In the old feud between the man of experience and the man of theory, it sometimes happens that the former obtains a triumph by the mere activity of the latter. Cases have been known where the theorist, in the clarifying and perfecting his own theory, has argued himself round to those very truths which his empirical antagonist had held to with a firm though less reasoning faith. He stood to his post; the stream of knowledge seemed to be flowing past him, and those who floated on it laughed at his stationary figure as they left him behind. Nevertheless he stood still; and by-and-by this meandering stream, with the busy crew that navigated it, after many a turn and many a curve, have returned to the very spot where he had made his obstinate halt.

This has been illustrated, and we venture to say will be illustrated still further, in the progress of the science of political economy. The man of experience has been taunted for his obstinacy and blindness in adhering to something which he called common sense and matter of fact; and behold! the scientific economist, in the course of his own theorising, is returning to those very positions from which he has been endeavouring to drive his opponent. The present work of Mr J. S. Mill, the latest and most complete exposition of the most advanced doctrines of the political economists, manifests, on more than one occasion, this retrograde progress,—demolishing, on the ground of still more scientific principles—the value of which time, however, must test—those arguments by which his scientific predecessors had attempted to mislead the man of experience or of empirical knowledge.

When, moreover, we consider, that the errors of the political economist are not allowed to remain mere errors of theory, but are pushed forward into practice, thrust immediately into the vital interests of the community, we must admit that never was the man of experience and common sense more fully justified in holding back and looking long before he yielded assent to his new teachers. Stranger paradoxes were never broached than some that have lived their day in this science; and paradoxes as they were, they claimed immediately their share of influence in our legislative measures. A learned professor, a luminary of the science, demonstrated that absenteeism could have nothing whatever to do with the poverty of Ireland. So the Greek sophist demonstrated that Achilles could never catch the tortoise. But the Greek was the more reasonable of the two: he required of no one to stake his fortune on the issue of the race. The professor of political economy not only teaches his sophism—he would have us back his tortoise.

Although it has been our irksome task to oppose the application to practice of half-formed theories, ill made up, and most dangerously incomplete, yet we surely need not say that we take a genuine interest in the approximation to a sound and trustworthy state of the science of political economy. That, notwithstanding its obliquities, the new science has rendered a substantial service to mankind, and is calculated, when thoroughly understood, to render still greater service—that it embraces topics of the widest and most permanent interest, and that intellects of the highest order have been worthily occupied in their investigation—this, let no strain of observation in which from time to time we have indulged, be thought to deny or controvert. To explain the complicate machinery of a modern commercial state, is assuredly one of the most useful tasks, and by no means the most easy, to which a reflective mind could address itself. When Adam Smith, leaving the arena of metaphysical inquiry, in which he had honourably distinguished himself, turned his analytic powers to the examination of the common-place yet intricate affairs of that commercial community in which he lived, he acted in the same enlightened spirit which led Bacon to demand of philosophy, that she should leave listening to the echoes of the school-room, and walk abroad into nature, amongst things and realities. The author of The Wealth of Nations, like him of the Novum Organum, struck out a new path of wisely utilitarian thinking. If the one led philosophy into the real world of nature and her daily phenomena, the other conducted her into a world still more novel to her footsteps—the world of commerce, of buying and selling, of manufacture and exchange. It may, indeed, be said of both these men, that in their leading and most valuable tenets, they were but announcing the claims of common sense; and that, in doing this, they had from time to time, and in utterances more or less distinct, been anticipated by others. But the cause of common sense is, after all, the very last which obtains a fair and potent advocacy; and the philosophy of one age is always destined, if it be true, to become the common sense of succeeding ages; and it detracts very little from the merit of an eminent writer who has been the means of impressing any great truth upon the minds of men, either at home or abroad, that others had obtained a view of it also, and given to it an imperfect and less effective enunciation. Let due honour, therefore, be paid to our countryman Adam Smith, the founder, on this side of the Channel at least, of the science of political economy—honour to him who turned a most keen intellect, sharpened by those metaphysical studies for which his fragmentary Essays, as well as and still more than his Theory of Moral Sentiments, prove him to have been eminently qualified—turned it from these captivating subtleties to inquiries into the causes, actually in operation, of the prosperity of a commercial people. He left these regions of mazy labyrinthine thought, which, if not as beautiful as the enchanted gardens in which Tasso imprisoned his knight, are, to a certain order of spirits, quite as ensnaring, to look into the mystery of bills of exchange, of systems of banking, customs, and the currency. Be it admitted at once, and ungrudgingly, that Adam Smith and some of his successors have done a substantial service in assisting to explain the machinery of society—the organisation, so to speak, of a commercial body. Until this is done, and done thoroughly, no proposed measure of legislation, and no course of conduct voluntarily adopted by the people, can be seen in all its bearings; the true causes of the most immediate and pressing evils can never be certainly known, and, of course, the efficient remedies can never be applied. Our main quarrel—though we have many—with the political economists is on this ground—that, having constructed a theory explanatory of the wealth of nations, they have wished to enforce this upon our legislature, as if it had embraced all the causes which conspire to the wellbeing of nations; as if wealth and wellbeing were synonymous. Having determined the state of things best fitted to procure, in general, the greatest aggregate amount of riches, they have proceeded to deal with a people as if it were a corporate body, whose sole object was to increase the total amount of its possessions. They have overlooked the equally vital questions concerning the distribution of these possessions, and of the various employments of mankind. Full of their leading idea, and accustomed to abstractions and generalities, they forget the individual, and appear to treat their subject as if the aggregate wealth of a community were to be enjoyed in some aggregate manner, and a sum-total of possessions would represent the comforts and enjoyments of its several members. To know what measures tend to increase the national wealth is undoubtedly of great importance, but it is not all; the theory of riches, or of commerce, is not the theory of society.

As political economy arose with a metaphysician, and has been prosecuted by men of the same abstract turn of mind, it very soon aspired to the philosophical character of a science. It laid down its laws. But it has not always been seen that the harmonious and systematic form it has been able to assume was owing to an arbitrary division of social topics, which in their nature, and in their operation on human welfare, are inextricably combined. They laid down laws, which could only be considered such by obstinately refusing to look beyond a certain number of isolated facts; and they persisted in governing mankind according to laws obtained by this imperfect generalisation.

With regard to the main doctrine of the political economists, that of free-trade—their advocacy of unfettered industry, whether working for the home or foreign market—one sees plainly that there is a truth here. Looking at the matter abstractedly from other considerations, what doctrine could be more reasonable or more benign than that which instructs the separate communities of mankind to throw aside all commercial jealousies, all unnecessary heartburnings—to throw down their barriers, their custom-houses, their preventive stations—to let the commerce and industry of the world be free, so that the peace of the world, as well as the wealth of nations, would be secured and advanced? What better doctrine could be taught than this? Did not FÉnÉlon, mildest and best of archbishops, reasoning from the dictates of his own Christian conscience, arrive at the same conclusion as the philosophical economist? What better, we repeat, could be taught than a doctrine which tends to make all nations as one people, and the most wealthy people possible? But hold a while. Take the microscope, and deign to look somewhat closer at the little interests of the many little men that constitute a nation. Condescend to inquire, before you change the currents of wealth and industry, (though to increase both,) into what hands the wealth is to flow, and what the class of labourers you diminish or multiply. Industry free! Good. But is the capitalist to be permitted, at all times, to gather round him and his machinery what multitudes of workmen he pleases—workmen who are to breed up families dependent for their subsistence on the success of some gigantic and hazardous enterprise? Is he to be allowed, under all circumstances, to do this, and give the state no guarantee for the lives of these men and women and children, but what it obtains from his perhaps too sanguine calculations of his own profit and loss? Is it any consolation that he bankrupts himself in ruining others, and adding immensely to a pauper population? Commerce free! Good. It will increase your imports, and multiply by an advantageous exchange the products of your industry. But what if your measure to promote this freedom of commerce foster a mode of industry at home essentially of a precarious nature, and attended with fearful political and social dangers, at the expense of other modes of industry of a more permanent, stable, peaceful character—must nothing still be heard of but free commerce? Must the utmost amount of products, at all hazard, be obtained, whatever the mode of industry that earn it, or the fate of those called into existence by the overgrown manufacture you encourage? Is it no matter how won, or who enjoys? Is the only question that the wealth be there? What if England, by carrying out, without pause or exception, the doctrine of free-trade, should aggravate the most alarming symptoms of her present social condition—must this law of the political economist be still, with unmitigated strictness, urged upon her? She pleads for exception, for delay; but the political economist will not see the grounds of her plea—will not recognise her reasons for exception: full of his partial science, which has been made to occupy too large a portion of his field of vision, he cannot see them.

