THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Kate Gordon Moore
 
 THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 POPULAR EDITION. 
 
 VOLUME X.
 
 POLITICS AND POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY. 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK : 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 , <Tambribge.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
 
 TK-KNOR AND FIELDS, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 , 1877, 
 Bl KURD AND I10UG1ITON.
 
 College 
 
 PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 THE present edition is a reissue of the Works of 
 Thomas De Quincey. The series is based upon the 
 American Edition of De Quincey's Works, pub- 
 lished originally in twenty-two volumes. After 
 that edition was issued, a complete English edition 
 was published in Edinburgh and was edited and 
 revised in part by the author. This edition con- 
 tained changes and additions, and the opportunity 
 has been taken, in reissuing the American edition, 
 to incorporate the new material which appeared 
 in the English edition. At the same time, the 
 arrangement of the several productions is more 
 systematic and orderly than was possible when the 
 collection was first made, at different intervals, 
 under difficulties which render the work of the 
 first editor especially praiseworthy. In the final 
 volume, an introduction to the series sets forth the 
 plan carried out in this new arrangement, and that 
 volume also contains a very full index to the entire 
 series. Throughout the series, the notes of the 
 editor are distinguished from those of the author 
 by being inclosed in brackets [ ]. 
 
 S5Q991
 
 FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR 
 OF HIS WORKS. * 
 
 THESE papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your 
 house, and, so far as regards the U. S., of your house exclu- 
 sively ; not with any view to further emolument, but as an 
 acknowledgment of the services which you have already ren- 
 dered me : namely, first, in having brought together so widely 
 scattered a collection, a difficulty which in my own hands 
 by too painful an experience I had found from nervous de- 
 pression to be absolutely insurmountable ; secondly, in hav- 
 ing made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the 
 American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any 
 expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could 
 plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and 
 merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these 
 new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the 
 eyes of those who have taken an interest in the original 
 series. But at all events, good or bad, they are now ten- 
 dered to the appropriation of your individual house, the 
 MESSRS. TICKNOR AND FIELDS, according to the amplest 
 extent of any power to make such a transfer that I may be 
 found to possess by law or custom in America. 
 
 I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But 
 the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, 
 may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout 
 this transaction by your honorable house. 
 Ever believe me, my dear sir, 
 
 Your faithful and obliged, 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 The stereotype plates of De Quincey's Works and the right of 
 publication have passed, by direct succession, from TICKMOB AKD 
 FIELDS to HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANT.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 tun 
 
 THK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 5 
 
 DIALOGUES OF THREE TEMPLARS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 CHIEFLY IN RELATION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MR. RICARDO 195 
 
 MALTHUS 288 
 
 MEASURE OF VALUE 299 
 
 CALIFORNIA 305 
 
 ON WAR 347 
 
 NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS 385 
 
 FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY ..... 415 
 CEILON . .... 4c6 
 
 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICAL- 
 ISM, IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND IN BENGAL . . . 477 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES OF MODERN ENGLAND . . 529 
 NOTBS . 581
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 [THE first paper in this volume would follow the see- 
 oud, if the order of composition were consulted, but it 
 properly holds the more prominent place, as it is a fuller 
 and more systematic statement of principles previously 
 enunciated in the fragmentary form of the "Templars' 
 Dialogues." 
 
 With respect to that paper, De Quiucey says, " It may 
 possibly be complained, that this paper is in some measure 
 a fragment. My answer is, that, although fragmentary in 
 relation to the entire system of Ricardo, and that previous 
 system which he opposed, it is no fragment in relation to 
 the radical principle concerned in those systems. The 
 conflicting systems are brought under review simply at 
 the locus of collision ; just as the reader may have seen 
 the chemical theory of Dr. Priestley, and the counter- 
 theory of his antiphlogistic opponents, stated within the 
 limits of a single page. If the principle relied on by 
 either party can be shown to lead into inextricable self- 
 contradiction, that is enough. So much is accomplished 
 in that case, as was proposed from the beginning viz., 
 not to exhaust the positive elements of this system or 
 that, but simply to settle the central logic of their sev- 
 eral polemics ; to settle, in fact, not the matter of whal 
 is evolved, but simply the principle of evolution."
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 "Malthus" and "Measures of Value" are now first 
 reprinted here from the short papers contained in the 
 posthumous volume of De Quincey's writings, of the Edin- 
 burgh edition. From the same source is derived the two 
 papers which complete this volume, " A Tory's Account 
 of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism, in a Letter to a 
 Friend in Bengal," and " On the Political Parties of Mod 
 era England." The last named was published from Mr. 
 De Quincey's manuscript after his death. It was originally 
 written, partly as a continuation of the article just pre- 
 ceding, and partly as a rejoinder to the stricture and com- 
 ment made by the editor of Tail's "Edinburgh Magazine " 
 upon the previous article when there published. Mr. De 
 Quincey wrote the paper for publication in Tait, and was 
 very earnest to have it appear as a justification of his 
 previous statement, but the editor refused to publish it, 
 and it lay unprinted until after the author's death. It is 
 thought that De Quincey's quotation of the editor's com- 
 ments is sufficient to inform the reader of the ground 
 taken. Any one desirous of looking at the matter more 
 minutely, will find the article in Tail's Magazine for De- 
 cember, 1835, and January, 1836. In one of his prefaces, 
 Mr. De Quincey has the following comment respecting 
 the article on War : ] 
 
 " In this paper, from having faultily adjusted its proportion* is 
 he original outline, I find that I hare dwelt too briefly and too 
 feebly upon the capital interest at stake. To apply a correction to 
 oino popular misrcadings of history, to show, that the criminal (bo- 
 cause trivial) occasions of war are not always its true causes, or to 
 suggest that war (if resigned to its own natural movement of progress) 
 H Cleansing itself and ennobling itself constantly and inevitably, 
 nrere it only through its connection with science ever more and more 
 exquisite, and through its augmented costliness, all this may have 
 its use in offering some restraint upon the levity of action or o/ 
 declamation in Peace Societies. But all this is below the occasion
 
 PREFACE. U 
 
 feel that far grander interests are at stake in this contest. The 
 Peace Societies are falsely appreciated, when they are described a* 
 merely deaf to the lessons of experience, and as too " romantic " in 
 their expectations. The very opposite is, to my thinking, their crim- 
 inal reproach. He that is romantic errs usually by too iruch eleva- 
 tion. He violates the standard of reasonable expectation, by drawing 
 too violently upon the nobilities of human nature. But, on the con- 
 trary, the Peace Societies would, if their power kept pace with their 
 guilty purposes, work degradation for man by drawing upon his most 
 effeminate and luxurious cravings for ease. Most heartily, and with 
 my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with Wordsworth in bia 
 grand lyrical proclamation of a truth not less divine than it is mys- 
 terious, not less triumphant than it is sorrowful, namely, that amongst 
 CJod's holiest instruments for the elevation of human nature is " mu- 
 tual slaughter" amongst men; yes, that "Carnage is God's daughter." 
 Not deriving my own views in this matter from AVordsworth, not 
 knowing even whether I hold them on the same grounds, since AVords- 
 worth has left his grounds unexplained, nevertheless I cite them in 
 honor, as capable of the holiest justification. The instruments rise 
 in grandeur, carnage and mutual slaughter rise in holiness, exactly 
 as the motives and the interests rise on behalf of which such awful 
 powers are invoked. Fighting for truth in its last recesses of sanc- 
 tity, for human dignity systematically outraged, or for human rights 
 mercilessly trodden under foot champions of such interests, men 
 first of all descry, as from a summit suddenly revealed, the possible 
 grandeur of bloodshed suffered or inflicted. Judas and Simon Mac- 
 cabneus in days of old, Gustavus Atlolphus * in modern days, fighting 
 for the violated rights of conscience against perfidious despots and 
 murdering oppressors, exhibit to us the incarnations of AVordswortb'a 
 principle. Such wars are of rare occurrence. Fortunately they are 
 to ; since, under the possible contingencies of human strength and 
 weakness, it might else happen that the grandeur of the principle 
 should suffer dishonor through the incommensurate means for main- 
 
 * The Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, wai 
 notoriously the last ami the decisive conflict between Popery and Protestantism ; 
 ihe result of that war it was which finally enlightened all the Popish princes of 
 Christendom as to the impossibility of ever suppressing the antagonist party bj 
 mere force of arms. I am not meaning, however, to utter any opinion whatevet 
 on the religious position of the iwo great parties. It is sufficient for entire sym- 
 pathy with the royal Sweie, that he fought for the freedom of conscience. Many 
 an enlightened Roman Catholic, supposing only that he were not a Papist, would 
 Wive given his hopes and his confidence to the Protestant king.
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 taimng it. But such cases, though emerging rarely, are always to b 
 reserved in men's minds as ultimate appeals to what is must divine io 
 man. Happy it is for human welfare that the blind heart of man is 
 a thoue.md times wiser than his understanding. An arricre jirnn'r 
 should lie hidden in all ininds a holy reserve as to cases which may 
 arise similar to such as HAVE arisen, where a merciful bloodshuu ' LJ = 
 been authorized by the express voice of God. Such a reserve cannot 
 be dispensed with. It belongs to the principle of progress in man 
 what he should forever keep open a secret commerce in the last resin t 
 
 ' " Merciful bloodshed." In reading either the later religious wars of tha 
 Jewish people under the Maccabees, or the earlier under Joshua, every philo- 
 sophic reader will have felt the true and transcendent spirit of mercy whic) 
 resides virtually in such wars, as maintaining the unity of God against Polythe- 
 ism, and, by trampling on cruel idolatries, as indirectly opening the channels for 
 benign principles of morality through endless generations of men. Here especially 
 he will have read one justification of Wordsworth's bold doctrine upon war. 
 Thus far he will descry a wisdom working from afar ; but, as regards the imme- 
 diate present, he will be apt to adopt the ordinary view, namely, that in the OM 
 Testament severity prevails approaching to cruelty. Yet, on consideration, he 
 will be disposed to qualify this opinion. He will have observed many indications 
 of a relenting kindness and a tenderness of love in the Mosaical ordinances. 
 And recently there has been suggested another argument tending to the same 
 ;onclusion. In the last work of Mr. Layard (" Discoveries in the Kuins of Nin- 
 eveh and Babylon, 1853 ") are published some atrocious monuments of the 
 Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives. In one of the plates of 
 Chap, xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown torture applied to the head , 
 and in another, at page 458, is exhibited the abominable process, applied to two 
 saptives, of flaying them alive. One such case had been previously recorded in 
 human literature, and illustrated by a plate. It occurs In a Dutch voyage to the 
 islands of the East. The subject of thrf torment in that case was a woman who 
 bad been charged with some act of infidelity to her husband. And the local gov- 
 ernment, being indignantly summoned to interfere by some Christian strangers, 
 had declined to do so, on the plea that the man was master within his own house. 
 But the Assyrian case was worse. This torture was there applied, not u|x>n a 
 Hidden vindictive Impulse, but in cold blood, to a simple case apparently of civil 
 disobedience or revolt. Now, when we consider how intimate, and how ancient, 
 wag the connection between Assyria and Palestine, how many things (in war 
 especially) were transferred mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitu- 
 ally Tuel), from the people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I feel convinced 
 that Moses must have interfered most peremptorily and determinately, and not 
 merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing counter usages against thii 
 ipirit of barbarity j otherwise it would have increased contagiously , whereas we 
 meet with no such hellish atrocities amongst the children of Israel. In the case 
 f one memorable outrage by a Hebrew tribe, the national vengeance, whick 
 vertook it. was complete and fearful beyond all that history has recorded.
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 with the spirit of martyrdom on behalf of man's most saintly inter- 
 ests. In proportion as the instruments for upholding or retrieving 
 rach saintly interests should come to be dishonored or less honored, 
 would the inference be valid that those interests were shaking in their 
 foundations. And any confederation or compact of nations for abol 
 ishing war would be the inauguration of a downward path for man. 
 
 A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also tha meanest, of 
 bninan exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike 
 truth, for human dignity, or for human rights ; it is the meanest when 
 it is fought for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for acces- 
 sion of territory which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), 
 and still more when it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of na- 
 tional prowess. This is the principle upon which, very naturally, OUT 
 British school-boys value a battle. Painful it is to add, that this ia 
 the principle upon which our adult neighbors the French soern to 
 value a battle. 
 
 To any man who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gal- 
 lantry of the French, and pa3 T s a cheerful tribute of respect to their 
 many intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state 
 of feeling which the French people manifest on every possible ques- 
 tion that connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A 
 battle is valued by them on the same principles, not better and not 
 worse, as govern our own school-boys. Every battle is viewed by the 
 boys as a test applied to the personal prowess of each individual sol 
 dier ; and, naturally amongst boys, it would be the merest hypocrisy 
 to take any higher ground. But amongst adults, arrived at the powei 
 of reflecting and comparing, we look for something nobler. We Eng- 
 lish estimate Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but 
 as the battle which terminated a series of battles, having one com- 
 mon object, namely, the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great 
 sepulchral shadow rolled away from the face of Christendom as that 
 day's sun went down to hjg rest ; for, had the success been less abso- 
 lute, an opportunity would have offered for negotiation, and conse- 
 quently for an infinity of intrigues through the feuds always gathering 
 upon national jealousies amongst allied armies. The dragon would 
 soon have healed his wounds ; after which the prosperity of the des- 
 potism would have been greater than before. But, without reference 
 to Waterloo in particular, we, on our part, find it impossible to con. 
 template any memorable battle otherwise than according to its tend 
 ency towards some commensurate object. To the French this must 
 Oe impossible, seeing that no lofty (that is, no disinterested) purpose
 
 *U PREFACE. 
 
 has ever been so much as counterfeited for a French war, nor there 
 fore for a French battle. Aggression, cloaked at the very utmost in 
 the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions on the part of the 
 enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such motives as it ia 
 thought worth while to plead Cut in French casuistry it is not held 
 necessary to plead ce*.-j\iin.g ; war jus'.ifies itself. To fight for the 
 experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but 
 (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing tc 
 Europe the proclamation of French superiority that is the object 
 of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold 
 that a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls 
 for apology ; and that already from the first such an apology uauit 
 ear a veryiuapioioui aspect of paradox.
 
 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 THAT the reader may not seek in this little work anything 
 other or more than was designed, I will briefly state its primary 
 object. Political Economy does not advance. Since the revo- 
 lution effected in that science by Ricardo (1817), upon the 
 whole it has been stationary. But why ? It has always been 
 my own conviction that the reason lies, not in any material 
 defect of facts (except as to the single question of money), but 
 in the laxity of some amongst the distinctions which are elemen" 
 tary to the science. For example, that one desperate enormity 
 of vicious logic, which takes place in the ordinary application 
 to price of the relation between supply and demand, has 
 ruined more arguments dispersed through speeches, books, 
 journals, than a long life could fully expose. Let us judge by 
 analogy drawn from mathematics. If it were possible that but 
 three elementary definitions, or axioms, or postulates, in geom- 
 etry, should be liable to controversy and to a precarious use (a 
 use dependent upon petition and momentary consent), what 
 would follow ? Simply this, that the whole vast aerial syn- 
 thesis of that science, at present towering upwards towards 
 infinity, would exhibit an edifice eternally, perhaps, renewing 
 itself by parts, but eternally tottering in some parts, and in 
 other parts mouldering eternally into ruins. That science,
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 which now holds " acquaintance with the stars " by means of 
 its inevitable and imperishable truth, would become as treach- 
 erous as Shakespeare's " stairs of sand " : or, like the fantastic 
 architecture which the winds are everlastingly pursuing in the 
 Arabian desert, would exhibit phantom arrays of fleeting col- 
 umns and fluctuating edifices, which, under the very breath 
 that had created them, would be for ever collapsing into dust. 
 Such, even to this moment, as regards its practical applications, 
 is the science of Political Economy. Nothing can be postulated, 
 nothing can be demonstrated ; for anarchy, even as to the 
 earliest principles, is predominant. Under this conviction, 
 about twenty-two years ago, I sketched a fragment of this 
 science, entitled " The Templar's Dialogues." The purpose of 
 this fragment was, to draw into much stronger relief than 
 Ricardo himself had done that one radical doctrine as to value, 
 by which he had given a new birth to Political Economy. My 
 little sketch had the merit of drawing from an author, to this 
 day anonymous, the " Critical Dissertation upon Value." Nat- 
 urally, it is gratifying to have called forth, whether in alliance 
 or in opposition, so much of ingenuity and of logical acuteness. 
 But, with all his ability, that writer failed to shake any of my 
 opinions. I continue to hold my original ideas on the various 
 aspeots of this embarrassing doctrine ; and I continue to believe 
 tfiat a much severer investigation of this doctrine is indispen- 
 sable at the outset. In prosecution of that belief, I now go on, 
 without again travelling over the ground which possibly I had 
 won in " The Templar's Dialogues," to investigate some further 
 perplexities in the general doctrine of value, and particularly 
 such as these which I now specify, in the view of intercepting 
 any misdirected expectations as to the nature of the book. 
 
 1. With respect to what is called value in use, I endeavor to 
 expose the total misapprehension, by Adam Smith, of the word 
 " use" as though any opposition were here indicated between 
 the useful and the ornamental or pleasurable. Not what is use- 
 ful, but what is used, here forms the nodus of the antithesis, and 
 regulates conformably the mode of appreciation. 
 
 2. With respect to the same term, value in use, I endeavor to 
 establish another distinction as against another perplexity much
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 7 
 
 more important. We sit on a summer day by the side of a 
 brook, and, being thirsty, drink from its waters. Now, this bev- 
 erage has confessedly a value in use ; but, in England, it is so 
 far from bearing a value in exchange, that such a case expresses 
 the very abnegation and antithesis of exchange value. On the 
 other hand, there is by possibility a very different value in use ; 
 there is such a value (that is, a valu3 determined altogether 
 and simply on the scale of uses or teleologic aptitudes) arising 
 under circumstances which will not range it against exchange 
 value as its polar antithesis, but will range it under exchange 
 value as one of its two modes. In the first acceptation, value 
 in use is made co-ordinate with exchange value, ranges over 
 against it, as its adequate contradiction ; in the second accep- 
 tation, value in use is made subordinate to exchange value, as 
 one of its two modifications. Here lies a source of confusion 
 which never has been exposed, and which, at the very vesti- 
 bule, has hitherto defeated all attempt at a systematic theory 
 of value. 
 
 3. I endeavor to expose the confusion between " market 
 value" as a fact, and "market value" as a law. The term 
 "market value," in popular use, expresses only a barren fact, 
 the value of an article, for instance, in Liverpool as opposed to 
 Glasgow ; to-day as opposed to yesterday. It means no more 
 than existing value as opposed to value past or future ; actual 
 value as opposed to possible value. But, in the technical use, 
 " market value " points to no idle matter of fact, (idle, I mean, 
 because uninfluential on the price,) but it points to a law modi- 
 fying the price, and derived from the market. In this use the 
 term " market " does not indicate the mere ubi or the quando 
 of the sale ; but is a short-hand expression for the relation be- 
 tween the quantity offered for sale and the quantity demanded. 
 That is certainly a distinction old enough to be clearly appre- 
 hended ; and often it is clearly apprehended. Yet also, in the 
 practical use, too often it is utterly misapplied. Even by those 
 who parade the distinction in their theoretical statements, even 
 by him who introduced this distinction, lastly, even by that 
 Ricardo who favors us with a separate chapter on this distinc- 
 tion, practically the two senses contemplated by the distinction
 
 8 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMT. 
 
 are confounded, inferences being derived from one sense which 
 apply only to the other. 
 
 4. I endeavor to expose the metaphysical confusion involved 
 in " market value," when it is supposed by possibility to consti- 
 tute an original value. This is an error which has led to worse 
 consequences than any of the others here noticed. People 
 fancy that the relation of Supply to Demand could by possibil- 
 ity and that in fact it often does determine separately per 
 se the selling price of an article. Within a few months, this 
 monstrous idea has been assumed for true by Colonel Torrens, 
 in an express work on Economic Politics ; by Lord Brougham, 
 in relation to the foreign corn-trade ; and by almost every jour- 
 nal in the land that has fallen under my own eye. But it is a 
 metaphysical impossibility that Supply and Demand, the rela- 
 tion of which is briefly expressed by the term " market value," 
 could ever affect price except by a secondary force. Always 
 there must be a modificabile (i. e. an antecedent price, arising 
 from some other cause) before any modification from Supply 
 against Demand can take effect. Consequently, whilst "natural 
 price " (the contradiction of "market price") is always a mono- 
 nomial, price, founded on the relation of Supply to Demand, 
 must always be a binomial. 
 
 The latter chapters, as a sort of praxis on the law of value 
 applied to the leading doctrines of Bicardo, were added for the 
 sake of the student in Political Economy. They are not abso- 
 lutely required ; but they may have a use in tracing the descent 
 of a pure theory into consequences connected on the one 
 side with theory, and on the other side with practice. 
 
 February 8, 1844.
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 VALUE. 
 SECTION I. VALUE IN THE GENERIC SENSE. 
 
