districts of Sienna, Lucca, and Bergamo, Piedmont, many parts of Germany, &c., in all which parts of Europe the land is very much subdivided among small proprietors. In all these parts great and expensive systems and plans of general irrigation have been carried out, and are now being supported by the small proprietors themselves; thus showing how they are able to accomplish, by means of combination, work requiring the expenditure of great quantities of capital.” Kay, i. 126.

Laing, Journal of a Residence in Norway, pp. 36, 37. [From the 3rd ed. (1852) was omitted the following further passage from Laing, quoted in the 1st and 2nd: “It is, I am aware, a favourite and constant observation of our agricultural writers, that these small proprietors make the worst farmers. It may be so; but a population may be in a wretched condition, although their country is very well farmed; or they may be happy, although bad cultivators.... Good farming is a phrase composed of two words which have no more application to the happiness or well-being of a people than good weaving or good iron-founding. That the human powers should be well applied, and not misapplied, in the production of grain, or iron, or clothing, is, no doubt, an object of great importance; but the happiness or well-being of a people does not entirely depend upon it. It has more effect on their numbers than on their condition. The producer of grain who is working for himself only, who is owner of his land, and has not a third of its produce to pay as rent, can afford to be a worse farmer by one-third, than a tenant, and is, notwithstanding, in a preferable condition. Our agricultural writers tell us, indeed, that labourers in agriculture are much better off as farm-servants than they would be as small proprietors. We have only the master' word for this. Ask the servant. The colonists told us the same thing of their slaves. If property is a good and desirable thing, I suspect that the smallest quantity of it is good and desirable; and that the state of society in which it is most widely diffused is the best constituted.” ]

Notes of a Traveller, pp. 299 et seqq.

The manner in which the Swiss peasants combine to carry on cheesemaking by their united capital deserves to be noted. “Each parish in Switzerland hires a man, generally from the district of Gruyère in the canton of Freyburg, to take care of the herd, and make the cheese. One cheeseman, one pressman or assistant, and one cowherd are considered necessary for every forty cows. The owners of the cows get credit each of them, in a book daily for the quantity of milk given by each cow. The cheeseman and his assistants milk the cows, put the milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the end of the season each owner receives the weight of cheese proportionable to the quantity of milk his cows have delivered. By this co-operative plan, instead of the small-sized unmarketable cheeses only, which each could produce out of his three or four cows' milk, he has the same weight in large marketable cheese superior in quality, because made by people who attend to no other business. The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so much per head of the cows, in money or in cheese, or sometimes they hire the cows, and pay the owners in money or cheese.” Notes of a Traveller, p. 351. A similar system exists in the French Jura. See, for full details, Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, 2nd ed., pp. 139 et seqq. One of the most remarkable points in this interesting case of combination of labour is the confidence which it supposes, and which experience must justify, in the integrity of the persons employed.

Rural and Domestic Life of Germany, p. 27.

Ibid. p. 40.

Ueber die Landwirthschaft der Rheinpfalz, und insbesondere in der Heidelberger Gegend. Von Dr. Karl Heinrich Rau. Heidelberg, 1830.

Ibid. p. 50.

Uber die Landwirthechaft der Rheinpfalz, und insobesondere in der Heidel berger Gegend. Von Dr. Karl Heinrich Rau Heidel berg 1930.

Rau, pp. 15, 16.

[The rest of this section was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe; showing the results of the Primary Schools, and of the division of Landed Property in Foreign Countries. By Joseph Kay, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, and late Travelling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge. Vol. i. pp. 138–40.

Kay, i. 116–8.

Geographical Dictionary, art. “Belgium.”

Pp. 11–14.

Flemish Husbandry, p. 3.

Flemish Husbandry, p. 13.

Ibid. pp. 73 et seq.

Flemish Husbandry, p. 81.

[1849] As much of the distress lately complained of in Belgium, as partakes in any degree of a permanent character, appears to be almost confined to the portion of the population who carry on manufacturing labour, either by itself or in conjunction with agricultural; and to be occasioned by a diminished demand for Belgic manufactures.

To the preceding testimonies respecting Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium, may be added the following from Niebuhr, respecting the Roman Campagna. In a letter from Tivoli, he says, “Wherever you find hereditary farmers, or small proprietors, there you also find industry and honesty. I believe that a man who would employ a large fortune in establishing small freeholds might put an end to robbery in the mountain districts.” —Life and Letters of Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 149.

Book II. Chapter VI. Section 6

[This section was added to the 2nd ed. (1849).]

A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. By William Thomas Thornton, pp. 99–104.

Ibid. p. 38.

Ibid. p. 9.

Ibid. p. 32.

Arthur Young' Travels in France, vol. i. p. 50. [In the edition of a portion of the work by Miss Betham-Edwards, p. 53.]

Ibid. p. 88 [ed. Betham-Edwards, p. 109].

Ibid. p. 51 [ed. Betham-Edwards, p. 54].

Young, vol. i. p. 56 [ed. Betham-Edwards, p. 61].

Young, vol. i. pp. 322–4.

Ibid. p. 325.

Ibid. p. 357.

Ibid. p. 364.

Ibid. p. 412.

Der Canton Schaffhausen (ut supra), p. 53.

Supra, Book i. ch. ix. § 4.

Read the graphic description by the historian Michelet, of the feelings of a peasant proprietor towards his land.

“If we would know the inmost thought, the passion, of the French peasant, it is very easy. Let us walk out on Sunday into the country and follow him. Behold him yonder, walking in front of us. It is two o'clock; his wife is at vespers; he has on his Sunday clothes; I perceive that he is going to visit his mistress.

“What mistress? His land.

“I do not say he goes straight to it. No, he is free to-day, and may either go or not. Does he not go every day in the week? Accordingly, he turns aside, he goes another way, he has business elsewhere. And yet—he goes.

“It is true, he was passing close by; it was an opportunity. He looks, but apparently he will not go in; what for? And yet—he enters.

“At least it is probable that he will not work; he is in his Sunday dress: he has a clean shirt and blouse. Still, there is no harm in plucking up this weed and throwing out that stone. There is a stump, too, which is in the way; but he has not his tools with him, he will do it to-morrow.

“Then he folds his arms and gazes, serious and careful. He gives a long, a very long look, and seems lost in thought. At last, if he thinks himself observed, if he sees a passer-by, he moves slowly away. Thirty paces off he stops, turns round, and casts on his land a last look; sombre and profound, but to those who can see it, the look is full of passion, of heart, of devotion.” —Le Peuple, by J. Michelet, Ire partie, ch. 1.

[This paragraph was added in the 5th ed. (1862).]

Essai sur l'Economie Rurale de l'Angleterre, de l'Ecosse, et de l'Irlande, 3me éd. p. 127. [Cf. English translation in Rural Economy of Great Britain and Ireland (1855), p. 116.]

[Here followed in the original text the following words, omitted in the 3rd ed, (1852): “then indeed he may feel with the old doggrel—

• Hang sorrow, cast away care,
• The parish is bound to find us.

But unless so shielded, the day labourer,” &c.]

Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 146. [Peasant Rents, p. 132.]

Ibid. p. 68. [Peasant Rents, p. 59.]

Notes of a Traveller, p. 46.

Nouveaux Principes, Book iii. ch. 3.

Residence in Norway, p. 18.

[This and the next two paragraphs were added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Vol. i. pp. 67–9.

Vol. i. pp. 75–9.

Ibid. p. 90.

The Prussian minister of statistics, in a work (Der Volkswohlstand im Preussischen Staate) which I am obliged to quote at second hand from Mr. Kay, after proving by figures the great and progressive increase of the consumption of food and clothing per head of the population, from which he justly infers a corresponding increase of the productiveness of agriculture, continues: “The division of estates has, since 1831, proceeded more and more throughout the country. There are now many more small independent proprietors than formerly. Yet, however many complaints of pauperism are heard among the dependent labourers, we never hear it complained that pauperism is increasing among the peasant proprietors.” —Kay, i. 262–6.

In a communication to the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry, p. 640 of their Foreign Communications, Appendix F to their First Report.

Ibid. 268.

The following is the table (see p. 168 of the Belgian translation of Mr. Rau' large work):

But the number given by Moreau de Jonnès, he adds, is not entitled to implicit confidence.

The following table given by M. Quetelet (Sur l'Homme et le Développement de ses Facultés, vol. i. ch. 7) also on the authority of Rau, contains additional matter, and differs in some items from the preceding, probably from the author' having taken, in those cases, an average of different years:

A very carefully prepared statement, by M. Legoyt, in the Journal des Economistes for May 1847, which brings up the results for France to the census of the preceding year 1846, is summed up in the following table:

Journal des Economistes for March and May 1847.

M. Legoyt is of opinion that the population was understated in 1841, and the increase between that time and 1846 consequently overstated, and that the real increase during the whole period was something intermediate between the last two averages, or not much more than one in two hundred.

[This sentence was added to the 4th ed. (1857).]

Journal des Economistes for February 1847.—[1865] In the Journal for January 1865, M. Legoyt gives some of the numbers slightly altered, and I presume corrected. The series of percentages is 1.28, 0.31, 0.69, 0.60, 0.41, 0.68, 0.22, and 0.20. The last census in the table, that of 1861, shows a slight reaction, the percentage, independently of the newly acquired departments, being 0.32. [M. Emile Levasscur (La Population Francaise, 1889, vol. i. p. 315) cites a calculation of M. Loua, according to which the increase per cent for the territory which has constituted France since 1871, was for the period 1801–1821 0.56; 1821–1841, 0.59; 1841–1861, 0.36; 1861–1881, 0.27.]

The following are the numbers given by M. Legoyt:

In the last two years the births, according to M. Legoyt, were swelled by the effects of a considerable immigration. “This diminution of births,” he observes, “while there is a constant, though not a rapid increase both of population and of marriages, can only be attributed to the progress of prudence and forethought in families. It was a foreseen consequence of our civil and social institutions, which, producing a daily increasing subdivision of fortunes, both landed and moveable, call forth in our people the instincts of conservation and of comfort.”

In four departments, among which are two of the most thriving in Normandy, the deaths even then exceeded the births.—[1857] The census of 1856 exhibits the remarkable fact of a positive diminution in the population of 54 out of the 86 departments. A significant comment on the pauper-warren theory. See M. de Lavergne' analysis of the returns.

“The classes of our population which have only wages, and are therefore the most exposed to indigence, are now (1846) much better provided with the necessaries of food, lodging, and clothing than they were at the beginning of the century. This may be proved by the testimony of all persons who can remember the earlier of the two periods compared. Were there any doubts on the subject they might easily be dissipated by consulting old cultivators and workmen, as I have myself done in various localities, without meeting with a single contrary testimony; we may also appeal to the facts collected by an accurate observer, M. Villermé (Tableau de l'Etat Physique et Moral des Ouvriers, liv. ii. ch. i.).” From an intelligent work published in 1846, Recherches sur les Causes de l'Indigence, par A. Clément, pp. 84–5. The same writer speaks (p. 118) of: “the considerable rise which has taken place since 1789 in the wages of agricultural day-labourers;” and adds the following evidence of a higher standard of habitual requirements, even in that portion of the town population, the state of which is usually represented as most deplorable. “In the last fifteen or twenty years a considerable change has taken place in the habits of the operatives in our manufacturing towns: they now expend much more than formerly on clothing and ornament.... Certain classes of workpeople, such as the canuts of Lyons,” (according to all representations, like their counterpart, our handloom weavers, the very worst paid class of artizans,) “no longer snow themselves, as they did formerly, covered with filthy rags.” (Page 164.)

[1862] The preceding statements were given in former editions of this work, being the best to which I had at the time access; but evidence, both of a more recent, and of a more minute and precise character, will now be found in the important work of M. Léonce de Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France depuis 1789. According to that painstaking, well-informed, and most impartial enquirer, the average daily wages of a French labourer have risen, since the commencement of the Revolution, in the ratio of 19 to 30, while, owing to the more constant employment, the total earnings have increased in a still greater ratio, not short of double. The following are the words of M. de Lavergne (2nd ed. p. 57): “Arthur Young estimates at 19 sous [9½d.] the average of a day' wages, which must now be about 1 franc 50 centimos [1s. 3d.], and this increase only represents a part of the improvement. Though the rural population has remained about the same in numbers, the addition made to the population since 1789 having centred in the towns, the number of actual working days has increased, first because, the duration of life having augmented, the number of able-bodied men is greater, and next, because labour is better organized, partly through the suppression of several festival-holidays, partly by the mere effect of a more active demand. When we take into account the increased number of his working days, the annual receipts of the rural workman must have doubled. This augmentation of wages answers to at least an equal augmentation of comforts, since the prices of the chief necessaries of life have changed but little, and those of manufactured, for example of woven, articles, have materially diminished. The lodging of the labourers has also improved, if not in all, at least in most of our provinces.”

M. de Lavergne' estimate of the average amount of a day' wages is grounded on a careful comparison, in this and in all other economical points of view, of all the different provinces of France.

In his little book on the agriculture of the Palatinate, already cited. He says that the daily wages of labour, which during the last years of the war were unusually high, and so continued until 1817, afterwards sank to a lower money-rate, but that the prices of many commodities, having fallen in a still greater proportion, the condition of the people was unequivocally improved. The food given to farm labourers by their employers has also greatly improved in quantity and quality. “It is to-day considerably better than it was about forty years ago, when the poorer class obtained less flesh-meat and puddings, and no cheese, butter, and the like” (p. 20). “Such an increase of wages” (adds the Professor), “which must be estimated not in money, but in the quantity of necessaries and conveniences which the labourer is enabled to procure, is by universal admission, a proof that the mass of capital must have increased.” It proves not only this, but also that the labouring population has not increased in an equal degree; and that, in this instance as well as in that of France, the division of the land, even when excessive, has been compatible with a strengthening of the prudential checks to population.

Page 334 of the Brussels translation. He cites as an authority, Schwerz, Landwirthschaftliche Mittheilungen, i. 185.

One of the many important papers which have appeared in the Journal des Economistes, the organ of the principal political economists of France, and doing great and increasing honour to their knowledge and ability. M. Passy' essay has been reprinted separately in a pamphlet.

[This paragraph was added in the 5th ed. (1862).]

Economie Rurale de la France, p. 455.

P. 117. See, for facts of a similar tendency, pp. 141, 250, and other passages of the same important treatise: which, on the other hand, equally abounds with evidence of the mischievous effect of subdivision when too minute, or when the nature of the soil and of its products is not suitable to it.

[1852] Mr. Laing, in his latest publication, Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People in 1848 and 1849, a book devoted to the glorification of England and the disparagement of everything elsewhere which others, or even he himself in former works, had thought worthy of praise, argues that “although the land itself is not divided and subdivided” on the death of the proprietor, “the value of the land is, and with effects almost as prejudicial to social progress. The value of each share becomes a debt or burden upon the land.” Consequently the condition of the agricultural population is retrograde; “each generation is worse off than the preceding one, although the land is neither less nor more divided, nor worse cultivated.” And this he gives as the explanation of the great indebtedness of the small landed proprietors in France (pp. 97–9). If these statements were correct, they would invalidate all which Mr. Laing affirmed so positively in other writings, and repeats in this, respecting the peculiar efficacy of the possession of land in preventing over-population. But he is entirely mistaken as to the matter of fact. In the only country of which he speaks from actual residence, Norway, he does not pretend that the condition of the peasant proprietors is deteriorating. The facts already cited prove that in respect to Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, he assertion is equally wide of the mark; and what has been shown respecting the slow increase of population in France, demonstrates that if the condition of the French peasantry was deteriorating, it could not be from the cause supposed by Mr. Laing. The truth I believe to be that in every country without exception, in which peasant properties prevail, the condition of the people is improving, the produce of the land and even its fertility increasing, and from the larger surplus which remains after feeding the agricultural classes, the towns are augmenting both in population and in the well-being of their inhabitants.

French history strikingly confirms these conclusions. Three times during the course of ages the peasantry have been purchasers of land; and these times immediately preceded the three principal eras of French agricultural prosperity.

“In the worst times,” says the historian Michelet (Le Peuple, 1re partie, ch. 1), “the times of universal poverty, when even the rich are poor and obliged to sell, the poor are enabled to buy: no other purchaser presenting himself, the peasant in rags arrives with his piece of gold, and acquires a little bit of land. These moments of disaster in which the peasant was able to buy land at a low price, have always been followed by a sudden gush of prosperity which people could not account for. Towards 1500, for example, when France, exhausted by Louis XI., seemed to be completing its ruin in Italy, the noblesse who went to the wars were obliged to sell: the land, passing into new hands, suddenly began to flourish: men began to labour and to build. This happy moment, in the style of courtly historians, was called the good Louis XII.

“Unhappily it did not last long. Scarcely had the land recovered itself when the tax-collector fell upon it; the wars of religion followed, and seemed to rase everything to the ground; with horrible miseries, dreadful famines, in which mothers devoured their children. Who would believe that the country recovered from this? Scarcely is the war ended, when from the devastated fields, and the cottages still black with the flames, comes forth the hoard of the peasant. He buys; in ten years, France wears a new face; in twenty or thirty, all possessions have doubled and trebled in value. This moment, again baptized by a royal name, is called the good Henry IV. and the great Richelieu.”

Of the third era it is needless again to speak: it was that of the Revolution.

Whoever would study the reverse of the picture, may compare these historic periods, characterized by the dismemberment of large and the construction of small properties, with the wide-spread national suffering which accompanied, and the permanent deterioration of the condition of the labouring classes which followed the “clearing” away of small yeomen to make room for large grazing farms, which was the grand economical event of English history during the sixteenth century. [This quotation from Michelet originally came at the end of chapter x, infra, on Means of Abolishing Cottier Tenancy. It was transferred to its present position in the 5th ed. (1862).]

[The last two sentences replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the concluding sentence of the original text: “Whether and in what these considerations admit of useful application to any of the social questions of our time, will be considered in a future chapter.”

The position of peasant proprietors in Germany in more recent decades may be studied in Buchenberger, Agrarwesen, one of the volumes in Wagner' Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie (1892), §§ 69, 70, 73; Blondel, Études sur les Populations Rurales de l'Allemagne (1897); and David, Sozialismus and Landwirthschaft (1903). As to whether morcellement is progressing in France, see Gide, Économic Sociale (1905), pp. 429 seq.]

In France before the Revolution, according to Arthur Young (i. 403), there was great local diversity in this respect. In Champagne “the landlord commonly finds half the cattle and half the seed, and the metayer, labour, implements, and taxes; but in some districts the landlord bears a share of these. In Roussillon, the landlord pays half the taxes; and in Guienne, from Aueh to Fleuran, many landlords pay all. Near Augillon, on the Garonne, the metayers furnish half the cattle. At Nangis, in the Isle of France, I met with an agreement for the landlord to furnish live stock, implements, harness, and taxes; the metayer found labour and his own capitation tax: the landlord repaired the house and gates, the metayer the windows: the landlord provided seed the first year, the metayer the last; in the intervening years they supply half and half. In the Bourbonnois the landlord finds all sorts of live stock, yet the metayer sells, changes, and buys at his will; the steward keeping an account of these mutations, for the landlord has half the product of sales, and pays half the purchases.” In Piedmont, he says, “the landlord commonly pays the taxes and repairs the buildings, and the tenant provides cattle, implements, and seed.” (ii. 151.)