England, by a series of well-known mechanical inventions, extended in a surprising manner her manufacture of cotton, and with it her foreign commerce in this article. It is unnecessary to repeat figures that we have given before, or which may be found in any statistical tables. Enough that her operations here have been on a quite gigantic scale. Recollect that this is the channel into which must run the industry and capital which your measures of free-trade may drive from their old accustomed course. Look for a moment at the nature of this species of industry, and ask whether it would be wise to foster and augment it at the expense of other more ordinary and less precarious modes of earning a subsistence. An enormous population is brought together, educated, so far as their industrial habits are concerned, in no independent labour, but taught merely to perform a part in the great machinery of a cotton-mill, themselves a part of that machinery, and trusting, they and their families, for their necessary bread, to the successful sale of the great stock of goods, the annual amount of which they are annually increasing. Although the home market may absorb the greatest portion of these goods, yet the foreign market takes so considerable a share, that any derangement of the external commerce throws a large number of this densely-congregated multitude out of employment. Is there nothing peculiarly hazardous in this condition of things? Granted that nothing can, or ought to be done to restrain the enterprising capitalist from speculating too freely with the lives of men, is it a state of things to be aggravated? Now, at this juncture comes the apostle of free-trade, and demands (for illustration's sake) that French boots and shoes be admitted duty-free. He employs the well-known, and, to its own legitimate extent, unanswerable argument of the political economist. He tells us that, by so doing, we shall purchase better and cheaper boots and shoes, and sell more of our cotton; that, in short, by manufacturing more cotton goods, in which we marvellously excel, we shall procure better boots and shoes than by the old process of making them ourselves. We are evidently the gainers. Let us see the gain. The gentleman pays something less for his shoes, and is somewhat more luxuriously shod. The owner of the cotton-mill, too, finds that trade is looking up. To balance this, we have so many shoemakers driven from their employment—the very steady one of making shoes for their own countrymen—and added to the number of men working at cotton-mills for the foreign market,—a mode of industry which we know, by painful experience, to be precarious in the extreme. We describe the superfluous shoemaker as going over directly to the artisans of the factory: we say nothing of the miseries of the middle passage; though in truth this transition is accomplished with pain and difficulty, and after much struggle, and is rather done in the second generation than the first, it being rather the children of the shoemaker that are added to the population of the factory than the shoemaker himself.

We see here that the mere calculation of profit and loss, such as it might figure in a debtor and creditor account, would justify the extreme advocate of free-trade. But there are, surely, other considerations which may properly rank a little higher than such a tradesman's balance of profit and loss; we are surely allowed to follow our inquiries a little further, and ask who is enriched, and how? and what branch of industry is promoted, and what destroyed or curtailed? It is not our object here to contend against what is called the factory system—we accept it with its evil and its good; we are not calling for measures directly hostile to it; but we certainly should exclaim against the sacrifice of a branch of household, stable, permanent industry, to be compensated by an increase in this already enormous system of factory labour, which, together with much good, brings with it so dreadfully precarious a condition of thousands and tens of thousands of men. The political economist has proved that free-trade is the condition under which the industry of man, so far as the amount of its products is concerned, can be exercised with the greatest advantage: he has established this principle; it is an important one, and we thank him for its lucid exposition; but he shall be no legislator of ours until he has learned to submit his principle to wise exceptions, until he has learned to estimate the first necessity of steady and well-remunerated employment to the labourer, until he is prepared, in short, to give their due weight to other considerations besides that of multiplying the gross products of human industry.

We have been viewing the question of free-trade from the position of an opulent manufacturing people—from the position of England, in short—and we see that there may be ground even here for exception. But the case is much stronger, and the claim for exception still plainer, which might be made out by a less opulent nation, desirous of fostering its own rising manufactures. These wisely refuse a reciprocity of free-trade measures. Even on the mere ground of the increase of national wealth, and without considering the advantage derived from a variety of employments, and a due admixture of a manufacturing population, they are fully justified in their protective policy. The economist will tell them that they deprive themselves of the opportunity of purchasing cheaper and better goods than they can produce. We admit that, for a season, they must forego an advantage of this description; but at the end of a few years how will the account stand? If the protective duty has fostered a home manufactory that would not otherwise have existed, (and this is an assumption which the political economist himself is compelled to admit,) then is there in that country a new industry—then amongst that people is there more labour and less idleness, and therefore more of the fruits of labour. It has created for itself what it otherwise would have had to purchase with its corn and oil.

The political economists love an extreme case. In order to test the universality of the principle of free-trade, we give them the following:—There is a little island somewhere in the Pacific, and it grows corn, and grapes, and the cotton plant. Two or three great ships come annually to this island, bringing a store of Manchester goods, and taking away a portion of the corn and the wine. But the wise men of the island meet and say, Let us learn to make our own cotton into stuff for raiment; so shall we have clothes without parting with our corn and wine. Would the people of the island be very foolish if they consented to wear, for a time, a much coarser raiment, in order that they might practise this new industry, and thus provide themselves with raiment, and keep their provender? We suppose that the same unequal distribution of property is found in our island as in the rest of the world—that there are rich and poor. Now, when a people exchanges its articles of food for articles of clothing, it rarely, if ever, parts with what, to the whole of the people, is a superfluous quantity of food. Those who own large portions of the land have a superfluity of produce, which they exchange for other articles either at home or abroad; but probably no people ever grew a greater quantity of corn, or other grain for food, than it could very willingly have consumed itself, could we conceive it distributed amongst all who had mouths to consume, and half-filled stomachs to stow it away in. Judge, therefore, whether our little island would not, in a few years, be much better off for refusing the visit of the great ships, and setting to work to weave its own cotton into garments. The political economists always talk of so much labour diverted from one employment to another; they seem to have forgotten that there is such a thing as so much idleness converted into so much labour.

In the work of John Stuart Mill, to which we have now to call the attention of our readers, the science of political economy has received its latest and most complete exposition. Nor, as the title itself will inform us, is the work limited to a formal enunciation of abstract principles, (as was the case with the brief compendium of Mr Mill, senior,) but it proceeds to apply those principles to the discussion of some of the most vital and momentous questions with which public opinion is at present occupied. There are things in these volumes, as may easily be conceived, in which we do not concur—views are supported, on some subjects, to which we have been long and notoriously opposed; but there is, in the exposition of its tenets, so accurate a statement, so severe and lucid a reasoning, and, withal, so genuine and manly an interest in the great cause of humanity, that we cannot hesitate a moment in awarding to it a high rank amongst the sterling literature of our country. This magazine has never been slow—it has been second to none—in its hearty recognition of great talent and ability, from whatever quarter of the political horizon these have made their appearance. We were amongst the first to give notice to all whom it concerned of the addition to the students' shelf of the profound and elaborate work, The System of Logic, by the same author. The present is a work of more general interest, yet it has the same severe character. In this, as in his logic, the author has sacrificed nothing deemed by him essential to his task, to the desire of being popular, or the fear of being pronounced dry—the word of most complete condemnation in the present day. Dry, however, no person who takes an interest in the actual condition and prospects of society, can possibly find the greater portion of this work. For, as we have already intimated, that which honourably distinguishes it from other professed treatises of political economy is the perpetual, earnest, never-forgotten interest, which accompanies the writer throughout, in the great questions at present mooted with respect to the social condition of man. Mr Mill very wisely refused to limit himself to the mere abstract principles of his science; he descends from them, sometimes as from a vantage ground, into the discussions which most concern and agitate the public mind at the present day; and, if his conclusions are not always, or even generally, such as we can wholly coincide with, there is so penetrating an intelligence in his remarks, and so grave and serious a philanthropy pervading his book, that it would be impossible for the most complete opponent of the work not to rise a gainer from its perusal. From what else can we gain, if not from intercourse with a keen, and full, and sincere mind, whether we have to struggle with it, or to acquiesce in its guidance? There are passages in this work, didactic as its style generally is, which have had on us all the effect of the most thrilling eloquence, from the fine admixture of severe reasoning and earnestness of feeling.