 THAT natural distinction, which takes place from the 
 very beginnings of society, between value as founded upon 
 some serviceable quality in an object too largely diffused 
 to confer any power of purchasing other objects, and 
 value as founded upon some similar quality in an object 
 so limited as to become property, and thus having a 
 power to purchase other objects, has long been familiar to 
 the public ear under the antithetic expressions of " value 
 in use " and " value in exchange" Who first noticed 
 pointedly a distinction which must always obscurely have 
 been moving in the minds of men, it would now be idle 
 to inquire : such an inquiry would too much resemble 
 that Greek question, " Who first invented sneezing ? " 
 For my own part, the eldest author, in whom I remem- 
 ber to have traced this distinction formally developed, 
 is Plautus, contemporary with Hannibal. He, in his 
 ' Asinaria" has occasion to introduce a lively scene on a 
 question of prompt payment between Argyrippus, a young 
 man then occupied in sowing wild-oats, and Ccelereta, a 
 prudent woman settled in business on her own account. 
 She is in fact a lena, which name, however did not bear 
 so horrid a construction under Pagan morals as most 
 justly it does under Christian . and, in that professional
 
 10 THE LOGIC OV POLITICAL 1 oNOMV. 
 
 character, she is mistress of a young beauty with whom 
 Argyrippus had celebrated a left-handed marriage some 
 time back, which connection he now seeks to renew upon 
 a second contract. But for this a price is asked of sixty 
 guineas. The question which arises between the parties 
 respects the propriety of the household economy for the 
 present going on \ipon tick, which Argyrippus views as 
 the sublimest of philosophical discoveries ; whilst the lena 
 violently resists it, as a vile, one-sided policy, patronized 
 by all who happened to be buyers, but rejected universally 
 by sellers. The following is the particular passage which 
 concerns the present distinction between value in use and 
 value in exchange : 
 
 " ARGYR. Ubi illaec quae dedi ante ? 
 
 " CYCLER. Abusa : nam, si ea durarent mihi, 
 Mulier mitteretur ad te : nunquam quicquam poscerem. 
 Diem, aquam, solem, lunam, noctem, hcec argento non emo : 
 Ccetera, quceque volumus uli, Graced, mercamur Jide. 
 Quum a pistore panem petimus, vinum ex cenoplio, 
 Si CES habent, dant mercem : eddem nos disciplind utimur. 
 Semper oculata; nostrae sunt manus, credunt quod vident. 
 Vetus est nihili cocio est." 
 
 ARG. What has become of those sums which in times past I 
 gave you ? 
 
 CML. All spent, sir, all consumed ; for, believe me, if those 
 moneys still survived, the young woman should be despatched to 
 your house without another word ; once paid in full, I 'm not 
 the woman that would trouble you for a shilling. Look here : 
 the successions of day and night, water, sunlight, moonlight, all 
 these things I purchase freely without money ; but that heap of 
 things beside, which my establishment requires, those 1 pay for on 
 the old terms of Grecian credit. 1 When I send for a loaf to the 
 baker's, -for wine to the vintner's, certainly the articles are deliv- 
 ered; but when ? Why, as soon as those people have touched the 
 cash. Now, that same practice is what I in my turn apply tc
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 11 
 
 others. My hands have still eyes at their finger-ends: their 
 faith is strong in all money which actually they see. For 
 "caution," as you call it for guaranties they are nothing: 
 security be d d ; and that 's an old saying. 
 
 The latter part of the speech wanders off into the dif- 
 ference between the system of prompt payment on the 
 one hand, and of credit on the other. But the part in 
 italics confines itself to the difference between value in 
 use and value in exchange, between the class of things 
 valuable which could be had for nothing, and that other 
 class of things valuable which must be paid for ; secondly, 
 which must also be paid for on the spot. The former 
 class is a limited class ; the latter so extensive, that she 
 makes no attempt to enumerate the items : she simply 
 selects two, bread and wine, as representative items, 
 one of which is the more striking, because it represents 
 a necessity already provided for by nature in the gratu- 
 itous article of water. 
 
 Here, then, already two centuries before the Chris- 
 tian era, in the second or chief Punic war, is the great 
 distinction brought out into broad daylight between the 
 things useful to man which are too multiplied and diffused 
 to be raised into property, and the things useful to man 
 which are not so multiplied and diffused, but which, being 
 hard to obtain, support the owner in demanding a price 
 for them. Many people fancy that these two ideas never 
 are, nor could be, confounded : and some people fancy, 
 amongst whom was Mr. Malthus, that in the intercourse 
 of real life the word value, or valuable, never is employed 
 at all, rightly or not rightly, in the original sense, as 
 implying mere value in use, but that (except amongst 
 affected or pedantic talkers) this word " value " must always 
 indicate some sort of value in exchange. We never, 
 
 G> 
 
 Jierefore, according to Mr. Malthus, use or could use such
 
 12 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 a phrase as "a valuable friend," or "a valuable doc- 
 trine." It would be impossible to say that " we ascribed 
 great value to any deliberate judgment of such a judge " ; 
 or that " the friendship of a wise elder brother had proved 
 of the highest value to a young man at Cambridge " ; or 
 that "the written opinion, which we had obtained from 
 Mr. Attorney- General, was eminently valuable." Liter- 
 ally, it is terrific to find blank assertions made by men 
 of sense so much in defiance of the truth, and on matters 
 of fact lying so entirely within an ordinary experience. 
 Full fifty times in every month must Mr. Malthus himself 
 have used the word " value " and " valuable " in this very 
 natural sense, which he denounces as a mere visionary 
 sense, suggested by the existing books. Now, to show by 
 a real and a recent case, how possible it is for a sensible 
 man to use the words value or valuable in this original 
 sense, not merely where a pure generic usefulness is con- 
 cerned, but even in cases which must forcibly have point- 
 ed his attention to the other sense (the exchange sense) 
 of the words, I cite in a note a striking instance of such 
 a use, 2 from this day's paper (the London Standard) for 
 February 27th, 1843. 
 
 Value in use, therefore, is an idea lurking by possibil- 
 ity under the elliptical term "value" quite as naturally, 
 though not so frequently, as the idea of value in ex- 
 change. And, in any case of perplexity arising out of the 
 term value employed absolutely, it may be well for the 
 reader to examine closely if some such equivocation does 
 not in reality cause the whole demur. One moment's 
 consideration will convince the student that the second 
 form of value viz. value in exchange does not ex- 
 clude the first form, value in use ; for, on the contrary, 
 the second form could not exist without presupposing the 
 first. But, in the inverse case, the logic is different : value
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 13 
 
 in use, where it exists antithetically to the other form, not 
 only may but must exclude it. 
 
 This leads to another capital distinction: Value in 
 exchange is an idea constructed by superadding to the 
 original element of serviceableness (or value in use) an 
 accessory element of power [howsoever gained] to com- 
 mand an equivalent. It follows, therefore, that the origi- 
 nal element, value in use, may be viewed in two states, 
 1st, as totally disengaged from the secondary element; 
 2dly, as not disengaged from that element, but as necessa- 
 rily combining with it. In the second state we have seen 
 that it takes the name of " value in exchange." What 
 name does it take in the first state, where it is wholly dis- 
 engaged from the power of purchasing ? Answer [and 
 let the reader weigh this well] it takes the name of 
 " wealth." 
 
 Mr. Ricardo was the first person who had the sagacity 
 to see, that the idea of wealth was the true polar antagonist 
 to the idea of value in exchange ; and that, without this 
 regulative idea, it is impossible to keep the logic of politi- 
 cal economy true to its duties. This doctrine, so essen- 
 tially novel, he first explained in his celebrated chapter 
 (numbered xviii. in his first edition) which bears for its 
 title, " Value and Riches; their distinctive Properties" 
 And in the early part of it he remarks most truly, that 
 " many of the errors in political economy have arisen from 
 errors on this subject, from considering an increase of 
 riches and an increase of value as meaning the same 
 thing." But it is singular enough, that even Ricardo did 
 not consciously observe the exact coincidence of riches, 
 under this new limitation of his own, with " value in use." 
 This was an accident likely enough to arise under the 
 absence of any positive occasion for directing his eye to 
 that fact. It was, no doubt, a pure case of inadvertence.
 
 14 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 But there is the same sort of danger from holding two 
 ideas radically identical to be different, or in opposition to 
 each other, as there is from confounding two ideas radi- 
 cally opposed. Meantime, no chapter in Ricardo's book 
 (with the single exception of the first) has been so much 
 singled out for attack, or for special admiration, 8 as this 
 particular chapter wlu'ch rectifies the idea of wealth. 
 Even amongst the leading supporters of Ricardo, it will 
 be seen further on, (in the brief commentary upon this 
 eighteenth chapter,) that some have unconsciously sur- 
 rendered it. Not only have they been unaware of their 
 own revolt, in this particular instance, from that theory 
 which they had professed to adopt; but they have been 
 equally unaware that, simultaneously with the collapse of 
 this doctrine concerning wealth, collapses the entire doc- 
 trine of Ricardo concerning value ; and if that basis 
 should ever seriously be shaken, all the rest of Ricardo's 
 system, being purely in the nature of a superstructure, 
 must fall into ruins. These questions, however, with re- 
 spect to the truth of particular doctrines, and their power 
 to resist such assaults as have menaced them, will come 
 forward by degrees, in proportion as their development 
 ripens under our advance. For the present my office is, 
 not to defend them, but to state them, and to trace their 
 logical deduction ; by which word, borrowed from a case 
 strictly analogous in the modern expositions of the civil 
 law, I understand a process such as, by a more learned 
 term, would be called a systematic "genesis" of any com- 
 plex truth, the act, namely, of pursuing the growth 
 which gradually carries that truth to its full expansion 
 through all its movements, and showing of each separately 
 how it arose, and in what change or movement of the 
 principal idea, under what necessity supervening at that 
 point, or on the suggestion of what occasional falling in 
 with some other and kindred truth.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 15 
 
 I have now traced the generic idea of " value," taken 
 absolutely and without further limitation, into the two 
 subordinate modes of, 1st, Value resting exclusively on 
 a power to serve a purpose ; and, 2d, Of value resting 
 on that power, but combined with the accessory power of 
 commanding an equivalent, into value which does and 
 value which does not involve the idea of property. The 
 simpler mode of value I have announced to be identical 
 with the Kicardian idea of wealth, and, under that head, 
 it will come round for consideration in its proper place. 
 But the other mode of value viz. Exchange Value 
 which is far more important to political economy, being 
 no longer a regulative but a constitutive idea, 4 now steps 
 naturally into the place, standing next in order for inves- 
 tigation ; and I warn the young student that, at this point, 
 he steps forward upon perilous ground, of which every 
 inch is debatable. Here it is that the true struggle takes 
 place, that unavoidable combat between principles origi- 
 nally hostile, which into every subsequent section carries 
 forward its consequences, and which, upon every system 
 past or to come, impresses that determinate character, 
 exposes, that determinate tendency or clinamen, event- 
 ually decisive of its pretensions. 
 
 SECTION H. VALUE IN EXCHANGE. 
 
 WHAT is value in exchange ? "What is its foundation ? 
 Most remarkable it seems, that up to a certain point 
 all systems of modern economy answer this question cor- 
 rectly ; yet, after passing that point, that all are wrong. 
 In the vast accumulation of books on this subject, English, 
 French, or Italian, (for German books go for nothing
 
 16 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECOXOMV. 
 
 
 
 here,) I have not met with one which sustains the truth to 
 the end ; whilst, on the other hand, it would be hardly less 
 difficult to point out one which fails at the opening. Ver- 
 hal inaccuracies might indeed be cited from all ; for in an 
 age of hasty reading, and of contempt for the whole ma- 
 chinery of scholastic distinctions, it cannot be expected 
 that authors will spend much energy upon qualities which 
 have ceased to be meritorious, upon nicety of distinction 
 which perishes to the flying reader, or upon a jealous 
 maintenance of consistency, which, unless it were appreci- 
 ated by severe study, could not benefit the writer. In this 
 way, there arises at once a natural explanation of that 
 carelessness in the mode of exposition which has every- 
 where disfigured the modern science of political economy. 
 Almost all writers have agreed substantially, and have 
 rightly agreed, in founding exchangeable value upon two 
 elements, power in the article valued to meet some nat- 
 ural desire or some casual purpose of man, in the liivt 
 place, and, in the second place, upon difficulty of attain- 
 ment. These two elements must meet, must come into 
 combination, before any value in exchange can be estab- 
 lished. They constitute the two co-ordinate conditions, of 
 which, where either is absent, no value in the sense of 
 exchange value can arise for a moment. Indeed, it is 
 evident to common sense, that any article whatever, to 
 obtain that artificial sort of value which is meant by ex- 
 change value, must begin by offering itself as a means to 
 some desirable purpose; and secondly, that even though 
 possessing incontestably this preliminary advantage, it will 
 never ascend to an exchange value in cases where it can 
 be obtained gratuitously, and without effort, of which 
 last terms both are necessary as limitations. For often 
 it will happen that some desirable object may be obtained 
 gratuitously; stoop, and you gather it at your feet: but
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 17 
 
 still, because the continued iteration of this stooping exacts 
 a laborious effort, very soon it is found, that to gather for 
 yourself virtually is not gratuitous. In the vast forests of 
 the Canadas, at intervals, wild strawberries may be gratui- 
 tously gathered by ship-loads ; yet such is the exhaustion 
 of a stooping posture, and of a labor so monotonous, that 
 everybody is soon glad to resign the service into merce- 
 nary hands. 
 
 The same idea, the same demand of a twofold conditio 
 sine qua non as essential to the composition of an ex- 
 change value, is otherwise expressed (and in a shape 
 better fitted for subsequent reference) by the two follow- 
 ing cases, marked Epsilon and Omicron: 
 
 Case Epsilon. A man comes forward with his over- 
 ture, " Here is a thing which I wish you to purchase ; 
 it has cost me in labor five guineas, and that is the price 
 I ask." " Very well," you reply ; " but tell me this, what 
 desire or purpose of mine will the article promote ? " 
 Epsilon rejoins, " Why, as candor is my infirmity, none 
 at all. But what of that ? Useful or not, the article em- 
 bodies five guineas' worth of excellent labor." This man, 
 the candid Epsilon, you dismiss. 
 
 Case Omicron. Him succeeds Omicron, who praises 
 your decisive conduct as to the absurd family of the 
 Epsilons. " That man," he observes, " is weak, candid, 
 but weak ; for what was the cost in your eyes but so much 
 toil to no effect of real service ? But that is what nobody 
 can say of the ai'ticle offered by myself; it is serviceable 
 always, nay, often you will acknowledge it to be indis- 
 pensable." " What is it ? " you demand. " Why simply, 
 then, it is a pound of water, and as good water as ever 
 you tasted." The scene lies in England, where water 
 bears no value except under that machinery of costly 
 arrangements which delivers it as a permanent and guar- 
 2
 
 18 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 anteed succession into the very chambers where it is to be 
 used. Omicron accordingly receives permission to follow 
 the candid Epsilon. Each has offered for sale one ele- 
 ment of value out of two, one element in a state of insu- 
 lation, where it was indispensable for any operative value, 
 t. . price, to offer the two in combination ; and, without 
 such a combination, it is impossible (neither does any 
 economist deny this by his principles) that value in ex- 
 change, under the most romantic or imaginary circum- 
 stances, ever should be realized. 
 
 Thus far all is right ; all is easy and all is harmonious ; 
 thus far, no hair-splitter by profession can raise even a 
 verbal quillet against so plain a movement of the under- 
 standing, unless it were by some such cavil as is stated 
 below. 5 It is in the next step that a difficulty arises, to 
 all appearance insurmountable. It is a difficulty which 
 seems, when stated, to include a metaphysical impossibil- 
 ity. You are required to do that which, under any state- 
 ment, seems to exact a contradiction in terms. The de- 
 mand is absolute and not to be evaded, for realizing an 
 absurdity and extracting a positive existence out of a 
 nonentity or a blank negation. To this next step, there- 
 fore, let us now proceed, after warning the reader that 
 even Ricardo has not escaped the snare which is here 
 spread for the understanding; and that, although a mascu- 
 line good sense will generally escape in practice from 
 merely logical perplexities, [that is, will cut the knot for 
 all immediate results of practice which it cannot untie,] 
 yet that errors " in the first intention " come round upon 
 us in subsequent stages, unless they are met by their 
 proper and commensurate solutions. Logic must be freed 
 by logic : a false dialectical appearance of truth must be 
 put down by the fullest exposure of the absolute and 
 hidden truth, since also it will continually happen, (as it
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 19 
 
 has happened in the present case,) though a plausible 
 sophism, Avhich had been summarily crushed for the mo- 
 ment by a strong appeal to general good sense upon the 
 absurd consequences arising, will infallibly return upon 
 us when no such startling consequences are at hand. 
 Now, therefore, with this sense of the critical step which 
 next awaits us, let us move forward. 
 
 The idea of value in exchange having thus been ana- 
 lytically decomposed, the question which offers itself next 
 in order concerns the subdivision of this idea. How 
 many modes are possible of value in exchange? The 
 general answer is, two ; and the answer is just : there 
 are two. But how are these two distinguished? How 
 is it that they arise ? Now here it is, in the answer to 
 this question, that an infirm logic has disturbed the truth. 
 Even Ricardo has not escaped the universal error. Sus- 
 pensory judgments are painful acts. It is fatiguing to 
 most readers, that a provisional view of the truth should 
 be laid before them, upon which all the pains taken to 
 appropriate and master it are by agreement to be finally 
 found worthless. This refutation of error is better so 
 placed as to follow the establishment of the truth, in which 
 position the reader may either dismiss it unread, as a cor- 
 ollary which already he knows to be too much, as an 
 oifshoot in excess ; or, on the other hand, choosing to 
 read it, will do so under the additional light obtained 
 through the true doctrine now restored to its authority. 
 
 The difficulty which strikes us all upon the possibility 
 of raising any subdivision under that generic idea of ex- 
 change value already stated, is this : The two elements 
 are, 1st, Intrinsic utility; 2d, Difficulty of attainment. 
 But these elements must concur. They are not recipro- 
 cating or alternating ideas ; they are not, to borrow a 
 word from Coleridge, inter-repellent 6 ideas, =o that room
 
 20 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 might be made for a double set of exchange values, by 
 supposing alternately each of the elements to be with- 
 drawn, whilst the other element was left paramount. 
 This is impossible; because, by the very terms of the 
 analysis, each element is equally indispensable to the com- 
 mon idea which is the subject of division. Alike in either 
 case, if No 1, or if No 2, should be dropped out of the 
 composition, instantly the whole idea of exchange value 
 falls to the ground tike a punctured bladder. 
 
 But this seems to preclose the road to any possible sub- 
 division of the generic idea, because immediately it occurs 
 to the student, that when no element can be withdrawn, 
 then it is not possible that the subdivisions can differ except 
 as to degree. In one case of exchange value there might, 
 for instance, be a little more of the element A, and a little 
 less of the element B. In some other case these propor- 
 tions might be reversed. But all this is nothing. When 
 we subdivide the genus animal, we are able to do so by 
 means of an element not common to the two subdivisions: 
 we assign man as one subdivision, brutes as the other, 
 by means of a great differential idea, the idea of ration- 
 ality ; consequential upon which are tears, laughter, and 
 the capacity of religion. All these we deny to brutes ; 
 all these we claim for man ; and thus are these two great 
 sub-genera or species possible. But when all elements 
 are equally present to both of the subdividing ideas. \ve 
 cannot draw any bisecting line between them. The two 
 ideas lie upon one continuous line, differing, therefore, 
 as higher and lower, by more and by less, but not other- 
 wise ; and any subdividing barrier, wheresoever it is made 
 to fall between them, must be drawn arbitrarily, without 
 any reasonable foundation in real or essential difference-. 
 
 These considerations are calculated to stagger us ; and 
 at this precise stage of the discussion I request the rca<
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECOHOMY. 21 
 
 er s most vigilant attention. We have all read of secret 
 doors in great cities, so exquisitely dissembled by art, that 
 in what seemed a barren surface of dead wall, where 
 even the eye forewarned could trace no vestige of a sep- 
 aration or of a line, simply by a simultaneous pressure 
 upon two remote points, suddenly and silently an opening 
 was exposed which revealed a long perspective of retir- 
 ing columns, architecture the most elaborate, where all 
 had passed for one blank continuity of dead wall. Not 
 less barren in promise, not less abrupt in its transition, 
 this speculation at the very vestibule of political economy, 
 at the point where most it had appeared to allow of no 
 further advance or passage, suddenly opens and expands 
 before an artifice of logic which almost impresses the 
 feelings as a trick of legerdemain, not by anything un- 
 sound in its own nature, but by the sudden kind of pan- 
 tomime change Avhich it effects. The demand is, that you 
 shall subdivide exchange value into two separate modes. 
 You are to do this without aid from any new idea that 
 has arisen to vary the general idea ; you are to work with 
 the two already contained in that general idea, con- 
 sequently with ideas that must be common to both the 
 subdivisions, and yet you are to differentiate these sub- 
 divisions. Each is to be opposed to the other, each is to 
 differ, and yet the elements assigned to you out of which 
 this difference is to be created are absolutely the same. 
 Who can face such conditions as these ? Given a total 
 identity, and out of that you are to create a difference. 
 
 Let not the reader complain of the copious way in 
 which the difficulty is exposed. After many hundreds 
 of failures, after endless efforts with endless miscar- 
 riages, it is no time for refusing his own terms to the 
 leader of a final assault. So many defeats have natu- 
 rally made us all angry. I am angry, the reader is
 
 22 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 angry; and that offer is entitled to consideration, even 
 though it should seem needlessly embarrassed or circuit- 
 ous, which terminates in the one object that can be worth 
 talking about, Viz. in "doing the trick," and carrying 
 by a summary effort that obstacle which (whether ob- 
 served or not observed) has so long thwarted the power 
 of perfecting and integrating the theory of value. Once 
 being convinced' that it is a mere contradiction to solve 
 the problem, the reader may be relied on for attending to 
 anything offered as a solution by one who has almost 
 demonstrated its impossibility. 
 