Etudes sur l'Economie Politique, 6me essai: De la Condition des Cultivateurs en Toscane.

Letters from Italy. I quote from Dr. Rigby' translation (p. 22).

This virtual fixity of tenure is not however universal even in Italy; and it is to its absence that Sismondi attributes the inferior condition of the metayers in some provinces of Naples, in Lucca, and in the Riviera of Genoa; where the landlords obtain a larger (though still a fixed) share of the produce. In those countries the cultivation is splendid, but the people wretchedly poor. “The same misfortune would probably have befallen the people of Tuscany if public opinion did not protect the cultivator; but a proprietor would not dare to impose conditions unusual in the country, and even in changing one metayer for another he alters nothing in the terms of the engagement.” —Nouveaux Principes, liv. iii. ch. 5.

M. Bastiat affirms that even in France, incontestably the least favourable example of the metayer system, its effect in repressing population is conspicuous.

“It is a well-ascertained fact that the tendency to excessive multiplication is chiefly manifested in the class who live on wages. Over these the forethought which retards marriages has little operation, because the evils which flow from excessive competition appear to them only very confusedly, and at a considerable distance. It is, therefore, the most advantageous condition of a people to be so organized as to contain no regular class of labourers for hire. In metayer countries, marriages are principally determined by the demands of cultivation; they increase when, from whatever cause, the metairies offer vacancies injurious to production; they diminish when the places are filled up. A fact easily ascertained, the proportion between the size of the farm and the number of hands, operates like forethought, and with greater effect. We find, accordingly, that when nothing occurs to make an opening for a superfluous population, numbers remain stationary: as is seen in our southern departments.” Considérations sur le Métayage, Journal des Economistes for February 1846. [The description of Bastiat as “a high authority among French political economists” was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Wealth of Nations, book iii. ch. 2.

Travels, vol. i. pp. 404–5.

Ibid. vol. ii. 151–3.

Travels, vol. ii. 217.

Principles of Political Economy, 3rd. ed. p. 471.

Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, pp. 102–4. [Peasant Rents, pp. 90–92.]

M. de Tracy is partially an exception, inasmuch as his experience reaches lower down than the revolutionary period; but he admits (as Mr. Jones has himself stated in another place) that he is acquainted only with a limited district, of great subdivision and unfertile soil.

M. Passy is of opinion, that a French peasantry must be in indigence and the country badly cultivated on a metayer system, because the proportion of the produce claimable by the landlord is too high; it being only in more favourable climates that any land, not of the most exuberant fertility, can pay half its gross produce in rent, and leave enough to peasant farmers to enable them to grow successfully the more expensive and valuable products of agriculture. (Systèmes de Culture, p. 35.) This is an objection only to a particular numerical proportion, which is indeed the common one, but is not essential to the system.

See the “Mémoire sur la Surcharge des Impositions qu'éprouvait la Généralité de Limoges, adressé au Conseil d'Etat on 1766,” pp. 260–304 of the fourth volume of Turgot' Works. The occasional engagements of landlords (as mentioned by Arthur Young) to pay a part of the taxes, were, according to Turgot, of recent origin, under the compulsion of actual necessity. “The proprietor only consents to it when he can find no metayer on other terms; consequently, even in that case, the metayer is always reduced to what is barely sufficient to prevent him from dying of hunger” (p. 275).

Vol. i. p. 404.

Letters from Italy, translated by Rigby, p. 16.

Ibid. pp. 19, 20.

Ibid. pp. 24–31.

Pp. 78–9.

Pp. 73–6.

Travels, vol. ii. p. 156.

Letters from Italy, p. 75.

Letters from Italy, pp. 295–6.

From his Sixth Essay, formerly referred to.

Inventory of the trousseau of Jane, daughter of Valente Papini, on her marriage with Giovacchino Landi, the 29th of April 1835, at Porta Vecchia, near Pescia:

“28 shifts, 7 best dresses (of particular fabrics of silk), 7 dresses of printed cotton, 2 winter working dresses (mezza lana), 3 summer working dresses and petticoats (mola), 3 white petticoats, 5 aprons of printed linen, 1 of black silk, 1 of black merino, 9 coloured working aprons (mola), 4 white, 8 coloured, and 3 silk, handkerchiefs, 2 embroidered veils and one of tulle, 3 towels, 14 pairs of stockings, 2 hats (one of felt, the other of fine straw); 2 canicos set in gold, 2 golden earrings, 1 chaplet with two Roman silver crowns, 1 coral necklace with its cross of gold.... All the richer married women of the class have, besides, the veste di seta, the great holiday dress, which they only wear four or five times in their lives.”

Of the intelligence of this interesting people, M. de Sismondi speaks in the most favourable terms. Few of them can read; but there is often one member of the family destined for the priesthood, who reads to them on winter evenings. Their language differs little from the purest Italian. The taste for improvisation in verse is general. “The peasants of the Vale of Nievole frequent the theatre in summer on festival days, from nine to eleven at night: their admission costs them little more than five French sous [2½d.]. Their favourite author is Alfieri; the whole history of the Atridae is familiar to these people who cannot read, and who seek from that austere poet a relaxation from their rude labours.” Unlike most rustics, they find pleasure in the beauty of their country. “In the hills of the vale of Nievole there is in front of every house a threshing-ground, seldom of more than 25 or 30 square fathoms; it is often the only level space in the whole farm; it is at the same time a terrace which commands the plains and the valley, and looks out upon a delightful country. Scarcely ever have I stood still to admire it, without the metayer' coming out to enjoy my admiration, and point out with his finger the beauties which he thought might have escaped my notice.”

“We never,” says Sismondi, “find a family of metayers proposing to their landlord to divide the metairie, unless the work is really more than they can do, and they feel assured of retaining the same enjoyments on a smaller piece of ground. We never find several sons all marrying, and forming as many new families; only one marries and undertakes the charge of the household: none of the others marry unless the first is childless, or unless some one of them has the offer of a new metairie.” New Principles of Political Economy, book iii. ch. 5.

In its original acceptation, the word “cottier” designated a class of subtenants, who rent a cottage and an acre or two of land from the small farmers. But the usage of writers has long since stretched the term to include those small farmers themselves,and generally all peasant farmers whose rents are determined by competition.

[“May be said to be” in 1st ed. (1848); altered as above in 5th ed. (1862). Similarly the account of the labourers in the following sentences was changed from the present to the past tense.]

“It is not uncommon for a tenant without a lease to sell the bare privilege of occupancy or possession of his farm, without any visible sign of improvement having been made by him, at from ten to sixteen, up to twenty and even forty years' purchase of the rent.” —(Digest of Evidence taken by Lord Devon' Commission, Introductory Chapter.) The compiler adds, “the comparative tranquillity of that district” (Ulster) “may perhaps be mainly attributable to this fact.”

“It is in the great majority of cases not a reimbursement for outlay incurred, or improvements effected on the land, but a mere life insurance or purchase of immunity from outrage.” —(Digest, ut supra.) “The present tenant-right of Ulster” (the writer judiciously remarks) “is an embryo copyhold.” “Even there, if the tenant-right be disregarded, and a tenant be ejected without having received the price of his goodwill, outrages are generally the consequence.” —(Ch. viii.) “The disorganised state of Tipperary, and the agrarian combination throughout Ireland, are but a methodized war to obtain the Ulster tenant-right.”

[“Is unhappily” until the 5th ed. (1862).]

Evils of the State of Ireland, their Causes and their Remedy. Page 10. A pamphlet containing, among other things, an excellent digest and selection of evidence from the mass collected by the Commission presided over by Archbishop Whately.

Evidence, p. 851.

[“Are” until the 5th ed. (1862).]

Mill' History of British India, book vi. ch. 8.

[In the original text there next came the following passages: “But in this ill judged measure there was one redeeming point, to which may probably be ascribed all the progress which the Bengal provinces have since made in production and in amount of revenue. The ryots were reduced, indeed, to the rank of tenants of the zemindar; but tenants with fixity of tenure. The rents were left to the zemindars to fix at their discretion; but once fixed, were never more to be altered. This is now the law and practice of landed tenure, in the most flourishing part of the British Indian dominions.

“In the parts of India into which the British rule has been more recently introduced, the blunder has been avoided of endowing a useless body of great landlords with gifts from the public revenue; but along with the evil, the good also has been left undone. The government has done less for the ryots than it has required to be done for them by the landlords of its creation.”

These were omitted (as incorrect—see note of 1871, infra, p. 328) in the 3rd ed. (1852). In that edition was added the reference to Madras and Bombay, with the statement that “the rent on each class of land is fixed in perpetuity.” This incorrect statement was struck out of the 4th ed. (1857), and the reference to the North-Western Provinces added.]

[1871] Since this was written, the resolution has been adopted by the Indian government of converting the long leases of the northern provinces into perpetual tenures at fixed rents.

[See Appendix M. Indian Tenures.]

[These words were added in the 3rd ed. (1852), and the following sentences changed from the present to the past tense.]

[This and the next two paragraphs date from the 3rd ed. (1852), and take the place of the whole of the original § 2.]

[This clause was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Author of numerous pamphlets, entitled True Political Economy of Ireland, Letter to the Earl of Devon, Two Letters on the Rackrent Oppression of Ireland, and others. Mr. Conner has been an agitator on the subject since 1832.

[Here was dropt out, from the 3rd ed. (1852) the following section of the original text:

“§ 5. Some persons who desire to avoid the term fixity of tenure, but who cannot be satisfied without some measure co-extensive with the whole country, have proposed the universal adoption of ‘tenant-right.’ Under this equivocal phrase, two things are confounded. What it commonly stands for in Irish discussion, is the Ulster practice, which is in fact, fixity of tenure. It supposes a customary, though not a legal, limitation of the rent; without which the tenant evidently could not acquire a beneficial and saleable interest. Its existence is highly salutary, and is one principal cause of the superiority of Ulster in efficiency of cultivation, and in the comfort of the people, notwithstanding a minuter sub-division of holdings than in the other provinces. But to convert this customary limitation of rent into a legal one, and to make it universal, would be to establish a fixity of tenure by law, the objections to which have already been stated.

“The same appellation (tenant right) has of late years been applied, more particularly in England, to something altogether different, and falling as much short of the exigency, as the enforcement of the Ulster custom would exceed it. This English tenant right, with which a high agricultural authority has connected his name by endeavouring to obtain for it legislative sanction, amounts to no more than this, that on the expiration of a lease, the landlord should make compensation to the tenant for ‘unexhausted improvements.’ This is certainly very desirable, but provides only for the case of capitalist farmers, and of improvements made by outlay of money; of the worth and cost of which, an experienced land agent or a jury of farmers could accurately judge. The improvements to be looked for from peasant cultivators are the result not of money but of their labour, applied at such various times and in such minute portions as to be incapable of judicial appreciation. For such labour, compensation could not be given on any principle but that of paying to the tenant the whole difference between the value of the property when he received it, and when he gave it up: which would as effectually annihilate the right of property of the landlord as if the rent had been fixed in perpetuity, while it would not offer the same inducements to the cultivator, who improves from affection and passion as much as from calculation, and to whom his own land is a widely different thing from the most liberal possible pecuniary compensation for it.” ]

[Little more than this remained in the 3rd ed. (1852)—modified to its present shape in the 5th (1862)—of the argument in favour of measures of reclamation of waste land which occupied five pages in the original edition. It opened thus: “There is no need to extend them to all the population, or all the land. 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 proportion of them so improvable, 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.”

After this argument came the following account of the English experiments associated with the name of Feargus O'Connor: “There are yet other means, by which not a little could be done in the dissemination of peasant proprietors over even the existing area of cultivation. There is at the present time an experiment in progress, in more than one part of England, for the creation of peasant proprietors. The project is of Chartist origin, and its first colony is now in full operation near Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire. The plan is as follows:—Funds were raised by subscription, and vested in a joint-stock company. With part of these funds an estate of several hundred acres was bought. This estate was divided into portions of two, three, and four acres, on each of which a house was erected by the Association. These holdings were let to select labourers, to whom also such sums were advanced as were thought to amount to a sufficient capital for cultivation by spade labour. An annual payment, affording to the Company an interest of five per cent. on their outlay, was laid on the several holdings as a fixed quit-rent, never in any circumstances to be raised. The tenants are thus proprietors from the first, and their redemption of the quit-rent, by saving from the produce of their labour, is desired and calculated upon.

“The originator of this experiment appears to have successfully repelled (before a tribunal by no means prepossessed in his favour, a Committee of the House of Commons) the imputations which were lavished upon his project, and upon his mode of executing it. Should its issue ultimately be unfavourable, the cause of failure will be in the details of management, not in the principle. These well-conceived arrangements afford a mode in which private capital may co-operate in renovating &c.” In the first edition it was said that “at present there seems no reason to believe” the issue would be unfavorable; and in the second the reference was inserted to the parliamentary enquiry. For the subsequent history of the National Land Company, see L. Jobb, Small Holdings, (1907), p. 121.]

[1857] Though this society, during the years succeeding the famine, was forced to wind up its affairs, the memory of what is accomplished ought to be preserved. The following is an extract in the Proceedings of Lord Devon' Commission (page 84) from the report made to the society in 1845, by their intelligent manager, Colonel Robinson:—

“Two hundred and forty-five tenants, many of whom were a few years since in a state bordering on pauperism, the occupiers of small holdings of from ten to twenty plantation acres each, have, by their own free labour, with the society' aid, improved their farms to the value of 4396l.; 605l. having been added during the last year, being at the rate of 17l. 18s. per tenant for the whole term, and 2l. 9s. for the past year; the benefit of which improvements each tenant will enjoy during the unexpired term of a thirty-one years' lease.

“These 245 tenants and their families have, by spade industry, reclaimed and brought into cultivation 1032 plantation acres of land, previously unproductive mountain waste, upon which they grew, last year, crops valued by competent practical persons at 3896l., being in the proportion of 15l. 18s. each tenant; and their live stock, consisting of cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs, now actually upon the estates, is valued, according to the present prices of the neighbouring markets, at 4162l., of which 1304l. has been added since February 1844, being at the rate of 16l. 19s. for the whole period, and 5l. 6s. for the last year; during which time their stock has thus increased in value a sum equal to their present annual rent; and by the statistical tables and returns referred to in previous reports, it is proved that the tenants, in general, improve their little farms, and increase their cultivation and crops, in nearly direct proportion to the number of available working persons of both sexes of which their families consist.”

There cannot be a stronger testimony to the superior amount of gross, and even of net produce, raised by small farming under any tolerable system of landed tenure; and it is worthy of attention that the industry and zeal were greatest among the smaller holders; Colonel Robinson noticing, as exceptions to the remarkable and rapid progress of improvement, some tenants who were “occupants of larger farms than twenty acres, a class too often deficient in the enduring industry indispensable for the successful prosecution of mountain improvements.”

[A brief section, beginning thus, was added in the 5th ed. (1862). This was omitted, and the present § 2 added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

There is, however, a partial counter-current, of which I have not seen any public notice. “A class of men, not very numerous, but sufficiently so to do much mischief, have, through the Landed Estates Court, got into possession of land in Ireland, who, of all classes, are least likely to recognise the duties of a landlord' position. These are small traders in towns, who by dint of sheer parsimony, frequently combined with money-lending at usurious rates, have succeeded, in the course of a long life, in scraping together as much money as will enable them to buy fifty or a hundred acres of land. These people never think of turning farmers, but, proud of their position as landlords, proceed to turn it to the utmost account. An instance of this kind came under my notice lately. The tenants on the property were, at the time of the purchase, some twelve years ago, in a tolerably comfortable state. Within that period their rent has been raised three several times; and it is now, as I am informed by the priest of the district, nearly double its amount at the commencement of the present proprietor' reign. The result is that the people, who were formerly in tolerable comfort, are now reduced to poverty: two of them have left the property and squatted near an adjacent turf bog, where they exist trusting for support to occasional jobs. If this man is not shot, he will injure himself through the deterioration of his property, but meantime he has been getting eight or ten per cent on his purchase-money. This is by no means a rare case. The scandal which such occurrences cause, casts its reflection on transactions of a wholly different and perfectly legitimate kind, where the removal of the tenants is simply an act of mercy for all parties.

“The anxiety of landlords to get rid of cottiers is also to some extent neutralized by the anxiety of middlemen to get them. About one-fourth of the whole land of Ireland is held under long leases; the rent received, when the lease is of long standing, being generally greatly under the real value of the land. It rarely happens that the land thus held is cultivated by the owner of the lease: instead of this, he sublets it at a rackrent to small men, and lives on the excess of the rent which he receives over that which he pays. Some of these leases are always running out; and as they draw towards their close, the middleman has no other interest in the land than, at any cost of permanent deterioration, to get the utmost out of it during the unexpired period of the term. For this purpose the small cottier tenants precisely answer his turn. Middlemen in this position are as anxious to obtain cottiers as tenants, as the landlords are to be rid of them; and the result is a transfer of this sort of tenant from one class of estates to the other. The movement is of limited dimensions, but it does exist, and so far as it exists, neutralizes the general tendency. Perhaps it may be thought that this system will reproduce itself; that the same motives which led to the existence of middlemen will perpetuate the class; but there is no danger of this. Landowners are now perfectly alive to the ruinous consequences of this system, however convenient for a time; and a clause against sub-letting is now becoming a matter of course in every lease.” —(Private Communication from Professor Cairnes.)

[See Appendix N. Irish Agrarian Development.]

[The present text of this paragraph dates from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original text ran, after the word “custom” “but the last is not a common case. A custom on the subject, even if established, could not easily maintain itself unaltered in any other than a stationary state of society. An increase or a falling off in the demand for labour, an increase or diminution of the labouring population, could hardly fail to engender a competition which would break down any custom respecting wages, by giving either to one side or to the other a strong direct interest in infringing it. We may at all events speak of the wages of labour as determined, in ordinary circumstances, by competition.” ]

[The qualification inserted in 3rd ed. (1852).]

[See Appendix O. The Wages Fund Doctrine.]

See the historical sketch of the condition of the English peasantry, prepared from the best authorities, by Mr. William Thornton, in his work entitled Over-Population and its Remedy: a work honourably distinguished from most others which have been published in the present generation, by its rational treatment of questions affecting the economical condition of the labouring classes.

Supra, pp. 293–5.

A similar, though not an equal, improvement in the standard of living took place among the labourers of England during the remarkable fifty years from 1715 to 1765, which were distinguished by such an extraordinary succession of fine harvests (the years of decided deficiency not exceeding five in all that period) that the average price of wheat during those years was much lower than during the previous half century. Mr. Malthus computes that on the average of sixty years preceding 1720, the labourer could purchase with a day' earnings only two-thirds of a peck of wheat, while from 1720 to 1750 he could purchase a whole peck. The average price of wheat, according to the Eton tables, for fifty years ending with 1715, was 41s. 7¾d. per quarter, and for the last twenty-three of these, 45s. 8d., while for the fifty years following, it was no more than 34s. 11d. So considerable an improvement in the condition of the labouring class, though arising from the accidents of seasons, yet continuing for more than a generation, had time to work a change in the habitual requirements of the labouring class; and this period is always noted as the date of “a marked improvement of the quality of the food consumed, and a decided elevation in the standard of their comforts and conveniences.” —(Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, p. 225.) For the character of the period, see Mr. Tooke' excellent History of Prices, vol. i. pp. 38 to 61, and for the prices of corn, the Appendix to that work.