For instance—to give at once an idea of the more elevated tone this utilitarian science has assumed in the work of Mr Mill—it is no little novelty to hear a political economist speak in the following manner of the mere elements of national wealth. The author has been discoursing on that stationary state to which all opulent nations are supposed to tend, wherein, by the diminution of profits, there is little means and no temptation to further accumulation of capital:—

"I cannot," he says, "regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists, of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of humankind, or any thing but one of the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress. The northern and middle states of America are a specimen of this stage of civilisation in very favourable circumstances; having apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities that affect persons of Caucasian race and of the male sex, while the proportion of population to capital and land is such as to insure abundance to every able-bodied member of the community who does not forfeit it by misconduct. They have the six points of Chartism, and no poverty; and all that these advantages do for them is, that the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters. This is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire to assist in realising....

"That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the others into better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that they should rust and stagnate. While minds are coarse, they require coarse stimuli, and let them have them. In the mean time, those who do not accept the present very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the kind of economical progress which usually excites the congratulations of politicians—the mere increase of production and accumulation. For the safety of national independence, it is essential that a country should not fall much behind its neighbours in these things. But in themselves they are of little importance, so long as either the increase of population, or any thing else, prevents the mass of the people from reaping any part of the benefit of them. I know not why it should be matter of congratulation, that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure, except as representative of wealth; or that numbers of individuals should pass over every year from the middle classes into a richer class, or from the class of the occupied rich to that of the unoccupied. It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object; in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution, of which an indispensable means is a stricter restraint on population. Levelling institutions, either of a just or an unjust kind, cannot alone accomplish it; they may lower the heights of society, but they cannot raise the depths."—(Vol. ii. p. 308.)

It will be already seen, from even this brief extract, that the too rapid increase of population presents itself to Mr Mill as the chief, or one of the chief obstacles to human improvement. Without attempting to repeat all that we have at different times urged upon this head, we may at once say here that, in the first place, we never denied, or dreamt of denying, that it was one of the first and most imperative duties of every human being, to be assured that he could provide for a family before he called one into existence. This has been at all times a plain, unquestionable duty, though it has not at all times been clearly understood as such. But, in the second place, we have combated the Malthusian alarm, precisely because we believe that the moral checks to population will be found a sufficient balance to the physical law of increase. We have repudiated the idea that there is, in the shape of the law of population, a constant enemy to human improvement, convinced that this law will be found to be in perfect harmony with all other laws that regulate the destiny of man. A certain pressure of population on the means of subsistence has been always recognised as an element necessary to the progress of society—especially at that early stage when bare subsistence is the sole motive for industry. When not only to live, but to live well, becomes the ruling motive of men, then come into play the various moral checks arising from prudence, vanity, and duty. But the mere thinness of population will not, in the first place, induce a high standard of comfortable subsistence. It is a delusion to suppose that the low standard of comfort and enjoyment prevailing amongst the multitude is the result of excessive population. If Neapolitan lazzaroni are contented with macaroni and sunshine, it matters not whether their numbers are five hundred or five thousand, they will labour for nothing beyond their macaroni. We would challenge the political economist to prove that in England, at this present time, or in any country of Europe, the prevailing standard of comfort amongst the working classes has been permanently determined by the amount of population. This standard is slowly rising, from better education, mechanical inventions, and other causes, and it will ultimately control the increase of population. That wages occasionally suffer a lamentable depression, owing to the numbers of any one class of workmen, is a fact which does not touch the point at issue. We say that, whether a population be dense or rare, you must first excite, by education and the example of a higher class, a certain taste for comfort, for a cleanly and orderly mode of life, amongst the mass of labouring men; that until this taste is called forth, it would be in vain to offer high wages, for men would only work one half the week, and spend the other half in idleness and coarse intemperance; and that, this taste once called forth, there will be no fear of the class of men who possess it being permanently degraded by over-population, unless the excess of population were derived from some neighbouring country, unhappily far behind it in the race of civilisation.

We now continue our quotation.

"There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for an immense increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving and capital to increase. But, although it may be innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the more populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude, in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world, with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature—with every rood of land brought into cultivation which is capable of growing food for human beings—every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up—all quadrupeds or birds, which are not domesticated for man's use, exterminated as his rivals for food—every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a shrub or flower could grow, without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before necessity compels them to it.

"It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference—that, instead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging labour. Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the daily toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make large fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes; but they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of a judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature, by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot."—(Vol. ii. p. 311.)

These are not the times when truth is to be withheld because it is disagreeable. There is a morality connected with wealth, its uses and abuses, not enough taught, certainly not enough understood. The rich man, who will not learn that there is a duty inseparable from his riches, is no better fitted for the times that are coming down upon us, than the poor man who has not learned that patience is a duty peculiarly imposed upon him, and that the ruin of others, and the general panic which his violence may create, will inevitably add to the hardships and privations he already has to endure. If society demands of the poor man that he endure these evils of his lot, rather than desperately bring down ruin upon all, himself included; surely society must also demand of the rich man that he make the best use possible of his wealth, so that his weaker brother be not driven to madness and despair. It demands of him that he exert himself manfully for that safety of the whole in which he has so much more evident an interest. For, be it known—prescribe whatever remedies you will, political, moral, or religious—that it is by securing a certain indispensable amount of wellbeing to the multitude of mankind that the only security can be found for the social fabric, for life, and property, and civilisation. If men are allowed to sink into a wretchedness that savours of despair, it is in vain that you show them the ruins of the nation, and themselves involved in those ruins. What interest have they any longer in the preservation of your boasted state of civilisation? What to them how soon it be all a ruin? You have lost all hold of them as reasonable beings. As well preach to the winds as to men thoroughly and bitterly discontented. Those, therefore, to whom wealth, or station, or intelligence, has given power of any kind, must do their utmost to prevent large masses of mankind from sinking into this condition. If they will not learn this duty from the Christian teaching of their church, they must learn it from the stern exposition of the economist and the politician.

Political economists have some of them wasted much time, and produced no little ennui, by unprofitable discussions on the definition of terms. These Mr Mill wisely spares us: an accurate writer, by a cautious use of ordinary expressions, will make his meaning more evident and precise than he will be able to do by any laboured definitions, or the introduction of purely technical terms. Such have been the discussions on the strict limits of the science of political economy, and the propriety of the title it has so long borne; whether intellectual efforts shall be classed amongst productive or unproductive labour, and the precise and invariable meaning to be given to such terms as wealth, value, and the like. These will generally be found to be unprofitable controversies, tending more to confusion of ideas than to precision of language. Let a writer think steadily and clearly upon his subject, and ordinary language will be faithful to him; distinctions between the several meanings of the same term will be made as they are wanted. He who begins by making such distinctions is only laying a snare for his own feet; he will hamper himself and perplex his reader. And with regard especially to the range of topics which an author thinks fit to embrace in his treatise upon this science, surely he may permit himself some liberty of choice, without resolving to mete out new boundaries to which all who follow him are to conform. If M. Dunoyer, for instance, in his able and, in many respects, valuable work, De la LibertÉ du Travail, chooses to write a treatise which embraces in fact the whole of human life, all the energies and activities of man, mental as well as physical, he could surely have done this without assailing old distinctions and old titles with so needless a violence. Of what avail to call in the etymologist at this time of day, to determine the meaning, or criticise the application of so familiar a term as political economy?[5]

But there is another class of discussions which, although to the general reader, who is mostly an impatient one, they will appear at first sight to be of a purely technical character, must not be so hastily dismissed. These will be often found to have a direct bearing on the most important questions that can occupy the mind of the statesman. They are in fact explanatory of that great machine, a commercial society, upon which he has to practise—which he has to keep in order, or to learn to leave alone—and therefore as necessary a branch of knowledge to him as anatomy or physiology to one who undertakes to medicine the body. Such are some of the intricate discussions which concern the nature of capital—a subject to which we shall in the first place and at once turn our attention. It is a subject which Mr Mill has treated throughout in a most masterly manner. We may safely say, that there is now no other work to which a student could be properly directed for obtaining a complete insight into all the intricacies of this great branch of political economy. The exposition lies scattered, indeed, through the two volumes; he must read the entire work to obtain it. This scattering of the several parts of a subject is inevitable in treating such a science as political economy, where every topic has to be discussed in relation to every other topic. We do not think that Mr Mill has been particularly happy in his arrangement of topics, but, aware as we are of the extreme difficulty, under such circumstances, of making any arrangement at all, we forbear from any criticism. A man must write himself out the best way he can; and the reader, after obtaining all the materials put at his disposition, may pack them up in what bundles may best suit his own convenience.