 Out of nothing, nothing is generated. This is pretty 
 old ontology ; and apparently our case at present is of 
 that nature ; for by no Laputan process of extracting sun- 
 beams from cucumbers, does it appear how we can hope, 
 out of two samenesses, to extract one difference ; yet do 
 it we must, or else farewell to the object before us. And, 
 in order that we may do it, let us disembarrass our prob- 
 lem of all superfluous words ; and, by way of sharpening 
 the eye to the point of assault, let us narrow it to the 
 smallest possible area. 
 
 What we have to do, is to consider whether (and now) 
 it is feasible so to use a sameness as to make it do the 
 office of a difference. With one single sameness this 
 would peremptorily not be possible ; for we could vary it 
 no otherwise than by varying its degrees. Now, a differ- 
 ence in degrees is no substantial difference in logic ; and 
 the pretended subdivisions would melt and play into each 
 other, so as to confound the attempt at sustaining any sub- 
 divisions at ah 1 . But, on the other hand, with two same- 
 nesses it is possible to move. A little reflection will show 
 that there is a resource for making them alternately act 
 as differences. In physics we see vast phenomena taking 
 place all day long, which a priori might have been stated
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 2-3 
 
 as paradoxes not less startling than that of extracting a 
 difference out of a sameness. One gravity rises through 
 another gravity. True ; it is specifically lighter ; but still it 
 has a specific gravity : and thus we find as the result, with 
 the usual astonishing simplicity of nature, that the same 
 machinery serves for sinking objects and for raising them. 
 By gravity they fall ; by gravity they rise. So also, 
 again, that same ocean, which to nations populous and 
 developed by civilization offers the main high-road of in- 
 tercourse, was to the same nations, when feeble, the great 
 Avail of separation and protection. And again, in the ca^e 
 before us, monstrous as really is the paradox, 7 yet it is 
 true, that, by a dexterous management of two elements 
 absolutely identical, all the effects and benefits may be 
 obtained of two elements essentially different. 
 
 Let us look more closely. The two elements are u and 
 D. If both elements are to be present, and both are to 
 be operative, then indeed we have a contradiction in terms 
 such as never will be overcome. But how if both be 
 uniformly present, one only being at any time operative ? 
 How if both be indispensably present, but alternately 
 each become inert? How if both act as motives on the 
 buyer for buying at all, but one only (each in turn under 
 its own circumstances) as a force operating on the price ? 
 
 This is the real case : this is the true solution ; and thus 
 is a difference obtained, such a difference as will amply 
 sustain a twofold subdivision from elements substantially 
 the same. Both are co-present, and always. Neither 
 "an be absent ; for, if so, then the common idea of ex- 
 change value would vanish, the case epsilon or the case 
 omicron would be realized. But each of the two is sus- 
 pended alternately. Thus, by way of illustration, walk 
 into almost any possible shop, buy the first article you 
 see ; what will determine its price ? In ninety-nine cases
 
 24 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of a hundred, simply the element D, difficulty of attain- 
 ment The other element, u, or intrinsic utility, will be 
 perfectly inoperative. Let the thing (measured by its 
 uses) be, for your purposes, worth ten guineas, so that you 
 would rather give ten guineas than lose it ; yet, if the 
 difficulty of producing it be only worth one guinea, one 
 guinea is the price which it will bear. But still not the 
 less, though u is inoperative, can u be supposed absent ? 
 By no possibility ; for, if it had been absent, assuredly you 
 would not have bought the article even at the lowest 
 price : u acts upon you, though it does not act upon the 
 price. On the other hand, in the hundredth case, we will 
 suppose the circumstances reversed. You are on Lake 
 Superior in a steamboat, making your way to an unset- 
 tled region 800 miles ahead of civilization, and consciously 
 with no chance at all of purchasing any luxury what- 
 soever, little luxury or big luxury, for a space of ten 
 years to come : one fellow-passenger, whom you will part 
 with before sunset, has a powerful musical snuff-box ; 
 knowing by experience the power of such a toy over your 
 own feelings, the magic with which at times it lulls your 
 agitations of mind, you are vehemently desirous to pur- 
 chase it. In the hour of leaving London you had forgot 
 to do so : here is a final chance. But the owner, aware 
 of your situation not less than yourself, is determined to 
 operate by a strain pushed to the very uttermost upon u, 
 upon the intrinsic worth of the article in your individual 
 estimate for your individual purposes. lie will not hear 
 of D as any controlling power or mitigating agency in the 
 case: and finally, although at six guineas 8 apiece in Lon- 
 don or Paris, you might have loaded a wagon with such 
 boxes, you pay sixty rather than lose it when the last 
 knell of the clock has sounded which summons you to 
 buy now or to forfeit for ever. Here, as before, only one
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. ~2o 
 
 element is operative : before it was D, now it is u. But, 
 after all, D was not absent, though inoperative. The in- 
 ertness of D allowed u to put forth its total effect. The 
 practical compression of D being withdrawn, u springs up 
 like water in a pump when released from the pressure of 
 air. Yet still that D was present to your thoughts, though 
 the price was otherwise regulated, is evident; both because 
 u and D must coexist in order to found any case of ex- 
 change value whatever, and because undeniably you taka 
 into very particular consideration this D, the extreme diffi- 
 culty of attainment, (which here is the greatest possible, 
 viz. an impossibility,) before you consent to have the price 
 racked up to u. The special D has vanished ; but it is 
 replaced in your thoughts by an unlimited D. Undoubt- 
 edly you have submitted to u in extremity as the regulat- 
 ing force of the price ; but it was under the sense of D'S 
 latent presence. Yet D is so far from exerting any posi- 
 tive force, that the retirement of D from all agency what- 
 ever on the price, this it is which creates, as it were, 
 a perfect vacuum, and through that vacuum u rushes up 
 to its highest and ultimate graduation. 
 
 This is the foundation of any true solution applied to 
 the difficulty of subdividing exchange value ; and this 
 statement of the case is open to a symbolical expression 
 of its principle ; which principle, let the reader not for- 
 get, is, that, under an eternal co-presence of two forces 
 equally indispensable to the possibility of any exchange 
 value at all, one only of those forces (and each alter- 
 nately, as the ultimate circumstances take effect) gov- 
 erns and becomes operative in the price. Both must 
 concur to raise any motive for purchasing ; but one sepa- 
 rately it is which rules the price. Let not the reader 
 quarrel beforehand with illustrations by geometrical sym- 
 bols ; the use which will be made of them is not of a kin* 1
 
 2 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to justify any jealousies of a surreptitious logic. It is a 
 logic in applying which we abstract altogether from the 
 qualities of objects, and consider them only in so far as 
 they are liable to the affection of more and less. Simply 
 the most elementary of geometrical ideas will be used ; 
 and the object is this, sometimes to render the student's 
 apprehension of the case more definite, but sometimes, 
 also, to show him that the same difficulty, or one anal- 
 ogous, might arise and be representable in the austere 
 simplicities of geometry ; in which case, by parity of argu- 
 ment, the explanation of the difficulty as represented in 
 space will become inversely the explanation for the origi- 
 nal difficulty. 
 
 Here the line u represents the utility 
 value to the purchaser of any article what- 
 ever ; that is, the very ultimate value to 20 
 which, by possibility, it could ascend hi the 
 case that a screw were made to operate 
 upon the purchaser's secret appreciation of J 
 its serviceable qualities. But in ordinary 
 circumstances this cannot happen ; and 
 under such ordinary circumstances, what 
 will be the price? It will be the price determined by 
 D, difficulty of attainment, and this difficulty is ex- 
 pressed by the line D. But mark how it acts. From the 
 summit of the line D, standing on the same base as u, 
 draw at right angles the dotted line which cuts u ; that is 
 to say, D, which is at present the operative force, the 
 true determining force as regards the price, takes up 
 from u precisely as much (and no more at any time) 
 as corresponds to itself. D is, in this case, the true and 
 sole operating force, u, which must indeed be co-present, 
 (because else the purchaser would not be a purchaser, he 
 would have no motive for purchasing, case epsilon,) yet, 
 
 10
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 27 
 
 for all that, is inert quoad the price ; itself submits to an 
 action of D, but it exerts none, it reflects none the very 
 smallest. 
 
 Now, suppose the case reversed : suppose not D, but u, 
 to become suddenly the ruling force, D has become infi- 
 nite, (as in the case of the musical toy in Canada,) that 
 is, the difficulties in the way of supplying the market by 
 a continued reproduction of the article (in one word, the 
 resistance) must be supposed so vast as to be quite beyond 
 the power of any individual to overcome. Instantly, 
 under these circumstances, u springs up to its utmost 
 height. But what is the utmost ? Because D, by ceasing 
 to be finite and measurable, has caused u to come into 
 play, will u therefore follow D, so as also to become 
 infinite ? Not at ah 1 : once called into action as the oper- 
 ating principle, u will become the sole principle ; D will 
 be practically extinct for any action that it can exert upon 
 the price. The rare holders of the article, as surviving 
 from past times or regions now inaccessibly distant, will 
 fix a strain upon the few purchasers by means of the 
 intrinsic or u value ; each of the candidates must submit 
 to see his own outside or extreme esteem for the article 
 made operative against himself as the law of the price. 
 He must ascend to the very maximum of what he will 
 pay, under the known alternative of losing the article for 
 ever if he will not pay it. u is therefore governed by 
 no recollection of the past D, by no consideration of the 
 present unlimited D, 9 but simply thrown back upon its 
 own potential force ; i. e. upon each purchaser's appre- 
 ciation of the article for his own purposes, which can 
 have no connection whatever with the D, or variable 
 resistance to the reproduction of that article in any partic- 
 ular place or time. If you submit to pay 30 of income 
 tax, doubtless the power of the state determines the gen-
 
 28 THE LOGIC OF 1'OMTICAL KCONOMV. 
 
 eral result of your paying at all ; but it is not that which 
 determines the how much : this is a mixed result from the 
 Exchequer ratio on the one hand, and the amount of your 
 income on the other. 
 
 And that this is really so, that both u and D, under the 
 alternate circumstances, will become passive latent, nu- 
 gatory, as regards the price may be shown ex abun- 
 danti ; viz. by showing that under any possible changes, 
 either to u or to D, no beginning no initial moment 
 of action will arise for the one, so long as the other is 
 operative. Figure to yourself, as the object concerned 
 in such a valuation, some powerful drug. Suppose it the 
 Peruvian or Jesuit's bark, and that suddenly, by applying 
 to it the agency of sulphuric acid, some new product (the 
 sulphate of this foreign bark) arises with prodigiously 
 greater powers, not only greater by far, when applied 
 to the common cases open equally to the old medicine and 
 the new, but al#o, in another respect, greater; viz. that 
 it is applicable to a set of cases from which the old med- 
 icine, by its bulk, or by its tendency to febrile symptoms, 
 had found itself excluded ; suppose under this enlarged 
 power, for the basis of the medicine, that the line u, ex- 
 pressing its utility value, should run up to triple or decu- 
 ple of its present altitude, would that change disturb the 
 present appreciation under D ? Not by an iota. Nay, 
 to press the principle to an excess, suppose u to become 
 infinite, still, in all the cases where D is at all the regu- 
 lative force, D will continue even under this change to be 
 the sole force. Nay, suppose that, even concurrently 
 with this increase to u, D, by some cheaper or briefer 
 process for obtaining the sulphate, should descend ; still, 
 even in such a compound case, (vast increase for u, 
 sudden decrease for D,) not the less, u would still con- 
 tinue inert, potentially capable, under the pftper cii-'
 
 10 
 
 -10 
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 29 
 
 cumstances, of exerting an action which might centuple 
 the price, and pitted against a decreasing force in D ; 
 nevertheless, so long as u was not in circumstances to 
 exert the whole action, it could exert none at all ; eo long 
 as D exerted any force, it would exert the whole. 
 
 In the opposite case, where u, or the 
 utility value, is suddenly called into action 
 as the controlling force, it will generally 20 
 be found that this force, in its extremity, 
 has not only been latent previously as 
 regards any effect upon the price, but 
 latent as regards even the consciousness 
 of the individual appreciator. This we 
 saw in the case of the musical toy on the u~ D~ 
 
 Canadian lake. The buyer had not, until a certain mo- 
 ment, been aware of the potential u which really existed 
 to his own contingent appreciation. Xo necessity had 
 ever arisen that he should inquire rigorously how much 
 he would submit to give in the case of u becoming the 
 operative force. So much of u as was requisite to sus- 
 tain r>, so much as corresponded to D, had always been 
 within the consciousness of the purchaser ; and how much 
 further it was capable of ascending, had been hitherto a 
 mere question of useless curiosity. But when a sudden 
 and violent revolution in all the circumstances has arisen 
 for the purchaser, when D is felt to have become infinite, 
 the difficulty of obtaining the article (except by one sole 
 anomalous chance) being now greater than any finite 
 expression could measure, What follows ? Does the 
 price become infinite, as it would do if it were supposed 
 at all to follow D ? No ; but D, though vexatiously pres- 
 ent to the calculations of the purchaser, is no longer opera- 
 tive : it has become silent ; and the alternate f( rce u (now 
 when the case has taken effect, thaf either u screwed up
 
 30 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 to its maximum must rule, or else the article must be 
 lost) instantly steps into the place of D, and becomes ex- 
 clusively operative. The dotted perpendicular line repre- 
 sents the sudden ascent of u to double of its preceding 
 altitude. How much further it would ascend, must de- 
 pend entirely upon the feeling and taste of the individual 
 as regulating his wishes, and upon his disposable money 
 as regulating his power. 
 
 Now, under this symbolic expression we may see at 
 once the hyperbolic extravagance of that notion which 
 has so often been cited with praise from Adam Smith, 
 as though an object might be very great by its capacity 
 in respect of D, and yet very little (or indeed nothing) 
 by its capacity in respect of u. Diamonds, it is asserted, 
 are trivial in respect of tr, but enormously high on the 
 scale measured by D. This is a blank impossibility. 
 The mistake arises under a total misconception of what u 
 indicates, as will be shown in a succeeding section. The 
 countervailing proposition in Adam Smith, viz. that other 
 and ordinary objects, such as water, may reverse these 
 conditions, being trivial in respect of D, but vast in respect 
 of u, is also false ; false in the mode and principle of 
 valuation. But this latter proposition is false only in 
 fact ; it is, at the same time, a very conceivable case : 
 whereas the former proposition is false as to the very 
 ideal possibility, it is inconceivable and monstrous, u 
 may outrun D in any extent ; and generally does so to 
 some extent. It is rare that the whole potential utility 
 value is exhausted by the cost or difficulty value. But 
 the inverse case is monstrous: D can never outrun u by 
 the most fractional increment. A man who would, in a 
 case of necessity, give fifty guineas fop- an article rather 
 than absolutely miss it, may habitually buy it for no more 
 than three, simply because such is the price as squared
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 31 
 
 to the scale of D. But it is impossible that a man, valuing 
 the article (under the very ultimate pressure of u) at 
 eight guineas, should consent to give twelve, because D 
 could not be overcome for less. 
 
 This latter part of the present section, viz. the sym 1 
 bolic illustration of the principles which control exchange 
 value, may seem to the reader too long. Perhaps it is 
 so ; but he cannot pronounce it positively " de trop," for 
 it enforces and explains this law, viz. that the two eter- 
 nally co-present forces, essential to the idea of exchange, 
 nevertheless govern alternately one by one, each alter- 
 nately becoming inert, and neither modifying the other 
 by the smallest fraction, when that " other " is raised by 
 circumstances into the true controlling principle. Now, 
 this explanation never can be held useless, so long as it 
 shall be remembered that Adam Smith, in a passage not 
 seldom cited as a proper basis for a whole system of 
 dependent political economy, has absolutely declared it 
 possible for a man to pay, by any assignable sum, a 
 greater price for a commodity than that same man con- 
 ceives its uttermost intrinsic value to justify : he will give 
 more than the maximum which he would give. Not by 
 one iota less extravagant is the proposition fairly de- 
 ducible from his words. Diamonds have no u value, he 
 assures us, no use (which is the one sole ground upon 
 which, at any price, a man buys anything at all) ; and 
 yet, because the D value is great, in spite of this "no 
 use," many a man will give an enormous price for dia- 
 monds : which proposition is a fierce impossibility. And 
 although, as will be seen in the proper section, the word 
 " use " is here employed most abusively, and in a sense 
 unphilosophically limited ; yet in the same proportion by 
 which this distinction, as to the word u use," will redress 
 some of the extravagant consequences deducible from the
 
 32 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Smithian doctrine, in that game proportion will the fa- 
 mous antithesis upon diamonds and water, from which 
 these consequences flow, vanish like a vapor ; and thus 
 will become available (against a party not within that 
 writer's contemplation) a remark made by the critical 
 dissertationist on value, (as well as by the late Mr. Cole- 
 ridge,) viz. that oftentimes these plausible paradoxes on 
 that side which offers any brilliancy, will be found quite 
 unsustainable ; whilst on that side which can be sustained, 
 they will be found empty truisms, brilliant so far as 
 they throw up a novel falsehood ; but where they rever* 
 berate a truth, utterly without either novelty or force. 
 This remark was levelled by the dissertaflonist at others, 
 chiefly ( I believe) at Ricardo ; but there is a luxury 
 in seeing the engineer of so keen a truth, either in his own 
 person, or that of his friends, " hoist by his own petard." 
 
 SECTION HI. ON THE TRUE RELATIONS IN LOGIC OF 
 THE EXPRESSIONS U AND D. 
 
 THERE is no one manifestation of imbecile logic more 
 frequent, than the disposition to find in all controversies 
 merely verbal disputes. Very early in life I came to be 
 aware that this compendious mode of dismissing weighty 
 questions by alleging, that in fact they seemed rather 
 to offer a dispute about words, than about things had 
 been always one regular and conscious resource of cant 
 with the feeble and the indolent. And amongst the first 
 conclusions, drawn from my own reading experience, was 
 this, that for one known dispute seeming to concern things, 
 but ultimately evaporating in verbal cavils, (supposing 
 even that one to exist in any recorded form,) there might
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 33 
 
 be cited many hundreds of disputes which seemed, or had 
 been declared, to be verbal ; whilst, by all their conse- 
 quences, they set in violently towards things. 10 The ten- 
 dencies of men are altogether towards that error. In 
 private companies, where the tone of society is so under- 
 bred as to allow of two people annoying the rest by dis- 
 putation, such things as verbal disputes may possibly 
 occur ; but in public, where men dispute by the pen, or 
 under ceremonial restraints, giving time for consideration, 
 and often with large consequences awaiting the issue, 
 such follies are out of the question : the strong natural 
 instinct attached to the true and substantial, the practical 
 results at hand, and the delays interposed for reflection, 
 bar all opening to such visionary cases, possibilities 
 indeed in rerum naturu, but which no man has ever wit- 
 nessed ; and accordingly at this hour, throughout all our 
 vast European libraries, no man can lay his hand upon 
 one solitary book which argues a verbal question as if ii 
 were a real one, or contends for a verbal issue. 11 
 
 The same capital mistake of false logic, mistaking its 
 own greatest imbecility for conspicuous strength, has often 
 alighted upon changes in terminology, or upon technical 
 improvements of classification, as being in virtue no more 
 than verbal changes. Here, again, we find Kant, though 
 not the man meant by nature for clearing up delusions in 
 the popular understanding, rightly contending that, in the 
 science of algebra for instance, to impose new denomina- 
 tions was often enough to reveal new relations which 
 previously had not been suspected. In reality we might 
 go much further ; and of some changes in algebraic ter- 
 minology, (as particularly the invention of negative expo- 
 nents,) I should say, that they had a value which could 
 be adequately expressed only by such an analogy as 
 might be drawn from the completion of a galvanic circle,
 
 34 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 where previously it had been interrupted. Not merely 
 an addition of new power, but the ratification of all tho 
 previous powers yet inchoate, had been the result. It 
 was impossible to use adequately the initial powers of the 
 science, until others had been added which distributed 
 the force through the entire cycle of resistances. 
 
 In the present case, although the reader may fancy 
 that such excessive solicitude for planting the great dis- 
 tinctions of value upon a true basis, is not likely to reap 
 any corresponding harvest of results in subsequent stages 
 of the science, further experience will satisfy him, that in 
 all cases of dispute already existing, with the exception 
 only of such as are still waiting for facts, and in all. cases 
 of efforts for the future progress of the science, it is really 
 the ancient confusion overhanging this difficult theme of 
 value which has been, or which will be, the sole retarding 
 force. The question of value is that into which every 
 problem finally resolves itself; the appeal comes bac-k to 
 that tribunal, and for that tribunal no sufficient code of 
 law has been yet matured which makes it equal to the 
 calls upon its arbitration. It is a great aggravation of the 
 other difficulties in the science of Economy, that the most 
 metaphysical part comes first. A German philosopher, 
 who in that instance was aiming at anything but truth, yet 
 with some momentary show of truth, once observed, with 
 respect to the Catechism of our English Church, that it 
 was the most metaphysical of books in a case which re- 
 quired the simplest. "I," said he, "with all my philos- 
 ophy, cannot swim where these infants are to wade." For 
 my own part, I utterly deny his inference. To be simple, 
 to be easy of comprehension, is but the second condition 
 for a good elementary statement of Christian belief, the 
 first is, to be faithful. There is no necessity that all 
 tilings should be at the earliest stage understood, in part
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 3d 
 
 they will never be understood in a human state, because 
 they relate to what is infinite for an intellect which is 
 iinite. But there is a high necessity that, early in life, 
 those distinctions should be planted which foreclose the 
 mind, by a battery of prejudication and prepossession, 
 against other interpretations, having, perhaps, the show 
 of intelligibility, but terminating in falsehood, which means 
 contradiction to Scripture. Now the condition of politi- 
 cal economy is in this point analogous. Left to our own 
 choice, naturally, none of us could wish to commence with 
 what is most of all subtle, metaphysical, and perplexing. 
 But no choice is allowed. Make a beginning at any other 
 point, and the first explanation you attempt will be found 
 to presuppose and involve all that you are attempting to 
 evade ; and in such a case, after every attempt to narrow 
 the immediate question into a mere occasional skirmish, 
 you will find yourself obliged to bring on the general con- 
 flict, under the great disadvantage of being already en- 
 gaged with a separate question, that is, on the most 
 embarrassed ground you could possibly have selected. 
 The great conflict, the main struggle, comes on at the 
 very opening of the field ; and simply because that is too 
 hastily and insufficiently fought out, are all students forced, 
 at one point or other, to retrace their steps, nay, simply 
 from that cause, and no other, it is possible at this day 
 to affirm with truth, that, amongst many other strange 
 results, no statesman in our British senate, and no leading 
 critical 'review, has escaped that error in particular, that 
 grossest and largest of errors, which is exposed in the 
 fourth chapter, upon market value. It is because men 
 are impatient of the preliminary cares, efforts, and cau- 
 tions, such as unavoidably they submit to in mathematics, 
 that upon what is known in Economy there is perpetual 
 uncertainty, and for any inroads into what is yet unknown, 
 perpetual insecurity.
 