[The original text of 1848 is practically unchanged in this paragraph.]

Forming an Appendix (F) to the General Report of the Commissioners, and also published by authority as a separate volume.

Preface, p. xxxix.

Preface, p. xxxiii., or p. 554 of the Appendix itself.

Appendix, p. 419.

Ibid. p. 567.

[This paragraph was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Kay, op. cit. i. 68.

“In general,” says Sismondi, “the number of masters in each corporation was fixed, and no one but a master could keep a shop, or buy and sell on his own account. Each master could only train a certain number of apprentices, whom he instructed in his trade; in some corporations he was only allowed one. Each master could also employ only a limited number of workmen, who were called companions, or journeymen; and in the trades in which he could only take one apprentice, he was only allowed to have one, or at most two, journeymen. No one was allowed to buy, sell, or work at a trade, unless he was either an apprentice, a journeyman, or a master; no one could become a journeyman without having served a given number of years as an apprentice, nor a master, unless he had served the same number of years as a journeyman, and unless he had also executed what was called his chef d'œuvre (masterpiece), a piece of work appointed in his trade, and which was to be judged of by the corporation. It is seen that this organization threw entirely into the hands of the masters the recruiting of the trade. They alone could take apprentices; but they were not compelled to take any; accordingly they required to be paid, often at a very high rate, for the favour; and a young man could not enter into a trade if he had not, at starting, the sum required to be paid for his apprenticeship, and the means necessary for his support during that apprenticeship; since for four, five, or seven years, all his work belonged to his master. His dependence on the master during that time was complete; for the master' will, or even caprice, could close the door of a lucrative profession upon him. After the apprentice became a journeyman he had a little more freedom; he could engage with any master he chose, or pass from one to another; and as the condition of a journeyman was only accessible through apprenticeship, he now began to profit by the monopoly from which he had previously suffered, and was almost sure of getting well paid for a work which no one else was allowed to perform. He depended, however, on the corporation for becoming a master, and did not, therefore, regard himself as being yet assured of his lot, or as having a permanent position. In general he did not marry until he had passed as a master.

“It is certain both in fact and in theory that the existence of trade corporations hindered, and could not but hinder, the birth of a superabundant population. By the statutes of almost all the guilds, a man could not pass as a master before the age of twenty-five; but if he had no capital of his own, if he had not made sufficient savings, he continued to work as a journeyman much longer; some, perhaps the majority of artisans, remained journeymen all their lives. There was, however, scarcely an instance of their marrying before they were received as masters; had they been so imprudent as to desire it, no father would have given his daughter to a man without a position.” —Nouveaux Principes, book iv. ch. 10. See also Adam Smith, book i. ch. 10, part 2.

See Thornton on Over-Population, page 18, and the authorities there cited.

Supra, p. 201.

[The proposal was mentioned in the 1st ed. (1848); the Act was referred to in the 7th ed. (1871). For the Union Chargeability Act of 1865 and previous and subsequent legislation, see Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission (1909), Part iv. ch. 4.]

[The words here following in the original text: “Especially considering how much the Irish themselves contribute to it, by migrating to this country and underbidding its native inhabitants,” were omitted from the 5th ed. (1862).]

[So ed. 5 (1862). In 1st ed. (1848) “seven or perhaps eight.” ]

[From the 3rd ed. (1852) was here omitted a paragraph of the original text criticising “the conduct, during ten important years, of a large portion of the Tory party” with regard to “an enactment” (the Poor Law Reform of 1834) “most salutary in principle, in which their own party had concurred, but of which their rivals were almost accidentally the nominal authors.”]

[See Appendix P. The Movement of Population.]

[This and the two following sentences were inserted in the 2nd ed. (1849), and allowed to remain in subsequent editions.]

[The present text dates only from the 7th ed. (1871). Until then it had read: “This deplorable system... has been abolished, and of this one abuse at least it may be said that nobody professes to wish for its revival.” ]

See the Evidence on the subject of Allotments, collected by the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry.

Laing' Notes of a Traveller, p. 456.

See Thornton on Over-Population, ch. viii.

[The remainder of this sentence appeared first in the 3rd ed. (1852). In the 1st and 2nd ed. (1848, 1849), the text ran: “Is it not to this hour the favourite recommendation for any parochial office bestowed by popular election to have a large family and to be unable to maintain them? Do not the candidates placard their intemperence upon walls, and publish it through the town in circulars?” Cf. Dickens, The Election for Beadle in Sketches by Boz, “Our Parish,” ch. iv.]

Little improvement can be expected in morality until the producing large families is regarded with the same feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess. But while the aristocracy and clergy are foremost to set the example of this kind of incontinence, what can be expected of the poor?

Nouveaux Principes, liv. vii. ch. 5.

[The two last sentences were added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[The following sentences of the original text were omitted in the 3rd ed. (1852) from the beginning of this paragraph: “To the case of Ireland, in her present crisis of transition, colonization, as the exclusive remedy, is, I conceive, unsuitable. The Irish are nearly the worst adapted people in Europe for settlers in the wilderness: nor should the founders of nations, destined perhaps to be the most powerful in the world, be drawn principally from the least civilized and least improved inhabitants of old countries. It is most fortunate therefore that the unoccupied lands of Ireland herself afford a resource so nearly adequate to the emergency, as reduces emigration to a rank merely subsidiary. In England and Scotland, with a population much less excessive, and better adapted to a settler' life, colonization must be the chief resource for easing the labour market, and improving the condition of the existing generation of labourers so materially as to raise the permanent standard of habits in the generation following. But England too has waste lands, though less extensive than those of Ireland: and the second resource, &c.”

[Added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

Wealth of Nations, book i. ch. 10.

Mr. Muggeridge' Report to the Handloom Weavers Inquiry Commission.

[This paragraph was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852). At the same time the following paragraph disappeared from the preceding page: “There is no difficulty in understanding the operative principle in all these cases. If, with complete freedom of competition, labour of different degrees of desireableness were paid alike, competitors would crowd into the more attractive employments, and desert the less eligible, thus lowering wages in the first, and raising them in the second, until there would be such a difference of reward as to balance in common estimation the difference of eligibility. Under the unobstructed influence of competition, wages tend to adjust themselves in such a manner that the situation and prospects of the labourers in all employments shall be, in the general estimation, as nearly as possible on a par.” ]

[Writing in 1848.]

See the Statute of Labourers, 25 Edw. IIL

Four-fifths of the manufacturers of the Canton of Zurich are small farmers, generally proprietors of their farms. The cotton manufacture occupies either wholly or partially 23,000 people, nearly a tenth part of the population, and they consume a greater quantity of cotton per inhabitant than either France or England. See the Statistical Account of Zurich formerly cited, pp. 105, 108, 110.

[The first and third of the following sentences were added in the 3rd ed. (1852); the second was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[So from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original text ran: “it does not appear that they are in general unequally paid.” ]

[“Sometimes” added in the 3rd ed.]

[Here the following passage was omitted from the 3rd ed.: “When an employment (as is the case with many trades) is divided into several parts, of some of which men alone are considered capable, while women or children are employed in the others, it is natural that those who cannot be dispensed with, should be able to make better terms for themselves than those who can.” ]

[The present text of this paragraph dates from the 5th ed. (1862). In the original of 1848 it ran, after the words “this peculiar nature”: “I find it impossible to wish, in the present state of the general habits of the people, that no such combinations existed. Acts of atrocity are sometimes committed by them, in the way... repressed: and even their legitimate liberty of refusing to work unless their own terms are conceded to them, they not unfrequently exercise in an injudicious, unenlightened manner, ultimately very injurious to themselves. But in so far as they do succeed in keeping up the wages of any trade by limiting its numbers, I look upon them as simply intrenching... themselves. And I should rejoice if by trade regulations, or even by trades unions, the employments thus specially protected could be multiplied to a much greater extent than experience has shown to be practicable. What at first sight seems the injustice... level. If indeed the general mass of the people were so improved in their standard of living, as not to press closer against the means of employment than those trades do; if, in other words, there were no greater degree of overcrowding outside the barrier, than within it—there would be no need of a barrier, and if it had any effects at all, they must be bad ones; but in that case the barrier would fall of itself, since there would no longer be any motive for keeping it up. On similar grounds, if there were no other escape from that fatal immigration of Irish, which has done and is doing so much to degrade the condition of our agricultural, and some classes of our town population, I should see no injustice, and the greatest possible expediency, in checking that destructive inroad by prohibitive laws. But there is a better mode of putting an end to this mischief, namely, by improving the condition of the Irish themselves; and England owes an atonement to Ireland for past injuries, which she ought to suffer almost any inconvenience rather than fail to make good, by using her power in as determined a manner for the elevation of that unfortunate people, as she used it through so many dreary centuries for their abasement and oppression.”

In the 3rd ed. (1852) this was replaced by the following (which appeared also in the 4th (1857)): “their existence, it is probable, has, in time past, produced more good than evil. Putting aside the atrocities sometimes committed by them, in the way... themselves. The time, however, is past when the friends of human improvement can look with complacency on the attempts of small sections of the community, whether belonging to the labouring or any other class, to organize a separate class interest in antagonism to the general body of labourers, and to protect that interest by shutting out, even if only by a moral compulsion, all competitors from their more highly paid department. The mass of the people are no longer to be thrown out of the account, as too hopelessly brutal to be capable of benefiting themselves by any opening made for them, and sure only, if admitted into competition, to lower others to their own level. The aim of all efforts should now be, not to keep up the monopoly of separate knots of labourers against the rest, but to raise the moral state and social condition of the whole body; and of this it is an indispensable part that no one should be excluded from the superior advantages of any skilled employment, who has intelligence enough to learn it, and honesty enough to be entrusted with it.” ]

It is to be regretted that this word, in this sense, is not familiar to an English ear. French political economists enjoy a great advantage in being able to speak currently of les profits de l'entrepreneur.

[So from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original text had “for his self-denial.” ]

[“Much more than” replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the “like” of the original text. Cf. supra, book ii. ch. xiv. § 1.]

[So from the 4th ed. (1857). In earlier editions: “this sort of combination exists; though individual interest is often too strong for its rules; nor, indeed, does the combination itself include the whole trade.” ]

[Altered from “chances” as late as the 5th ed. (1862).]

[The rest of this paragraph was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

Vide supra, book ii. ch. iv. § 3.

[The remainder of this section was added in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[Added in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[So from the 6th ed. (1865). The earlier editions ran: “the cost of labour to the capitalist is considerably lower than in Europe. It must be so, since the rate of profit is higher; as indicated by the rate of interest, which is six per cent at New York when it is three or three and a quarter per cent in London.” ]

[See Appendix Q. Profits.]

[This clause was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[This explanatory phrase was added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[This sentence was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[The reference to Bastiat was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852). The remainder of this paragraph, together with the following paragraph, took their present form finally in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[So from the 5th ed. (1862). Until then the concluding sentence of the paragraph had been: “It would be difficult to show that the whole land of the country can yield a rent on any other supposition.” ]

[See Appendix R. Rent.]

[The remaining words of the sentence were added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

Logic of Political Economy, p. 13.

Adam Smith, who introduced the expression “effectual demand,” employed it to denote the demand of those who are willing and able to give for the commodity what he calls its natural price, that is the price which will enable it to be permanently produced and brought to market.—See his chapter on Natural and Market Price (book i. ch. 7).

“The price of corn in this country has risen from 100 to 200 per cent and upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been more than between one-sixth and one-third below an average, and when that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies. If there should be a deficiency of the crops amounting to one-third, without any surplus from a former year, and without any chance of relief by importation, the price might rise five, six, or even tenfold.”—Tooke's History of Prices, vol. i. pp. 13–5.

See Tooke, and the Report of the Agricultural Committee of 1821.

Supra, p. 412.

Logic of Political Economy, pp. 230–1.

Supra, pp. 29–31.

Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, ch. i. sect. 3.

[1862] Some of these quarries, I believe, have been rediscovered, and are again worked.

Esprit des Lois, liv. xi. ad finem. [See Appendix S. The Theory of Value.]

Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. xxii. oh. 8.

[I.e. the Napoleonic war.]

[So from the 3rd ed. (1852). In the 1st ed. (1848): “so abundant as the mines of the Ural mountains and of Siberia.” In the 2nd ed. (1849): “to which may now be added California.”]

[“As yet” added in 2nd ed. (1849).]

Infra, chap. xxiii.

[“Invested” substituted for “employed” in 3rd ed. (1852).]

Fullarton, Regulation of Currencies, 2nd edit. pp. 87–9.

[The rest of the sentence was added in the 4th ed. (1857), and the proposition described as “a totally incorrect expression of the fact.” In the 5th ed. (1862) “extremely” was substituted for “totally.”]

The effect of the prohibition cannot, however, have been so entirely insignificant as it has been supposed to be by writers on the subject. The facts adduced by Mr. Fullarton, in the note to page 7 of his work on the Regulation of Currencies, shows that it required a greater percentage of difference in value between coin and bullion than has commonly been imagined, to bring the coin to the melting-pot.

In England, though there is no seignorage on gold coin, (the Mint returning in coin the same weight of pure metal which it receives in bullion,) there is a delay of a few weeks after the bullion is deposited, before the coin can be obtained, occasioning a loss of interest, which, to the holder, is equivalent to a trifling seignorage. From this cause, the value of coin is in general slightly above that of the bullion it contains. An ounce of gold, according to the quantity of metal in a sovereign, should be worth 3l. 17s. 10½d.; but it was usually quoted at 3l. 17s. 6d., until the Bank Charter Act of 1844 made it imperative on the Bank to give its notes for all bullion offered to it at the rate of 3l. 17s. 9d.

[The final sentence of this paragraph was added in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

From some printed, but not published, Lectures of Mr. Senior: in which the great differences in the business done by money, as well as in the rapidity of its circulation, in different states of society and civilization, are interestingly illustrated.

[See Appendix T. The Value of Money.]

[The following passage, which occurred in the original ed. (1848) at this point, was omitted in the 3rd ed. (1852):

“This is the case in France. Silver alone is (I believe) a legal tender, and all sums are expressed and accounts kept in francs, a silver coin. Gold is also coined, for convenience, but does not pass at a fixed valuation: the twenty francs marked on a napoleon are merely nominal, napoleons being never to be bought for that sum, but always bearing a small premium, or agio as it is called; though, as the agio is very trifling, (the bullion value differing very little from twenty francs), it is seldom possible to pass a napoleon for more than that sum in ordinary retail transactions. Silver, then, is the real money of the country, and gold coin only a merchandise; but, though not a legal tender, it answers all the real purposes of one, since no creditor is at all likely to refuse receiving it at the market price, in payment of his debt.”]

[See Appendix U. Bimetallism.]

[1865] To make the proposition in the text strictly true, a corrective, though a very slight one, requires to be made. The circulating medium existing in a country at a given time, is partly employed in purchases for productive, and partly for unproductive consumption. According as a larger proportion of it is employed in the one way or in the other, the real capital of the country is greater or less. If, then, an addition were made to the circulating medium in the hands of unproductive consumers exclusively, a larger portion of the existing stock of commodities would be bought for unproductive consumption, and a smaller for a productive, which state of things, while it lasted, would be equivalent to a diminution of capital; and on the contrary, if the addition made be to the portion of the circulating medium which is in the hands of producers, and destined for their business, a greater portion of the commodities in the country will for the present be employed as capital, and a less portion unproductively. Now an effect of this latter character naturally attends some extensions of credit, especially when taking place in the form of bank notes, or other instruments of exchange. The additional bank notes are, in ordinary course, first issued to producers or dealers, to be employed as capital; and though the stock of commodities in the country is no greater than before, yet as a greater share of that stock now comes by purchase into the hands of producers and dealers, to that extent what would have been unproductively consumed is applied to production, and there is a real increase of capital. The effect ceases, and a counter-process takes place, when the additional credit is stopped, and the notes called in.

Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain, p. 24. This work, published in 1802, is even now [1848] the clearest exposition that I am acquainted with, in the English language, of the modes in which credit is given and taken in a mercantile community.

Pp. 29–33.

P. 40.

[So from the 4th ed. (1857). The original (1848) ran: “Up to twenty years ago.”]

[The concluding clause of this sentence was added in the 4th ed. (1857).]

According to Mr. Tooke (Inquiry into the Currency Principle, p. 27) the adjustments of the Clearing-house “in the year 1839 amounted to 954,401,600l., making an average amount of payments of upwards of 3,000,000l. of bills of exchange and cheques daily effected through the medium of little more than 200,000l. of bank notes.”—[1862] At present a very much greater amount of transactions is daily liquidated, without bank notes at all, cheques on the Bank of England supplying their place.

[1865] The commercial difficulties, not however amounting to a commercial crisis, of 1864, had essentially the same origin. Heavy payments for cotton imported at high prices, and large investments in banking and other joint stock projects, combined with the loan operations of foreign governments, made such large drafts upon the loan market as to raise the rate of discount on mercantile bills as high as nine per cent.

Tooke, History of Prices, vol. iv. pp. 125–6.

Inquiry into the Currency Principle, pp. 79 and 136–8.

The most approved estimate is that of Mr. Leatham, grounded on the official returns of bill stamps issued. The following are the results:—

“Mr. Leatham,” says Mr. Tooke, “gives the process by which, upon the data furnished by the returns of stamps, he arrives at these results; and I am disposed to think that they are as near an approximation to the truth as the nature of the materials admits of arriving at.”—Inquiry into the Currency Principle, p. 26.—[1862] Mr. Newmarch (Appendix No. 39 to Report of the Committee on the Bank Acts in 1857, and History of Prices, vol. vi, p. 587) shows grounds for the opinion that the total bill circulation in 1857 was not much less than 180 millions sterling, and that it sometimes rises to 200 millions.

On the Regulation of Currencies, p. 41.

[This section was added in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[This and the preceding sentence replaced in the 4th ed. (1857) the following sentence of the original text: “I can see no reason for the doctrine, that according as there are more or fewer bank notes, there will be more or less of other descriptions of credit.”]

[Until the 6th ed. (1865) the paragraph ended with “five hundred francs to pay for a cup of coffee.”]

Among the schemes of currency to which, strange to say, intelligent writers have been found to give their sanction, one is as follows: that the state should receive, in pledge or mortgage, any kind or amount of property, such as land, stock, &c., and should advance to the owners inconvertible paper money to the estimated value. Such a currency would not even have the recommendations of the imaginary assignats supposed in the text; since those into whose hands the notes were paid by the persons who received them, could not return them to the government, and demand in exchange land or stock which was only pledged, not alienated. There would be no reflux of such assignats as these, and their depreciation would be indefinite.