We must premise that on this subject—the nature and employment of capital—there appears to be in one part of Mr Mill's exposition—not an error—but a temporary forgetfulness of an old and familiar truth, which ought to have found its place there. Its very familiarity has occasioned it to be overlooked, in the keen inquiry after truth of a more recondite nature. The part which the economists call "unproductive consumption," the self-indulgent luxurious expenditure of the rich—the part this plays in a system of society based on individual effort and individual possession, is not fully stated.

He who spends his money, and lives to do little else, however idle he may be himself, has always had the consolation that he was, at least, setting other people to work. Mr Mill seems to deny him utterly this species of consolation; for in contending against a statement, made by political economists as well as others, that unproductive consumption is necessary, in a strictly economical sense, to the employment of the workmen, and as the indispensable relative to productive consumption, or capital spent in industrial pursuits, he has overlooked that moral necessity there is, in the present system of things, that there should be those who spend to enjoy, as well as those who lay out their money for profit. "What supports and employs productive labour," says Mr Mill, (Vol. i. p. 97,) "is the capital expended in setting it to work, and not the demand of purchases for the produce of the labour when completed. Demand for commodities is not demand for labour. The demand for commodities determines in what particular branch of production the labour and capital shall be employed; it determines the direction of the labour, but not the more or less of the labour itself, or of the maintenance and payment of the labour. That depends on the amount of the capital, or other funds directly devoted to the sustenance and remuneration of labour." Now, without a doubt, the man who purchases an article of luxury when it is manufactured, does not employ labour in the same sense as the manufacturer, who spends his wealth in supporting the artisan, and finding him the requisites of his art, and who, after selling the products of this industry, continues to spend the capital returned to him, together with the profit he has made, in the further sustenance of workmen. But it has been always understood, and the truth appears to be almost too trite to insist on, that unless the unproductive consumer were there to purchase, the capitalist would have had no motive to employ his wealth in this manner; and, what is of equal importance to bear in mind, unless the capitalist also calculated on being, some future day, an unproductive consumer himself, he would have no motive, by saving and toiling, to increase his wealth.

The necessity for a certain amount of unproductive consumption is not a necessity in the nature of things. All men might, if they chose, be saving, might spend upon themselves only what is needful for comfort, and set apart the residue of their funds for the employment of labour, not, of course, in the production of articles of luxury, for which there would be no purchasers, but for such articles as the labourers themselves, now paid from such ample stores, might be consumers of. The social machine might still go on under such a regime, and much to the benefit of the labourer. The capitalists would find their profits diminishing, it is true—they would be more rapidly approaching that minimum of profit, that stationary state, of which we shall by-and-by have to speak; but this diminution of profits must, at all events, sooner or later, take place, and depends ultimately, as we shall have occasion to show, on higher laws, over which man has no control. Men might, if they chose, be all saving, and all convert superfluous wealth into capital; but need we add, men would never choose any such thing. There is no necessity in the nature of things, but there is a necessity in the moral nature of man for a certain portion of this unproductive consumption. The good of others is not a motive sufficiently strong to stimulate a man to any of the steady pursuits of industry. When, therefore, his real wants are satisfied, it must be the gratification of fictitious wants that induces him to toil and accumulate, or to part with any thing he has, by way of barter or exchange. From the time when the rude possessor of the soil consents to surrender a portion of his surplus produce for some trinket or piece of gaudy apparel, to the present epoch, when men consent to live frugally and toil hard during the first period of life, in order that they or their children may afterwards live idly, luxuriously, and ostentatiously, this same unproductive expenditure has performed the part of essential stimulant to human industry. It is not enough, therefore, to say, that it gives the direction to a certain portion of labour: it affords the stimulant that converts idleness into industry, and saving into capital. A very much more dignified being would man undoubtedly be, if desire for the general good could replace, as a motive of industry, a selfish desire, which is often no better than what we ridicule in the savage when he manifests a most disproportionate anxiety, as it seems to us, for the possession of glass beads, or a piece of painted calico. But to this point in the cultivation of human reason we have, at all events, not yet arrived. And let this be always borne in mind—in order that the class of society designated as unproductive consumers may not fall into unmerited odium—that others, who are using their wealth in the direct and profitable employment of labour, are themselves desirous, above all things, of taking their place in the class of unproductive consumers, and are working for that very end.

"Every one can see," writes Mr Mill, "that if a benevolent government possessed all the food, and all the implements and materials of the community, it could exact productive labour from all to whom it allowed a share in the food, and could be in no danger of wanting a field for the employment of this productive labour, since, as long as there was a single want unsaturated (which material objects could supply) of any one individual, the labour of the community could be turned to the production of something capable of satisfying that want. Now, the individual possessors of capital, when they add to it by fresh accumulations, are doing precisely the same thing which we suppose to be done by our benevolent government."—(Vol. i. p. 83.) Certainly the individual capitalists could do the same as the benevolent government, if they had its benevolence. If there are any political economists who teach otherwise, we hold them in error. We wish only to add to the statement the old moral truth long ago recognised, before political economy had a distinct place or name in the world, that as man is constituted, or rather, as he has hitherto demeaned himself, (for who knows what moral as well as other reformations may take place?—the civilised man, such as we have him at this day, postponing habitually the present enjoyment to the future, is a creature of cultivation; and who can tell but that advanced cultivation may make of man a being habitually acting for the general good, in which general good he finds his own particular interest sufficiently represented and provided for?)—that, as man has hitherto acted, this same unproductive selfish expenditure is indispensable as the motive to set that industry to work, which ultimately distributes the real necessaries and rational comforts of life to so many thousands.

Having, in justice to the class of unproductive consumers, brought out this homely truth, which, in the scientific exposition of Mr Mill, seemed in danger of being overlooked, we proceed to a branch of the subject which, if it appears at first of a very technical and abstruse description, is yet capable of very important applications. One of the most striking facts relating to the nature of capital is the tendency of profits, in wealthy and populous countries, to diminish as the amount of capital increases—a tendency to arrive at a certain minimum beyond which there would be no motive for saving, and little possibility of accumulating. This tendency Mr Mill explains as being the result, not of what has been somewhat vaguely called the competition of capital, over-production, or general glut in the market, but, in reality, of the physical laws of nature—of the simple fact that the products of the soil cannot be indefinitely multiplied. Manufacturing industry must be ultimately limited by the supply of the raw material it fashions, which is furnished by the soil, and the supply of food for the artisan, furnished also by the soil; it therefore is subjected, as well as agricultural industry, to the limits which have been set to the productiveness of the earth. Now, without seeking for any definite ratio, such as might be expressed in numbers, between the labour and ingenuity of man and the products of the soil, it may be stated as a simple fact, which admits of no dispute, that after the land has been fairly cultivated, additional labour and additional cost yield but a small proportionate return.