 86 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 The object of this section is, to obtain a better, a more 
 philosophic, and a more significant expression for the two 
 modes of exchange value than those of u and D, employed 
 hitherto ; and, at the same time, to explode the expres- 
 sions adopted by previous writers, as founded upon a false 
 view of their relations. 
 
 In any exchange value whatsoever, it has been agreed 
 by all parties, that both u and D must be present ; there 
 must be a real utility or serviceableness before a man will 
 submit to be affected by D, i. e. before he will pay a 
 price adjusted to the difficulty of attainment; and, versa 
 vice, there must be this real difficulty of attainment before 
 the simple fact of utility in the object will dispose him to 
 pay for it, not by D in particular, but by anything at all. 
 Now, though this is indispensable, yet, in the preceding 
 section, it has been shown that, whilst both alike are pres- 
 ent, one only governs. And a capital error has been in 
 fancying that value in use (value derived from u) is 
 necessarily opposed to value in exchange ; whereas, being 
 one horn of the two into which value in exchange divides, 
 as often as the value in use becomes operative at all, it 
 does itself become it constitutes value in exchange, 
 and is no longer co-ordinate to exchange value, (in which 
 case it is wealth,) but subordinate ; one subdivision of 
 exchange value. 
 
 Now, then, having shown, under two different sets of 
 circumstances, the one element and the other will with 
 equal certainty take effect and become dominant, I will 
 request the student to consider what, after all, is the true, 
 sole, and unvarying consideration which acts upon the 
 mind of the purchaser in the first intention of wishing 
 to possess. As regards the price, what acts is alter- 
 nately u and D ; sometimes one, sometimes the other. 
 But not so with regard to the general purpose of buying.
 
 1HE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. t>/ 
 
 Here only one thing acts. No man ever conceived the 
 intention of buying upon any consideration of the diffi- 
 culty and expense which attend the production of an 
 article. He wishes to possess, he resolves to buy, not 
 on account of these obstacles, far from it, but in spite 
 of them. What acts as a positive and sole attraction to 
 him, is the intrinsic serviceableness of the article towards 
 some purpose of his own. The other element may hap- 
 pen to affect the price, and, generally speaking, does affect 
 it as the sole regulating force, but it can never enter at 
 all into the original motive for seeking to possess the 
 article ; uniformly, it is viewed in the light of a pure re- 
 sistance to that desire. 
 
 Here, then, present themselves two reasonable desig- 
 nations for supplanting u and D, which are far better, 
 as being, 1st, in true logical opposition ; and 2d!y, as point- 
 ing severally each to its own origin and nature : u may 
 be called affirmative, D negative. The latter represents 
 the whole resistance to your possession of the commodity 
 concerned ; the former represents the whole benefit, the 
 whole positive advantage, the whole power accruing to 
 you from possession of this commodity. There is always 
 an affirmative value, there is always a negative value, on 
 any commodity bearing an exchange value, that is, 
 on any which can enter a market ; but one only of these 
 values takes effect at one time, under certain circum- 
 stances the affirmative value, under other and more or- 
 dinary circumstances, the negative. And, accordingly, as 
 one or other becomes operative, as it ceases to be latent 
 and rises into the effectual force, we may say of it, that 
 it has passed into the corresponding price ; affirmative 
 value into affirmative price, negative value into negative 
 price. For price is value ratified or made effectual, 
 the potential raised into the actual.
 
 38 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Many years ago, in a slight and unfinished sketch of 
 what is most peculiar to Ricardo, (bearing the title of 
 "The Templar's Dialogues,") I made it my businos to 
 show that a general confusion had pervaded Political 
 Economy between two cardinal ideas, a measure of 
 value, and a ground of value ; that no writer within my 
 knowledge had escaped this confusion ; that the former 
 idea was demonstrably a chimera, an ens rationis, which 
 never could be realized; that, except in one instance," 
 (viz. when needed as a test of the variations, whether 
 real or only apparent, between successive stages of a 
 paper currency,) no practical benefit would be derived 
 from the realization of such a measure ; whereas, on the 
 other hand, a ground of value is so indispensable an idea, 
 that without it not one step can be taken in advance. 
 
 The author of " A Critical Dissertation on Value," who 
 does me much honor in saying (p. xxv. of Preface) that 
 this little sketch of mine it was which "first suggest. <! " 
 his own work, gives two different opinions in the same 
 page (p. 171) as to the original delivery of this broad dis- 
 tinction. In the text he says, " The author of the ' Tem- 
 plar's Dialogues on Political Economy ' is the only writer 
 who appears to me to have been fully aware of this con- 
 fusion of two separate and distinct ideas. He traces it 
 partly to an ambiguity in the word determine." But in 
 a foot-note on this same sentence he thus corrects him- 
 self: "This was written before I had seen the second 
 edition of Mr. Mill's ' Elements,' in which the distinction 
 is for the first time introduced. His language on the 
 point, however, is not uniformly consistent, as will be 
 shown in the next chapter." I apprehend that, if any 
 such distinction has been anywhere insisted upon con' 
 tciously by Mr. Mill, it will be difficult to establish a 
 priority for him. The fragment called "The Templar's
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 39 
 
 Dialogues" was written at the end of 1821, and, to the 
 best of my recollection, printed in the spring of 1822. 
 Having never seen any edition whatsoever of Mr. Mill's 
 "Elements" until this present return to the subject, (spring 
 of 1843,) I obtained a copy from a public library. This 
 happens to be the first edition, (which is clear from the 
 fact, that no attempt occurs in this work at any distinc- 
 tion whatever between a " measure " and a " ground " of 
 value,) and this bears the date of 1821 upon the title- 
 page. It seems probable, therefore, that the date of the 
 second edition would be, at the earliest, 1822, a ques- 
 tion, however, which I have no means of deciding. But, 
 be that as it may, two facts seem to discredit such a 
 claim : 1st, that Mr. Mill, at p. iv. of the Preface, says, 
 " I profess to have made no discovery " ; whereas, beyond 
 all doubt, a distinction which exposes suddenly a vast con- 
 fusion of thought affecting the great mob of books upon 
 this subject, is a discovery, and of very extensive use. 
 2c?/y, it turns out, from a charge alleged at p. 204, by the 
 Dissertator on value, that Mr. Mill " confounds the stand- 
 ard with the cause of value." I understand him to mean, 
 not that constructively Mr. Mill confounds these ideas, not 
 that such a confusion can be extorted from his words 
 though against his intention, but that formally and avow- 
 edly he insists on the identity of the two ideas. If so, 
 there is an end of the question at once ; for " a standard 
 of value " is but a variety of the phrase " measure of 
 value." The one, according to a scholastic distinction, 
 (most beneficially revived by Leibnitz,) is a mere prln- 
 cipium cognoscendi ; the other (a ground of value) is a 
 principium essendi. 13 What qualifies an object to be a 
 standard of value, that is, to stand still when all other 
 objects are moving, and thus by consequence qualifies it 
 to measure all changes of value between any two objects,
 
 40 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 showing, as on a delicate scale, how much of the change 
 has belonged to the one object, how much to the other, 
 or whether either has been stationary : this is a thing 
 which we shall never learn ; because no such qualification 
 can arise for any object, none can be privileged from 
 change affecting itself. And, if liable to change itself, we 
 need not quote Aristotle's remark on the Lesbian rule, to 
 prove that it can never measure the changes in other 
 objects. A measure of value is therefore not by accident 
 impossible, but impossible by the very constitution of its 
 idea ; precisely as the principle of perpetual motion is not 
 accidentally impossible, (by failure of all efforts yet made 
 to discover it,) but essentially impossible so long as this 
 truth remains in force, that it is impossible to propagate 
 motion without loss. On the other hand, to seek for the 
 cause or ground of value is not only no visionary quest, 
 speculatively impossible and practically offering little use, 
 but is a sine qua non condition for advancing by a sin- 
 gle step in political economy. Everything that enters a 
 market, we find to have some value or other. Every- 
 thing in every case is known to be isodynamic with some 
 fraction, some multiple, or some certain proportion, of 
 everything else. For this universal scale of relations, 
 for this vast table of equations, between all commodities 
 concerned in human traffic, a ground, a sufficient reason, 
 must exist. What is it? Upon examination it is found 
 that there are two grounds, because there are two sepa- 
 rate modes of exchange value, for which I have deduced, 
 as the adequate designations, the antithetic terms affirmative 
 and negative. And if the reader will look forward to 
 Section IV., which arrays before him a considerable list 
 of cases under each form, he will perceive, (what in fact 
 is my object in exposing those cases,) simultaneously, a 
 proof of the necessity that such cases should exist, and an
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 41 
 
 illustration of the particular circumstances under which 
 each arises. But first, and before all other remarks which 
 he will be likely to make on this fevyoy, this two-headed 
 system of cases, I anticipate the remark which follows ; 
 viz. that, such and so broad being the distinction between 
 this double system of cases, it is not possible that former 
 economists should have overlooked it. " Under some 
 name or other," he will say, " I am satisfied that these 
 distinctions must have been recognized." He will be 
 right. The distinction has been recognized, has been 
 formally designated. And what are the designations ? 
 Everywhere almost the same : the price, which corre- 
 sponds to the difficulties, has been properly called the cost 
 price, as representing in civilized societies the total re- 
 sistance which is usually possible to the endless repro- 
 duction of an article. So far there is no blame : but go 
 forward ; go on to the opposite mode of price, to that 
 which I have called the affirmative price. By what name 
 is it that most economists designate that? They call it 
 " monopoly price" or " scarcity price" But monopoly, 
 but scarcity, these are accidents ; these are imperti- 
 nences, i. e. considerations not pertinent, not relevant to 
 the case ; or, to place the logic of the question under the 
 clearest light, these express only the conditio sine qua, 
 non, or negative condition. But is that what we want? 
 Not at all : we want the positive cause technically, the 
 causa sitfficiens of this antagonist price. That cause 
 is found, not in the scarcity or the monopoly, Aris- 
 totle forbid such nonsense ! (how could a pure absence 
 or defect of importation, how could a mere negation, 
 produce a robust positive ens, a price of sixty guineas ?) 
 No ; but in something that has existed antecedently to all 
 monopoly or scarcity ; in a strong affirmative attraction of 
 the article concerned; in a positive adaptation of this
 
 42 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 article to each individual buyer's individual purposes. 
 True, the accidental scarcity brings this latent affirmative 
 cause into play ; but for that scarcity, this latent cause 
 might have concealed itself for generations, might never 
 have acted. The scarcity it is, the absolute stoppage to 
 all further receipts of the article from its regular repro- 
 duction, which has enabled something to rise into action 
 as the regulator of price. But what is that something? 
 You say, popularly, that the absence of a sentinel caused 
 the treasury to be robbed : and this language it Avould be 
 pedantic to censure, because the true meaning is liable to 
 no virtual misconstruction. But everybody would cen- 
 sure it, if the abstraction of " absence " were clothed with 
 the positive attributes of a man, and absence were held 
 responsible for the larceny to the exculpation of the true 
 flesh-and-blood criminal. The case is in all respects the 
 same as to scarcity: the scarcity creates the opening, or 
 occasion for " something " to supersede the D, or negative 
 value ; but that something is the u value, the affirma- 
 tive value. 
 
 This must be too self-evident to require any further 
 words : the technical term of " scarcity value," adopted 
 as the antithesis of " cost value " by Ricardo, by Mr. 
 M'Culloch, and many beside, will not be defended by any- 
 body, except under the idea that the false logic which it 
 involves is sure to undergo a correction from the logical 
 understanding. But it is unsafe trusting too much to 
 that. In the hurry of disputation it would be too late 
 to revise our terms, to allow for silent errors, and to insti- 
 tute pro hue vice rectifications. It is indispensable to the 
 free movement of thought, that we should have names and 
 phrases for expressing our ideas, upon which we can rely 
 at all hours as concealing no vestige of error. Now, 
 against the technical term in possession, besides the con-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 43 
 
 elusive reasons already exposed, there may be alleged 
 these two sufficient absurdities as consequences to which 
 it is liable : 
 
 1st. That in any case of such scarcity actually real- 
 ized, the scarcity could not be imagined to create a price ; 
 because neither as an absolute scarcity, nor as gradu- 
 ated to any particular point, could it have more relation 
 to one price than to any other, to a shilling than to a 
 thousand guineas. As rationally might it be said, that 
 the absence of the sentinel, according to the degrees of 
 its duration, had created the costliness of the articles 
 robbed from the treasury. 
 
 2d. That if such a shadow as a blank negation could 
 become a positive agency of causation, still there would 
 arise many monstrous absurdities. One case will suffice 
 as an illustration of all. Suppose the scarcity as to two 
 articles to be absolute, in other words, the greatest pos- 
 sible, or beyond any finite degree, then if the scarcity 
 were the acting cause of the new price, which has super- 
 seded the old D price, being the same in both cases, this 
 scarcity must issue in producing the same price for both 
 articles : whereas the true cause, which has been brought 
 into action by the scarcity and the consequent abolition 
 of D, being in reality the r, or utility value, (pushed to 
 its maximum,) will soon show decisively that the one ar- 
 ticle may not reach the price of half a crown, whilst the 
 other may run up to a thousand guineas. 
 
 It is useless to talk of " words " and " names " as being 
 shadows, so long as words continue to express ideas, and 
 names to distinguish actual relations. Verbalism it is 
 in fact, and the merest babble of words, which can sub- 
 stitute a pure defect so aerial an abstraction as a want 
 or an absence for a positive causal agency. That is 
 really scholastic trifling. The true agencies in the case
 
 44 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 under discussion arc eternally and alternately D and u, 
 the resistance to the reproduction of the article, or the 
 power /n use of that article. Finally, it has been shown 
 why these should be termed the affirmative and negative 
 values of the article; and from the moment when either 
 value takes effect, (ceases to be latent, and becomes oper- 
 ative upon the market,) should be termed severally affirm- 
 ative and negative price. 14 
 
 SECTION IV. ON THE TWO MODES OF EXCHANGE VAL- 
 UE, AFFIRMATIVE AND NEGATIVE. 
 
 THE business of this present section is chiefly to illus- 
 trate by cases the two possible modes of exchange value ; 
 viz. the alternate modes as founded on a negative prin- 
 ciple, and as founded on an affirmative principle. Any 
 reader, therefore, who is already satisfied with this dis- 
 tinction and its grounds, may pass on (without disturb- 
 ing the nexus or logical dependency of the parts) to 
 Section V. 
 
 That general principle which governs the transition 
 under the appropriate circumstances from negative to 
 affirmative value, might be brought forcibly before the 
 reader by a political case drawn from the civil adminis- 
 tration of ancient Rome. Any foreigner coming to Rome 
 before the democratic basis of that republic had given 
 way, would have found some difficulty (when reviewing 
 the history of Rome) in accounting for the principle which 
 had governed the award of triumphs. " I am at a loss," 
 lie would say, " to reconcile the rule which in some instan- 
 ces appears to have prevailed with that which must have 
 prevailed at others. In one case I see a rich province
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 45 
 
 overrun, and no triumph granted to the conqueror ; in 
 another, I see a very beggarly (perhaps even a muti- 
 nous and unmanageable) province, -r- no source of strength, 
 but rather of continual anxiety to Rome, made the oc- 
 casion of a most brilliant triumph, and even of a family 
 title, such as ' Macedonicus ' or ' Isauricus,' the most grat- 
 ifying personal distinction which Rome had to confer." 
 Here would seem a contradiction ; but the answer could 
 dispel it. " "We regard," it would be said on behalf of 
 Rome, " two separate and alternate considerations. No 
 province, whether poor or rich, has ever been annexed 
 to our republic which had not this primary condition of 
 value, that it tended to complete our arch of empire. 
 By mere locality, as one link in a chain, it has tended to 
 the arrondissement of our dominions, the orb within which 
 our power circulates." So far any province whatsoever 
 added within the proper Mediterranean circuit, had always 
 a claim upon the republic for some trophy of honor. 
 But to raise this general claim to a level with triumphal 
 honors, we Romans required 15 that one or other of these 
 two extra merits should be pleaded : either, first, that 
 the province, though not rich, had been won by peculiarly 
 hard fighting ; or, secondly, that, though won with very 
 slight efforts, the province was peculiarly rich. The pri- 
 mary, the indispensable value, as a link in the Roman 
 chain, every province must realize, that tended to com- 
 plete the zone drawn round the Mediterranean. Even 
 a wilderness of rocks would have that value. But this 
 being presumed, of course, as an advantage given by 
 position withoitt merit in the winner, we required, as the 
 crest of the achievement towards justifying a triumph, 
 either the affirmative value of great capacities for tax- 
 ation, or the negative value of great difficulties overcome 
 in the conquest. Cilicia, for example, returned little in
 
 40 TIIK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECOXOMT. 
 
 ^ 
 
 the shape of revenue to Rome ; for the population was 
 scanty, and, from the condition of society, wealth was 
 impossible. But the Isaurian guerillas, and the Cilician 
 buccaneers, occupying for many centuries caves and moun- 
 tain fortresses, that without gunpowder were almost im- 
 pregnable, gave a sanguinary interest to the conflict, which 
 compensated the small money value. For eight centuries 
 Cilicia was the scourge of the Levant. Palestine again 
 presented even a bloodier contest, though less durable, in 
 a far narrower compass. But Egypt poor, effeminate 
 Egypt ! always " a servant of servants " offered, amidst 
 all her civilization, no shadow of resistance. As a test 
 of military merits, she could not found a claim for any 
 man ; for six hundred miles she sank on her knees at 
 the bidding of the Roman centurion. So far, the triumph 
 was nothing. On the other hand, Egypt was by wealth 
 the first of all provinces. She was the greatest of coeval 
 granaries. 16 The province technically called Africa, and 
 the island of Sicily, were bagatelles by comparison ; and 
 what, therefore, she wanted is the negative criterion of 
 merit, having so much wealth, she possessed redun- 
 dantly in the affirmative criterion. Transalpine Gaul, 
 again, was a fine province under both criteria. She took 
 much beating. In the half-forgotten language of the fancy, 
 she was " a glutton " ; and, secondly, on the affirmative HI If. 
 she was also rich. Thus might an ancient Roman have 
 explained and reconciled the apparently conflicting prin- 
 ciples upon which triumphs had been awarded. Where 
 a stranger had fancied a want of equitable consistency, 
 because two provinces had been equally bloodless acqui- 
 sitions, and yet had not equally secured a triumph, he 
 would now be disabused of his error by the sudden expla- 
 nation, that the one promised great wealth, the other 
 little. And where, again, between two provinces equally
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 47 
 
 worthless as regarded positive returns of use, he had 
 failed to understand why one should bring vast honor to 
 the winner, the other none at all, his embarrassment 
 would be relieved at once by showing him that the unhon- 
 ored conquest had fallen at the first summons, possibly 
 as a mere effect of reaction from adjacent victories ; Avhil.it 
 the other conquest had placed on the record a brilliant 
 success, surmounting a resistance that had baffled a 
 series of commanders, and so far flattering to the Roman 
 pride ; but in another sense transcendently important, as 
 getting rid of an ominous exposure which proclaimed to 
 the world a possibility of hopeful opposition to Rome. 
 
 Now exactly the same principle, transferred to the 
 theory of value in exchange, will explain the two poles 
 on which it revolves. Sometimes you pay for an article 
 on the scale of its use, its use with regard to your in- 
 dividual purposes. On this principle, you pay for A 
 suppose twice as much as you would consent to pay for 
 B. The point at which you pause, and would choose to 
 go without B rather than pay more for it, does not rise 
 more than one half so high on the scale as the corre- 
 sponding ne plus ultra for A. This is affirmative price. 
 On the other hand, sometimes you pay for an article on 
 the scale of its costliness ; i. e. of its resistance to the act 
 of reproduction. This principle is not a direct natural 
 expression of any intrinsic usefulness ; it is an indirect, and 
 properly an exponential, expression of value, by an alien 
 accident perfectly impertinent to any interest of yours, 
 not what good it will do to yourself, but what harm it has 
 done to some other man, (viz. what quantity of trouble it 
 has imposed upon him,) that is the immediate 1 ' 1 question 
 which this second principle answers. But unnatural (that 
 is, artificial) as such a principle seems, still, in all civilized 
 countries, this is the principle which takes effect by way
 
 48 THfc LOGIC OF POLITICAL KCOXOMY. 
 
 of governing force upon price full twenty times for once 
 that the other and natural principle takes effect. 
 