[In the 2nd ed. (1849) was inserted the following section, which did not disappear till the 5th ed. (1862):

“§ 4. One of the most transparent of the fallacies by which the principle of the convertibility of paper money has been assailed, is that which pervades a recent work by Mr. John Gray, Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money: the author of the most ingenious, and least exceptionable plan of an inconvertible currency which I have happened to meet with. This writer has seized several of the leading doctrines of political economy with no ordinary grasp, and among others, the important one, that commodities are the real market for commodities, and that Production is essentially the cause and measure of Demand. But this proposition, true in a state of barter, he affirms to be false under a monetary system regulated by the precious metals, because if the aggregate of goods is increased faster than the aggregate of money, prices must fall, and all producers must be losers; now neither gold nor silver, nor any other valuable thing, ‘can by any possibility be increased ad libitum, as fast as all other valuable things put together:’ a limit, therefore, is arbitrarily set to the amount of production which can take place without loss to the producers: and on this foundation Mr. Gray accuses the existing system of rendering the produce of this country less by at least one hundred million pounds annually, than it would be under a currency which admitted of expansion in exact proportion to the increase of commodities.

“But, in the first place, what hinders gold, or any other commodity whatever, from being ‘increased as fast as all other valuable things put together?’ If the produce of the world, in all commodities taken together, should come to be doubled, what is to prevent the annual produce of gold from being doubled likewise? for that is all that would be necessary, and not (as might be inferred from Mr. Gray's language) that it should be doubled as many times over as there are other ‘valuable things’ to compare it with. Unless it can be proved that the production of bullion cannot be increased by the application of increased labour and capital, it is evident that the stimulus of an increased value of the commodity will have the same effect in extending the mining operations, as it is admitted to have in all other branches of production.

“But, secondly, even if the currency could not be increased at all, and if every addition to the aggregate produce of the country must necessarily be accompanied by a proportional diminution of general prices; it is incomprehensible how any person who has attended to the subject can fail to see that a fall of price, thus produced, is no loss to producers: they receive less money; but the smaller amount goes exactly as far, in all expenditure, whether productive or personal, as the larger quantity did before. The only difference would be in the increased burthen of fixed money payments; and of that (coming, as it would, very gradually) a very small portion would fall on the productive classes, who have rarely any debts of old standing, and who would suffer almost solely in the increased onerousness of their contribution to the taxes which pay the interest of the National Debt.”]

[Until the 5th ed. (1862) the text ran: “from 1819 to the present time, it has been... contended,” and “the answer” was spoken of in the present tense.]

Supra, pp. 66–8.

Infra, book iv. chap. 4.

Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, Essay I.

[1862] I at one time believed Mr. Ricardo to have been the sole author of the doctrine now universally received by political economists, on the nature and measure of the benefit which a country derives from foreign trade. But Colonel Torrens, by the republication of one of his early writings, The Economists Refuted, has established at least a joint claim with Mr. Ricardo to the origination of the doctrine, and an exclusive one to its earliest publication.

Third ed. p. 120.

Vide supra, book i. chap. ix. § 1.

Supra, book iii. chap. ii. § 4.

[Here was omitted in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following passage of the original: “Several of those consequences were indicated in the Essay already quoted; and others have been pointed out in the writings of Colonel Torrens, who appears to me substantially correct in his general view of the subject, and who has supported it with great closeness and consecutiveness of reasoning, though his conclusions are occasionally pushed much beyond what appear to me the proper limits of the principle on which they are grounded.”]

[§§ 6–8 were inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852).]

It may be asked, why we have supposed the number n to have as its extreme limits, m and 2m (or )? why may not n be less than m, or greater than 2m; and if so, what will be the result?

This we shall now examine; and, when we do so, it will appear that n is always, practically speaking, confined within these limits.

Suppose, for example, that n is less than m; or, reverting to our former figures, that the million yards of cloth, which England can make, will not satisfy the whole of Germany's pre-existing demand; that demand being (let us suppose) for 1,200,000 yards. It would then, at first sight, appear that England would supply Germany with cloth up to the extent of a million; that Germany would continue to supply herself with the remaining 200,000 by home production: that this portion of the supply would regulate the price of the whole; that England therefore would be able permanently to sell her million of cloth at the German cost of production (viz. for two millions of linen) and would gain the whole advantage of the trade, Germany being no better off than before.

That such, however, would not be the practical result, will soon be evident. The residuary demand of Germany for 200,000 yards of cloth furnishes a resource to England for purposes of foreign trade of which it is still her interest to avail herself; and though she has no more labour and capital which she can withdraw from linen for the production of this extra quantity of cloth, there must be some other commodities in which Germany has a relative advantage over her (though perhaps not so great as in linen): these she will now import, instead of producing, and the labour and capital formerly employed in producing them will be transferred to cloth, until the required amount is made up. If this transfer just makes up the 200,000, and no more, this augmented n will now be equal to m; England will sell the whole 1,200,000 at the German values: and will still gain the whole advantage of the trade. But if the transfer makes up more than the 200,000, England will have more cloth than 1,200,000 yards to offer; n will become greater than m, and England must part with enough of the advantage to induce Germany to take the surplus. Thus the case, which seemed at first sight to be beyond the limits, is transformed practically into a case either coinciding with one of the limits or between them. And so with every other case which can be supposed.

The increase of demand from 800,000 to 900,000, and that from a million to 1,440,000, are neither equal in themselves, nor bear an equal proportion to the increase of cheapness. Germany's demand for cloth has increased one-eighth, while the cheapness is increased one-fourth. England's demand for linen is increased 44 per cent, while the cheapness is increased 60 per cent.

Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money.

[See Appendix V. International Values.]

[In the 1st and 2nd editions here followed: “(as has been done in the controversies called forth by the recent publications of Colonel Torrens).”]

[1862] Written before the change in the relative value of the two metals produced by the gold discoveries. The par of exchange between gold and silver currencies is now variable, and no one can foresee at what point it will ultimately rest.

On the news of Bonaparte's landing from Elba, the price of bills advanced in one day as much as ten per cent. Of course this premium was not a mere equivalent for cost of carriage, since the freight of such an article as gold, even with the addition of war insurance, could never have amounted to so much. This great price was an equivalent not for the difficulty of sending gold, but for the anticipated difficulty of procuring it to send; the expectation being that there would be such immense remittances to the Continent in subsidies and for the support of armies, as would press hard on the stock of bullion in the country (which was then entirely denuded of specie), and this, too, in a shorter time than would allow of its being replenished. Accordingly the price of bullion rose likewise, with the same suddenness. It is hardly necessary to say that this took place during the Bank restriction. In a convertible state of the currency, no such thing could have occurred until the Bank stopped payment.

The subjoined extract from the separate Essay previously referred to, will give some assistance in following the course of the phenomena. It is adapted to the imaginary case used for illustration throughout that Essay, the case of a trade between England and Germany in cloth and linen.

“We may, at first, make whatever supposition we will with respect to the value of money. Let us suppose, therefore, that before the opening of the trade, the price of cloth is the same in both countries, namely six shillings per yard. As ten yards of cloth were supposed to exchange in England for 15 yards of linen, in Germany for 20, we must suppose that linen is sold in England at four shillings per yard, in Germany at three. Cost of carriage and importer's profit are left, as before, out of consideration.

“In this state of prices, cloth, it is evident, cannot yet be exported from England into Germany: but linen can be imported from Germany into England. It will be so; and, in the first instance, the linen will be paid for in money.

“The efflux of money from England, and its influx into Germany, will raise money prices in the latter country and lower them in the former. Linen will rise in Germany above three shillings per yard, and cloth above six shillings. Linen in England, being imported from Germany, will (since cost of carriage is not reckoned) sink to the same price as in that country, while cloth will fall below six shillings. As soon as the price of cloth is lower in England than in Germany, it will begin to be exported, and the price of cloth in Germany will fall to what it is in England. As long as the cloth exported does not suffice to pay for the linen imported, money will continue to flow from England into Germany, and prices generally will continue to fall in England and rise in Germany. By the fall, however, of cloth in England, cloth will fall in Germany also, and the demand for it will increase. By the rise of linen in Germany, linen must rise in England also, and the demand for it will diminish. As cloth fell in price and linen rose, there would be some particular price of both articles at which the cloth exported and the linen imported would exactly pay for each other. At this point prices would remain, because money would then cease to move out of England into Germany. What this point might be, would entirely depend upon the circumstances and inclinations of the purchasers on both sides. If the fall of cloth did not much increase the demand for it in Germany, and the rise of linen did not diminish very rapidly the demand for it in England, much money must pass before the equilibrium is restored; cloth would fall very much, and linen would rise, until England, perhaps, had to pay nearly as much for it as when she produced it for herself. But if, on the contrary, the fall of cloth caused a very rapid increase of the demand for it in Germany, and the rise of linen in Germany reduced very rapidly the demand in England from what it was under the influence of the first cheapness produced by the opening of the trade; the cloth would very soon suffice to pay for the linen, little money would pass between the two countries, and England would derive a large portion of the benefit of the trade. We have thus arrived at precisely the same conclusion, in supposing the employment of money, which we found to hold under the supposition of barter.

“In what shape the benefit accrues to the two nations from the trade is clear enough. Germany, before the commencement of the trade, paid six shillings per yard for broadcloth: she now obtains it at a lower price. This, however, is not the whole of her advantage. As the money prices of all her other commodities have risen, the money-incomes of all her producers have increased. This is no advantage to them in buying from each other, because the price of what they buy has risen in the same ratio with their means of paying for it; but it is an advantage to them in buying anything which has not risen, and, still more, anything which has fallen. They, therefore, benefit as consumers of cloth, not merely to the extent to which cloth has fallen, but also to the extent to which other prices have risen. Suppose that this is one-tenth. The same proportion of their money incomes as before will suffice to supply their other wants; and the remainder, being increased one-tenth in amount, will enable them to purchase one-tenth more cloth than before, even though cloth had not fallen: but it has fallen; so that they are doubly gainers. They purchase the same quantity with less money, and have more to expend upon their other wants.

“In England, on the contrary, general money-prices have fallen. Linen, however, has fallen more than the rest, having been lowered in price by importation from a country where it was cheaper; whereas the others have fallen only from the consequent efflux of money. Notwithstanding, therefore, the general fall of money-prices, the English producers will be exactly as they were in all other respects, while they will gain as purchasers of linen.

“The greater the efflux of money required to restore the equilibrium, the greater will be the gain of Germany, both by the fall of cloth and by the rise of her general prices. The less the efflux of money requisite, the greater will be the gain of England; because the price of linen will continue lower, and her general prices will not be reduced so much. It must not, however, be imagined that high money-prices are a good, and low money-prices an evil, in themselves. But the higher the general money-prices in any country, the greater will be that country's means of purchasing those commodities which, being imported from abroad, are independent of the causes which keep prices high at home.”

In practice, the cloth and the linen would not, as here supposed, be at the same price in England and in Germany: each would be dearer in money-price in the country which imported than in that which produced it, by the amount of the cost of carriage, together with the ordinary profit on the importer's capital for the average length of time which elapsed before the commodity could be disposed of. But it does not follow that each country pays the cost of carriage of the commodity it imports; for the addition of this item to the price may operate as a greater cheek to demand on one side than on the other; and the equation of international demand, and consequent equilibrium of payments, may not be maintained. Money would then flow out of one country into the other, until, in the manner already illustrated, the equilibrium was restored: and, when this was effected, one country would be paying more than its own cost of carriage, and the other less.

Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 3rd ed. p. 143.

[1862] I am here supposing a state of things in which gold and silver mining are a permanent branch of industry, carried on under known conditions; and not the present state of uncertainty, in which gold-gathering is a game of chance, prosecuted (for the present) in the spirit of an adventure, not in that of a regular industrial pursuit.

Supra, pp. 525–7.

Supra, book ii. ch. xv. § 1.

I do not include in the general loan fund of the country the capitals, large as they sometimes are, which are habitually employed in speculatively buying and selling the public funds and other securities. It is true that all who buy securities add, for the time, to the general amount of money on loan, and lower pro tanto the rate of interest. But as the persons I speak of buy only to sell again at a higher price, they are alternately in the position of lenders and of borrowers: their operations raise the rate of interest at one time, exactly as much as they lower it at another. Like all persons who buy and sell on speculation, their function is to equalize, not to raise or lower, the value of the commodity. When they speculate prudently, they temper the fluctuations of price; when imprudently, they often aggravate them.

[This paragraph and the accompanying note were added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[1865] To the cause of augmentation in the rate of interest, mentioned in the text, must be added another, forcibly insisted on by the author of an able article in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1865; the increased and increasing willingness to send capital abroad for investment. Owing to the vastly augmented facilities of access to foreign countries, and the abundant information incessantly received from them, foreign investments have ceased to inspire the terror that belongs to the unknown; capital flows, without misgiving, to any place which affords an expectation of high profit; and the loan market of the whole commercial world is rapidly becoming one. The rate of interest, therefore, in the part of the world out of which capital most freely flows, cannot any longer remain so much inferior to the rate elsewhere, as it has hitherto been.

[The first three paragraphs of this section were added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[The text of this and the next seven paragraphs is an expansion in the 6th ed. (1865) of two paragraphs of the earlier editions.]

Inquiry into the Currency Principle, ch. xiv.

[So from the 7th ed. (1871). In the original (1848): “a temporary suspension” &c.; in the 5th ed. (1862): “two temporary suspensions.”]

Regulation of Currencies, p. 85.

[Sentence inserted in 5th ed. (1862).]

[1857] I think myself justified in affirming that the mitigation of commercial revulsions is the real, and only serious, purpose of the Act of 1844. I am quite aware that its supporters insist (especially since 1847) on its supreme efficacy in “maintaining the convertibility of the Bank note.” But I must be excused for not attaching any serious importance to this one among its alleged merits. The convertibility of the Bank note was maintained, and would have continued to be maintained, at whatever cost, under the old system. As was well said by Lord Overstone in his evidence, the Bank can always, by a sufficiently violent action on credit, save itself at the expense of the mercantile public. That the Act of 1844 mitigates the violence of that process, is a sufficient claim to prefer in its behalf. Besides, if we suppose such a degree of mismanagement on the part of the Bank, as, were it not for the Act, would endanger the continuance or convertibility, the same (or a less) degree of mismanagement, practised under the Act, would suffice to produce a suspension of payments by the Banking Department; an event which the compulsory separation of the two departments brings much nearer to possibility than it was before, and which, involving as it would the probable stoppage of every private banking establishment in London, and perhaps also the non-payment of the dividends to the national creditor, would be a far greater immediate calamity than a brief interruption of the convertibility of the note; insomuch that, to enable the Bank to resume payment of its deposits, no Government would hesitate a moment to suspend payment of the notes, if suspension of the Act of 1844 proved insufficient.

A conditional increase of this maximum is permitted, but only when by arrangement with any country bank the issues of that bank are discontinued, and Bank of England notes substituted; and even then the increase is limited to two-thirds of the amount of the country notes to be thereby superseded. Under this provision the amount of notes which the Bank of England is now [1871] at liberty to issue against securities, is about fifteen millions.

[Paragraph inserted in 4th ed. (1857).]

[The present text of the remainder of this paragraph dates only from the 6th ed. (1865). The original simply ran: “If, instead of lending their notes, the banks allow the demand of their customers for disposable capital to act on the deposits, there is the same increase of currency, (for a short time at least,) but there is not an increase of loans. The rate of interest, therefore, is not prevented from rising at the first moment when the difficulties consequent on excess of speculation begin to be felt. Speculative holders,” &c. No change was made in this before 1865, except the insertion of the words “On the contrary... interest” before the last sentence in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[From the 6th ed. (1865) disappeared the following lines and the accompanying footnote, which had remained since 1848:

“If the restrictions of the Act of 1844 were no obstacle to the advances of banks in the interval preceding the crisis, why were they found an insuperable obstacle during the crisis? an obstacle which nothing less could overcome than a suspension of the law, through the assumption by the Government of a temporary dictatorship? Evidently they were an obstacle.”

Footnote.—“It would not be to the purpose to say, by way of objection, that the obstacle may be evaded by granting the increased advance in book credits, to be drawn against by cheques, without the aid of bank notes. This is indeed possible, as Mr. Fullarton has remarked, and as I have myself said in a former chapter. But this substitute for bank note currency certainly has not yet been organised; and the law having clearly manifested its intention that, in the case supposed, increased credits should not be granted, it is yet a problem whether the law would not reach what might be regarded as an evasion of its prohibitions, or whether deference to the law would not produce (as it has hitherto done), on the part of banking establishments, conformity to its spirit and purpose, as well as to its mere letter.”]

P. 106.

[1857] True, the Bank is not precluded from making increased advances from its deposits, which are likely to be of unusually large amount, since, at these periods, every one leaves his money in deposit in order to have it within call. But, that the deposits are not always sufficient was conclusively proved in 1847, when the Bank stretched to the very utmost the means of relieving commerce which its deposits afforded, without allaying the panic, which however ceased at once when the Government decided on suspending the Act.

[1862] This prediction was verified on the very next occurrence of a commercial crisis, in 1857; when Government were again under the necessity of suspending, on their own responsibility, the provisions of the Act.

[“Wholly” inserted in 4th ed. (1857).]

It is known, from unquestionable facts, that the hoards of money at all times existing in the hands of the French peasantry, often from a remote date, surpass any amount which could have been imagined possible; and even in so poor a country as Ireland, it has of late been ascertained that the small farmers sometimes possess hoards quite disproportioned to their visible means of subsistence.

Regulation of Currencies, pp. 71–4.

Regulation of Currencies, pp. 139–42.

[The rest of this paragraph replaced in the 6th ed. (1865) the following passage of the original text:

“The machinery, however, of the new system insists upon bringing about by force, what its principle not only does not require, but positively condemns. Every drain for exportation, whatever may be its cause, and whether under a metallic currency it would affect the circulation or not, is now compulsorily drawn from that source alone. The bank-note circulation, and the discounts or other advances of the Bank, must be diminished by an amount equal to that of the metal exported, though it be to the full extent of seven or ten millions. And this, be it remembered,” &c.]

[From this point to the end of the section the text was largely rewritten in the 4th ed. (1857), and the note added in the 5th (1862).]

[1862] This, which I have called “the double action of drains,” has been strangely understood as if I had asserted that the Bank is compelled to part with six millions' worth of property by a drain of three millions. Such an assertion would be too absurd to require any refutation. Drains have a double action, not upon the pecuniary position of the Bank itself, but upon the measures it is forced to take in order to stop the drain. Though the Bank itself is no poorer, its two reserves, the reserve in the banking department and the reserve in the issue department, have each been reduced three millions by a drain of only three. And as the separation of the departments renders it necessary that each of them separately should be kept as strong as the two together need be if they could help one another, the Bank's action on the money market must be as violent on a drain of three millions, as would have been required on the old system for one of six. The reserve in the banking department being less than it otherwise would be by the entire amount of the bullion in the issue department, and the whole amount of the drain falling in the first instance on that diminished reserve, the pressure of the whole drain on the half reserve is as much felt, and requires as strong measures to stop it, as a pressure of twice the amount on the entire reserve. As I have said elsewhere,∗ “it is as if a man having to lift a weight were restricted from using both hands to do it, and were only allowed to use one hand at a time; in which case it would be necessary that each of his hands should be as strong as the two together.”

Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on the Bank Acts, in 1857.

Pp. 89–92.

[The remainder of this paragraph replaced in the 4th ed. (1857) the following sentences of the original (1848) text:

“The numerous joint-stock banks since established have, by furnishing a more trustworthy currency, made it almost impossible for any private banker to maintain his circulation, unless his capital and character inspire the most complete confidence. And although there has been in some instances very gross mismanagement by joint-stock banks (less, however, in the department of issues than in that of deposits) the failure of these banks is extremely rare, and the cases still rarer in which loss has ultimately been sustained by any one except the shareholders. The banking system of England is now almost as secure to the public, as that of Scotland (where banking was always free) has been for two centuries past; and the legislature might without any bad consequences, at least of this kind, revoke its interdict (which was never extended to Scotland) against one and two pound notes. I cannot, therefore, think it at all necessary, or that it would be anything but vexatious meddling, to enforce any kind of special security in favour of the holders of notes. The true protection to creditors of all kinds is a good law of insolvency (a part of the law at present shamefully deficient), and, in the case of joint-stock companies at least, complete publicity of their accounts: the publicity now very properly given to their issues being a very small portion of what a state has a right to require in return for their being allowed to constitute themselves, and be recognised by the law, as a collective body.”]

[See Appendix W. The Regulation of Currency.]

[Until the 6th ed. (1865) the concluding clause ran: “as is proved by the fact that the general rate of profits and of interest is very much higher.”]

[The concluding clause of this sentence was added in the 7th ed. (1871); the following sentences changed from the present to the past tense; and the sentence about the price of American cotton was inserted.]

Historisch-geographisch-statistisches Gemälde der Schweiz. Erstes Heft, 1834, p. 105.

Supra, book iii. oh. iv.

[So since 6th ed. (1865); replacing “ten or twelve” in 1st ed. (1848).]

[“Some of” inserted in 5th ed. (1862).]

[So since 3rd ed. (1852). The original text ran: “the commodities without which they will not consent to continue the race.”]

Supra, book iii. eh. iv. § 2, and eh. xxv, § 4.

[The words “as at present in the United States” were omitted at this point from the 6th ed. (1865).]

Essay IV. on Profits and Interest.

[“Usually” inserted in 4th ed. (1857)]

[The remaining words of the sentence were added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[The following passage of the original (1848) text was omitted in the 5th ed. (1862): “The former, indeed, so far as present foresight can extend, does not seem to be susceptible to improved processes to so great a degree as some branches of manufacture; but inventions may be in reserve for the future which may invert this relation.”]

[The “fifteen or twenty” of the 1st ed. (1848) was replaced in the 6th ed. (1865) by “twenty or twenty-five,” and in the 7th (1871) by “twenty or thirty.”]

[Written in 1848.]

[1852] A still better criterion, perhaps, than that suggested in the text, would be the increase or diminution of the amount of the labourer's wages estimated in agricultural produce.

[See Appendix X. Prices in the 19th Century.]

[“Or good fortune” added in 3rd ed. (1852).]

[See Appendix Y. Commercial Cycles.]

Supra, pp. 183–4.

[Parenthesis added in 2nd ed. (1849).]

[See Appendix Z. Rents in the 19th Century.]

[See Appendix AA. Wages in the 19th Century.]

Wealth of Nations, book i. ch. 9.

[1862] Now so much better known through his apostolic exertions, by pen, purse, and person, for the improvement of popular education, and especially for the introduction into it of the elements of practical political economy.

Book iii. ch. 14.

[So since the 6th ed. (1865). The original (1848) ran: “the condition of the labourers certainly is not on the whole declining.”]

[So from the 5th ed. (1862). In the 1st ed. (1848) the parenthesis had been: “(which is now very nearly, and will soon be entirely, our own case).”]

[See Appendix BB. The Importation of Food.]

[See Appendix CC. The Tendency of Profits to a Minimum.]

Supra, p. 94.

[The present form of this sentence dates from the 6th ed. (1865). The original [1848] text ran: “the great sums in process of being sunk,” and “I cannot agree.”]

[1852] It is hardly needful to point out how fully the remarks in the text have been verified by subsequent facts. The capital of the country, far from having been in any degree impaired by the large amount sunk in railway construction, was soon again overflowing.

[This and the preceding sentence replaced in the 6th ed. (1865) the following passage of the original [1848] text: “The northern and middle states of America are a specimen of this stage of civilization 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 ensure abundance to every able-bodied member of the community who does not forfeit it by misconduct. They have the six points of Chartism, and they have no poverty: and all that these advantages seem to have done 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.” Into this, however, had been inserted since the 2nd ed. (1849), after “done for them,” the parenthesis “(notwithstanding some incipient signs of a better tendency).”]

[“Permanently” inserted in 2nd ed. (1849); “of themselves” in 3rd (1852).]

Supra, pp. 227–9.

[This paragraph replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following paragraph of the original (1848) text:

“The economic condition of that class, and along with it of all society, depends therefore essentially on its moral and intellectual, and that again on its social, condition. In the details of political economy, general views of society and politics are out of place; but in the more comprehensive inquiries it is impossible to exclude them; since the various leading departments of human life do not develop themselves separately, but each depends on all, or is profoundly modified by them. To obtain any light on the great economic question of the future, which gives the chief interest to the phenomena of the present—the physical condition of the labouring classes—we must consider it, not separately, but in conjunction with all other points of their condition.”]

[Parenthesis inserted in 3rd ed. (1852).]

[Carlyle's Past and Present appeared in 1843.]

[In the 3rd ed. (1852) “qualities” replaced “virtues,” and the next sentence was omitted: “That the most beautiful developments of feeling and character often grow out of the most painful, and in many respects the most hardening and corrupting, circumstances of our condition, is now, and probably will long be, one of the chief stumbling-blocks both in the theory and in the practice of morals and education.”]

[“Whether... women” inserted in 3rd ed.]

[So since the 3rd ed. The original text ran: “The laws protect them: where laws do not reach, manners and opinion shield them.” The reference to police reports and atrocities later in the paragraph was introduced in the 3rd ed., and “the protection of the law” was expanded into the protection which the law “ought to give.”]

[The last clause inserted in 3rd ed. (1852).]

[This and the following sentence were inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[Here was omitted from the 2nd ed. (1849) the following passage of the 1st (1848): “It is of little importance that some of them may, at a certain stage of their progress, adopt mistaken opinions. Communists are already numerous, and are likely to increase in number; but nothing tends more to the mental development of the working classes than that all the questions which Communism raises should be largely and freely discussed by them; nothing could be more instructive than that some should actually form communities, and try practically what it is to live without the institution of property.”]

[The original (1848) text ran: “that there should be no other carrière possible... is one of those social injustices which call loudest for remedy. Among the salutary consequences of correcting it, one of the most probable would be a great diminution,” &c.

In the 2nd ed. (1849) the following sentence was inserted after “remedy”: “The ramifications of this subject are far too numerous and intricate to be pursued here. The social and political equality of the sexes is not a question of economical detail, but one of principle, so intimately connected with all the more vital points of human improvement, that none of them can be thoroughly discussed independently of it. But for this very reason it cannot be disposed of by way of parenthesis, in a treatise devoted to other subjects. It is sufficient for the immediate purpose, to point out, among the probable consequences of the industrial and social independence of women, a great diminution,” &c.

This was replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) by the present text, and a note attached: “It is truly disgraceful that in a woman's reign not one step has been made by law towards removing even the smallest portion of the existing injustice to women. The brutal part of the populace can still maltreat, not to say kill, their wives, with the next thing to impunity; and as to civil and social status, in framing a new reform bill for the extension of the elective franchise, the opportunity was not taken for so small a recognition of something like equality of rights, as would have been made by admitting to the suffrage women of the same class and the same householding and tax-paying qualifications as the men who already possess it.”

Further comments were added to the note in the 4th ed. (1857): “Mr. Fitzroy's Act for the Better Protection of Women and Children against Assaults, is a well-meant though inadequate attempt to wipe off the former reproach. The second is more flagrant than ever, another Reform Bill having been since presented, largely extending the franchise among many classes of men, but leaving all women in their existing state of political as well as social servitude.”

The whole note disappeared in the 5th ed. (1862).]

[At this point was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852) the following passage of the original (1848) text: “To work at the bidding and for the profit of another, without any interest in the work—the price of their labour being adjusted by hostile competition, one side demanding as much and the other paying as little as possible—is not, even when wages are high, a satisfactory state to human beings of educated intelligence, who have ceased to think themselves naturally inferior to those whom they serve.”]

[The rest of the paragraph, with the exception of the two sentences indicated in the next note, replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following single sentence of the original text: “But something else is required when wealth increases slowly, or has reached the stationary state, when positions, instead of being more mobile, would tend to be much more permanent than at present, and the condition of any portion of mankind could only be desirable, if made desirable from the first.”]

[This and the following sentence are an expansion in the 4th ed. (1857) of the clause in the 3rd: “while the return given in the shape of service is sought to be reduced to the lowest minimum.”]

[The remainder of this paragraph (subjected subsequently to verbal alterations) replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following original (1848) text: “The problem is, to obtain the efficiency and economy of production on a large scale, without dividing the producers into two parties with hostile interests, employers and employed, the many who do the work being mere servants under the command of the one who supplies the funds, and having no interest of their own in the enterprise, except to fulfil their contract and earn their wages.”]

[3rd ed. (1852), “five”; 4th (1857), “ten”; 6th (1865), “twenty”; 7th (1871), “thirty.”]

[So since 5th ed. (1862). In the 3rd and 4th, “Unless the military despotism now triumphant on the Continent should succeed in its nefarious attempts to throw back the human mind.”]

[In 3rd ed.: “temporarily and in some cases..., in other cases and finally in all.” In 5th ed. (1862): “perhaps finally in all.” In 6th ed. (1865), “temporarily” omitted.]

[The following passage, inserted at this point in the 2nd ed. (1849) disappeared from the 3rd (1852).

“§ 5. It is this feeling, of the nature of the problem” (see supra, p. 761, n. 1), “almost as much as despair of the improvement of the condition of the labouring masses by other means, which has caused so great a multiplication of projects for the ‘organization of industry’ by the extension and development of the co-operative or joint stock principle: some of the more conspicuous of which have been described and characterized in an early chapter of this work. It is most desirable that all these schemes should have opportunity and encouragement to test their capabilities by actual experiment. There are, in almost all of them, many features, in themselves well worth submitting to that test; while, on the other hand, the exaggerated expectations entertained by large and growing multitudes in all the principal nations of the world, concerning what it is possible, in the present state of human improvement, to effect by such means, have no chance of being corrected except by a fair trial in practice. The French Revolution of February 1848, at first seemed to have opened a fair field for the trial of such experiments, on a perfectly safe scale, and with every advantage that could be derived from the countenance of a government which sincerely desired their success. It is much to be regretted that these prospects have been frustrated, and that the reaction of the middle class against anti-property doctrines has engendered for the present an unreasoning and undiscriminating antipathy to all ideas, however harmless or however just, which have the smallest savour of Socialism. This is a disposition of mind, of which the influential classes, both in France and elsewhere, will find it necessary to divest themselves. Socialism has now become irrevocably one of the leading elements in European politics. The questions raised by it will not be set at rest by merely refusing to listen to it; but only by a more and more complete realization of the ends which Socialism aims at, not neglecting its means so far as they can be employed with advantage.”]

This passage is from the Prize Essay on the Causes and Remedies of National Distress, by Mr. Samuel Laing. The extracts which it includes are from the Appendix to the Report of the Children's Employment Commission.

Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 3rd edition, ch. 26.

[The long quotation from Babbage, which appeared in the 1st and 2nd eds. (1848, 1849), disappeared from the 3rd (1852): “I venture to quote the principal part of his observations on the subject.

‘The general principles on which the proposed system is founded, are—1st. That a considerable part of the wages received by each person employed, should depend on the profits made by the establishment; and 2nd. That every person connected with it should derive more advantage from applying any improvement he might discover, to the factory in which he is employed, than he could by any other course.

‘It would be difficult to prevail on the large capitalist to enter upon any system, which would change the division of the profits arising from the employment of his capital in setting skill and labour in action; any alteration, therefore, must be expected rather from the small capitalist, or from the higher class of workmen, who combine the two characters; and to these latter classes, whose welfare will be first affected, the change is most important. I shall therefore first point out the course to be pursued in making the experiment; and then, taking a particular branch of trade as an illustration, I shall examine the merits and defects of the proposed system as applied to it.

‘Let us suppose, in some large manufacturing town, ten or twelve of the most intelligent and skilful workmen to unite, whose characters for sobriety and steadiness are good, and are well known among their class. Such persons will each possess some small portion of capital; and let them join with one or two others who have raised themselves into the class of small master-manufacturers, and therefore possess rather a larger portion of capital. Let these persons, after well considering the subject, agree to establish a manufactory of fire-irons and fenders; and let us suppose that each of the ten workmen can command forty pounds, and each of the small capitalists possesses two hundred pounds: thus they have a capital of 800l. with which to commence business, and for the sake of simplifying, let us further suppose the labour of each of these twelve persons to be worth two pounds a week. One portion of their capital will be expended in procuring the tools necessary for their trade, which we shall take at 400l., and this must be considered as their fixed capital. The remaining 400l. must be employed as circulating capital, in purchasing the iron with which their articles are made, in paying the rent of their workshops, and in supporting themselves and their families until some portion of it is replaced by the sale of the goods produced.

‘Now the first question to be settled is, what proportion of the profit should be allowed for the use of capital, and what for skill and labour? It does not seem possible to decide this question by any abstract reasoning: if the capital supplied by each partner is equal, all difficulty will be removed; if otherwise, the proportion must be left to find its level, and will be discovered by experience; and it is probable that it will not fluctuate much. Suppose it to be agreed that the capital of 800l. shall receive the wages of one workman. At the end of each week, every workman is to receive one pound as wages, and one pound is to be divided amongst the owners of the capital. After a few weeks the returns will begin to come in; and they will soon become nearly uniform. Accurate accounts should be kept of every expense and of all the sales; and at the end of each week the profit should be divided. A certain portion should be laid aside as a reserved fund, another portion for repair of the tools, and the remainder being divided into thirteen parts, one of these parts would be divided amongst the capitalists and one belong to each workman. Thus each man would, in ordinary circumstances, make up his usual wages of two pounds weekly. If the factory went on prosperously, the wages of the men would increase; if the sales fell off, they would be diminished. It is important that every person employed in the establishment, whatever might be the amount paid for his services, whether he act as labourer or porter, or as the clerk who keeps the accounts, or as book-keeper employed for a few hours once a week to superintend them, should receive one-half of what his service is worth in fixed salary, the other part varying with the success of the undertaking.

‘The result of such arrangements in a factory would be,

• ‘1. That every person engaged in it would have a direct interest in its prosperity; since the effect of any success, or falling off, would almost immediately produce a corresponding change in his own weekly receipts.
• ‘2. Every person concerned in the factory would have an immediate interest in preventing any waste or mismanagement in all the departments.
• ‘3. The talents of all connected with it would be strongly directed to improvement in every department.
• ‘4. None but workmen of high character and qualifications could obtain admission into such establishments, because when any additional hands were required, it would be the common interest of all to admit only the most respectable and skilful, and it would be far less easy to impose upon a dozen workmen than upon the single proprietor of a factory.
• ‘5. When any circumstance produced a glut in the market, more skill would be directed to diminishing the cost of production; and a portion of the time of the men might then be occupied in repairing and improving their tools, for which a reserved fund would pay, thus checking present, and at the same time facilitating future, production.
• ‘6. Another advantage, of no small importance, would be the total removal of all real or imaginary causes for combinations. The workmen and the capitalist would so shade into each other—would so evidently have a common interest, and their difficulties and distresses would be mutually so well understood, that instead of combining to oppress one another, the only combination which could exist would be a most powerful union between both parties to overcome their common difficulties.

‘One of the difficulties attending such a system is, that capitalists would at first fear to embark in it, imagining that the workmen would receive too large a share of the profits: and it is quite true that the workmen would have a larger share than at present: but at the same time, it is presumed the effect of the whole system would be, that the total profits of the establishment being much increased, the smaller proportion allowed to capital under this system would yet be greater in actual amount, than that which results to it from the larger share in the system now existing.

‘A difficulty would occur also in discharging workmen who behaved ill, or who were not competent to their work; this would arise from their having a certain interest in the reserved fund, and perhaps from their possessing a certain portion of the capital employed; but without entering into detail, it may be observed, that such cases might be determined on by meetings of the whole establishment; and that if the policy of the laws favoured such establishments, it would scarcely be more difficult to enforce just regulations than it now is to enforce some which are unjust, by means of combinations either amongst the masters or the men.’”]

[In the original ed. (1849) this paragraph began thus: “In this imaginary case” described by Babbage, see supra, p. 766, n. 1, “it is supposed that each labourer brings some small portion of capital into the concern: but the principle is equally applicable to the ordinary case in which the whole capital belongs to an individual capitalist. An application of it to such a case is actually in progress by a Paris tradesman,” &c. The present text, but with “about ten years ago,” dates from the 3rd ed. (1852). The 4th, 5th, and 6th eds. (1857, 1862, 1865) have “about sixteen years ago”; the 7th (1871) “above thirty.”]

His establishment is 11, Rue Saint Georges.

[1849] It appears, however, that the workmen whom M. Leclaire had admitted to this participation of profits, were only a portion (rather less than half) of the whole number whom he employed. This is explained by another part of his system. M. Leclaire pays the full market rate of wages to all his workmen. The share of profit assigned to them is, therefore, a clear addition to the ordinary gains of their class, which he very laudably uses as an instrument of improvement, by making it the reward of desert, or the recompense for peculiar trust.

For September 27, 1845.

[Added in 2nd ed. (1849).]

Lettres sur l'Organisation du Travail, by Michel Chevalier, lettre xiv.

[The concluding sentence of this paragraph, together with the next paragraph and the examples quoted in the note, were added in the 5th ed. (1862).]

Nouveau Traité d'Economie Politique.

[1865] At the present time M. Leclaire's establishment is conducted on a somewhat altered system, though the principle of dividing the profits is maintained. There are now three partners in the concern: M. Leclaire himself, one other person (M. Defournaux), and a Provident Society (Société de Secours Mutuels), of which all persons in his employment are the members. (This Society owns an excellent library, and has scientific, technical, and other lectures regularly delivered to it.) Each of the three partners has 100,000 francs invested in the concern; M. Leclaire having advanced to the Provident Society as much as was necessary to supply the original insufficiency of their own funds. The partnership, on the part of the Society, is limited; on that of M. Leclaire and M. Defournaux, unlimited. These two receive 6000 francs (240l.) per annum each as wages of superintendence. Of the annual profits they receive half, though owning two-thirds of the capital. The remaining half belongs to the employés and workpeople; two-fifths of it being paid to the Provident Society, and the other three-fifths divided among the body. M. Leclaire, however, now reserves to himself the right of deciding who shall share in the distribution, and to what amount; only binding himself never to retain any part, but to bestow whatever has not been awarded to individuals, on the Provident Society. It is further provided that in case of the retirement of both the private partners, the goodwill and plant shall become, without payment, the property of the Society.