"The limitation to production from the properties of the soil," writes our author, "is not like the obstacle opposed by a wall, which stands immovable in one particular spot, and offers no hindrance to motion, short of stopping it entirely. We may rather compare it to a highly elastic and extensible band, which is hardly ever so violently stretched that it could not possibly be stretched any more; yet the pressure of which is felt long before the final limit is reached, and felt more severely the nearer that limit is approached.

"After a certain, and not very advanced stage in the progress of agriculture—as soon, in fact, as men have applied themselves to cultivation with any energy, and have brought to it any tolerable tools—from that time it is the law of production from the land, that, in any given state of agricultural skill and knowledge, by increasing the labour the produce is not increased in an equal degree; doubling the labour does not double the produce; or, to express the same thing in other words, every increase of produce is obtained by a more than proportional increase in the application of labour to the land.

"This general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in political economy. Were the law different, nearly all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are. The most fundamental errors, which still prevail on our subject, result from not perceiving this law at work underneath the more superficial agencies on which attention fixes itself; but mistaking these agencies for the ultimate causes of effects of which they may influence the form and mode, but of which it alone determines the essence."—(Vol. i. p. 212.)

It is to this physical law, underlying, as it were, the commercial and industrial energies of man, that we must finally attribute that gradual diminution of profits, observable in advanced and opulent countries. This is popularly attributed, we believe, and has been assigned, by some political economists, to over-production; to a general glut of the market, or, in other words, a preponderance of supply over demand. Over-production in this or that article may very easily, for a time, take place; but general over-production, a general over-balance in the supply, and deficiency in the demand, may be demonstrated to be impossible.

The simple but convincing argument against a general glut or over-balance between supply and demand, which we believe Mr Mill senior first originated, is this,—that as each producer produces in order to part with his produce—in order, in fact, to exchange, to purchase, he must necessarily bring into the market a demand equivalent to the supply he furnishes. "All sellers," as our present author expresses it, "are ex vi termini buyers. Could we suddenly double the productive powers of the country, we should double the supply of commodities in every market; but we should, by the same stroke, double the purchasing power. Every body would bring a double demand as well as supply; every body would be able to buy twice as much, because every one would have twice as much to offer in exchange."—(Vol. ii. p. 91.) Of certain articles, there may, of course, be a superfluity; of certain others a deficiency; but such a thing as a general over-balance between supply and demand cannot take place.

The argument, if it laid claim to a sort of mathematical precision, might be open to an ingenious cavil. The exchange of commodities, it might be said, is effected through the instrumentality of money; now, it is one of the peculiar advantages of money that it enables the vender to sell at one time and purchase at another; it gives him a command over future markets; it enables him to postpone indefinitely one half of the operation of barter. Men who come into a market, wishing to dispose of their commodities now, but not intending to select what commodity they shall take in exchange, till some future time, postponing indefinitely the other half of the operation of barter, and seeking only for money, for that token which will give them or their children a claim on subsequent markets—do not bring with them a demand equivalent to their supply.

The answer to the objection lets us more fully into the real facts of the case. Those only who wished to sell their produce in order to hoard, would fall under the description of men who bring a present supply into the market, postponing indefinitely their demand. But the producer is almost always a man desirous of increasing his wealth—he does not hoard; he immediately lays out his capital in some productive manner, in the purchase of food for labourers, and of the raw materials of industry. But these articles, it happens, cannot be supplied to him with the increasing abundance he demands; and thus we fall back upon the ultimate law to which we have alluded. The manufacturer finds, that every additional demand he makes for these is supplied at a greater cost. What has limited the profits of the agricultural capitalist limits his profits also. He cannot sell his goods at the accustomed advantage. He exclaims that there is a glut in the market. What he takes for a glut is a deficiency. It is quite natural and permissible, however, that this phenomenon of the diminution of profits should be spoken of as the result of a superabundance of capital, provided only it be understood why the later accumulations of capital fail to bring the same return as the earlier.

A simple law of nature, therefore, is the true cause of this commercial phenomenon. Countries, after a certain progress in the career of wealth, must cease to accumulate;—the diminished profit on capital affording no longer any motive for frugality and toil;—and they arrive at what may be called the stationary state. "When a country," says Mr Mill, "has long possessed a large production, and a large net income to make savings from, and when, therefore, the means have long existed of making a great annual addition to capital, (the country not having, like America, a large reserve of fertile land still unused,) it is one of the characteristics of such a country, that the rate of profit is habitually within, as it were, a hand's breadth of the minimum, and the country, therefore, on the very verge of the stationary state. By this, I do not mean that this state is likely, in any of the great countries of Europe, to be soon actually reached, or that capital does not still yield a profit considerably greater than what is barely sufficient to induce the people of these countries to save and accumulate. My meaning is, that it would require but a short time to reduce profits to the minimum, if capital continued to increase at its present rate, and no circumstances having a tendency to raise the rate of profit occurred in the mean time."—(Vol. ii. p. 287.)

Mr Mill then states what are the counteracting circumstances which arrest this downward tendency of profits. He mentions the waste of capital in periods of over-trading and rash speculation, the expenditure of an unproductive kind, and the perpetual overflow of capital into colonies and foreign countries, to seek higher profits than can be obtained at home. This last has a twofold operation. "In the first place, it does what a fire, or an inundation, or a commercial crisis, would have done,—it carries off a part of the increase of capital from which the reduction of profits proceeds. Secondly, the capital so carried off is not lost, but is chiefly employed either in founding colonies, which become large exporters of cheap agricultural produce, or in extending, and perhaps improving, the agriculture of older communities. It is to the emigration of English capital that we have chiefly to look for keeping up a supply of cheap food and cheap materials of clothing, proportional to the increase of our population; thus enabling an increasing capital to find employment in the country, without reduction of profit, in producing manufactured articles with which to pay for this supply of raw produce. Thus, the exportation of capital is an agent of great efficacy in extending the field of employment for that which remains; and it may be said truly that, up to a certain point, the more capital we send away, the more we shall possess and be able to retain at home."—(Vol. ii. p. 297.)

This last observation we have quoted is well deserving of attention. It is an instance of what we mentioned in the outset, of the science correcting as it advances its own errors. What follows is a still more striking instance, and still more worthy of attention. It occurs in the chapter entitled,—Consequences of the tendency of profits to a minimum. To such observations we have wished to draw the especial attention of our readers, but could not do so till the previous exposition had been gone through.

"The theory of the effect of accumulation on profits, laid down in the preceding chapter, materially alters many of the practical conclusions which might otherwise be supposed to follow from the general principles of political economy, and which were, indeed, long admitted as true by the highest authorities on the subject.

"It must greatly abate, or, rather, altogether destroy, in countries where profits are low, the immense importance which used to be attached, by political economists, to the effects which an event or a measure of government might have in adding to, or subtracting from, the capital of the country. We have now seen that the lowness of profits is a proof that the spirit of accumulation is so active, and that the increase of capital has proceeded at so rapid a rate, as to outstrip the two counter agencies, improvements in production, and increased supply of cheap necessaries from abroad: and that unless a considerable portion of the annual increase of capital were either periodically destroyed, or exported for foreign investment, the country would speedily attain the point at which further accumulation would cease, or at least spontaneously slacken, so as no longer to overpass the march of invention in the arts which produce the necessaries of life. In such a state of things as this, a sudden addition to the capital of the country, unaccompanied by any increase of productive power, would be but of transitory duration; since, by depressing profits and interest, it would rather diminish, by a corresponding amount, the savings which would be made from income in the year or two following, or it would cause an equivalent amount to be sent abroad, or to be wasted in rash speculations. Neither, on the other hand, would a sudden abstraction of capital, unless of inordinate amount, have any real effect in impoverishing the country. After a few months or years there would exist in the country just as much capital as if none had been taken away. The abstraction, by raising profits and interest, would give a fresh stimulus to the accumulative principle, which would speedily fill up the vacuum. Probably, indeed, the only effect that would ensue, would be that, for some time afterwards, less capital would be exported, and less thrown away in hazardous speculation.