 Now, having explained the two principles, I find it my 
 next duty to exemplify them both by appropriate cases. 
 These, if judiciously selected, will both prove and illustrate. 
 
 In the reign of Charles II. occurred the first sale in 
 England of a RHINOCEKOS. The more interesting wild 
 beasts those distinguished by ferocity, by cruelty, and 
 agility had long been imported from the Mediterranean ; 
 and, as some of them were "good fellows and would 
 strike," (though, generally speaking, both the lion and the 
 tiger are the merest curs in nature,) they bore tolerable 
 prices, even in the time of Shakespeare. But a rhinoceros 
 had not been yet imported ; and, in fact, that brute is a 
 dangerous connection to form. As a great lady from Ger- 
 many replied some seventy years ago to an Englishman 
 who had offered her an elephant, " Mil nic/Uen, by no 
 means ; him eat too mauch." In spite, however, of a sim- 
 ilar infirmity, the rhinoceros fetched, under Charles II., 
 more than 2,000. But why? on what principle ? AVas 
 it lu's computed negative value ? Not at alL A granite 
 obelisk from Thebes, or a Cleopatra's needle, though as 
 heavy as a pulk of rhinoceroses, would not have cost ?o 
 much to sling and transport from the Niger to the Thames. 
 But in such a case there are two reasons why the purchas- 
 er is not anxious to inquire about the costs. In buying a 
 loaf, that is an important question, because a loaf will be 
 bought every day, and there is a great use in knowing the 
 cost, or negative value, as that which will assuredly gov- 
 ern an article of daily reproduction. But in buying a 
 rhinoceros, which it is to be hoped that no man will be so 
 ill-fated as to do twice in one world, it is scarcely to be 
 hoped that the importer will tell any truth at all, nor is it 
 of much consequence that he should ; for the buyer care*
 
 THE LOGIC OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 49 
 
 little by comparison as to the separate question on the 
 negative price of the brute to his importer. He cares 
 perhaps not very much more as to the separate question 
 upon the affirmative return likely to arise for himself in 
 the case of his exhibiting such a monster. Neither value 
 taken singly was the practical reply to his anxieties. 
 That reply was found in both values, taken in combina- 
 tion, the negative balanced against the affirmative. It 
 was less important to hear that the cost had been 1,000, 
 so long as the affirmative return was conjecturally assigned 
 at little beyond 2,200, than to hear that the immediate 
 cost to the importer had been 2,000, but with the im- 
 portant assurance that 5,000, at the veiy least, might 
 be almost guaranteed from the public exhibition of so 
 delicate a brute. The creature had not been brought from 
 the Barbary States, our staple market for monsters, but 
 from some part of Africa round the Cape ; so that the 
 cost had been unusually great. But the affirmative value, 
 founded on the public curiosity, was greater ; and, when 
 the two terms in the comparison came into collision, then 
 was manifested the excess of the affirmative value, in that 
 one instance, as measured against the negative. An 
 " encore " was hardly to be expected for a rhinoceros in 
 the same generation ; but for that once it turned out that 
 a moderate fortune might be raised upon so brutal a basis. 
 
 TURKISH HORSES. Pretty nearly at the same time, 
 viz. about the year 1684, an experiment of the same 
 nature was made in London upon an animal better suited 
 to sale, but almost equally governed in its price by affir- 
 mative qualities. In this instance, however, the qualities 
 lay in excess of beauty and docility, rather than of power 
 and strange conformation. Three horses, of grace and 
 speed at that tune without parallel in Western Europe, 
 were brought over to England, and paraded before the
 
 50 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 English court. Amongst others, Evelyn saw them, and thus 
 commemorates the spectacle: "December 17. Early in 
 the morning, I went into St. James's Park to see three 
 Turkish or Asian horses, newly brought over, and now 
 first showed to his Majesty" (Charles II., who died about 
 six weeks later). " There were " (had been) " four, but 
 one of them died at sea, being three weeks coming from 
 Ilamborow. They were taken from a bashaw at the 
 siege of Vienna, at the late famous raising that leaguer. 18 
 I never beheld so delicate a creature as one of them was ; 
 of somewhat a bright bay ; in all regards beautifull and 
 proportion'd to admiration ; spirited, proud, nimble ; mak- 
 ing halt, turning with that swiftnesse, and in so small a 
 compass, as was admirable. With all this, so gentle and 
 tractable, as call'd to mind what Busbequius speakes to 
 the reproch of our groomes in Europe, who bring up their 
 horses so churlishly as makes most of them retain their ill 
 habits." Busbequius talks nonsense. This, and the no- 
 tion that our Western (above all, our English) horses are 
 made short-lived by luxurious stables, &c., are old "crazes" 
 amongst ourselves. Mr. Edmond Temple, in his Peru, 
 evidently supposes that, with worse grooming, and if other- 
 wise sufficiently ill-treated, our English horses would live 
 generally to the age of forty, possibly, I add, of a thou- 
 sand, which would be inconvenient. As to the conceit of 
 Busbequius, it is notorious to Englishmen that the worst- 
 tempered' horses in the world (often mere devils ir malig- 
 nity) are many of the native breeds in Hindostan, who 
 happen, unfortunately for the hypothesis, to have oflbn- 
 times the very gentlest grooms. The particular horses 
 brought over from the Turkish roui ur.der Vienna, by their 
 exquisite docility would seem to have been Arabs. The 
 cross of our native breed by the Arab blood, which has 
 since raised the English racer to perfection, was soon
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 51 
 
 after begun (I believe) under the patronage of tbe Godol- 
 pliin family. From this era, when Ar-ab velocity for a 
 short burst had been inoculated upon English "bottom," 
 or enduring energy, the Newmarket racer rose to a price 
 previously unheard of in the annals of the horse. So 
 low, however, was the affirmative standard at this period 
 in England, so little had the latent perfections of the ani- 
 mal (the affirmative value) been developed, that of these 
 matchless Arabians, sold on the terms of including the 
 romantically gorgeous appointments for both horse and 
 rider, even the finest was offered for five hundred guineas, 
 and all three together for a thousand. This price had 
 reference (as also in the case of the rhinoceros) exclu- 
 sively to affirmative value. 19 
 
 PARADISE LOST. Were you (walking with a for* 
 eigner in London) to purchase for eighteen pence a new 
 copy of this poem, suppose your foreign friend to sting 
 your national pride by saying : " Really, it pains me to 
 see the English putting so slight a value upon their great 
 poet as to rate his greatest work no higher than eighteen 
 pence," how would you answer ? Perhaps thus : " My 
 friend, you mistake the matter. The price does not 
 represent the affirmative value, the value derived from 
 the power of the poem to please or to exalt ; that would 
 l>e valued by some as infinite, irrepresentable by money ; 
 and yet the resistance to its reproduction might be less 
 than the price of a breakfast." Now here, the ordinary 
 law of price exposes itself at once. It is the power, the 
 affirmative worth, which creates a fund for any price at 
 all ; but it is the resistance, the negative worth, or what 
 we call the cost, which determines how much shall be 
 taken from that potential fund. In bibliographic records, 
 there are instances of scholars selling a landed estate 
 equal to an annual livelihood for ever, in order to obtain
 
 i>'l THK LOGIC OK POLITICAL KCOXOMT. 
 
 a copy of one single book, viz. an XRISTOTLK. At this 
 day, there are men whose estimate of Aristotle is not at 
 all less. Having long since reached his lowest point of 
 depression from the influence of sciolism and misconcep- 
 tion, for at least fifty years Aristotle has been a rising 
 author. But does, any man pay an estate in exchange 
 for Aristotle as now multiplied ? Duval's in folio may be 
 had for two guineas ; the elder edition of Sylburgius in 
 quarto may be had (according to our own juvenile expe- 
 rience) for ten guineas ; and the modern Bipont by Buhle, 
 only that it is unfinished, may be had for less than three. 
 There is the reason for the difference between former 
 purchasers and modern purchasers. The resistance is 
 lowered ; but the affirmative value may, for anything that 
 is known, be still equal in many minds to that which it 
 was in elder days, and in some minds we know that 
 it is. The fair way to put this to the test would be to 
 restore the elder circumstances. Then the book was a 
 manuscript ; printing was an undiscovered art ; so that 
 merely the resistance value was much greater, since it 
 would cost a much larger sum to overcome that resist- 
 ance where the obstacle was so vast a mass of manual 
 labor, than where the corresponding labor in a compos- 
 itor would multiply, by the pressman's aid, into a thou- 
 sand copies, and thus divide the cost amongst a thousand 
 purchasers. But this was not all. The owner of a manu- 
 script would not suffer it to be copied. He knew the 
 worth of his prize ; it had a monopoly value. And what 
 is that? Monoi>oly value is affirmative value carried to 
 extremity. It is the case where you press to the ultimate 
 limit upon the desire of a bidder to possess the article. 
 It ia no longer a question, For how little might it be 
 afforded? You do not suffer him to put that question. 
 You tell him plainly, that although he might have it
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 53 
 
 copied for forty pounds, instead of sinking upon the origi- 
 nal manuscript a perpetual estate yielding forty pounds 
 annually, you will not allow it to be copied. Conse- 
 quently you draw upon that fund which, in our days, so 
 rarely can be drawn upon ; viz. the ultimate esteem for 
 the object, the last bidding a man will offer under the 
 known alternative of losing it. 
 
 This alternative rarely exists in our days. It is rarely 
 in the power of any man to raise such a question. Yet 
 sometimes it is ; and we will cite a case which is curious, 
 in illustration. In 1812 occurred the famous Roxburghe 
 sale, in commemoration of which a distinguished club was 
 subsequently established in London. It was a library 
 which formed the subject of this sale, and in the series 
 of books stood one which was perfectly unique in affirma- 
 tive value. This value was to be the sole force operat- 
 ing on the purchaser; for as to the negative value, 
 estimated on the resistance to the multiplication of copies, 
 it was impossible to assign any : no price would overcome 
 that resistance. The book was the VALDARFEU* BOCCAC- 
 CIO. It contained, not all the works of that author, but 
 his Decameron, and, strange enough, it was not a manu- 
 script, but a printed copy. The value of the book lay 
 in these two peculiarities : 1st, it was asserted that all 
 subsequent editions had been castrated with regard to 
 those passages which reflected too severely on the Papal 
 Church ; 2dly, the edition, as being incorrigible in that 
 respect, had been so largely destroyed, that, not without 
 reason, the Roxburghe copy was believed to be unique. 
 In fact, the book had not been seen during the two previ- 
 ous centuries ; so that it was at length generally held to 
 be a nonentity. And the biddings went on as they would 
 
 * Yaldarfer was the printer.
 
 54 TI-IK LOGIC OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 do for the Wandering Jew, in case he should sudden- 
 ly turn up as a prize-subject for life insurances. The 
 contest soon rose buoyantly above the element of little 
 men. It lay between two "top-sawyers," the late Lord 
 Spencer and Lord Blandford ; and finally was knocked 
 down to the latter for two thousand two hundred and forty 
 pounds, at a time when five per cent was obtained 
 everywhere, and readily, for money. It illustrates the 
 doctrine on which we are now engaged, that the pur- 
 chaser some few years later, when Duke of Marlborough, 
 and in personal embarrassments, towards which he could 
 draw no relief from plate that was an heirloom, or from 
 estates that were entailed, sold the book to his old com- 
 petitor Lord Spencer for one thousand guineas. Noth- 
 ing is more variable than the affirmative value of objects 
 which ground it chiefly upon rarity. It is exceedingly 
 apt to pall upon possession. In this case there was a 
 secondary value, the book was not only rare, but was 
 here found in its integrity : this one copy was perfect : 
 all others were mutilated. But still such a value, being 
 partly a caprice, and in the extremest sense a pretium 
 affectionis, or fancy price, fluctuates with the feelings 
 or opinions of the individual ; and, even when it keeps 
 steady, it is likely to fluctuate with the buyer's fortunes. 
 
 On the other hand, where a pretium affectionis is not 
 without a general countersign from society, we do not find 
 that it fluctuates at all. The great ITALIAN MASTER- 
 PIECES OF PAINTING have long borne an affirmative value 
 (i. e. a value founded on their pre-eminence, not on the 
 cost of producing) ; and that value pushed to the excess 
 of a monopoly, continually growing more intense. It 
 would be useless now to ask after the resistance price : 
 because, if that could be ascertained, it would be a mere 
 inoperative curiosity. Very possible it is that Leonardo
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. OO 
 
 da Vinci may have spent not more than 150 in pro- 
 ducing his fresco of the Last Supper. But, were it pos- 
 sible to detach it from the walls of the convent refectory 
 which it emblazons, the picture would command in Lon- 
 don a king's ransom ; and the Sistine Chapel embellish- 
 ments of Michael Angelo, probably two such ransoms 
 within a week. Such jewels are now absolutely unique, 
 they are secure from repetition ; notorious copies would 
 not for a moment enter into competition. It is very 
 doubtful if artists of power so gigantic will reappear for 
 many centuries ; and the sole deduction from their in- 
 creasing value is the ultimate frailty of their materials. 
 
 SALMON is another instructive case. At present it is 
 said pretty generally to bear the average price of fifteen 
 pence a pound ; * and this price is doubtless the resistance 
 value. But, if the price should ever come to represent 
 the affirmative or power value, it might easily rise consid- 
 erably higher. There are many men who would prefer 
 one pound of salmon to four of beef; and up to that level, 
 if the stress should ever lie on a man's intrinsic esteem 
 for salmon, it might ascend easily. But it could not as- 
 rend very much higher; because a limit is soon reached 
 at which it would always be pulled up suddenly by some 
 other commodity of the same class in still higher esteem. 
 A majority of palates prefer turbot, i. e. true turbot, not 
 the rubbish which passes for such. And vicarious articles) 
 possibly even superior substitutes, will generally avail t<f 
 fix a limit on the maximum side, beyond which few arti' 
 cles will be pushed even by the severest strain upon 
 their affirmative qualities ; that is, by the situation where 
 the question ceases entirely to the seller, What can you 
 
 # Since this was written, a Dutch competition in the aiarkets of Lon- 
 don has reduced the price.
 
 50 TUB LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 afford to take? and is turned against the buyer, What 
 is the utmost that you, rather than lose the article, will 
 consent to give? The simple demand for variety, as one 
 amongst the resources of hospitality, might long avail 
 to support a rack-price (that is, an affirmative price) for 
 salmon, if it were ever to reach it. People are called 
 upon daily to buy what may allow a reasonable choice to 
 their guests ; that is, what may be agreeable as one luxury 
 amongst others, even though to their own estimate it may 
 not avail as one luxury against others. 
 
 CROTON OIL. This case of salmon represents that 
 vast order of cases where the article i.; within limits. 
 Press as you will upon the desire of a man to obtain the 
 article for its intrinsic qualities, for its power to gratify, 
 (which, as in itself capable of no exact estimate, might 
 seem susceptible of an unlimited appreciation,) there is, 
 however, in all such cases, or very nearly all, a practical 
 limit to this tendency. Easily the article may rise to a 
 price double or triple of what would notoriously suffice 
 to overcome the resistance, or cost. But this very ascent 
 brings it at every step into direct competition with articles 
 of the same class usually reputed to be better. It is of 
 no consequence, in such a competition, whether the supe- 
 rior article is selling on the principle of affirmative value 
 or of negative, selling for its intrinsic qualities or its 
 cost. Turbot, for instance, being at four shillings a pound, 
 whether that four shillings represents a value far beyond 
 the cost, or simply the cost, naturally the candidate for 
 salmon will pause, and compare the two fishes with a 
 single reference to the intrinsic power of each for the 
 common purpose of gratifying the palate. If, then, IK; 
 shared in the usual comparative estimate of the two as 
 luxury against luxury, here at ouce a limit is reached 
 beyond which monopoly of salmon could never exten.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 57 
 
 sively force it. Peculiar palates are, for that reason, rare. 
 Limits, therefore, are soon found, and almost universally. 
 
 But now we pass to a case where no such limits exist. 
 About nineteen years ago were introduced, almost simul- 
 taneously, into the medical practice of this country two 
 most powerful medicines. One of these was the sulphate 
 of quinine ; the other was croton oil, amongst drastic 
 medicines of a particular class the most potent that is 
 known. Both were understood to be agents of the first 
 rank against inflammatory action ; and, with respect to 
 the last, numerous cases were reported in which it had, 
 beyond a doubt, come in critically to save a patient, pre- 
 viously given up by his medical attendants. Naturally 
 these cases would be most numerous during the interval 
 requisite for publishing and diffusing the medicine, an 
 interval which, with our British machinery, is brief. There 
 was time enough, however, to allow of a large number 
 of cases in which it had not been introduced until the 
 eleventh hour. Two of these came under my personal 
 knowledge, and within the same fortnight. Both were 
 cases of that agonizing disorder, inflammation affecting 
 the intestines. One was near to London : a mounted 
 messenger rode in for the medicine ; returned within a 
 hundred minutes ; and the patient was saved. The other 
 case lay near to Nottingham : the person despatched with 
 the precious talisman to the post-office, then in Lombard 
 Street, found the mail just starting ; but, by an inflexible 
 rule of office, neither guard nor coachman was at liberty 
 to receive a parcel not entered in the way-bill : the man 
 had not the presence of mind to intrust it with one of the 
 pas.sengers ; the patient was already in extremity ; and, 
 before the medicine reached Nottingham by a coach leav- 
 ing London the next morning, he had expired. 
 
 Now, in the case of such a magical charm, to have or
 
 58 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 to want which was a warrant for life or for death, it is 
 clear that, amongst rich men, the holder of the subtle 
 elixir, the man who tendered it in time, might effectually 
 demand an Oriental reward. " Ask me to the half of 
 my kingdom ! " would be the voluntary offer of many a 
 millionnaire. And if this undoubted power, occasionally 
 held by individual surgeons, were not neutralized by the 
 honor governing our medical body, cases of excessive 
 prices for critical operations would not be rare. Accord- 
 ingly Marechal Lannes in 1809, who had been accus- 
 tomed in his original walk of life to a medical body far 
 less liberal or scrupulous than ours, used the words of 
 the dying Cardinal Beaufort, "I'll give a thousand 
 pounds," he exclaimed convulsively, "to the man who 
 saves my life ! " Not a very princely offer, it must be 
 owned ; and we hope it was not livres that he meant. 
 But the case was hopeless ; both legs shattered at his 
 age were beyond art. Had it even been otherwise, 
 Baron Larrey was a man of honor; and, under any 
 circumstances, would have made the same answer, viz. 
 that, without needing such bribes, the surgeons would 
 do their utmost. 
 
 Si ill the case requires notice. Accidentally in our 
 British system the high standard of professional honor 
 turns aside such mercenary proposals, they have become 
 insults. But it is clear, that, per se, the value of the 
 aid offered is very frequently in the strictest sense illim- 
 itable. Not only might the few monopolists of exqui- 
 site skill in operating, or the casual monopolist of an 
 amulet, a charm, like the croton oil, press deeply upon 
 the affirmative value of this one resource to a man else 
 sealed for death : but also it is certain that, in applying 
 their screw, medical men would rarely find themselves 
 abreast of those limits which eternally are coming into
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. OJ 
 
 play (as we have illustrated in the case of salmon) with 
 regard to minor objects. A man possessing enormous 
 strength of wrist, with singular freedom from nervous 
 trepidations, is not often found ; how very rarely, then, 
 will he be found amongst those possessing an exquisite 
 surgical science ! Virtually, in any case where a hair's- 
 breadth swerving of the hand will make the difference of 
 life and death, a surgeon thus jointly favored by nature 
 and by art holds a carte blanche in his hands. This 
 is the potential value of his skill ; and he knows it ; and 
 generally, we believe, that out of the British empire 20 it 
 would be used to some extent. As it is, what value do 
 we find it to be which really takes place in such instances ? 
 It is simply the resistance value. Disdaining to levy a 
 ransom, as it were, upon the fears and yearnings after 
 life in the patient, or upon the agitations of his family, 
 the honorable British surgeon or physician estimates 
 only the cost to himself; he will take no account of the 
 gain to the other party. He must compute the cost of 
 his journey to and fro ; the cost in practice lost during 
 his absence from home ; and that dividend upon the total 
 costs of his education to which a case of this magnitude 
 may fairly pretend. These elements compose the resist- 
 ance to his being in the situation to offer such aid ; and 
 upon these he founds his expectation. 
 