“In March 1847, M. Paul Dupont, the head of a Paris printing-office, had the idea of taking his workmen into partnership by assigning to them a tenth of the profits. He habitually employs three hundred; two hundred of them on piece work, and a hundred by the day. He also employs a hundred extra hands, who are not included in the association. The portion of profit which falls to the workmen does not bring them in, on the average, more than the amount of a fortnight's wages; but they receive their ordinary pay according to the rates established in all the great Paris printing offices; and have, besides, the advantage of medical attendance in illness at the expense of the association, and a franc and a half per day while incapacitated for work. The workmen cannot draw out their share of profit except on quitting the association. It is left at interest (sometimes invested in the public funds), and forms an accumulating reserve of savings for its owners.

“M. Dupont and his partners find this association a source of great additional profit to them: the workmen, on their side, congratulate themselves daily on the happy idea of their employer. Several of them have by their exertions caused the establishment to gain a gold medal in 1849, and an honorary medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1855: some even have personally received the recompense of their inventions and of their labours. Under an ordinary employer, these excellent people would not have had leisure to prosecute their inventions, unless by leaving the whole honour to one who was not the author of them: but, associated as they were, if the employer had been unjust, two hundred men would have obliged him to repair the wrong.

“I have visited this establishment, and have been able to see for myself the improvement which the partnership produces in the habits of the workpeople.

“M. Gisquet, formerly Prefect of Police, has long been the proprietor of an oil manufactory at St. Denis, the most important one in France next to that of M. Darblay, of Corbeil. When in 1848 he took the personal management of it, he found workmen who got drunk several days in the week, and during their work sung, smoked, and sometimes quarrelled with one another. Many unsuccessful attempts had been made to alter this state of things: he accomplished it by forbidding his workmen to get drunk on working days, on pain of dismissal, and at the same time promising to share with them, by way of annual gratuity, five per cent of his net profits, in shares proportioned to wages, which are fixed at the current rates. From that time the reformation has been complete, and he is surrounded by a hundred workmen full of zeal and devotion. Their comforts have been increased by what they have ceased to spend in drink, and what they gain by their punctuality at work. The annual gratuity has amounted, on the average, to the equivalent of six weeks' wages.

“M. Beslay, a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1830 to 1839, and afterwards of the Constituent Assembly, has founded an important manufactory of steam engines at Paris, in the Faubourg of the Temple. He has taken his workpeople into partnership ever since the beginning of 1847, and the contract of association is one of the most complete which have been made between employers and workpeople.”

The practical sagacity of Chinese emigrants long ago suggested to them, according to the report of a recent visitor to Manilla, a similar constitution of the relation between an employer and labourers. “In these Chinese shops” (at Manilla) “the owner usually engages all the activity of his countrymen employed by him in them, by giving each of them a share in the profits of the concern, or in fact by making them all small partners in the business, of which he of course takes care to retain the lion's share, so that while doing good for him by managing it well, they are also benefiting themselves. To such an extent is this principle carried that it is usual to give even their coolies a share in the profits of the business in lieu of fixed wages, and the plan appears to suit their temper well; for although they are in general most complete eye-servants when working for a fixed wage, they are found to be most industrious and useful ones when interested even for the smallest share.”—McMicking's Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines during 1848, 1849, and 1850, p. 24.

[This paragraph was added in the 6th ed. (1865); and it was said that Messrs. Briggs “have issued a proposal to work”; changed to “They now work” &c., in the 7th ed. (1871).]

[For the abandonment of the Briggs experiment in 1875 see Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration (2nd ed.), p. 282.]

[The opening paragraphs of this section and the account of French cooperative societies which follows were added in the 3rd ed. (1852). At the same time the following paragraph and section of the original (1848) text were removed:

“Under this system,” of M. Leclaire, “as well as under that recommended by Mr. Babbage, the labourers are, in reality, taken into partnership with their employer. Bringing nothing into the common concern but their labour, while he brings not only his labour of direction and superintendence but his capital also, they have justly a smaller share of the profits; this, however, is a matter of private arrangement in all partnerships; one partner has a large, another a small share, according to their agreement, grounded on the equivalent which is given by each. The essence, however, of a partnership is obtained, since each benefits by all things that are beneficial to the concern, and loses by all which are injurious. It is, in the fullest sense, the common concern of all.

“§ 6. To this principle, in whatever form embodied, it seems to me that futurity has to look for obtaining the benefits of co-operation, without constituting the numerical majority of the co-operators an inferior caste. The objections that apply to a ‘co-operative society,’ in the Communist or Owenite sense, in which, by force of giving to every member of the body a share in the common interest, no one has a greater share in it than another, are not applicable to what is now suggested. It is expedient that those, whose performance of the part assigned to them is the most essential to the common end, should have a greater amount of personal interest in the issue of the enterprise. If those who supply the funds, and incur the whole risk of the undertaking, obtained no greater reward or more influential voice than the rest, few would practise the abstinence through which those funds are acquired and kept in existence. Up to a certain point, however, the principle of giving to every person concerned an interest in the profits is an actual benefit to the capitalist, not only (as M. Leclaire has testified) in point of ease and comfort, but even in pecuniary advantage. And after the point of greatest benefit to the employers has been attained, the participation of the labourers may be carried somewhat further without any material abatement from that maximum of benefit. At what point, in each employment of capital, this ultimatum is to be found, will one day be known and understood from experience; and up to that point it is not unreasonable to expect that the partnership principle will be, at no very distant time, extended.

“The value of this ‘organization of industry,’ for healing the widening and embittering feud between the class of labourers and the class of capitalists, must, I think, impress itself by degrees on all who habitually reflect on the condition and tendencies of modern society. I cannot conceive how any such person can persuade himself that the majority of the community will for ever, or even for much longer, consent to hew wood and draw water all their lives in the service and for the benefit of others; or can doubt, that they will be less and less willing to co-operate as subordinate agents in any work, when they have no interest in the result, and that it will be more and more difficult to obtain the best work-people, or the best services of any work-people, except on conditions similar in principle to those of M. Leclaire. Although, therefore, arrangements of this sort are now in their infancy, their multiplication and growth, when once they enter into the general domain of popular discussion, are among the things which may most confidently be expected.”]

[So since 4th ed. (1857). Originally, in 3rd ed. (1852), “a few months ago.”]

[“Strengthened” &c., added in 5th ed. (1862).]

P. 112.

Pp. 113–6.

Article by M. Cherbuliez on “Operative Associations,” in the Journal des Economistes for November 1860.

I subjoin, from M. Villiaumé and M. Cherbuliez, detailed particulars of other eminently successful experiments by associated workpeople.

“We will first cite,” says M. Cherbuliez, “as having attained its object and arrived at a definitive result, the Association Remquet, of the Rue Garancière, at Paris, whose founder, in 1848, was a foreman in M. Renouard's printing establishment. That firm being under the necessity of winding up, he proposed to his fellow-workmen to join with him in continuing the enterprise on their own account, asking a subvention from the government to cover the purchase-money of the business and the first expenses. Fifteen of them accepted the proposal, and formed an association, whose statutes fixed the wages for every kind of work, and provided for the gradual formation of a working capital by a deduction of 25 per cent from all wages and salaries, on which deduction no dividend or interest was to be allowed during the ten years that the association was intended to last. Remquet asked and obtained for himself the entire direction of the enterprise, at a very moderate fixed salary. At the winding up, the entire profits were to be divided among all the members, proportionally to their share in the capital, that is, to the work they had done. A subvention of 80,000 francs was granted by the State, not without great difficulty, and on very onerous conditions. In spite of these conditions, and of the unfavourable circumstances resulting from the political situation of the country, the association prospered so well, that on the winding up, after repaying the advance made by the State, it was in possession of a clear capital of 155,000 francs [6200l.], the division of which gave on the average between ten and eleven thousand francs to each partner; 7000 being the smallest and 18,000 the largest share.

“The Fraternal Association of Working Tinmen and Lampmakers had been founded in March 1848 by 500 operatives, comprising nearly the whole body of the trade. This first attempt, inspired by unpractical ideas, not having survived the fatal days of June, a new association was formed of more modest proportions. Originally composed of forty members, it commenced business in 1849 with a capital composed of the subscriptions of its members, without asking for a subvention. After various vicissitudes, which reduced the number of partners to three, then brought it back to fourteen, then again sunk it to three, it ended by keeping together forty-six members, who quietly remodelled their statutes in the points which experience had shown to be faulty, and their number having been raised by successive steps to 100, they possessed, in 1858, a joint property of 50,000 francs, and were in a condition to divide annually 20,000 francs.

“The Association of Operative Jewellers, the oldest of all, had been founded in 1831 by eight workmen, with a capital of 200 francs [8l.] derived from their united savings. A subvention of 24,000 francs enabled them in 1849 greatly to extend their operations, which in 1858 had already attained the value of 140,000 francs, and gave to each partner an annual dividend equal to double his wages.”

The following are from M. Villiaumé:—

“After the insurrection of June 1848, work was suspended in the Faubourg St. Antoine, which, as we know, is principally occupied by furniture-makers. Some operative arm-chair makers made an appeal to those who might be willing to combine with them. Out of six or seven hundred composing the trade, four hundred gave in their names. But capital being wanting, nine of the most zealous began the association with all that they possessed; being a value of 369 francs in tools, and 135 francs 20 centimes in money.

“Their good taste, honesty, and punctuality having increased their business, they soon numbered 108 members. They received from the State an advance of 25,000 francs, reimbursable in 14 years by way of annuity, with interest at 3¾ per cent.

“In 1857 the number of partners is 65, the auxiliaries average 100. All the partners vote at the election of a council of eight members, and a manager whose name represents the firm. The distribution and superintendence of all the works is entrusted to foremen chosen by the manager and council. There is a foreman to every 20 or 25 workmen.

“The payment is by the piece, at rates determined in general assembly. The earnings vary from 3 to 7 francs a day, according to zeal and ability. The average is 50 francs [2l.] a fortnight, and no one gains much less than 40 francs per fortnight, while many earn 80. Some of the carvers and moulders make as much as 100 francs, being 200 francs [8l.] a month. Each binds himself to work 120 hours per fortnight, equal to ten per day. By the regulations, every hour short of the number subjects the delinquent to a penalty of 10 centimes [one penny] per hour up to thirty hours, and 15 centimes [1½d.] beyond. The object of this rule was to abolish Saint Monday, and it succeeded in its effort. For the last two years the conduct of the members has been so good, that fines have fallen into disuse.

“Though the partners started with only 359 francs, the value of the plant (Rue de Chavonne, Cour St. Joseph, Faubourg St. Antoine) already in 1851 amounted to 5713 francs, and the assets of the association, debts due to them included, to 24,000 francs. Since then the association has become still more flourishing, having resisted all the attempts made to impede its progress. It does the largest business, and is the most considered, of all the houses in Paris in the trade. Its business amounts to 400,000 francs a year.” Its inventory in December 1855 showed, according to M. Villiaumé, a balance of 100,398 francs 90 centimes in favour of the association, but it possessed, he says, in reality, 123,000 francs.

But the most important association of all is that of the Masons. “The Association of Masons was founded August 10th, 1848. Its address is Rue St. Victor, 155. Its number of members is 85, and its auxiliaries from three to four hundred. There are two managers, one for the building department, the other for the pecuniary administration: these are regarded as the ablest master-masons in Paris, and are content with a moderate salary. This association has lately constructed three or four of the most remarkable mansions in the metropolis. Though it does its work more economically than ordinary contractors, yet as it has to give long credits, it is called upon for considerable advances: it prospers, however, as is proved by the dividend of 56 per cent which has been paid this year on its capital, including in the payment those who have associated themselves in its operations. It consists of workmen who bring only their labour, of others who bring their labour and a capital of some sort, and of a third class who do not work, but contribute capital only.

“The masons, in the evening, carry on mutual instruction. They, as well as the arm-chair makers, give medical attendance at the expense of the association, and an allowance to its sick members. They extend their protection over every member in every action of his life. The arm-chair makers will soon each possess a capital of two or three thousand francs, with which to portion their daughters or commence a reserve for future years. Of the masons, some have already 4000 francs, which are left in the common stock.

“Before they were associated, these workmen were poorly clad in jackets and blouses; because, for want of forethought, and still more from want of work, they had never 60 francs beforehand to buy an overcoat. Most of them are now as well dressed as shopkeepers, and sometimes more tastefully. For the workman, having always a credit with the association, can get whatever he wants by signing an order; and the association reimburses itself by fortnightly stoppages,making him save as it were in spite of himself. Some workmen who are not in debt to the concern, sign orders payable to themselves at five months date, to resist the temptation of needless expense. They are put under stoppages of 10 francs per fortnight, and thus at the end of five months they have saved the amount.”

The following table, taken by M. Cherbuliez from a work (Die gewerblichen und wirthschaftlichen Genossenschaften der arbeitenden Classen in England, Frankreich und Deutschland), published at Tübingen in 1860, by Professor Huber (one of the most ardent and high-principled apostles of this kind of cooperation) shows the rapidly progressive growth in prosperity of the Masons' Association up to 1858:—

“Of this last dividend,” says M. Cherbuliez, “30,000 francs were taken for the reserve fund, and the remaining 100,000, divided among the shareholders, gave to each from 500 to 1500 francs, besides their wages or salaries, and their share in the fixed capital of the concern.”

Of the management of the associations generally, M. Villaumé says, “I have been able to satisfy myself personally of the ability of the managers and councils of the operative associations. The managers are far superior in intelligence, in zeal, and even in politeness, to most of the private masters in their respective trades. And among the associated workmen, the fatal habit of intemperance is gradually disappearing, along with the coarseness and rudeness which are the consequence of the too imperfect education of the class.”

Even the association founded by M. Louis Blane, that of the tailors of Clichy, after eighteen months' trial of this system, adopted piece-work. One of the reasons given by them for abandoning the original system is well worth extracting. “Besides the vices I have mentioned, the tailors complained that it caused incessant disputes and quarrels, through the interest which each had in making his neighbours work. Their mutual watchfulness degenerated into a real slavery; nobody had the free control of his time and his actions. These dissensions have disappeared since piece-work was introduced.”—Feugueray, p. 88. One of the most discreditable indications of a low moral condition given of late by part of the English working classes, is the opposition to piece-work. When the payment per piece is not sufficiently high, that is a just ground of objection. But dislike to piece-work in itself, except under mistaken notions, must be dislike to justice and fairness; a desire to cheat, by not giving work in proportion to pay. Piece-work is the perfection of contract; and contract, in all work, and in the most minute detail—the principle of so much pay for so much service, carried out to the utmost extremity—is the system, of all others, in the present state of society and degree of civilization, most favourable to the worker; though most unfavourable to the non-worker who wishes to be paid for being idle.

[This paragraph dates from the 5th ed. (1862), and replaced the following passages of the 3rd (1852): “It is painful to think that these bodies, formed by the heroism and maintained by the public spirit and good sense of the working people of Paris, are in danger of being involved in the same ruin with everything free, popular, or tending to improvement in French institutions. The unprincipled adventurer who has for the present succeeded in reducing France to the political condition of Russia, knows that two or three persons cannot meet together to discuss, though it be only the affairs of a workshop, without danger to his power. He has therefore already suppressed most of the provincial associations, and many of those of Paris, and the remainder, instead of waiting to be dissolved by despotism, are, it is said, preparing to emigrate. Before this calamity overtook France, the associations could be spoken of not with the hope merely, but with positive evidence, of their being able to compete successfully with individual capitalists. ‘The associations,’ says M. Feugueray,” &c., as in the present text, supra, p. 781.

“Though the existing associations may be dissolved, or driven to expatriaté, their experience will not be lost. They have existed long enough to furnish the type of future improvement: they have exemplified the process for bringing about a change in society, which would combine the freedom and independence of the individual,” &c., as in the present text, infra, p. 791.

To the 4th ed. (1857) was added this note: “It appears however from subsequent accounts that in 1854 twenty-five associations still existed in Paris and several in the provinces, and that many of these were in a most flourishing condition. This number is exclusive of Co-operative Stores, which have greatly multiplied, especially in the South of France, and are not understood to be discouraged by the Government.”]

[1865] In the last few years the co-operative movement among the French working classes has taken a fresh start. An interesting account of the Provision Association (Association Alimentaire) of Grenoble has been given in a pamphlet by M. Casimir Périer (Les Sociétés de Co-opération); and in the Times of November 24, 1864, we read the following passage:—“While a certain number of operatives stand out for more wages, or fewer hours of labour, others, who have also seceded, have associated for the purpose of carrying on their respective trades on their own account, and have collected funds for the purchase of instruments of labour. They have founded a society, ‘Société Générale d'Approvisionnement et de Consommation.’ It numbers between 300 and 400 members, who have already opened a ‘co-operative store’ at Passy, which is now within the limits of Paris. They calculate that by May next, fifteen new self-supporting associations of the same kind will be ready to commence operations; so that the number will be for Paris alone from 50 to 60.”

[This paragraph and the subsequent account of the Rochdale Pioneers date from the 5th ed. (1862), though the reference to the Zürich society and to Mr. Plummer in the footnote were added in the 6th ed. (1865). From the 4th (1857) disappeared the following footnote:

“Though this beneficent movement has been so seriously checked in the country in which it originated, it is rapidly spreading in those other countries which have acquired, and still retain, any political freedom. It forms already an important feature in the social improvement which is proceeding at a most rapid pace in Piedmont. In England also, under the impulse given by the writings and personal exertions of a band of friends, chiefly clergymen and barristers, the movement has made some progress. On the 15th of February, 1856, there had been registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies' Act, thirty-three associations, seventeen of which were industrial societies, the remainder being associations for co-operative consumption only: without reckoning Scotland, where, also, these associations were rapidly spreading. It is believed that all such societies are now registered under the Limited Liabilities Act. From later information it appears that the productive associations (excluding the flour mills, which partake more of the nature of stores) have fallen off in number since their first start; and their progress, in the present moral condition of the bulk of the population, cannot possibly be rapid. But those which subsist, continue to do as much business as they ever did: and there are in the North of England instances of brilliant and steadily progressive success. Co-operative stores are increasing both in number and prosperity, especially in the North; and they are the best preparation for a wider application of the principle.”]

Self-help by the People—History of Co-operation in Rochdale. An instructive account of this and other co-operative associations has also been written in the Companion to the Almanack for 1862, by Mr. John Plummer, of Kettering; himself one of the most inspiring examples of mental cultivation and high principle in a self-instructed working man.