"In the first place, then, this view of things greatly weakens, in a wealthy and industrious country, the force of the economical argument against the expenditure of public money for really valuable, even though industrially unproductive purposes. If for any great object of justice or philanthropic policy, such as the industrial regeneration of Ireland, or a comprehensive measure of colonisation or of public education, it were proposed to raise a large sum by way of loan, politicians need not demur to the abstraction of so much capital, as tending to dry up the permanent sources of the country's wealth, and diminish the fund which supplies the subsistence of the labouring population. The utmost expense which could be requisite for any of these purposes, would not, in all probability, deprive one labourer of employment, or diminish the next year's production by one ell of cloth or one bushel of grain. In poor countries the capital of the country requires the legislator's sedulous care; he is bound to be most cautious in encroaching upon it, and should favour to the utmost its accumulation at home, and its introduction from abroad. But in rich, populous, and highly cultivated countries, it is not capital which is the deficient element, but fertile land; and what the legislator should desire and promote, is not a greater aggregate saving, but a greater return to saving, either by improved cultivation, or by access to the produce of more fertile lands in other parts of the globe. In such countries, the government may take any moderate portion of the capital of the country and convert it into revenue, without affecting the national wealth; the whole being rather drawn from that portion of the annual saving which would otherwise be sent abroad, or being substracted from the unproductive expenditure of individuals for the next year or two, since every million sent makes room for another million to be saved, before reaching the overflowing point. When the object in view is worth the sacrifice of such an amount of the expenditure that furnishes the daily enjoyment of the people, the only well grounded economical objection against taking the necessary funds directly from the capital, consists of the inconveniences attending the process of raising a revenue, by taxation, to pay the interest of a debt.

"The same considerations enable us to throw aside, as unworthy of regard, one of the common arguments against emigration as a means of relief for the labouring class. Emigration, it is said, can do no good to the labourers, if, in order to defray the cost, as much must be taken away from the capital of the country as from its population. That any thing like this proportion could require to be abstracted from capital for the purpose even of the most extensive colonisation, few, I should think, would now assert; but even on that untenable supposition, it is an error to suppose that no benefit could be conferred on the labouring class. If one-tenth of the labouring people of England were transferred to the colonies, and along with them one-tenth of the circulating capital of the country, either wages, or profits, or both, would be greatly benefited by the diminished pressure of capital and population upon the fertility of the land. There would be a reduced demand for food; the inferior arable lands would be thrown out of cultivation, and would become pasture; the superior would be cultivated less highly, but with a greater proportional return; food would be lowered in price, and, though money wages would not rise, every labourer would be considerably improved in circumstances—an improvement which, if no increased stimulus to population and fall of wages ensued, would be permanent; while, if there did, profits would rise, and accumulation start forward so as to repair the loss of capital. The landlords alone would sustain some loss of income; and even they, only if colonisation went to the length of actually diminishing capital and population, but not if it merely carried off the annual increase."—(Vol. ii. p. 999.)

Does not all this place the condition of England in a very striking aspect before us? We have a country here so wealthy, so nearly approaching that state where its accessions of capital can no longer be profitably employed, that it wastes its funds in ruinous speculations, building perhaps useless factories—and, if useless, how mischievous!—that it sends its money abroad to construct foreign railways, or throws it away upon South American republics. Yet the people of this country is degraded and brutalised for want of education, and it is threatened with political convulsions for want of a good system of emigration; and you call for education, and you call for colonisation, and the only obstacle that is opposed to you is—the want of money! Shame upon England, if this be so! With all her knowledge and civilisation, she will go down to ruin, rather than give, in the shape of taxes, for the most necessary as well as philanthropic purposes, that wealth which she can fling abroad or waste at home with the most reckless prodigality.

Of late the Irish landlord has been very justly held up to public reproof for the hard, unthinking, extortionate manner in which he has been in the habit of dealing with the soil—or allowing certain middlemen to deal with it—taking a famine-price for the land—permitting the miserable cottiers to bid against each other, instead of fixing an equitable rent, such as would finally have secured to himself better and more profitable tenants. For his thoughtlessness or cupidity, whichever it may be, both he and the country at large are paying a severe penalty. But the Irish landlords are not the only class that are to blame. That indiscriminate recoil from all taxation, whatever be its object, which characterises the upper and middling classes of society in England, is a sad blot in their escutcheon.[6]

Before quitting this subject of capital, we must quote a passage which occurs at an earlier part of the work, but which is in perfect harmony with the strain of observations we have been calling attention to. It serves to show and explain the elastic power there is in every thoroughly industrious country to revive from any temporary loss, or sacrifice, or calamity. Let but the people with their knowledge and habits, the soil and a little food, remain, and there is no effort, and no ruin or desolation from which it would not speedily recover. Moreover, it is a passage of a certain popular interest, and we are glad of the opportunity to relieve our pages by its quotation.

"Every thing which is produced is consumed; both what is saved and what is said to be spent; and the former quite as rapidly as the latter. All the ordinary forms of language tend to disguise this. When men talk of the ancient wealth of a country, of riches inherited from ancestors, and similar expressions, the idea suggested is, that the riches so transmitted were produced long ago, at the time when they are said to have been first acquired, and that no portion of the capital of the country was produced this year, except so much as may have been this year added to the total amount. The fact is far otherwise. The greater part, in value, of the wealth now existing in England, has been produced by human hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion indeed of that large aggregate was in existence ten years ago;—of the present productive capital of the country, scarcely any part except farm-houses and factories, and a few ships and machines; and even these would not in most cases have survived so long, if fresh labour had not been employed within that period in putting them in repair. The land subsists, and the land is almost the only thing that subsists. Every thing which is produced perishes, and most things very quickly. Most kinds of capital are not fitted by their nature to be long preserved. There are a few, and but a few productions, capable of a very prolonged existence. Westminster Abbey has lasted many centuries, with occasional repairs; some ancient sculptures have existed above two thousand years; the Pyramids perhaps double or treble that time. But these were objects devoted to unproductive use. If we except bridges and aqueducts, (to which may sometimes be added tanks and embankments,) there are few instances of any edifice applied to industrial purposes which has been of great duration: such buildings do not hold out against wear and tear, nor is it good economy to construct them of the solidity necessary for permanency. Capital is kept in existence from age to age, not by preservation, but by perpetual reproduction: every part of it is used and destroyed, generally very soon after it has been produced; but those who consume it are employed meanwhile in producing more. The growth of capital is similar to the growth of population. Every individual who is born, dies, but in each year the number born exceeds the number who die; the population, therefore, always increases, although not one person of those comprising it was alive until a very recent date.

"This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital affords the explanation of what has so often excited wonder—the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance in a short time of all traces of the mischief done by earthquakes, of floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the movable wealth existing in it: all the inhabitants are ruined; yet in a few years after, every thing is much as it was before. This vis medicatrix naturÆ has been a subject of sterile astonishment, or has been cited to exemplify the wonderful strength of the principle of saving, which can repair such enormous losses in so brief an interval. There is nothing at all wonderful in the matter. What the enemy have destroyed would have been destroyed in a little time by the inhabitants themselves; the wealth which they so rapidly reproduce would have needed to be produced, and would have been reproduced in any case, and probably in as short an interval."—(Vol. i. p. 91.)

One of the most interesting portions of the work is that devoted to questions touching the cultivation of the land—as whether large or small farms are most advisable. Mr Mill appears to advocate the latter, and enlarges much on the industry universally displayed by the peasants of those countries who either cultivate land of their own, or in which they have a certain and permanent interest. Additional value is given to these chapters, from the bearing they are made to have on the vexed questions of the causes and the remedies of the lamentable state of that unhappy country, Ireland.

We remember well the impression made upon us on reading, some time, ago, these passages in Sismondi's work which Mr Mill quotes on this occasion, where the habits and life of the peasant proprietors of Switzerland are so minutely, and apparently so faithfully described. Coupling his description with what our own hasty observation had taught us of this country, we were disposed to believe that nowhere, and under no circumstances, does human life wear a more enviable aspect than amongst these small proprietors, this rustic aristocracy of Switzerland. But we regarded it, as we still do, as one of those instances of compensation so general in the moral world. All the wealth of England could not purchase this sort of pastoral happiness. At all events, only here and there such a primitive state of things could exist. It was not necessary for our Norman ancestors to have added manor to manor: a wealthy commercial state, which gives origin to great fortunes, must inevitably give origin to large properties. The same wealth which decides for us that the land shall be cultivated in large farms, would also decide that it should be divided amongst large proprietors. It is well to keep in mind that neither of these facts is, to any material extent, owing to any peculiarity in the history or the laws of England, but to its commercial opulence.