 By this time, therefore, the reader understands suffi- 
 ciently our distinctions of plus and minus power and 
 resistance value. He understands them to be the two 
 ruling poles towards which all possible or conceivable 
 prices must tend ; and we admit that, generally, the re- 
 sistance value will take place, because generally, by apply- 
 ing an equal resistance, the object (whatever it be) may 
 be produced. But by way of showing that it is no roman- 
 tic idea to suppose a case of continual recurrence where
 
 CO TIIK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 4 
 
 the affirmative value will prevail over the negative, where 
 an object will draw upon the purchaser not for the amount 
 of cost, (including as we need not say, the ordinary rate 
 of profit,) but for an amount calculated according to tho 
 intrinsic powers, we will give the case of 
 
 HUNTERS, as against RACK-HORSKS. If a man were 
 to offer you a hunter, master of your weight, and other- 
 wise satisfactory, you would readily give him a fair price. 
 But what is a fair price ? That which will reproduce such 
 a hunter, his cost; the total resistance to his being 
 offered in this condition. Such is the value, and such the 
 law of value, for a hunter But it is no longer such for 
 a racer. When a breeder of horses finds one amongst 
 his stud promising first-rate powers of contending at 
 Newmarket, he is no longer content to receive a cost 
 price for the horse, or anything like it. The man who 
 (as a master of pearl-divers) sells the ordinary seed pearls 
 at the mere cost and fair profit on the day's wages which 
 have earned them, when he reaps a pearl fit to embellish 
 the schah of Persia's crown, looks to become a petty 
 schah himself. He might sell it with a profit by obtain- 
 ing even that whole day's wages, during one hour of 
 which it was produced : but will he ? No more than, 
 amongst ourselves, the man who, by a twenty-guinea lot- 
 tery-ticket, drew a prize of 10,000, would have sold 
 his ticket for a profit of cent per cent upon its cost. The 
 breeder of the race-horse would take into his estimate 
 the numerous and splendid stakes which the horse might 
 hereafter win; sometimes at Epsom, on one Derby day, 
 as much as 5,000 to 6,000 ; to say nothing of the 
 Leger at Doncaster, or other enormous prizes. It is 
 true that the chances of mortality and failure must also 
 be weighed: and unluckily no insurance has yet been 
 done on racers, except as regards sea-risk. But after all
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 6\ 
 
 drawbacks, the owner may succeed finally in obtaining 
 for a first-rate horse (once known for good perform- 
 ances) as much as 4,000 ; whilst the whole value, com- 
 puted on the resistance, may not have been more than 
 as many hundreds. And this fact, though standing back 
 in the rear as regards public knowledge, we may see 
 daily advertised in effect by that common regulation which 
 empowers the loser in many cases to insist on the win- 
 ning horse being sold for 200, or a similar small sum. 
 Were it not for this rule, which puts a stop to all such 
 attempts without hazard of personal disputes, it would 
 be a capital speculation for any first-rater, though beaten 
 at Newmarket, to sweep all the stakes without effort on a 
 tour through the provincial courses : justice would cease 
 for the owners of inferior horses, and sport for the spec- 
 tators of the competition. 
 
 The last case must have convinced the reader, that, 
 however uncommon it may be, the cost the resistance 
 does not always take place even in the bosom of high 
 civilization. And, by the way, amongst many other 
 strange examples which we could state of anomalous 
 values not considered in books of political economy, it 
 would be easy to show that the very affirmative values 
 of things have shifted under shifting circumstances. 
 Pearls were most valued amongst the ancient Romans, 
 diamonds and rubies amongst modern nations. "Why? 
 We are persuaded that, besides other reasons founded 
 on resistance for the varying ratio of prices, this follow- 
 ing affirmative reason has prevailed : the Roman festi- 
 vals were all by daylight, under which sort of light 
 pearls tell most at a distance. The modem are chiefly 
 by lamplight, where the flashing and reverberated lustres 
 of jewels are by far the more effective. The intrinsic 
 powers have shifted. As an embellishment of female
 
 62 THE LOGIC OK POLITICAL KCONOMY. 
 
 4 
 beauty or distinction, pearls are no longer what they 
 
 were. Affirmatively they have shifted, as well as in the 
 resistance, or negatively. 
 
 SLAVES are valued alternately under both laws. Enter 
 the slave-market at Constantinople ; not in its now ruined 
 ftate, but as it existed at the opening of this nineteenth 
 century. The great majority of ordinary slaves were val- 
 ued, simply as effects derived from certain known causes 
 adequate to their continued reproduction. They had been 
 stolen ; and the cost of fitting out a similar foray, when 
 divided suppose amongst a thousand captives, quoted the 
 price of each ordinary slave. Even upon this class, how- 
 ever, although the cost (that is, on our previous explana- 
 tion, the negative value) would form the main basis in the 
 estimate, this basis would be slightly modified by varieties 
 in the affirmative value. The cost had been equal; but 
 the affirmative value would obviously vary under marked 
 differences as to health, strength, and age. Was the 
 man worth five or eight years' purchase ? that question 
 must make a slight difference, even where the kind of 
 service itself, that could be promised, happened to rank 
 in the lowest ranges of the scale. A turnip cannot admit 
 of a large range in its appreciation ; because the very best 
 is no luxury. But still a good turnip will fetch more 
 than a bad one. We do not, however, suppose that this 
 difference in turnips will generally go the length of mak- 
 ing one sort sell at negative or cost value, the other at 
 affirmative. Why? Simply because the inferiority in 
 the turnip A, is owing to inferior cost on its culture ; 
 and the superiority in turnip B, to superior cost. But 
 in the case of the slaves this is otherwise. Upon any 
 practicable mode of finding their cost, it must prove to 
 have been the same. The main costs of the outfit wi-rr, 
 of necessity, common to the total products of the expe-
 
 THE LOGIC OV POLITICAL ECONOMY. 63 
 
 dition. And any casual difference in the individual ex- 
 penditure, from sickness or a longer chase, &c., must be 
 too vague to furnish a ground of separate appreciation. 
 Consequently the mob, the plebs, amongst the slaves, 
 must be valued as the small ordinary pearls are valued, 
 simply so many stone-weight on the basis of so much 
 outlay. 
 
 But the natural aristocracy amongst the slaves, like 
 the rarer pearls, will be valued on other principles. 
 Those who were stolen from the terraces and valleys 
 lying along that vast esplanade between the Euxine and 
 the Caspian, had many chances in favor of their proving 
 partially beautiful ; by fine features and fine complexions 
 at the least. Amongst the males, some would have a 
 Mameluke value, as promising equestrian followers in 
 battle, as capital shots, as veterinary surgeons, as sooth- 
 sayers, or calculators of horoscopes, &c. All these would 
 be valued affirmatively ; not as effects that might be 
 continually reproduced by applying the same machinery 
 of causes to the resistance presented by the difficulties ; 
 but inversely, as themselves causes in relation to certain 
 gratifying effects connected with Mohammedan display 
 or luxury. And if we could go back to the old slave- 
 markets of the Romans, we should meet a range of prices 
 (corresponding to a range of accomplishments) as much 
 more extensive than that of the Ottoman Porte, as the 
 Roman civilization was itself nobler and ampler than that 
 of Islamism. Generally, no doubt, the learned and the 
 intellectual slaves amongst the Romans, such as Tiro, the 
 private secretary of Cicero, were vernee, slaves not im- 
 mediately exotic, but homebred descendants from slaves 
 imported in some past generation, and trained at their 
 master's expense upon any promise of talent. Tutors 
 (in the sense of pedagogues), physicians, poets, actors,
 
 64 THIS LOGIC OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 4 
 
 brilliant sword-players, architects, and artists of all elates, 
 savans, litterateurs nay, sometimes philosophers not to 
 be sneezed at were to be purchased in the Roman mar- 
 kets. And this, by the way, was undoubtedly the cause 
 of that somewhat barbarian contempt which the Romans, 
 in the midst of a peculiar refinement, never disguised 
 for showy accomplishments. We read this sentiment 
 conspicuously expressed in that memorable passage where 
 Virgil so carelessly resigns to foreigners, Graeculi, or 
 whatever they might be, the supremacy in all arts but 
 those of conquest and government ; and, in one instance, 
 viz. " orabunt causas melius" with a studied insult to 
 a great compatriot recently departed, not less false as 
 to the fact than base as to the motive. But the contempt 
 was natural in a Roman noble for what he could so easily 
 purchase. Even in menial domestics, some pretensions 
 to beauty and to youth were looked for : " tall stripling 
 youths, like Ganymede or Hylas," stood ranged about 
 the dinner-table. The solemn and shadowy banquet, 
 offered by way of temptation to our Saviour in the wil- 
 derness, (see Paradise Regained,) is from a Roman din- 
 ner; and the philosophic Cicero, in the midst of eternal 
 declamations against luxury, &c., thinks it a capital jest 
 against any man, that his usual attendants at dinner were 
 but three in number, old, shambling fellows, that squinted 
 perhaps, two of them bandy-legged, and one with a ten- 
 dency to mange. Under this condition of the Roman 
 slave-shambles as respected the demand, we must be sure 
 that affirmative price would interfere emphatically to gov- 
 ern the scale. Slaves possessing the greatest natural 
 or acquired advantages, would often be thrown, by the 
 chances of battle, into Roman hands, at the very same 
 rate as those who had no advantages whatever. The 
 cost might be very little, or it might be none, except foi
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 65 
 
 a three months' voyage to Rome ; and, at any rate, would 
 be equal. So far, there would be no ground for differ- 
 ence in the price. But if at all on a level as to the cost, 
 the slaves were surely not on a level when considered 
 as powers. As powers, as possessors of various accom- 
 plishments ministering to the luxury or to the pom- 
 pous display of some princely household, the slaves would 
 fetch prices perhaps as various as their own numbers, 
 and pointing to a gamut of differences utterly unknown 
 to any West Indian colonies, or the States of Continental 
 America, In that New "World, slavery has assumed a far 
 coarser and more animal aspect. Men, women, or child- 
 ren, have been all alike viewed in relation to mere pnedial 
 uses. Household slaves must there also be wanted, no 
 doubt, but in a small ratio by comparison with the Roman 
 demand; and, secondly, they were not bought originally 
 with that view, so as materially to influence the market, 
 but were subsequently selected for domestic stations, upon 
 experimental discovery of their qualities. "Whereas in 
 Rome that is, through all Italy and the Roman colo- 
 nies the contemplation of higher functions on a very 
 extensive scale, as open almost exclusively to slaves, would 
 act upon the total market, even upon its inferior arti- 
 cles, were it only by greatly diminishing the final 
 residuum available for menial services. The result was, 
 that, according to the growth of Rome, slaves were grow- 
 ing continually in price. Between 650 660 U. C. (the 
 period of Marius, Sylla, &c.) and 700 710 (final stage 
 of the Julian conflict with Pompey), the prices of all 
 slaves must prodigiously have increased. And this object 
 it was viz. the slave-market, a most substantial specula- 
 tion, not by any means the pearl market (as rumor stated 
 at the time) which furnished the great collateral motive 
 ^see Mitford's Greece") to Csesar's twe British expeditions. 
 5
 
 66 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 LAND is another illustration, and of the first rank 
 Ricardo ought not to have overlooked a case so broad 
 as this. You may easily bring it under examination 
 by contrasting it with the case of a machine for displa- 
 cing human labor. That machine, if it does the work 
 in one hundred days of one hundred men in the same 
 time, will at first sell for something approaching to the 
 labor which it saves, say, for the value of eighty 
 men's labor : that is, it will sell for what it can produce, 
 not for what will produce itself; that is, it will sell for 
 affirmative, not for negative value. But as soon as the 
 construction of such a machine ceases to be a secret, its 
 value will totally alter. It will not sell for the labor 
 produced, but for the labor produc^w^r. By the sup- 
 position, it produces work equal to that of a hundred 
 men for one hundred days ; but, if it can itself be pro- 
 duced by twenty men in twenty days, then it will finally 
 drop in value to that price : it will no longer be viewed 
 as a cause equal to certain effects, but as an effect cer- 
 tainly reproducible by a known cause at a known cost. 
 Such is the case eventually with all artificial machines ; 
 and for the plain reason, that, once ceasing to be a secret, 
 they can be reproduced ad irtfinitum. On the other 
 hand, land is a natural machine, it is limited, it can- 
 not be reproduced. It will therefore always sell as a 
 power, that is, in relation to the effects which it can 
 produce, not as itself an effect ; because no cause is 
 adequate to the production of land. The rent expresses 
 one year's value of land ; and, if it is bought in perpe- 
 tuity, then the value is calculated on so many years' 
 purchase, a valuation worthy, on another occasion, of 
 a separate consideration. For the present, it is enough 
 to say, that land is not valued on any principle of cost, 
 does not sell at negative value, but entirely on tho
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 67 
 
 principle of its powers or intrinsic qualities : in short, it 
 sells for affirmative value, as a power, as a cause, not 
 as an effect. 
 
 Popish rdiques put this distinction in a still clearer 
 light. The mere idea of valuing such articles as pro- 
 ducible and reproducible, as effects from a known ma- 
 chinery, would at once have stripped them of all value 
 whatever. Even a saint can have only one cranium ; 
 and, in fact, the too great multiplication of these relics, 
 as derived from one and the same individual saint or 
 martyr, was one of the causes, co-operating with changes 
 in the temper of society, and with changes in the inter- 
 course of nations, which gradually destroyed the market 
 in relics. But we are far from deriding them. For the 
 simple and believing ages, when the eldest son of bap- 
 tism, the King of France, led by the bridle the mule 
 who bore such relics, and went out on foot, bareheaded, 
 to meet them, these were great spiritual powers ; al- 
 ways powers for exalting or quickening devotion, and 
 sometimes, it was imagined, for the working of benign 
 miracles. This was their affirmative value ; and when 
 that languished, they could not pass over to the other 
 scale of negative value, this was impossible ; for they 
 could not be openly reproduced: counterfeited, forged, 
 they might be, and too often they were. But this was 
 not a fact to be confessed. They could sell at all only 
 by selling as genuine articles. A value as powers they 
 must have, a value affirmatively, or thsy could have 
 Done at all.
 
 C8 THE LOGIC OF 1'OLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 SECTION V. ON THE PRINCIPAL FORM OF EXCHANGE 
 VALUE, VIZ. NEGATIVE VALUE. 
 
 THUS far I have been attempting to extricate from the 
 confusion which besets it, and to establish in coherency 
 through all its parts, that idea of value in general, and 
 those subdivisions of exchange value, which come for- 
 ward as antithetic principles in the earliest stages of the 
 deduction. And thus far it is undeniable that Ricar- 
 do's views were as unsound as those of any man, the very 
 weakest among all, who had gone before him. Casual 
 words which he has used, and the practical inference 
 from his neglect to censure, betray this fact. But now 
 the deduction has reached a point at which Ricardo's 
 great reform first comes into action. Henceforward, the 
 powerful hand of Ricardo will be felt in every turn and 
 movement of economy. 
 
 It may now be assumed as a thing established, that 
 there are two great antithetic forms of value, and no 
 more ; viz. affirmative value, resting upon the intrinsic 
 powers of the article valued for achieving or for aiding 
 a human purpose, and negative value, which neglects 
 altogether the article in itself, and rests upon an acci- 
 dent outside of the article, viz. the amount of resistance 
 to be overcome in continually reproducing it. 
 
 Upon the first form of value there is little opening 
 for any further explanation, because no opening for any 
 error, except that one error which arises from yielding 
 through lachete of the understanding, to the false im- 
 pression of the word " use," as though " use " meant 
 use beneficial, a use approved by the moral sense, or 
 the understanding, in contradistinction to a false, facti- 
 tious, and imaginary use. Whareas this is all pure imper-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 69 
 
 tinence; and the use contemplated is the simple power 
 of ministering to a purpose, though that purpose were 
 the most absurd, wicked, or destructive to the user that 
 could be imagined. But this misconception is treated 
 in a separate section (viz. in Section VI.). At present, 
 therefore, and throughout this section, we have nothing 
 to distract our attention from the single question which 
 remains, Value in exchange being founded either on 
 power or on resistance, and the case of power being 
 dismissed to a subsequent section, what is it that consti- 
 tutes the resistance ? This value measured by resistance, 
 once for all, this negative value, being in fact the 
 sole value ever heard of in the markets, except for here 
 and there a casual exception, by much the greatest ques- 
 tion in political economy is that which now comes on 
 for consideration. 
 
 How stood the answer to this question when first 
 Ricardo addressed himself to the subject? According 
 to many writers, according to Ricardo himself and Mr. 
 M'Culloch, the answer was occasionally not amiss; 
 only it was unsteady and vacillating. Is that so? Not 
 at all : the answer was amiss, was always amiss, was 
 never right in a single instance. For what is it to us 
 that a man stumbles by some accident into a form of 
 expression which might be sustained at this day as toler- 
 ably correct, (simply because ambiguous,) if, by five hun- 
 dred other expressions in that same man's book, we 
 know to a certainty that he did not mean his own equiv- 
 ocal language to be taken in that sole sense one sense 
 out of two which could sustain its correctness ? You 
 urge as decisive the opinion of some eminent witness, 
 who, being asked, " To whose jurisdiction does such a 
 case belong?" had answered, "To the pope's," mean- 
 ing only that it did not belong to that of the civil power j
 
 70 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 whilst yet the proof was strong against him, that he had 
 not been aware of two popes being in the field, pope 
 and anti-pope, and whilst the question of jurisdiction had 
 undeniably concerned not the old competition of temporal 
 and spiritual, but that particular personal schism. A 
 very dubious, because a very latitudinarian, expression 
 is cited abundantly from Adam Smith, and the civil crit- 
 ics in economy praise it with vehemence. " Ok, si sic 
 omnia ! " they exclaim. " Oh, if he had never forgot 
 himself! " But thai is language which cannot be toler- 
 ated. Adam Smith appears to be right in some occa- 
 sional passages upon this great question, merely because 
 his words, having two senses, dissemble that sense which 
 is now found to be inconsistent with the truth. Yet even 
 this dissembling was not consciously contemplated by 
 Adam Smith; he could not dissemble what he did not 
 perceive; he could not equivocate between two senses 
 which to him were one. It is certain, by a vast redun- 
 dancy of proof, that he never came to be aware of any 
 double sense lurking in his own words ; and it is equally 
 certain that, if the two senses now indicated in the ex- 
 pression had been distinctly pointed out to him, he would 
 not have declared for either as exclusive of the other; 
 he would have insisted that the two meanings amounted 
 to the same, that one was substantially a reiteration of 
 the other, under a different set of syllables, and that 
 the whole distinction, out of which follows directly a 
 total revolution of political economy, had been pure scho- 
 lastic moonshine. 
 
 That all this is a correct statement, one sentence will 
 prove. What was the foundation, in Adam Smith's view, 
 of that principal exchange value which in all markets 
 predominates, and which usually is known as the cost 
 value? This mode of exchange value it is which I am
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 71 
 
 treating in this fifth section. I have called it negative value; 
 but, call it as you please, what is the eternal ground which 
 sustains it ? Adam Smith replied in one word, that it is 
 LABOR. Well, is it not? Why, at one time it might 
 have been said, with some jealousy, that it was ; for this 
 elliptical phrase might have been used by Ricardo himself 
 to denote all which it ought to denote ; and, without exam- 
 ination, it could not be known that Adam Smith had not 
 used it in this short-hand way. But proofs would soon 
 arise that in fact he had not. Suppose him questioned 
 thus : " By the vague general phrase ' labor] do you mean 
 quantity of labor, or do you mean value of labor ? Price 
 in a market, you affirm, is governed and controlled by 
 labor ; and therefore, as double labor will produce double 
 value, as decuple labor will produce decuple value, so, 
 inversely, from double value you feel yourself at liberty 
 to infer double labor, and from decuple value to infer 
 decuple labor. In this we all agree, we moderns that 
 are always right, and our fathers that were always wrong. 
 But when you say that, when you utter that unimpeach- 
 able truth, do you mean, that from double value could 
 be inferred double quantity of labor ; as that in Portugal, 
 for instance, because the same cotton stockings will cost 
 thirty shillings which in England may be had for fifteen, 
 therefore two days' labor is required, on the bad Portu- 
 guese system, to equal in effect of production one day's 
 labor on the English system? Is this what you mean? 
 Or, on the contrary, is it this, that therefore the value 
 of labor (that is, wages) may be inferred to be double 
 in Portugal of what it is in England?" Mirrors are 
 undoubtedly cheaper by much amongst us English peo- 
 ple hi 1843 than they were in the year of Waterloo. 
 I saw, in 1832, a small one of eight feet high, the very 
 fellow to one which, in 1815, had been used for the
 
 72 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 4 
 
 very same purpose, of filling up a five feet recess, over- ' 
 arched by wooden carvings, between two separate com- 
 partments of a library, and thus connecting the two into 
 the unity of one. In every point of dimensions, of 
 reputed quality, of framing, and of application the two 
 mirrors were the same, and both had been manufactured 
 on a special order to meet the disposable vacancy ; yet 
 the one of 1815 had cost forty-eight guineas, the one of 
 1832 had cost only thirty pounds. Now in reporting 
 from Adam Smith labor as the ground of value, and 
 in applying that doctrine to this case of the mirrors, is 
 it your construction of the word " labor " that the young 
 mirror had cost so much less than the old mirror in 
 consequence of fewer days' work being spent upon it, 
 or in consequence of the same precise days' work (no 
 more and no fewer) being paid at a lower rate? I ab- 
 stract from the quality of money in which the wages 
 happened to be paid. We are all aware that, between 
 1819 and 1832, there was full time to accomplish that 
 augmented value of money which the believers in the 
 war depreciation 21 suppose to have been the natural anti- 
 strophe, or inverse series of motions pursued by our Eng- 
 lish currency under the speculative measures of Sir Robert 
 Peel in his earlier years. For a moment, therefore, the 
 reader might fancy that the cheapness of the one mirror 
 was no more than an expression of a currency re-estab- 
 lished in power, and that the dearness of the other had 
 been a mere nominal dearness. But this fancy is de- 
 stroyed by a comparison with the mass of other commod- 
 ities, all of which must have been equally affected (if any 
 had) by a fall and rise in the value of money. The 
 dilemma, therefore, resolves itself into these alternative 
 propositions ; viz. that the later and cheaper of the mir- 
 rors had been produced through some smaller quantity
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 73 
 
 of labor, or else that the same unvarying quantity of 
 labor had been obtained at a very much less rate of 
 wages. Now, which of the two alternative explanations 
 does that man declare for, who adopts the vague language 
 of labor being the foundation of price ? Does he make 
 his election for quantity of labor, or for value of labor? 
 Either choice will satisfy the mere understanding for the 
 moment, since either will explain the immediate phenom- 
 enon of a large, and else unaccountable difference in the 
 prices of the two mirrors : but one only will satisfy Political 
 Economy, because one only will stand the trial of those 
 final consequences into which economy will pursue it. 
 