“But it is not,” adds Mr. Holyoake, “the brilliancy of commercial activity in which either writer or reader will take the deepest interest; it is in the new and improved spirit animating this intercourse of trade. Buyer and seller meet as friends; there is no overreaching on one side, and no suspicion on the other.... These crowds of humble working men, who never knew before when they put good food in their mouths, whose every dinner was adulterated, whose shoes let in the water a month too soon, whose waistcoats shone with devil's dust, and whose wives wore calico that would not wash, now buy in the markets like millionaires, and as far as pureness of food goes, live like lords.” Far better, probably, in that particular; for assuredly lords are not the customers least cheated in the present race of dishonest competition. “They are weaving their own stuffs, making their own shoes, sewing their own garments, and grinding their own corn. They buy the purest sugar and the best tea, and grind their own coffee. They slaughter their own cattle, and the finest beasts of the land waddle down the streets of Rochdale for the consumption of flannel weavers and cobblers. (Last year the Society advertised for a Provision Agent to make purchases in Ireland, and to devote his whole time to that duty.) When did competition give poor men these advantages? And will any man say that the moral character of these people is not improved under these influences? The teetotallers of Rochdale acknowledge that the Store has made more sober men since it commenced than all their efforts have been able to make in the same time. Husbands who never knew what it was to be out of debt, and poor wives who during forty years never had sixpence uncondemned in their pockets, now possess little stores of money sufficient to build them cottages, and go every week into their own market with money jingling in their pockets; and in that market there is no distrust and no deception; there is no adulteration, and no second prices. The whole atmosphere is honest. Those who serve neither hurry, finesse, nor flatter. They have no interest in chicanery. They have but one duty to perform—that of giving fair measure, full weight, and a pure article. In other parts of the town, where competition is the principle of trade, all the preaching in Rochdale cannot produce moral effects like these.

“As the Store has made no debts, it has incurred no losses; and during thirteen years' transactions, and receipts amounting to 303,852l., it has had no law-suits. The Arbitrators of the Societies, during all their years of office, have never had a case to decide, and are discontented that nobody quarrels.”

[This paragraph added in 6th ed. (1865).]

[This paragraph is from the 5th ed. (1862), and so is the explanation, in the next paragraph but one, of the increase in the productiveness of industry. The argument as to the limitation of the number of distributors was inserted in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[The present text from this point to the point indicated in the next paragraph but two dates from the 6th ed. (1865).]

[The rest of this paragraph dates from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[1865] In this respect also the Rochdale Society has given an example of reason and justice, worthy of the good sense and good feeling manifested in their general proceedings. “The Rochdale Store,” says Mr. Holyoake, “renders incidental but valuable aid towards realizing the civil independence of women. Women may be members of this Store, and vote in its proceedings. Single and married women join. Many married women become members because their husbands will not take the trouble, and others join it in self-defence to prevent the husband from spending their money in drink. The husband cannot withdraw the savings at the Store standing in the wife's name unless she signs the order.”

[This section added in 3rd ed. (1852).]

P. 90.

[“Of their class” was inserted in 4th ed. (1857); and the words of the 3rd ed. (1852), “so unjustly and illiberally railed at—as if they were one iota worse in their motives or practices than other people, in the existing state of society,—” were omitted.]

[See Appendix DD. The Subsequent History of Co-operation.]

[This explanation added in 2nd ed. (1849).]

[So since the 4th ed. (1857). The original text ran: “he has a claim to do as he likes, without being molested or restricted by judges and legislators.”

Wealth of Nations, book v. ch. ii.

[1865] This principle of assessment has been partially adopted by Mr. Gladstone in renewing the income-tax. From 100l., at which the tax begins, up to 200l., the income only pays tax on the excess above 60l.

[For the subsequent history of the Income Tax see Appendix EE.]

[Added in 5th ed. (1862). The original (1848) text ran: “An income of 100l. a year would, as it seems to me, obtain all the relief it is entitled to,” &c.]

[This last sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following sentence of the original text: “To tax all incomes in an equal ratio, would be unjust to those the greater part of whose income is required for necessaries; but I can see no fairer standard of real equality than to take from all persons, whatever may be their amount of fortune, the same arithmetical proportion of their superfluities.”]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original text ran: “but not so as to impair the motives on which society depends for keeping up (not to say increasing) the produce of its labour and capital.]

[This sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. a sentence of the original: “It is partial taxation, which is a mild form of robbery.”]

[This sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. the original sentence: “A just and wise legislation would scrupulously abstain from opposing obstacles to the acquisition of even the largest fortune by honest exertion.”]

[So since 3rd ed. Originally: “and not that, whether they were swift or slow, all should reach the goal at once.”]

[So since 3rd ed. Instead of the second half of this sentence the original ran: “and it is the part of a good government to provide, that, as far as more paramount considerations permit, the inequality of opportunities shall be remedied. When all kinds of useful instruction shall be as accessible as they might be made, and when the cultivated intelligence of the poorer classes, aided so far as necessary by the guidance and co-operation of the state, shall obviate, as it might so well do, the major part of the disabilities attendant on poverty, the inequalities of fortune arising,” &c.]

[At this point were omitted in the 3rd ed. (1852) the following words of the original text: “is as much a part of the right of property as the power of using: that is not in the fullest sense a person's own, which he is not free to bestow on others. But this is,” &c.]

Supra, book ii. ch. 2.

[So since 3rd ed. Originally: “the most eligible mode.”]

[So since 3rd ed. Originally: “would be a violation of first principles.”]

[So since 3rd ed. Originally: “is quite unobjectionable.”]

[The principle of graduation has been applied to inheritance and legacy duties since 1894. See Bastable, Public Finance, 3rd ed. p. 599; Book iv. ch. 9, § 6. For its application to the Income Tax see Appendix EE.]

[The rest of this paragraph,—with the exception of the last sentence, added in the 4th ed. (1857),—was inserted in the 2nd ed. (1849).]

[This paragraph inserted in 5th ed. (1862).]

[Added in 2nd ed. (1849).]

[Added in 3rd ed. (1852) with “greater wants”: changed to “greater necessities” in 5th ed.]

[This paragraph was inserted in the 3rd ed. (1852), in the place of the following passage which was made a footnote, but disappeared from the 5th ed. (1862):

“I say really applied, because (as before remarked in the case of an income not more than sufficient for subsistence) an exemption grounded on an assumed necessity ought not to be claimable by any one who practically emancipates himself from the necessity. One expedient might be, that the Income-Tax Commissioners should allow, as a deduction from income, all bonâ fide payments for insurance on life. This, however, would not provide for the case which most of all deserves consideration, that of persons whose lives are not insurable; nor would it include the case of savings made as a provision for age. The latter case might, perhaps, be met by allowing as a deduction from income all payments made in the purchase of deferred annuities; and the former by remitting income-tax on sums actually settled, and on sums paid into the hands of a public officer, to be invested in securities, and repaid only to the executor or administrator: the tax so remitted, with interest from the date of deposit, being retained (for the prevention of fraud) as a first debt chargeable on the deposit itself, before other debts could be paid out of it; but not demanded if satisfactory proof were given that all debts had been paid from other resources. I throw out these suggestions for the consideration of those whose experience renders them adequate judges of practical difficulties.”]

[This paragraph inserted in 5th ed. (1862).]

[Here the text again dates from the 3rd ed. (1852) down to the proposal of “two different rates of assessment,” from which point the text becomes that of the original edition (1848).]

[1862] Mr. Hubbard, the first person who, as a practical legislator, has attempted the rectification of the income tax on principles of unimpeachable justice, and whose well-conceived plan wants little of being as near an approximation to a just assessment as it is likely that means could be found of carrying into practical effect, proposes a reduction not of a fourth but of a third, in favour of industrial and professional incomes. He fixes on this ratio, on the ground that, independently of all consideration as to what the industrial and professional classes ought to save, the attainable evidence goes to prove that a third of their incomes is what on an average they do save, over and above the proportion saved by other classes. “The savings” (Mr. Hubbard observes) “effected out of incomes derived from invested property are estimated at one-tenth. The savings effected out of industrial incomes are estimated at fourtenths. The amounts which would be assessed under these two classes being nearly equal, the adjustment is simplified by striking off one-tenth on either side, and then reducing by three-tenths, or one-third, the assessable amount of industrial incomes.” Proposed Report (p. xiv. of the Report and Evidence of the Committee of 1861). In such an estimate there must be a large element of conjecture; but in so far as it can be substantiated, it affords a valid ground for practical conclusion which Mr. Hubbard founds on it.

[1848] Several writers on the subject, including Mr. Mill in his Elements of Political Economy, and Mr. M'Culloch in his work on Taxation, have contended that as much should be deducted as would be sufficient to insure the possessor's life for a sum w which would give to his successors for ever an income. equal to what he reserves for himself; since this is what the possessor of heritable property can do without saving at all: in other words, that temporary incomes should be converted into perpetual incomes of equal present value, and taxed as such. If the owners of life-incomes actually did save this large proportion of their income, or even a still larger, I would gladly grant them an exemption from taxation on the whole amount, since, if practical means could be found of doing it, I would exempt savings altogether. But I cannot admit that they have a claim to exemption on the general assumption of their being obliged to save this amount. Owners of life-incomes are not bound to forego the enjoyment of them for the sake of leaving to a perpetual line of successors an independent provision equal to their own temporary one; and no one ever dreams of doing so. Least of all is it to be required or expected from those whose incomes are the fruits of personal exertion, that they should leave to their posterity for ever, without any necessity for exertion, the same incomes which they allow to themselves. All they are bound to do, even for their children, is to place them in circumstances in which they will have favourable chances of earning their own living. To give, however, either to children or to others, by bequest, being a legitimate inclination, which these persons cannot indulge without laying by a part of their income, while the owners of heritable property can; this real inequality in cases where the incomes themselves are equal, should be considered, to a reasonable degree, in the adjustment of taxation, so as to require from both, as nearly as practicable, an equal sacrifice.

[The remainder of this paragraph dates from the 3rd ed. (1852). In the original it was said, “Of the net profits of persons in business one half may perhaps be considered as interest on capital... and the other half as remuneration” &c.; and the paragraph ended thus: “For profits, therefore, an intermediate rate might be adopted, one half of the net income being taxed on the higher scale and the other half on the lower.”]

[Between the last revision of this chapter and the present edition (1909), important changes have been made in the Income Tax:—

• (1) The extension of the system of abatements has made the tax in effect progressive up to incomes of £700.
• (2) It has been made allowable to deduct life insurance premiums actually paid, up to one sixth of the income.
• (3) A distinction has been introduced between “earned” and “unearned” incomes, and a lower rate charged on the former. See Appendix EE].

[See Appendix FF. The Taxation of Land.]

[1849] The same remarks obviously apply to those local taxes, of the peculiar pressure of which on landed property so much has been said by the remnant of the Protectionists. As much of these burthens as is of old standing, ought to be regarded as a prescriptive deduction or reservation, for public purposes, of a portion of the rent. And any recent additions have either been incurred for the benefit of the owners of landed property, or occasioned by their fault: in neither case giving them any just ground of complaint.

[Remaining words of the paragraph added in 4th ed. (1857).]

Supra; pp. 79–88.

[So since the 4th ed. (1857). The original ran: “on the ground that some taxes on necessaries are still kept up, and that almost all the existing taxes on indulgences press more heavily” &c.]

[The third condition was altered in its wording in the 3rd ed. (1852), to give effect to the arguments introduced in that edition in the preceding chapter.]

[So since the 3rd ed. The original ran: “The objection to it, which, with much regret I cannot help regarding as insuperable” &c.]

[“Cannot” replacing in the 3rd ed. (1852) “can never” of the original text.]

A Percentage Tax on Domestic Expenditure to supply the whole of the Public Revenue. By John Revans. Published by Hatchard, in 1847.

[The remainder of this paragraph, together with the next, appeared first in the 4th ed. (1857), and the following passage of the original (1848) was removed: “There is thus no difference between the two component elements of house-rent, in respect to the incidence of the tax. Both alike fall ultimately on the occupier: while, in both alike, if the occupier in consequence reduces his demand by contenting himself with inferior accommodation, that is, if he prefers saving his tax from house-rent to saving it from other parts of his expenditure, he indirectly lowers ground-rent, or retards its increase; just as a diminished consumption of agricultural produce, by making cultivation retrograde, would lower ordinary rent.”]

[1852] Another common objection is that large and expensive accommodation is often required, not as a residence, but for business. But it is an admitted principle that buildings or portions of buildings occupied exclusively for business, such as shops, warehouses, or manufactories, ought to be exempted from house-tax. The plea that persons in business may be compelled to live in situations, such as the great thoroughfares of London, where house-rent is at a monopoly rate, seems to me unworthy of regard; since no one does so but because the extra profit, which he expects to derive from the situation, is more than an equivalent to him for the extra cost. But in any case, the bulk of the tax on this extra rent will not fall on him, but on the ground-landlord.

[1848] It has been also objected that house-rent in the rural districts is much lower than in towns, and lower in some towns and in some rural districts than in others: so that a tax proportioned to it would have a corresponding inequality of pressure. To this, however, it may be answered, that in places where house-rent is low persons of the same amount of income usually live in larger and better houses, and thus expend in house-rent more nearly the same proportion of their incomes than might at first sight appear. Or if not, the probability will be, that many of them live in those places precisely because they are too poor to live elsewhere, and have therefore the strongest claim to be taxed lightly. In some cases, it is precisely because the people are poor that house-rent remains low.

[1865] It is true, this does not constitute, as at first sight it appears to do, a case of taking more out of the pockets of the people than the state receives; since, if the state needs the advance, and gets it in this manner, it can dispense with an equivalent amount of borrowing in stock or exchequer bills. But it is more economical that the necessities of the state should be supplied from the disposable capital in the hands of the lending class, than by an artificial addition to the expenses of one or several classes of producers or dealers.

[The reference to “free admission,” &c., inserted in 4th ed. (1857).]

Probably the strongest known instance of a large revenue raised from foreigners by a tax on exports, is the opium trade with China. The high price of the article under the government monopoly (which is equivalent to a high export duty) has so little effect in discouraging its consumption, that it is said to have been occasionally sold in China for as much as its weight in silver.

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original text ran: “and when the contract relates to property the tax rises, though in an irregular manner, with the pecuniary value of the property.”]

[1865] The statement in the text requires modification in the case of countries where the land is owned in small portions. These, being neither a badge of importance, nor in general an object of local attachment, are readily parted with at a small advance on their original cost, with the intention of buying elsewhere; and the desire of acquiring land even on disadvantageous terms is so great as to be little checked by even a high rate of taxation.

[The long footnote in the original edition illustrating the higher rate of stamp duties on smaller contracts, disappeared from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[At this point the following passage remained, with an unimportant verbal alteration, through the first six editions and disappeared in 1871: “In the case of fire insurances, the tax is exactly double the amount of the premium of insurance on common risks; so that the person insuring is obliged by the government to pay for the insurance just three times the value of the risk. If this tax existed in France, we should not see, as we do in some of her provinces, the plate of an insurance company on almost every cottage or hovel. This, indeed, must be ascribed to the provident and calculating habits produced by the dissemination of property through the labouring class: but a tax of so extravagant an amount would be a heavy drag upon any habits of providence.”]

[“Is not” until the 7th ed. (1871).]

[The next sentence of the original text disappeared from the 3rd ed. (1852): “In this country the amount of the duty is moderate, and the abuse of advertising, which is quite as conspicuous as the use, renders the abolition of the tax, though right in principle, a matter of less urgency than it might otherwise be deemed.”]

[The parenthesis added in 7th ed. (1871).]

[See Appendix GG. The Incidence of Taxation.]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). According to the original text, the expenditure on civil and military establishments was “still in many cases unnecessarily profuse, but though many of the items will bear great reduction, others certainly require increase,” and the hope was not held out, as in the parenthesis also inserted further on in the paragraph in the 3rd ed., that retrenchment would provide sufficient means for the new purposes.]

[The present text of the first two sentences of this paragraph dates from the 3rd ed. (1852). The original (1848) ran:

“The decisive objection, however, to raising the whole or the greater part of a large revenue by direct taxes, is the impossibility of assessing them fairly. In the case of an income-tax, I have pointed out that the burthen can never be apportioned with any tolerable approach to fairness upon those whose incomes are derived from a business or profession.”]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran: “in disregarding the inequality and unfairness inseparable from every practicable form of income tax.”]

Some argue that the materials and instruments of all production should be exempt from taxation; but these, when they do not enter into the production of necessaries, seem as proper subjects of taxation as the finished article. It is chiefly with reference to foreign trade that such taxes have been considered injurious. Internationally speaking, they may be looked upon as export duties, and, unless in cases in which an export duty is advisable, they should be accompanied with an equivalent drawback on exportation. But there is no sufficient reason against taxing the materials and instruments used in the production of anything which is itself a fit object of taxation.

“Were we to suppose that diamonds could only be procured from one particular and distant country, and pearls from another, and were the produce of the mines in the former, and of the fishery in the latter, from the operation of natural causes, to become doubly difficult to procure, the effect would merely be that in time half the quantity of diamonds and pearls would be sufficient to mark a certain opulence and rank, that it had before been necessary to employ for that purpose. The same quantity of gold or some commodity reducible at last to labour, would be required to produce the now reduced amount, as the former larger amount. Were the difficulty interposed by the regulations of legislators... . . it could make no difference to the fitness of these articles to serve the purposes of vanity.” Suppose that means were discovered whereby the physiological process which generates the pearl might be induced ad libitum, the result being that the amount of labour expended in procuring each pearl came to be only the five-hundredth part of what it was before. “The ultimate effect of such a change would depend on whether the fishery were free or not. Were it free to all, as pearls could be got simply for the labour of fishing for them, a string of them might be had for a few pence. The very poorest class of society could therefore afford to decorate their persons with them. They would thus soon become extremely vulgar and unfashionable, and so at last valueless. If however we suppose that instead of the fishery being free, the legislator owns and has complete command of the place, where alone pearls are to be procured; as the progress of discovery advanced, he might impose a duty on them equal to the diminution of labour necessary to procure them. They would then be as much esteemed as they were before. What simple beauty they have would remain unchanged. The difficulty to be surmounted in order to obtain them would be different, but equally great, and they would therefore equally serve to mark the opulence of those who possessed them.” The net revenue obtained by such a tax “would not cost the society anything. If not abused in its application, it would be a clear addition of so much to the resources of the community.”—Rae, New Principles of Political Economy, pp. 369–71. [Sociological Theory of Capital, pp. 286–88.]

[So since the 5th ed. (1862). The original (1848) ran: “Among the excise and custom duties now existing in this country, some must, on the principles we have laid down, be altogether condemned.”]

[The footnote added to the 6th ed. (1865) was omitted from the 7th (1871): “Except the shilling per quarter duty on corn, ostensibly for registration, and scarcely felt as a burthen.”]

[So since 5th ed. (1862). In the original: “enormous.”]

Supra, pp. 77–8.

[The concluding words of this paragraph were added in the 4th ed. (1857). At the same time the parenthesis “(in every respect... the tax)” was inserted above; and the words “by the whole of that great fact” were omitted after “was therefore worse.”]

Supra, p. 114.

[Added in 4th ed. (1857).]

[1865] Lord Westbury's recent Act is a material mitigation of this grievous defect in English law, and will probably lead to further improvements.

Supra, pp. 110–2.

Principles of Political Economy, ed. 1843, p. 264. There is much more to the same effect in the more recent treatise by the same author, On the Succession to Properly vacant by Death.

[The concluding words of this paragraph took the place in the 5th ed. (1862) of the following words of the original text: “and English entails are not, in point of fact, much less injurious than those of other countries.”]