Meanwhile we may be permitted to admire "the picture of unwearied industry, and what may be called affectionate interest in the land;" the patience, frugality, and prudence in entering into marriage, that almost always characterise the class of small proprietors cultivating their own soil. Our own yeomen, at that distant and almost fabulous epoch when our country obtained the name of "merry England," were of this description of men. We wish we had space to transfer to our pages some of the extracts which our author has drawn together from French, and German, and English writers, all showing the hearty, incessant, and, as one author calls it, the "superhuman" industry of the peasant proprietor.

A great number of such properties England cannot be expected to have; there may, too, be reasons for not desiring their existence; but one fact is placed beyond all controversy, both by the testimony of travellers, and the known operations of the common feelings of our nature, that they are the most indefatigable of all labourers. If you wish to convert an idle and improvident man into an industrious and frugal one, give him a piece of land of his own: the recipe may fail; but if this does not reform him, nothing else will.

It is on the condition of Ireland, as we have intimated, that this description of the peasant proprietor is made particularly to bear. To substitute for the wretched cottier system, some system under which the Irish peasant, having a substantial interest in the improvement of the soil, would be placed under strong motives to industry and providence, is the great remedy which Mr Mill proposes for the unhappy state of that country.

The evils of the cottier system are notorious. A peasantry who have no resource but the potato field, and who are multiplying as only utter poverty can multiply, bid against each other for the possession of the land. They promise rents they cannot possibly pay. They are immediately and continually in debt; but being there upon the soil, they can first feed themselves; this they do, and the rest, whatever it may be, is for the landlord.

"In such a condition," writes Mr Mill, "what can a tenant gain by any amount of industry or prudence, and what lose by any recklessness? If the landlord at any time exerted his full legal rights, the cottier would not be able even to live. If by extra exertion he doubled the produce of his bit of land, or if he prudently abstained from producing mouths to eat it up, his only gain would be to have more left to pay to his landlord, while, if he had twenty children, they would still be fed first, and the landlord would only take what was left. Almost alone among mankind, the Irish cottier is in this condition,—that he can scarcely be either better or worse off by any act of his own. If he was industrious or prudent, nobody but his landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive. The inducements of free human beings are taken away, and those of a slave not substituted. He has nothing to hope and nothing to fear, except being dispossessed of his holding; and against this he protects himself by the ultima ratio of a civil war."—(Vol. i. p. 374)

That this system must be got rid of is admitted by all—but how? It is often proposed to convert the cottiers into hired labourers; but without entering upon (either to admit or controvert) the other objections which Mr Mill makes to this plan, it is enough to say that it is, at present, impracticable. "The conversion of cottiers into hired labourers," he justly observes, "implies the introduction all over Ireland of capitalist farmers, in lieu of the present small tenants. These farmers, or their capital at least, must come from England. But to induce capital to come in, the cottier population must first be peaceably got rid of: in other words, that must be already accomplished, which English capital is proposed as the means of accomplishing." Besides which, it is the characteristic of the English system of farming, that it employs the fewest number of labourers. "Taking the number of Irish peasants in the square mile, and the number of hired labourers in an equal space in the model counties of Scotland or England, the former number is commonly computed to be about three times the latter. Two-thirds, therefore, of the Irish peasantry would be absolutely dispensed with. What is to be done with them?... The people are there; and the problem is, not how to improve the country, but how it can be improved by and for its present inhabitants."

To wait till the English system of farming can be introduced into Ireland is tantamount to resigning all attempt to improve the condition of the people of that country. Something must be done to prepare the way for the introduction of that system. There are several schemes afloat for giving or extending a certain tenant-right to the peasantry. Into these we have not space to enter—for it would take some to explain the several significations attached to this term tenant-right. It is sufficient to say, that, whenever the term has any really important signification, and under it any effective remedy is proposed, it means this,—that the legislature should interfere between the landlord and tenant, and assign an equitable rent, and an equitable duration of the tenancy. Such an act of the legislature might be perfectly justifiable, and might be found to be as advantageous to the landlord as the tenant; for the former as much needs to be protected from his own indolence or thoughtless cupidity, as the latter from the desperate pressure of want. But we should, of course, infinitely prefer that such an equitable arrangement between these parties should be arrived at without the intervention of the legislature; and we think it would be an indirect result of the scheme which Mr Mill proposes, or rather advocates. He would begin the work of reformation by forming a body of peasant proprietors on the waste lands of Ireland. Carried out with due consideration to the rights of property, we confess we can detect no objections to this plan. Some differences of opinion, we believe, exist amongst the best judges as to the nature of the soil in question, and its capability of being reclaimed; and on this point we cannot profess to give an opinion: but, so far as principles of legislation, or the objects in view are concerned, we cordially approve of the scheme, though we cannot say that we entertain the same sanguine view of it as the author before us. It deserves a trial, in conjunction with other measures of relief, when the temper of that misguided people shall admit of the application, with any probability of success, of this class of remedial measures.

We shall give the project as it is stated in the work before us. After observing that it is not necessary that peasant properties should be universal, in order to be useful, nor, indeed, desirous that they should be universal, he thus proceeds:—

"It is enough, if there be land available on which to locate so great a portion of the population, that the remaining area of the country shall not be required to maintain greater numbers than are compatible with large farming and hired labour. For this purpose there is an obvious resource in the waste lands, which are happily so extensive, and a large portion of them so improveable, as to afford a means by which, without making the present tenants proprietors, nearly the whole surplus population might be converted into peasant proprietors elsewhere. This plan has been strongly pressed upon the public by several writers; but the first to bring it prominently forward in England, was Mr William Thornton.[7]

"The detailed estimate of an irrefragable authority, Mr Griffith, annexed to the Report of Lord Devon's Commission, shows nearly a million and a half of acres reclaimable for the spade or plough, some of them with the promise of great fertility, and about two millions and a half more reclaimable for pasture; the greater part being in most convenient proximity to the principal masses of destitute population. Besides these four millions of acres, there are above two millions and a half, pronounced by Mr Griffith to be unimprovable; but he is only speaking of reclamation for profit: it is doubtful if there be any land, in a temperate climate, which cannot be reclaimed and rendered productive by labourers themselves under the inducement of a permanent property. Confining ourselves to the one and a half millions of arable first mentioned, it would furnish properties averaging five acres each to three hundred thousand persons, which, at the rate of five persons to a family—a rather low rate for Ireland—answers to a population of fifteen hundred thousand. Suppose such a number drafted off to a state of independence and comfort, together with any moderate additional relief of emigration, and the introduction of English capital and farming over the remaining surface of Ireland would cease to be chimerical.

"'The improvement of waste,' Mr Thornton observes, 'may perhaps be thought to require a good deal of capital; but capital is principally useful for its command of labour, and the Irish peasantry have quite labour enough at their own disposal. Their misfortune is that they have so much. Their labour would not be worse applied because they worked for themselves instead of for a pay-master. So far is large capital from being indispensable for the cultivation of barren tracts, that schemes of this kind, which could only bring loss to a real speculator, are successfully achieved by his penniless rival. A capitalist must have a certain return for the money he lays out, but the poor man expends nothing but his own superabundant labour, which would be valueless if not so employed; so that his returns, however small, are all clear profit. No man in his senses would ever have thought of wasting money upon the original sand of the Pays de Waes; but the hard-working boors who settled there two hundred years ago, without any other stock than their industry, contrived to enrich both themselves and the land, and indeed to make the latter the richest in Europe.'