 Greatly it has always surprised me, that Ricardo should 
 not have introduced in his first chapter that experimentam 
 crucis which, about four years later, I found myself obliged 
 to introduce in " The Templar's Dialogues " ; because, 
 as the matter now stands, Ricardo's main chapter is not 
 so much a proof of his new theory as an illustration of it. 
 For instance, he begins by saying that, in the earliest 
 period of society, the hunter and the fisherman would 
 exchange their several commodities on the basis laid down; 
 viz. a day's produce of the one against a day's produce 
 of the other. 22 But if any opponent had gone a step 
 further, so as next to suppose the case of a master fisher- 
 man employing twenty journeymen, and the hunter em- 
 ploying a similar body of ministerial agents, the whole 
 question under discussion would have come back in full 
 force upon the disputants. Circumstances would imme- 
 diately have been imagined under which the quantities 
 of labor had altered for the same produce, or (which is 
 the same thing) where the produce had altered under an 
 unvarying quantity of labor. Opposite circumstances 
 would have been imagined, where not the quantities, but 
 the rewards, or prices of labor, had altered ; and then,
 
 74 THE LOGIC OF POLITIC \L ECONOMY. 
 
 thirdly, circumstances would have been imagined where 
 both alterations had been in motion simultaneously, the 
 one hi the fisherman's business, the other in the hunt- 
 er's. And the resulting prices would have been, affirmed 
 to be the same under all these varying circumstances, or 
 to be in any degree capriciously different, according to 
 the views of the writer. Simply as illustration against 
 illustration, one case is as good as another, until ii is 
 shown to involve an absurdity. Now, it is true that 
 obscurely, and in a corner, Ricardo does indicate an 
 absurdity flowing from the notion of wages governing 
 the prices of the articles produced. But this absurdity 
 should have been put forward pointedly and conspicu- 
 ously, ia the front of the main, illustrative case between 
 fishermen and hunters ; whereas, at present, it is only 
 said, that thus does the hunter, thus does the fisher ; 
 and upon either doing otherwise, that the other will 
 remonstrate. To be sure he will. But the case de- 
 manded a proof that neither party could do otherwise. 
 Such a proof let me now attempt. 
 
 CASE THE FIRST, where the quantity of labor gov- 
 erns the price. 
 
 A beaver hat of the finest quality has hitherto cost 
 two guineas. At length, after centuries of beaver-hunt- 
 ing, which have terminated in altering the very habits 
 of the animal, compelling it to become shy and recluse 
 where once it had been careless and gregarious, 28 natu- 
 rally the price of a beaver hat will begin to advance. 
 But why? What is the essential movement that has 
 taken place ? The novice will object that it is not in the 
 quantity of producing labor; for assuredly the process 
 of manufacturing a beaver-skin into a hat will not have 
 been retrograde : if it changes at all, it will be for the 
 better ; instead of the former process, will gradually be
 
 THE LOGIC QF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 13 
 
 substituted a shorter. Or, if it should seem not so much 
 a short process that superseded a long one, as a cheap 
 process that superseded a dear one, still, in any case, it 
 would be for the better. And in fact, though a cheaper 
 process may seem at first sight different from a shorter, 
 eventually they will be found to coincide. For how can 
 it be cheaper? Either first by dispensing, through some 
 compendious contrivance, with part of the labor (in which 
 case it is cheaper, obviously because it is shorter) ; or, 
 secondly, because something (whether implement or ma- 
 terial) at a low price is substituted for something formerly 
 used at a higher price. But in that case why was the 
 old displaced article at a higher price? Simply because 
 it required more labor to produce it. This truth is illus- 
 trated in the present objection : the novice objects that 
 the hat does not cost more, on account of more labor 
 being required to manufacture a hat, but because the 
 raw material is more costly : and this strikes him as being 
 quite a separate element in the cost of an article, and 
 perfectly distinct from the labor spent in, producing that 
 article. All this, however, is misplaced ingenuity. The 
 raw material seems to be distinct from the producing 
 labor; but hi fact it is the same thing: it is part of the 
 producing labor contemplated in an earlier stage. The 
 beaver can be valued only as the hat is valued, on. the 
 same principle applied at a different time. How is the 
 manufacturing process more or less costly? Exactly as 
 it requires more or less labor. How else is the beaver 
 more or less costly? That also, viz. the raw material, 
 can vary in cost only as it requires more or less labor ; 
 that is, twenty men, fifteen, or ten, within the same num- 
 ber of weeks, to secure a given quantity of beaver-skins- 
 The manufacturer of rum, of arrack, of ale, of perry^ 
 speaks of the labor employed in his own particular pro-
 
 7G THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 cess of distillation, brewing, fermentation, as antithetically 
 opposed to the raw material on which his skill is exercised. 
 But this is only because naturally he abstracts his atten- 
 tion from processes belonging to a stage of labor previous 
 to his own stage, and with which earliest processes per- 
 sonally he has no connection. Up to the moment which 
 brings the raw material into his own hands, he postulates 
 that article as thus far a product unknown to himself; 
 viz. so far as it is a product from a skill or science not 
 within his own profession. Else he is well aware that 
 the sugar, the rice, the malt, the pears, all alike are 
 valued, and can be valued, only upon that same consid- 
 eration of so much labor applied to their production, 
 which consideration it is that assigns a value and a price 
 to the final product from his own professional series of 
 operations. 
 
 SECTION VI. ON THE TECHNICAL TERM, VALUE IN USE. 
 
 I. IT has been already explained, that the capital and 
 influential error of Adam Smith, in his famous distinc- 
 tion between value in use and value in exchange, lies 
 in his co-ordinating these ideas. Yet how? Are they 
 not co-ordinate ? Doubtless they are sometimes ; doubt- 
 less they divide sometimes against each other as collat- 
 eral genera of value ; that is, whenever each excludes 
 the other. In the case where a particular value in use 
 has no value at all in exchange, there the two ideas stand 
 in full antithesis to each other, exactly as Adam Smith 
 represents them. But, secondly, value in use is often 
 not co-ordinate but subordinate to value in exchange. 
 Value in use sometimes excludes all value in exchange,
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY", 77 
 
 that is one mode. But value in use sometimes so en- 
 tirely includes exchange value, as to form in fact but one 
 subdivision of that idea; one horn out of the two into 
 which exchange value divaricates. 
 
 This has been sufficiently illustrated in the last sec- 
 tion, and it may be repeated once for all in this logical 
 type or diagram : 
 
 First relation 
 
 Value, as opposed to non-value, 
 
 Subdivides into 
 
 Value in use. Value in exchange. 
 
 Second relation : 
 Value in exchange, as opposed to pure teleologic value bearing no 
 
 price in exchange, 
 
 Subdivides into 
 
 Value in use (as a possible Value in cost (as the ordi- 
 
 ground of price). nary ground of price). 
 
 Any man acquainted with logic will apprehend at once 
 the prodigious confusion likely to ensue, when genera 
 and species, radical ideas and their subdivisions, are all 
 confounded together. A glass full of water, taken out 
 of a brook in England to quench a momentary thirst, has 
 only a use value; it stands opposed as a collateral idea 
 (not as ajfilial, but as a sisterly idea) to value in exchange. 
 And the two hostile ideas jointly, compose the general 
 abstract idea of value as opposed to worthlessness ; they 
 are its two species as in Diagram I. But, on the other 
 hand, a glass of medicinal water, having its value meas- 
 ured by the resistance to its production, is not opposed co- 
 ordinately to exchange value ; it ranks under exchange 
 value as one of two modes : 1 . Teleologic power ( = 
 use) ; 2. Cost. It is only requisite to look back upon the 
 case of the musical toy in Canada, selling, under pecu'
 
 78 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 liar circumstances, for a price founded on its teleology: 
 whilst in London or Paris, at the very same tune, in 
 contempt of this teleology, (or consideration of serviceable- 
 ness,) it sells on the principle of its cost, in order to see 
 value in use no longer collateral and opposed to value 
 ia exchange, but, on the contrary, to see it coinciding 
 with exchange value, and as one subordinate mode of 
 exchange value, (incapable, therefore, of opposition to ex- 
 change value,) to see it dividing against cost as the other 
 mode. In general, it may be -;iii I. that value in use, as 
 excluding value in exchange, has na place in political 
 economy ; from the moment when it begins to interest 
 the economist, it must be because it happens to coincide 
 with the value in exchange : it has itself become the value 
 in exchange. 
 
 Here lay the original error, the irpeorw -^evdos, viz. in 
 the false position of use value, as if always and neces- 
 sarily contra-arranged to exchange value ; whereas often 
 enough the use value becomes for a time the sole basis 
 of the exchange value- But this first error ia followed 
 by two others. 
 
 IJ. How came Adam Smith to say of water, that it 
 bears little or no value in exchange? you might as 
 well say that abstractedly, and without reference to spe- 
 cific gravity, pine timber was heavy or not heavy : it ia 
 heavy or not in the absolute sense, as you take much 
 of that timber, or little of that timber. Specific gravity, 
 indeed, already presupposes a past collation of weights, 
 because it compares the weights under equal bulks : and 
 then it becomes reasonable to say that lead is heavy, 
 else the proposition is unmeaning. A little water, and 
 in the wrong place, has no value : a/ great deal of water, 
 and in the right place, even in watery England, has 
 a very great value. Not merely as a fishery, but as a
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 79 
 
 bath for swimmers ; as a reservoir, or Roman " castellum," 
 for supplying the domestic purposes of a city ; as a tor- 
 rent, or water-power, for turning machinery ; as a dock 
 for shipping, as an anchorage for boats, as a canal for 
 transporting great bulks and weights of commodities, 
 water is often incalculable in its exchange value. The 
 late Duke of Bridgewater derived a larger rental from 
 one of his canals, than perhaps he could have done from 
 half the diamonds in the regal treasuries of Europe or 
 of Asia. 24 How has a man, in comparing water with 
 diamonds, the right of staking against any single diamond 
 one ounce of water, rather than ten thousand ounces, 
 or than ten million ounces, or these rather than a grain ? 
 Even the ancients, little as they knew of political econ- 
 omy, knew better than this. Before they attempt a com- 
 parison between two commodities, they are careful to 
 assign the particular quantities (usually the weights) 
 between which the equations shall be made. Aurelian, 
 for instance, would not allow his wife a silk (or pos- 
 sibly a silk velvet) gown, because he thought it too 
 dear for authorizing by so authentic a precedent. But 
 how dear? At that time, (say 250 years after Christ,) 
 it was lo-oarcuriov TCO xpvcrw, drew in the scales against 
 gold ; a pound weight of the silk tissue exchanged for 
 a pound weight of gold at the ordinary alloy. Thus 
 Plautus, in his Epidicus [Act iii. sc. 3]: 
 
 " Nae tu habes servom graphicum, et quantivis pretii ! 
 
 Non caru' est auro contra." 
 
 " Indeed you have an accomplished slave, and worth any money ! 
 He is cheap weighed against gold: i. e. against his own weight in gold." 
 
 Otherwise says an old French commentator, he might 
 be sold au poids de Tar ; and so in many scores of places. 
 To make an intelligible valuation in gold, the weight of 
 the article in question is assumed as the basis of the
 
 80 THE LOGIC OF I'OLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 * 
 
 equation. Else it is the old Cambridge problem, Given 
 the skipper's name, to determine the ship's longitude. 
 
 III. How came Adam Smith (by way of retaliation 
 for stripping water of its exchange value) to say, that 
 diamonds have little or no value in use ? Diamonds 
 realize the "use" contemplated by political economy 
 quite as much as water. Water has the exchange value 
 of diamonds, diamonds have the use value of water. The 
 use means the capacity of being used, that is, of being 
 applied to a purpose. It is not meant that, by pos- 
 sessing value in use, a thing is useful is valuable 
 quoad commodum or quoad utilitatem, but valuable ad 
 utendum, utendi gratia, with a view to being used; not 
 that it accomplishes some salutary or laudable purpose, 
 but that it accomplishes a purpose, however monstrous, 
 pernicious, or even destructive to the user ; and that 
 its price, instead of being founded on its cost, (or the 
 resistance to its reproduction,) is founded on its power 
 to realize this purpose. From the Greek word for a 
 purpose (or final cause), viz. re\os (telos), we have the 
 word teleologic ; to denote that quality in any subject 
 by which it tends towards a purpose, or is referred to 
 A purpose. Thus the beauty of a kitchen-garden, of 
 a machine, of a systematic theory, or of a demonstration, 
 is said to be teleologic ; as first of all perceived upon 
 referring it to the purposes which it professes to answer. 
 On the same principle, all affirmative value, or value 
 in use, is teleologic value, value derived from the pur- 
 pose which the article contemplates. 25 
 
 Lastly, upon any other explanation of the word " use," 
 as part of the term " value in use," the puerility of the 
 consequences must Btartle every man whose attention is 
 once directed to the point It is clear that political econ- 
 omy neither has resources nor any motive for distin-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 81 
 
 guishing between the useful and the noxious ; it is clear 
 that political economy has quite as little of either, for 
 distinguishing between the truly useful and the spu- 
 riously useful. No man has paid for an article less or 
 more because it is fascinating and ruinous ; no man has 
 paid for an article, either less or more, because it is 
 dull and useful. On what fiction, therefore, or under 
 what pretence, should political economy insinuate her 
 proboscis into such inquiries ? She may " hope that she 
 is not intruding " ; but it is certain that she is : and if 
 a value can be tolerated which founds itself on the use- 
 ful, then with equal reason may be introduced a value 
 founded on the virtuous, or a value peculiar to Birming- 
 ham, to Wednesday, to Friday, and to Robinson Crusoe. 
 But whilst "the useful" must be deplorably imperti- 
 nent as a subject of inquiry to political economy ; the 
 " use " of any article in the sense of its purposes, func- 
 tions, or ideological relations, as furnishing the ground 
 for their values or prices, will offer one entire hemisphere 
 in that field of science. And for this reason, because 
 the purpose which any article answers, and the cost 
 which it imposes, must eternally form the two limits, 
 within which the tennis-ball of price flies backward and 
 forward. Five guineas being, upon the particular article 
 x, the maximum of teleologic price, the utmost sacrifice 
 to which you would ever submit, under the fullest ap- 
 preciation of the natural purposes which x can fulfil, 
 and then only under the known alternative of losing it 
 if you refuse the five guineas ; this constitutes the one 
 pole, the aphelion or remotest point to which the price 
 for you could ever ascend. But, on the other hand, it 
 is quite consistent with this potential teleologic price, 
 that, considered as a product, (not as itself a power for 
 raising products,) measured in its value by the resistance
 
 82 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 to its own endless reproduction, x might not be worth 
 more than five shillings. The cost of reproducing might 
 be no more. And so long as that state of things sub- 
 sisted, you would not listen to any call made upon your 
 ultimate or teleologic appreciation. You would insist 
 on the appreciation by cost on the five shillings so 
 long as nothing hindered the reproduction upon those 
 terms. Here you have the other pole, the perihelion, 
 countervailing the higher extreme which comes into play, 
 only hi that case where circumstances suspend the free 
 reproduction of the article. These, therefore, constitute 
 the two limits between which the price must always be 
 held potentially to oscillate. Consequently for itself this 
 pair of limits, the use and the cost, the use as the 
 positive or virtual measure, the cost as the measure, 
 by resistance, must be as all-important as the other pair 
 of limits between the useful and the noxious must be 
 impertinent. But, secondly, the former pair of limits is 
 also the basis or ground of genesis from which the whole 
 science is eventually developed. 
 
 Thus, by way of brief illustration, a genuine picture 
 of Da Vinci's or Raphael's, sells always on the principle 
 of value in use, or teleologic value. An enlightened 
 sensibility to the finest effects of art, thia constitutes 
 the purpose or teleologic function to which the appre- 
 ciation is referred; no regard is paid to the lower limit, 
 founded on the difficulty of reproduction ; that being now, 
 and ever since the death of the great artists, a limit 
 in the most absolute sense unapproachable. It is right, 
 therefore, to say that the picture sells for its use, i. e. 
 its capacity of being used or enjoyed ; and that this price 
 cannot now be intercepted (as so generally the affirma- 
 tive prices of articles are) by a price founded upon cost 
 f reproducing. . So, again, the phial of prussic acid,
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 8J 
 
 which you buy in a remote Australian colony, acciden- 
 tally drained of its supplies, at a price exorbitantly be- 
 yond its ordinary cost, must be classed as a price founded 
 on value in use, notwithstanding that I will assume it 
 to have been bought with a view to self-destruction. It 
 would argue great levity of heart to view in the light 
 of a useful thing, any agency whatever that had termi- 
 nated in so sorrowful a result as suicide. Usefulness 
 there was not in the prussic acid, as any power sufficient 
 to affect or alter the price ; but a purpose there was, 
 however gloomy a purpose, a teleologic use attached to 
 the acid, under the circumstances supposed. Now, if 
 this purpose is considered in the price, then the use of 
 the article, its teleologic function, has operated ; and in 
 bar of its more customary ground. But, it is perhaps 
 retorted, " considered ! why, the purpose, the application, 
 the possible uses of an article, must always be considered 
 in the price ; for, unless it promised those uses, there 
 would be no price at all." True ; and this it is which 
 always causes a confusion : that even in the common 
 case where merely the cost it is which cuts off from a 
 possible line that section of the line representative of 
 the price, still it is the affirmative uses of the article which 
 make it first of all conceivable for any such line to exist. 
 The cost cuts off, suppose from a valuation of twenty, 
 (as corresponding to the affirmative use of the article,) 
 six as corresponding to itself; but that the twenty should 
 at all exist, without which even the six would be impos- 
 sible, is due originally, and in all cases, to the affirma- 
 tive ground, not to the negative, and in those cases even 
 where the negative price actually takes effect. This, 
 however, does not disturb the principle, that whilst the 
 affirmative value only can cause any fund at all to be 
 available for price alternately, it is either that affirmative
 
 84 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 value or the negative value of cost, which settles 
 much out of this fund shall be in fact disposable for 
 price. Here, for instance, as to the prussic acid, always 
 it must be the capacity of this acid to meet a pucpose 
 which could cause any price at all to arise. And this 
 effect of affirmative value must always continue to act, 
 even when the ordinary state of things shall have been 
 restored by some English vessel bringing an abundant 
 supply of the acid, and after the cost or negative value 
 shall have been reinstalled as the operative price. This 
 primary and latent action of the affirmative value must 
 not be for a moment forgotten. In fact, the confusion 
 arising out of this one oversight has been the real cause 
 why the idea of vah>e has never yet been thoroughly and 
 searchingly investigated. It must be remembered that 
 in every case of price alike, whether terminating in a 
 negative or affirmative result, invariably and necessarily 
 it comnjenees on affirmative grounds. "Without a pur- 
 pose contemplated, no article could be entertained in the 
 thoughts for a. moment as even potentially susceptible 
 of a price. But, secondly, this being presumed to be 
 realized as & vine qua non condition, then always a two- 
 fold opening arises : the original, intrinsic, affirmative 
 value, has fir~t determined the possible quantity of money, 
 &c., available in the extreme case for price, say twenty. 
 But in the last step ft is either this affirmative value, 
 or the negative, whic\ settles how much of that twenty 
 shall be cut off and rendered effective, whether the 
 entire twenty, or perhaps only one. And in the very 
 delicate management of forces so contradictory coming 
 always into a collision, or into the very closest juxtaposi- 
 tion, it cannot be wondered at that the popular and 
 hurried style of thinking in economy has led most men 
 into confusion.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 85 
 
 Before concluding, it may be well to remark that even 
 the Pagan Greeks, ignorant as they necessarily were on 
 political economy, perceived the main outline of distinc- 
 tion between affirmative and negative price. 
 
 A passage exists in the " Characteristics " of Theo- 
 phrastus, which presents us with this distinction in a 
 lively form, and under circumstances which will prove 
 interesting to the reader. By pure accident, this pas- 
 sage came under the separate review of two eminent 
 scholars, Casaubon and Salmasius. Greater names do 
 not adorn the rolls of scholarship. Casaubon was dis- 
 tinguished for his accuracy in the midst of his vast 
 comprehensiveness ; and every page of his writing is 
 characterized by an overruling good sense. Salmasius, 
 on the other hand, was too adventurous to be always 
 safe. He was the man for riding steeple-chases, for 
 wrestling with extravagant difficulties, or for dancing 
 upon nothing. Yet, with all the benefit from this cau- 
 tion of his intellectual temper, upon the passage in 
 Theophrastus did Casaubon write the most inexcusable 
 nonsense ; whilst the youthful Salmasius, at one bound 
 of his agile understanding, cleared the " rasper " in a 
 style which must have satisfied even the doubts of Isaac. 
 The case illustrates powerfully the uselessness of mere 
 erudition in contending with a difficulty seated in the 
 matter, substantially in the thing, and not in the 
 Greek or Latin expression. Here, in Theophrastus, it 
 was not Greek, it was political economy, that could 
 put it to rights. I will give the very words, construing 
 as I go along, for the benefit of non-Grecian readers. 
 Kat TrwXcoj' TI, and when selling any article, p.rj Xeyi>, not 
 to say, (i. e. it is amongst his characteristic traits not 
 to say,) rots <avovfj,fvois, to the purchasers, iroo-ov av aTroSoiro, 
 in exchange for how much he would deliver it, aXX' eparrai,
 
 86 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 i 
 
 but to ask Ay, "but to ask" "What is it that he 
 
 n*ks? Casaubon, we are concerned to report, construes 
 the words thus, ecquid inveniat damnandum ? what 
 is it that he (the purchaser, I suppose) finds to complain 
 of? But, besides that such a rendering could not be 
 sustained verbally, it is still worse, that this sense, if it 
 co-uld be sustained, would be irrelevant. How would 
 it be any substitution for the plain declaration of what 
 price he asked, to turn round upon a buyer, and insist 
 upon that buyer's saying what blemish could be detected 
 in the article? And then, venerable Isaac, in which 
 of your waistcoat-pockets did you find the word damnan- 
 dum f And again, as the Greek expression had been 
 plural, rots <t>vovp.(vois, to the purchasers, whence comes 
 it that the verb is evptcnm, and not pluraliter tv<Tpuc.ov<ri? 
 Ought Casaubon to have been satisfied with that blunder, 
 so apparent on his construction, in the syntax ? 
 