[1852] Mr. Cecil Fane, the Commissioner of the Bankruptcy Court, in his evidence before the Committee on the Law of Partnership, says: “I remember a short time ago reading a written statement by two eminent solicitors, who said that they had known many partnership accounts go into Chancery, but that they never knew one come out.... Very few of the persons who would be disposed to engage in partnerships of this kind” (co-operative associations of working men) “have any idea of the truth, namely, that the decision of questions arising amongst partners is really impracticable.

“Do they not know that one partner may rob the other without any possibility of his obtaining redress?—The fact is so; but whether they know it or not, I cannot undertake to say.”

This flagrant injustice is, in Mr. Fane's opinion, wholly attributable to the defects of the tribunal. “My opinion is, that if there is one thing more easy than another, it is the settlement of partnership questions, and for the simple reason, that everything which is done in a partnership is entered in the books; the evidence therefore is at hand; if therefore a rational mode of proceeding were once adopted, the difficulty would altogether vanish.”—Minutes of Evidence annexed to the Report of the Select Committee on the Law of Partnership (1851), pp. 85–7.

Report, ut supra, p. 167.

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). In the original: “this necessity is done away, and the formalities which have been substituted for it are not sufficiently onerous to be very much of an impediment to such undertakings.”]

[The comment: “and this liberty, in England, they cannot now be fairly said not to have,” (“though they have had it but for a little more than three years,” omitted in 2nd ed. 1849), was dropt out of the 3rd ed.]

[“Though less, I believe, owing to the defects of the law than to those of the courts of judicature”; omitted in 3rd ed.]

[So since 4th ed. (1857). In the original: “which it absolutely disallows, and which can still be only” &c. “Until lately” was inserted in the 3rd ed. in the next paragraph.]

See the Report already referred to, pp. 145–158.

[So since the 5th ed. (1862). The addition, as made in the 3rd ed. (1852), began: “It has however been proved by the evidence of several experienced witnesses before a late committee of the House of Commons that associations” &c. The original text, after “improper hazards” went on: “Admitting that this is one of the disadvantages of such associations, it is a consideration of more importance” &c.]

The quotation is from a translation published by Mr. H. C. Carey, in an American periodical, Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, for May and June 1845.

[They have been allowed since 1908. See Appendix HH. Company and Partnership Law.]

[1852] “There has been a great deal of commiseration professed,” says Mr. Duncan, solicitor, “towards the poor inventor; he has been oppressed by the high cost of patents; but his chief oppression has been the partnership law, which prevents his getting any one to help him to develop his invention. He is a poor man, and therefore cannot give security to a creditor; no one will lend him money; the rate of interest offered, however high it may be, is not an attraction. But if by the alteration of the law he could allow capitalists to take an interest with him and share the profits, while the risk should be confined to the capital they embarked, there is very little doubt at all that he would frequently get assistance from capitalists; whereas at the present moment, with the law as it stands, he is completely destroyed, and his invention is useless to him; he struggles month after month; he applies again and again to the capitalists without avail. I know it practically in two or three cases of patented inventions; especially one where parties with capital were desirous of entering into an undertaking of great moment in Liverpool, but five or six different gentlemen were deterred from doing so, all feeling the strongest objection to what each one called the cursed partnership law.”—Report, p. 155.

Mr. Fane says, “In the course of my professional life, as a Commissioner of the Court of Bankruptcy, I have learned that the most unfortunate man in the world is an inventor. The difficulty which an inventor finds in getting at capital involves him in all sorts of embarrassments, and he ultimately is for the most part a ruined man, and somebody else gets possession of his invention.”—Ib. p. 82.

[1865] It has been found possible to effect this through the Limited Liability Act, by erecting the capitalist and his workpeople into a Limited Company; as proposed by Messrs. Briggs (supra, p. 771).

[1862] By an Act of the year 1852, called the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, for which the nation is indebted to the public-spirited exertions of Mr. Slaney, industrial associations of working people are admitted to the statutory privileges of Friendly Societies. This not only exempts them from the formalities applicable to joint-stock companies, but provides for the settlement of disputes among the partners without recourse to the Court of Chancery. There are still some defects in the provisions of this Act, which hamper the proceedings of the Societies in several respects; as is pointed out in the Almanack of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers for 1861.

In a note appended to his translation of M. Coquelin's paper.

[This sentence replaced in the 6th ed. (1865) the comment of the original: “and I concur in thinking that to this conclusion science and legislation must ultimately come.”]

[The original parenthesis “(and is indeed little better than a timid shrinking from the infliction of anything like pain, next neighbour to the cowardice which shrinks from unnecessary endurance of it)” was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[So since the 5th ed. (1862). The original ran: “Everything... has been gradually relaxed and much of it entirely got rid of. Because insolvency was formerly treated as if it were necessarily a crime, everything is now done to make it, if possible, not even a misfortune.” The present reference to an opposite movement “by a recent enactment” was introduced in the 3rd ed. (1852), and spoken of as “partial but very salutary.”]

[So since the 3rd ed. (1852). The original ran: “In depriving creditors of this instrument, the law has not furnished them with a sufficient equivalent”: and went on as follows: “And it is seldom difficult for a dishonest debtor, by an understanding with one or more of his creditors, or by means of pretended creditors set up for the purpose, to abstract a part, perhaps the greatest part, of his assets, from the general fund, through the forms of the law itself. The facility and frequency of such frauds are a subject of much complaint, and their prevention demands a vigorous effort of the legislature, under the guidance of judicious persons practically conversant with the subject.”]

[So since the 3rd ed. The original ran: “The humanitarians do not deny that what is technically... pay, may reasonably, when detected, be” &c.]

From a volume published in 1845, entitled, Credit the Life of Commerce, by J. H. Elliott.

Pp. 50–1.

The following extracts from the French Code de Commerce (the translation is that of Mr. Fane) show the great extent to which the just distinctions are made, and the proper investigations provided for, by French law. The word banqueroute, which can only be translated by bankruptcy, is, however, confined in France to culpable insolvency, which is distinguished into simple bankruptcy and fraudulent bankruptcy. The following are cases of simple bankruptcy:—

“Every insolvent who, in the investigation of his affairs, shall appear chargeable with one or more of the following offences, shall be proceeded against as a simple bankrupt:—

“If his house expenses, which he is bound to enter regularly in a day-book, appear excessive:

“If he had spent considerable sums at play, or in operations of pure hazard:

“If it shall appear that he has borrowed largely, or resold merchandize at a loss, or below the current price, after it appeared by his last account-taking that his debts exceeded his assets by one-half:

“If he has issued negotiable securities to three times the amount of his available assets, according to his last account-taking.

“The following may also be proceeded against as simple bankrupts:—

“He who has not declared his own insolvency in the manner prescribed by law:

“He who has not come in and surrendered within the time limited, having no legitimate excuse for his absence:

“He who either produces no books at all, or produces such as have been irregularly kept, and this although the irregularities may not indicate fraud.”

The penalty for “simple bankruptcy” is imprisonment for a term of not less than one month, nor more than two years. The following are cases of fraudulent bankruptcy, of which the punishment is travaux forcés (the galleys) for a term:—

“If he has attempted to account for his property by fictitious expenses and losses, or if he does not fully account for all his receipts:

“If he has fraudulently concealed any sum of money or any debt due to him, or any merchandize or other movables:

“If he has made fraudulent sales or gifts of his property:

“If he has allowed fictitious debts to be proved against his estate:

“If he has been entrusted with property, either merely to keep, or with special directions as to its use, and has nevertheless appropriated it to his own use:

“If he has purchased real property in a borrowed name:

“If he has concealed his books.

“The following may also be proceeded against in a similar way:—

“He who has not kept books, or whose books shall not exhibit his real situation as regards his debts and credits:

“He who, having obtained a protection (sauf-conduit), shall not have duly attended.”

These various provisions relate only to commercial insolvency. The laws in regard to ordinary debts are considerably more rigorous to the debtor.

Supra, pp. 79 et seqq.

[The “will” of the original (1848) text was changed into “might” in the 7th ed. (1871), and “it is essential that” was inserted in the next sentence.]

[The next three paragraphs were added in the 6th ed. (1865).]

To this Mr. Carey would reply (indeed he has already so replied in advance) that of all commodities manure is the least susceptible of being conveyed to a distance. This is true of sewage, and of stable manure, but not true of the ingredients to which those manures owe their efficiency. These, on the contrary, are chiefly substances containing great fertilizing power in small bulk; substances of which the human body requires but a small quantity, and hence peculiarly susceptible of being imported; the mineral alkalics and the phosphates. The question indeed mainly concerns the phosphates, for of the alkalies, soda is procurable everywhere; while potass, being one of the constituents of granite and the other feldspathic rocks, exists in many subsoils, by whose progressive decomposition it is renewed, a large quantity also being brought down in the deposits of rivers. As for the phosphates, they, in the very convenient form of pulverized bones, are a regular article of commerce, largely imported into England; as they are sure to be into any country where the conditions of industry make it worth while to pay the price.

[See Appendix II. Protection.]

[See Appendix JJ. Usury Laws.]

[The remainder of this paragraph was added in the 5th ed. (1862).]

[So since 7th ed. (1871). Originally (1848) “not much more than twenty years ago, and is in full vigour at this day in some other countries.”]

[This and the preceding sentence replaced, but not until the 7th ed. (1871), the following sentence of the original (1848) text: “But if they aimed at obtaining actually higher wages than the rate fixed by demand and supply—the rate which distributes the whole circulating capital of the country among the entire working population—this could only be accomplished by keeping a part of their number permanently out of employment.”]

[So since 3rd ed. (1852). Originally: “ought to be regarded as a benefit.”]

[This and the following paragraph were added in the 3rd ed. (1852); and the sentence of the original text, “Combinations to keep up wages are therefore not only permissible but useful, wherever really calculated to have that effect,” was removed at this point.]

[This paragraph was added in the 5th ed. (1862). The second sentence, however, then ran: “I grant that a strike is wrong whenever it is foolish, and it is foolish whenever it attempts to raise wages above that market rate which is rendered possible by supply and demand. But demand and supply are not physical agencies,” &c. The present text dates from the 7th ed. (1871).]

Supra, book v. chap. vii.

[At this point the following passage of the original text was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852): “and a limitation of the number of persons in employment may be a necessary condition of these. Combinations, therefore, not to work for less than certain wages, or for more than a certain number of hours, or even not to work for a master who employs more than a certain number of apprentices, are, when voluntary on the part of all who engage in them, not only unexceptionable, but would be desirable, were it not that they almost always fail of their effect.”]

[This sentence was inserted in the 3rd ed.]

[So since the 5th ed. (1862). In the earlier editions: “avowed object.”]

[The rest of this paragraph dates from the 3rd ed. The first edition (1848) read: “Every society which exacts from its members obedience to rules of this description, and endeavours to enforce compliance with them on the part of employers by refusal to work, is a public nuisance. Whether the law would be warranted in making the formation of such associations illegal and punishable, depends upon the difficult question of the legitimate bounds of constitutional liberty. What are the proper limits to the right of association? To associate for the purpose of violating the law could not of course be tolerated under any government. But among the numerous acts which, although mischievous in themselves, the law ought not to prohibit from being done by individuals, are there not some which are rendered so much more mischievous when people combine to do them, that the legislature ought to prohibit the combination, though not the act itself? When these questions have been philosophically answered, which belongs to a different branch of social philosophy from the present, it may be determined whether the kind of associations here treated of can be a proper subject of any other than merely moral repression.”

But in the 2nd ed. (1849) this had already been replaced by: “Any society which exacts from its members obedience to rules of this description, and endeavours to enforce compliance with them on the part of employers by refusal to work, incurs the inconveniences of Communism, without getting rid of any of those of individual property. It does not follow, however, that the law would be warranted” &c., as at present.]

[1862] Whoever desires to understand the question of Trade Combinations as seen from the point of view of the working people, should make himself acquainted with a pamphlet published in 1860, under the title Trades Unions and Strikes, their Philosophy and Intention, by T. J. Dunning, Secretary to the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders. There are many opinions in this able tract in which I only partially, and some in which I do not at all, coincide. But there are also many sound arguments, and an instructive exposure of the common fallacies of opponents. Readers of other classes will see with surprise, not only how great a portion of truth the Unions have on their side, but how much less flagrant and condemnable even their errors appear, when seen under the aspect in which it is only natural that the working classes should themselves regard them.

[So in 7th ed. (1871). In 1st (1848): “two or three.”]

Supra, book v. ch. 1.

The only cases in which government agency involves nothing of a compulsory nature, are the rare cases in which, without any artificial monopoly, it pays its own expenses. A bridge built with public money, on which tolls are collected sufficient to pay not only all current expenses, but the interest of the original outlay, is one case in point. The government railways in Belgium and Germany are another example. The Post Office, if its monopoly were abolished and it still paid its expenses, would be another.

[So since 5th ed. (1862). Originally: “and.”]

De la Liberté du Travail, vol. i. pp. 353–4.

I quote at second hand, from Mr. Carey's Essay on the Rate of Wages, pp. 195–6.

In opposition to these opinions, a writer, with whom on many points I agree, but whose hostility to government intervention seems to me too indiscriminate and unqualified, M. Dunoyer, observes, that instruction, however good in itself, can only be useful to the public in so far as they are willing to receive it, and that the best proof that the instruction is suitable to their wants is its success as a pecuniary enterprise. This argument seems no more conclusive respecting instruction for the mind, than it would be respecting medicine for the body. No medicine will do the patient any good if he cannot be induced to take it; but we are not bound to admit as a corollary from this, that the patient will select the right medicine without assistance. Is it not probable that a recommendation, from any quarter which he respects, may induce him to accept a better medicine than he would spontaneously have chosen ? This is, in respect to education, the very point in debate. Without doubt, instruction which is so far in advance of the people that they cannot be induced to avail themselves of it, is to them of no more worth than if it did not exist. But between what they spontaneously choose, and what they will refuse to accept when offered, there is a breadth of interval proportioned to their deference for the recommender. Besides, a thing of which the public are bad judges may require to be shown to them and pressed on their attention for a long time, and to prove its advantages by long experience, before they learn to appreciate it, yet they may learn at last; which they might never have done, if the thing had not been thus obtruded upon them in act, but only recommended in theory. Now, a pecuniary speculation cannot wait years, or perhaps generations for success; it must succeed rapidly, or not at all. Another consideration which M. Dunoyer seems to have overlooked, is, that institutions and modes of tuition which never could be made sufficiently popular to repay, with a profit, the expenses incurred on them, may be invaluable to the many by giving the highest quality of education to the few, and keeping up the perpetual succession of superior minds, by whom knowledge is advanced, and the community urged forward in civilization.

[The paragraph originally went on: “but which it might be proper to demand, merely in recognition of a principle: the remainder of the cost to be defrayed, as in Scotland, by a local rate, that the inhabitants of the locality might have a greater interest in watching over the management, and checking negligence and abuse.” These words were omitted in the 4th ed. (1857).]

[1852] The practice of the English law with respect to insane persons, especially on the all-important point of the ascertainment of insanity, most urgently demands reform. At present no persons, whose property is worth coveting, and whose nearest relations are unscrupulous, or on bad terms with them, are secure against a commission of lunacy. At the instance of the persons who would profit by their being declared insane, a jury may be impanelled and an investigation held at the expense of the property, in which all their personal peculiarities, with all the additions made by the lying gossip of low servants, are poured into the credulous ears of twelve petty shopkeepers, ignorant of all ways of life except those of their own class, and regarding every trait of individuality in character or taste as eccentricity, and all eccentricity as either insanity or wickedness. If this sapient tribunal gives the desired verdict, the property is handed over to perhaps the last persons whom the rightful owner would have desired or suffered to possess it. Some recent instances of this kind of investigation have been a scandal to the administration of justice. Whatever other changes in this branch of law may be made, two at least are imperative: first, that, as in other legal proceedings, the expenses should not be borne by the person on trial, but by the promoters of the inquiry, subject to recovery of costs in case of success: and secondly, that the property of a person declared insane should in no case be made over to heirs while the proprietor is alive, but should be managed by a public officer until his death or recovery.

[“Acts” since 7th ed. (1871). Originally (1848): “the recent Factory Act.”]

[See Appendix KK. The Factory Acts.]

[This last sentence added in 3rd ed. (1852).]

A parallel case may be found in the distaste for politics, and absence of public spirit, by which women, as a class, are characterized in the present state of society, and which is often felt and complained of by political reformers, without, in general, making them willing to recognise, or desirous to remove, its cause. It obviously arises from their being taught, both by institutions and by the whole of their education, to regard themselves as entirely apart from politics. Wherever they have been politicians, they have shown as great interest in the subject, and as great aptitude for it, according to the spirit of their time, as the men with whom they were contemporaries; in that period of history (for example) in which Isabella of Castile and Elizabeth of England were, not rare exceptions, but merely brilliant examples of a spirit and capacity very largely diffused among women of high station and cultivation in Europe.

[The original “twelve to ten” (1848) was changed to the present text, and the consequent alterations made in the rest of the paragraph, in the 5th ed. (1862).]

[“Which has never... recommend” was added in the 5th ed. (1862). A Nine Hours Movement made its appearance in the 70's. The hours of labour for women, young persons and children in textile factories were reduced to 56½ per week by the Act of 1874, and to 55½ by the Act of 1901. A Miners' Eight Hours Act was passed in 1908.]

[The remark in the original, “and to get rid of this is important, even as a matter of justice,” was omitted from the 3rd ed. (1852).]

[See Appendix LL. The Poor Law.]

[The exception was added in the 5th ed. (1862). In the next line “cannot have” had been changed into “rarely has” in the 3rd (1852).]

[“The price of land being generally fixed too low and” omitted from 3rd ed. (1852).]

[1857] The objections which have been made, with so much virulence, in some of these colonies, to the Wakefield system, apply, in so far as they have any validity, not to the principle, but to some provisions which are no part of the system, and have been most unnecessarily and improperly engrafted on it; such as the offering only a limited quantity of land for sale, and that by auction, and in lots of not less than 640 acres, instead of selling all land which is asked for, and allowing to the buyer unlimited freedom of choice, both as to quantity and situation, at a fixed price.

[From the 3rd ed. was omitted the following passage of the original (1848): “The oldest of the Wakefield colonies, South Australia, is scarcely” (in 2nd ed. (1849), “little more than”) “twelve years old; Port Philip” (Victoria) “is still more recent; and they are probably at this moment the two places, in the known world, where labour on the one hand, and capital on the other, are the most highly remunerated.”]

[The reference to Irish emigration was added in the 3rd ed. (1852), and concluded with this sentence: “While the stream of this emigration continues flowing, as broad and deep as at present, the principal office required from government would be to direct a portion of it to quarters (such as Australia) where, both for local and national interests, it is most of all required, but which it does not sufficiently reach in its spontaneous course.” This was replaced in the 4th ed. (1857) by the reference to emigration to the gold fields. The slackening of the stream was noticed in the 5th ed. (1862), and the partial revival of Irish emigration in the 6th ed. (1865).]

[See Appendix MM. Limits of the Sphere of Government.]