"'The profit of reclaiming waste land,' says the Digest of Evidence to Lord Devon's Commission, 'will be best understood from a practice not uncommon in Ireland, to which farmers sometimes resort. This consists in giving the use of a small portion of it to a poor cottier or herdsman for the first three crops, after which this improved portion is given up to the farmer, and a fresh piece of the waste land is taken on the same terms by the cottier.' Well may the compiler say, 'Here we have the example of the very poorest class in Ireland obtaining a livelihood by the cultivation of waste land under the most discouraging and the least remunerative circumstances that can well be imagined.'

"It is quite worthy of the spirit which pervades the wretched attempts as yet made to do good to Ireland, that this spectacle of the poorest of mankind making the land valuable by their labour for the profit of other people who have done nothing to assist them, does not at once strike Lord Devon and his Commission as a thing which ought not to be. Mr Thornton strongly urges the claims of common justice and common sense.

"'The colonists ought to be allowed to retain permanent possession of the spots reclaimed by them. To employ them as labourers in bringing the land into a remunerative condition, (see Report of Land Occupation Commissioners,) in order that it may then be let to some one else, while they are sent to shift for themselves where they can, may be an excellent mode of enriching the landlord, but must eventually aggravate the sufferings of the poor. It is probably because this plan has been generally practised, that the reclamation of waste land has hitherto done nothing for the benefit of the Irish peasantry. If the latter are to derive any advantage from it, such of them as may be located on the waste should receive perpetual leases of their respective allotments—should be made freeholders in fact, or at least perpetual tenants at a quit-rent. Such an appropriation of waste land would, of course, require that compensation should be made to all who previously possessed any interest in it. But the value of a legal interest in land which cannot be enclosed or cultivated without permission of the legislature, can only be proportionate to the actual yearly produce; and as land in a natural state yields little or nothing, all legal claims upon it might be bought up at a trifling expense, or might be commuted for a very small annual payment to be made by the settlers. Of the perfect competence of parliament to direct some arrangement of this kind there can be no question. An authority which compels individuals to part with their most valued property on the slightest pretext of public convenience, and permits railway projectors to throw down family mansions and cut up favourite pleasure-grounds, need not be very scrupulous about forcing the sale of boggy meadows or mountain pastures, in order to obtain the means of curing the destitution and misery of an entire people.'

"It would be desirable," continues Mr Mill, "and in most cases necessary, that the tracts of land should be prepared for the labours of the peasant by being drained and intersected with roads, at the expense of government; the interest of the sums so expended, and of compensation paid for the existing rights to the waste land, being charged on it, when reclaimed, as a perpetual quit-rent, redeemable at a moderate number of years' purchase. The state would thus incur no loss, while the advances made would give that immediate employment to the surplus labour of Ireland, which, if not given in this manner, will assuredly have to be given in some other, not only less useful, but far less likely to repay its cost. The millions lavished, during the famine, in the almost nominal execution of useless works, without any result but that of keeping the people alive, would, if employed in a great operation in the waste lands, have been quite as effectual for relieving immediate distress, and would have laid the foundation, broad and deep, for something really deserving the name of social improvement. But, as usual, it was thought better to throw away money and exertion in a beaten track, than to take the responsibility of the most advantageous investment of them in an untrodden one."—(Vol. i. p. 392.)

We make no apology for the length of the above extract; the subject is of great importance; but having stated the proposal in the words of its principal author (if Mr Thornton can claim the distinction) and its most distinguished advocate, we have nothing left but to express our own wish that some such wide and general plan will at all events meet with a fair trial, when the fitting time shall occur for making the experiment.

Any of our readers into whose hands the work of Mr Mill has already fallen, will be aware of the numerous topics on which it must excite controversy or provoke discussion. Some of these topics we had marked out for examination; but we have no space to enter upon a new subject, and shall content ourselves with closing our notice with an extract or two from what is the closing chapter of the work itself—On the Limits of the Province of Government. His observations upon this subject are so temperate and judicious, and conceived throughout in so liberal and enlightened a spirit, that although there must always be a shade of difference between such a writer and ourselves, we should have little hesitation in adopting almost the whole of the chapter. He draws a very necessary distinction between the authoritative interference of government, controlling and interdicting, and that kind of intervention where a government, "leaving individuals free to use their own means of pursuing any object of general interest, but not trusting the object solely to their care, establishes, side by side with their arrangements, an agency of its own for a like purpose. Thus it is one thing to maintain a church establishment, and another to refuse toleration to other religions, or to persons professing no religion. It is one thing to provide schools or colleges, and another to require that no person shall act as an instructor of youth without a government license."

We like the tone of the following remark:—"Whatever theory we adopt respecting the foundation of the social union, and under whatever political institutions we live, there is a circle around every individual human being which no government, be it that of one, of a few, or of the many, ought to be permitted to overstep; there is a part of the life of every person, who has come to years of discretion, within which the individuality of that person ought to reign uncontrolled, either by any other individual or the public collectively. That there is, or ought to be, some space of human existence thus entrenched round, and sacred from authoritative intrusion, no one who professes the smallest regard to human freedom or dignity will call in question."

"Many," he continues, "in latter times have been prone to think that limitation of the powers of government is only essential when the government itself is badly constituted; when it does not represent the people, but is the organ of a class, or a coalition of classes; and that a government of a sufficiently popular constitution might be trusted with any amount of power over the nation, since its power would be only that of the nation over itself. This might be true, if the nation, in such cases, did not practically mean a mere majority of the nation, and if minorities only were capable of oppressing, but not of being oppressed. Experience, however, proves that the depositaries of power, who are mere delegates of the people—that is, of a majority—are quite as ready (when they think they can count upon popular support) as any organs of oligarchy to assume arbitrary power, and encroach unduly on the liberty of private life. The public collectively is abundantly ready to impose, not only its generally narrow views of its interests, but its abstract opinions, and even its tastes, as laws binding upon individuals; and our present civilisation tends so strongly to make the power of persons acting in masses the only substantial power in society, that there never was more necessity for surrounding individual independence of thought, speech, and conduct with the most powerful defences, in order to maintain that originality of mind and individuality of character, which are the only source of any real progress, and of most of the qualities which make the human race much superior to any herd of animals."

It is not the error which Conservative politicians are liable to commit, to throw too large a share of the management of affairs into the hands of a central power; they would, therefore, readily coincide with Mr Mill, when he observes, that even if a government could comprehend within itself the most eminent intellectual capacity and active talent of the nation, it would not be the less desirable that the conduct of a large portion of the affairs of society should be left in the hands of the persons immediately interested in them. "The business of life," he remarks, "is an essential part of the practical education of a people; without which, book and school instruction, though most necessary and salutary, does not suffice to qualify them for conduct, and for the adaptation of means to ends.... A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest—who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern—who expect to have every thing done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine—have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches."

We must conclude with the following extract, which is so extremely applicable to the affairs of our neighbours, that we wish we could make it heard from the tribune of their National Assembly.

"A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination. In some countries, the desire of the people is for not being tyrannised over, but in others, it is merely for an equal chance to every body of tyrannising. Unhappily, this last state of the desires is fully as natural to mankind as the former, and in many of the conditions even of civilised humanity, is far more largely exemplified. In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to the repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannising; while, in proportion as all real initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals perpetually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power; diverting the intelligence and activity of the country from its principal business to a wretched competition for the selfish prizes and the petty vanities of office."—(Vol. ii. p. 515.)

In quitting this work, we must again repeat that our task would be endless if we entered upon every topic on which it provokes discussion. On some of these we may take a future opportunity to express ourselves. Amongst the subjects we had designed, had space permitted, for some discussion, are certain heresies, as we think them, regarding property in land; and some views, rather hinted at than explained, on the position which the female sex ought to take in society. In the extract we first made, the reader may have remarked this singular expression. Speaking of the Americans, he says they have "apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities that affect persons of Caucasian race and of the male sex;" leaving it to be inferred, that even in America there still remain certain social injustices and inequalities affecting the female sex. There are many inuendos scattered throughout the book of the same description, but we nowhere gather a distinct view of the sort of reformation that is called for. In a writer of another character these expressions would be encountered only with ridicule; coming from Mr Mill, they excite our surprise, and, in some measure, our curiosity.