 Salmasius saw the truth at a glance, His version 
 needs no justification : itself justifies itself. Thus it is : 
 " TI (vpio-Kii ; ad verbum quid invenit ? hoc est, quid 
 pretium mereat haec res ; quanti valeat ? " Instead of 
 saying at a word how much he demands, our knavish 
 friend insists upon asking, n tvpia-Kti ; " What does it 
 fetch ? What do we say, gentlemen, for this glorious 
 sabre from Damascus ? What price shall I have the 
 honor of naming for these jewelled stirrups from An- 
 tioch ? " The antithesis designed is gross and palpable : 
 that it it the antithesis, and sharply drawn, between 
 affirmative and negative price, power price (in refer- 
 ence to the power in the article to fulfil human purposes) 
 as opposed to resistance price, (or price measured by the 
 amount of resistance to its reproduction) price, in short, 
 regulated by what x will produce in opposition to price 
 regulated by what will produce x all this (which is
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 87 
 
 but the same idea under three different formulae) will 
 appear at once by the following reflection : What is 
 it that Theophrastus inputes to him as the form of his 
 trickery? (whatever might be its drift.) It js, that 
 he evaded a question to himself, and turned round upon 
 the company with a question of his own. Now, it is 
 evident that the question of price, when thrown into 
 the negative form as a question about the cost, was 
 a question for him to answer, and not for the company. 
 The cost could be known only to himself. But, when 
 our friend has taken his resolution of translating the onus 
 to the buyers, the only way to accomplish this is, by 
 throwing that question about price into a shape which 
 only the company could answer. " Nay, gentlemen, how 
 can 1 tell the value ? Every man knows best what pleas- 
 ure or what benefit he will draw from an article. Do 
 you mind your own business : the cost is my business ; 
 but yours is, the worth of the thing for use ; for your 
 uses, not for mine." Scamp seems to have the best of 
 it: their benefit from the article could not be affected 
 by the terms on which he had acquired it. And thus 
 even Hellas was up to this elementary distinction. 26 
 
 SECTION VII. MODES OF CAPITAL AS AFFECTING VALUE. 
 
 FINALLY, there arises a modification, first indicated by 
 Ricardo, of value, from the different proportions in which 
 capital fixed or circulating, predominates in the production 
 of the articles. In this case, it can very often no longer 
 be said that the prices of the resulting articles, according 
 to the general rule of Ricardo, vary as the quantities 
 f the producing labor, a disturbance of that law occurs.
 
 83 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 The difference between what is called fixed capital 
 and what is called circulating capital, has often been 
 represented as shifting and shadowy. However, with- 
 out entering upon that dispute further at this point, it 
 will be sufficient to say, that they may be distinguished 
 essentially. Circulating capital, in its normal idea, means 
 any agent whatever used productively which perishes 
 in the very act of being used. Thus, wages are con- 
 veniently said to be for a month, a week, or a day ; but, 
 in fact, a commensurate "moment" of wages perishes 
 upon every instant of time. So of candlelight or gas, 
 so of the porter or drink of any kind allowed by the 
 master of a manufacturing establishment, none of it 
 holds over for a second act of consumption. That part 
 which may accidentally survive, is a part wholly distinct, 
 not concerned at all in the first act. But in fixed capital 
 this is otherwise. The workman's tools hold over from 
 one act of production to a thousandth act. The same 
 identical chisel, saw, grindstone, and not successive parts 
 of them, have operated on many hundreds of cases ; and 
 by how much larger has been the range of these itera- 
 tions, by so much the more intensely is the tool, engine, 
 or machinery, entitled to the denomination of fixed. The 
 leading case under circulating capital what we chiefly 
 think of is wages ; the leading case under fixed capi- 
 tal is machinery. 
 
 Now, in practice, although one kind of capital often 
 preponderates, rarely is it found altogether to exclude 
 the other. Where wages, for instance, form the main 
 element of cost, there will yet be implements required; 
 and, inversely, the most extensive machines require human 
 vigilance, direction, and sometimes very considerable co- 
 operation. But, though this is always the practical case, 
 for the sake of trying the question, it is better to suppose
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 89 
 
 an extreme case, in which alternately the products arise 
 exclusively from a machine, demanding no aid whatever 
 from circulating capital, and again exclusively from human 
 labor, demanding no aid whatever from capital fixed in 
 stationary machines or instruments. On such an as- 
 sumption, Ricardo undertakes to show that the commod- 
 ities produced in the first case could sustain a far greater 
 fall in price under the same change in the circumstances, 
 and with the same injury (no more and no less) to the 
 manufacturing capitalists, than those produced in the 
 second. 
 
 He bids us suppose a case of circulating capital, where 
 for the production of certain articles, two thousand pounds 
 annually are paid in Avages. We are to suppose an 
 opposite case, in which two thousand pounds have been 
 sunk in a very durable machine for producing a partic- 
 ular set of articles. Now, the annual profits will be the 
 same for both parties : say at ten per cent, two hundred 
 pounds. Consequently, we may say of the total products 
 turned out from either establishment, that they will sell 
 for two thousand two hundred pounds in the first case, for 
 two hundred pounds in the second. Some trifle should 
 be added for current repairs on the machine, and also 
 another trifle as a sinking fund for replacing the machine 
 finally, yet, as this machine is of variable duration, 
 and in one case calculated to last for a century, both 
 provisions are uncertain, and frequently too inconsider- 
 able to affect the results, so that they may be safely 
 neglected. 
 
 Now then, such being the circumstances of the two 
 cases, suppose a rise in wages of two per cent to affect 
 the prices of articles issuing from the first establishment. 
 For a time this is peculiar to that establishment ; it does 
 not reach the second at first, because that by the case
 
 90 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 
 
 pays no wages. But at last it reaches the second set 
 of products also, through the rebound upon profits. The 
 two per cent extra on wages will be forty pounds in the 
 whole. Now, the loss upon wages must be borne by 
 profits. But the forty pounds levied upon two hundred 
 pounds will reduce the prices of the articles by that 
 amount, i. e. twenty per cent ; whereas the forty pounds 
 levied upon the two thousand two hundred pounds, is 
 simply transferred to the laborers, and the price continues 
 as it was. 
 
 The case here imagined by Ricardo, and which is 
 subsequently varied through lower stages of durability, 
 greatly disturbing the violence of the results as to price, 
 is exceedingly important by its tendency. And he goes 
 on to show, what will naturally have suggested itself to 
 the student, that between different sorts of fixed capital 
 there is the same difference of tendency as between fixed 
 and circulating. And why ? Because the durability, 
 which forms the ground of the generic distinction be- 
 tween fixed and circulating, varies also, and therefore 
 becomes a ground for a special distinction, between any 
 different orders of the fixed. When a man sows corn, 
 which is intensely circulating capital, he seems absolutely 
 and violently to throw it away. But this eventually 
 comes back to him in a new shape. But on every year 
 he renews this violent sacrifice of capital. Other modes 
 of capital, in an opposite extreme, as a thrashing ma- 
 chine, last for his life or even longer. Now, the inter- 
 mediate modes, such as horses, next cows, carts, rakes, 
 as they outlast uses continually less durable, come nearer 
 and nearer to the principle of the circulating capital ; 
 and consequently the difference of result upon price, 
 under any changes occurring in productive agencies, tend 
 more and more to become evanescent.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 91 
 
 This is the amount of Ricardo's restriction applied to 
 his own general principle of value. An objection, made 
 by Malthus, which to himself appeared fatal, stumbled 
 in the very statement, not conforming to the conditions 
 presupposed by Ricardo. There is, however, some degree 
 of obscurity still overhanging this final section of Ricar- 
 do's great chapter on value ; and for a large system 
 of political economy, which, without regard to names, 
 should endeavor severely to settle the truth as affecting 
 every part, this particular section would require a more 
 searching consideration. But in a little work professing 
 only to state the separate principles (which happen to 
 be fundamental) and the separate theory of Ricardo, 
 there seems no reason for extending the inquiry beyond 
 the limits fixed by his own views. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON MARKET VALUE. 
 
 A VERT short chapter, and a very bad one, (the worst 
 in the whole series,) has been introduced by Ricardo 
 upon market value, quite out of its natural place ; it 
 stands forth in succession by the arrangement of the first 
 edition ; whereas it ought, upon any principle, to have 
 ranked immediately after the first. I mention this be- 
 cause the dislocation of the chapter from its true place 
 naturally suggests the cause of its unsoundness ; it was 
 a hurried after-thought, introduced to provide for incon* 
 reniences which, until they had begun to crowd upon
 
 92 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 his experience, the writer had not previously anticipated. 
 What was Ricardo's specific object in this chapter ? Was 
 it, as in his great inaugural chapter on value, to amend 
 or reconstitute the old notions current upon this impor- 
 tant section of economy? By no means; for that con- 
 struction of his object there is no opening, since he neither 
 objects to any one point in the old definition and old 
 employment of the idea, nor does he add silently or 
 indirectly any new element to that idea; he neither am- 
 plifies the use of this idea, nor regulates by any limita- 
 tion its logical relations. As he found it he adopts it; 
 as he adopts it he leaves it. Every other chapter formed 
 a distinct precedent against his title to write this. But 
 it was his necessity which threw him upon such an 
 anomaly. He found that a case was gathering upon 
 him, which would else call in every page for a distinc- 
 tion and a caution. As often as it should happen, that 
 either to the question of rent, or profits, of wages, or of 
 foreign trade, he should apply his own new laws of value, 
 he would be eternally crossed and thwarted by one and 
 the same form of objections ; viz. by those which are 
 drawn from market value. 
 
 He would be supposed, by the unskilful student, always 
 to overlook that from which always and systematically 
 he abstracted. The modifications to value, arising out 
 of accidental disturbances in the market, out of casual 
 excesses or casual defects iu the supply, are in fact 
 no objections at all. The capital and ruling law de- 
 termine such an article A to be worth 25. Then super- 
 venes a modification, which, by accident, is equal in 
 virtue to 3 ; if this modification (from a defect in the 
 supply) happens to be -(-3. in that case the result will be 
 28 ; if it happens (from a corresponding excess in the 
 supply) to be 3, in that case the resulting price will
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 93 
 
 be 22. But alike in either case the original determina- 
 tion of the primary law has had its full effect To have 
 reached 28, when a casual disturbance arose from an 
 additional 3, argues sufficiently an original or natural 
 price of 25 ; to have settled at 22, when a disturbance 
 had arisen equal to the effect of subtracting 3, equally 
 argues back to the original price of 25. Consequently 
 all such disturbances are vainly alleged as answers to 
 the capital laws of value, or as in the very least degree 
 objections to those laws. As well might it be said that 
 gravitation is not gravitation, because a magnet is so 
 placed as to effect the velocity of descent. The gravi- 
 tation, you may rely on it, exerts its full power without 
 abatement ; and all which is neutralized by the magnet, 
 must be fully accounted for. This is what Ricardo 
 contemplates in the fourth chapter. He wishes to check 
 the rash reader by a timely caution, " Do not go on 
 complicating the matter to no purpose, by eternally sub- 
 mitting every assertion upon price to the disturbance of 
 a well-known irregularity. We are all alike aware of 
 that irregularity. It is an irregularity as regards its 
 amount in any particular case ; but it is perfectly regu- 
 lar in its mode of action. We cannot tell beforehand 
 what will be the supply of an article in relation to its 
 demand ; that is uncertain and irregular ; but, once known 
 and certified, we can all anticipate its effects." 
 
 The case was the same precisely as when Ricardo 
 announced beforehand that he should neglect the varia- 
 tions in the value of money. What could be the use of 
 stating every proposition as to price three times over; 
 first, in the contingency of money remaining stationary; 
 secondly, in the contingency of its rising; thirdly, in the 
 contingency of its falling? Such an eternal fugue of 
 iterations, such a Welsh triad of cases, would treble the
 
 94 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 labor of writer and reader, without doing the slighter/ 
 service to either. Within ten pages it would become a 
 mere nuisance. Why not, once for all, abstract from 
 such regular irregularities, which affect no principle, but 
 merely tend to make every conclusion needlessly operose 
 and perplexing? That was the course which Ricardo 
 did take in the case of money : he announced his inten- 
 tion of abstracting from all disturbances of that nature : 
 he made it understood, that from this point onwards he 
 would always assume money as ranging at its stationary 
 natural value ; that is, at the value predetermined by the 
 cost, without looking aside this way or that to changes 
 in the value from the momentary market supply. 
 
 Now, then, exactly that same intention of abstracting 
 from the casual oscillations of a market, which he had 
 announced in regard to money, here in this fourth chapter 
 he desires to announce universally with regard to all 
 other articles whatsoever. He will fatigue neither him- 
 self nor his readers, by entertaining an eternal set of 
 changes which can be rung upon all cases alike, and 
 which affect no principle in any. 
 
 Having thus shown what it was that Ricardo designed 
 in this chapter, (viz. a general caveat through all time 
 coming, as to a particular useless practice ;) and secondly, 
 what it was not that Ricardo designed, (viz. a new view 
 of the subsisting doctrine on market value ;) thirdly, let 
 me have permission to show what it was that he ouyJit, 
 to have intended. He ought to have disengaged the old 
 doctrine from a foul logical blunder, which (if not the. 
 very greatest in political economy) is certainly the great- 
 est upon a point of equal simplicity, and the greatest 
 for practical effect. 
 
 What it "market value"? Does it mean value in a 
 market? Precisely upon that blunder has turned the
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 9o 
 
 whole distortion of this doctrine, which else, and separate 
 from its misconstructions, is essential to political economy. 
 Let the reader ask himself this question: "What is the 
 antithesis to " market value " ? Upon that there is no 
 dispute : all are agreed in calling it " natural value." 
 And what does natural value mean ? Confessedly, it 
 means the value which is central to the oscillation right 
 and left, arising from supply either redundant or defec- 
 tive. Consequently, whilst market value means value 
 as it is disturbed by such oscillations, natural value (being 
 the direct antithesis) means value as it is not disturbed 
 by such oscillations. Such being the nature of this fa- 
 mous distinction, how shameful an error it has been in 
 all writers since the idea of market value was first intro- 
 duced, and much more so in Ricardo, the great, malleus 
 hereticorum, that they speak of " the actual value," 27 i. e. 
 the present or existing value, as a term interchangeable 
 with that of market value. Ricardo does so in the very 
 first sentence of his fourth chapter. " In making labor the 
 foundation," &c., " we must not," says he, " be supposed 
 to deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the 
 actual or market price of commodities from this their 
 primary and natural price." Actual or market ! why, 
 that would stand, if " market price " meant " price in a 
 market " ; but it means nothing of the sort. And, if it 
 was designed to do so, then I ask, for what was it ever 
 introduced? Exactly because price in a market is not 
 always the same thing as market price, was this latter 
 phrase ever introduced, and guarded as a technical term. 
 Every man will grant that the " actual price " may happen 
 to coincide with the " natural price " ; he will grant also 
 (for he must) that actual price may happen at another 
 time to coincide with market price : but if actual price, 
 or existing price, may at one time coincide with the
 
 96 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 technical term market price, and at another time with 
 its direct antithesis, that is, may coincide indifferently 
 with A or with non-A ; with wliat color of decency eoulu 
 a man make actual price and market price to be con- 
 vertible terms; that is, essentially united, and yet by 
 necessity at times essentially opposed? 
 
 Adam Smith it was who first brought up the distinc- 
 tion of market value. What did he mean by it? He 
 meant value of any article as adfected (purposely I use 
 the algebraic term) by the state of the market, disturbed 
 from its equilibrium. He was not ignorant that no quan- 
 tity of an article, whether in excess or in. defect, could 
 ever mainly fix the price : the cost it is only that could 
 do that ; but the quantity in the market would, if not 
 level to the demand, be a coefficient in regulating that 
 price. Sometimes this quantity might be a great deal 
 too much for the demand ; sometimes it might be a great 
 deal too little ; and, accordingly, as either case happened, 
 it would (by raising or by depressing) modify the simple 
 result obtained from the cost. Having thus set up a 
 term, viz. market value, to express cost value as adfected 
 by quantity in excess or in defect, next he looked out 
 for a contradictory term,, (viz. natural value,) in order 
 to express cost value as it is not adfected by quantity in 
 excess or in defect. 
 
 These two terms, therefore, express the two opposite 
 ]>oles of a law. They indicate always an agency of law. 
 But the terms actual value, or value in a market, ex- 
 press only a fact. When you speak of the actual value, 
 meaning in good English the present or existing value, 
 you cannot but be aware that it might coincide equally 
 with the cost price as adfected by quantity, or with 
 the cost price as not adfected by the quantity ; that is, 
 with technical market price, or with technical natural
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 97 
 
 price, (which is non-market price.) The actual price 
 of a coach-horse, for instance, " sixteen hands high, grand 
 action, six years old," will generally turn out to be a 
 " market price " in the true technical sense ; for horses 
 never travel entirely out of that circle : they are always 
 somewhat in excess or in defect. And the reason of 
 this is, that the breeding of horses cannot adapt itself 
 fast enough to the oscillations in the demand. It is not 
 until an oscillation in one direction has begun to make 
 itself felt steadily in the prices, that it is assumed to be 
 certain, and acted upon ; and by that time it is too late 
 to countermand the scale of arrangements which has 
 already been in action through four years back. Hence, 
 in horses, or wherever it is impossible to equate the sup- 
 ply abruptly with an altered state of the demand, large 
 elongations occur, this way or that, between the oscil- 
 lating market price (reflecting the cost adfected by the 
 quantity) and the steady central price, or natural price, 
 (reflecting the cost only, without regard to quantity.) 
 On the other hand, whilst horses are perhaps always 
 at market value, boots and shoes are never known to 
 bear a market value. Some variation may occur slowly 
 in the price of hides, and therefore of leather. This, 
 however, is not much, where no changes happen in the 
 course of foreign trade, and none hi the duties. As to 
 the manufactured article, there is so little reason for 
 supplying it in any variable ratio, and shoemakers are 
 notoriously such philosophic men, and the demand of 
 the public is so equable, that no man buys shoes or 
 boots at any other than the steady natural price. The 
 result of this difference is seen in the two orders of men, 
 shoemakers and horse-dealers. The horse-dealer is always 
 too clever; whilst it is in no scorn, but in thankful remem- 
 brance of such men as Jacob Boehmen, &c., that Mr. 
 7
 
 98 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Coleridge and many others have declared the shoemakers' 
 craft to be the most practically productive of meditation 
 amongst men. This has partly been ascribed to its seden- 
 tary habits ; but much more, I believe, depends upon the 
 shoemaker's selling always at natural, never at unnatu- 
 ral or market price ; whilst the unhappy horse-dealer, 
 being still up to his lips in adfected price, and absolutely 
 compelled to tamper with this price, naturally gets the 
 habit of tampering with the buyer's ignorance, or any 
 other circumstance that shapes the price to his wishes. 
 
 Market price, therefore, is so far from meaning the 
 rude idea of price in a market, that such a term would 
 never have been introduced as a technical distinction, 
 except expressly for the purpose of contradicting that 
 rude idea. This, it was felt, might or might not hap* 
 pen to include the double affections of cost and quan^ 
 tity. But what the economist wanted was a terra that 
 always should, and must include them ; and, observe, 
 no sooner has he got his term, trimmed -it, fought for 
 it, than instantly he unsettles it from its foundation. With 
 one Alnaschar kick he destroys the whole edifice upon 
 which he has employed himself so painfully. 
 
 But is this confusion of the idea the worst result 
 from the defeated doctrine? By no means. A crazy 
 maxim has got possession of the whole world; viz. that 
 price is, or can be, determined by the relation between 
 supply and demand. The man who uses this maxim 
 does not himself mean it. He cannot say, " I think thus ; 
 you think otherwise." He does not think thus. Try 
 to extract price for wheat from the simple relation of 
 the supply to the demand. Suppose the supply to be 
 by one tenth part beyond the demand, what price will 
 that indicate for eight imperial bushels of the best red 
 wheat, weighing sixty-four pounds a bushel? Will the
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECOXOMY. 09 
 
 price be a shilling, or will it be a thousand pounds? 
 You guess at the first would be too little, and the second 
 too much. Perhaps so ; but what makes you " guess " 
 this ? Why, simply, your past experience. You fancy 
 yourself ascertaining the price by the relation of supply 
 to demand, and, in fact, you are ascertaining it by pri- 
 vately looking for the cost in past years ; the very thing 
 that you had pledged yourself to dispense with. 
 
 Now, mark how a man does really proceed in solving 
 such a problem. He finds upon inquiry that an excess 
 in the supply of wheat by one tenth, will cause a deprecia- 
 tion perhaps by one sixth : the accident of excess has 
 told to the extent of a sixth. But of what? A sixth 
 of what ? Manifestly, a sixth upon the last price of wheat. 
 The pretended result, that could be known by knowing 
 the mere amount of excess, now turns out to be a mere 
 function of the former cost, previous to the depreciation. 
 But that price includes the whole difficulty ; for always 
 the price of wheat will express the cost in the first place, 
 as the principal (oftentimes the sole) element. This 
 call c. Then, secondly, the other (the movable) element 
 of the price will represent any modification upon this c, 
 by means of too much or too little wheat in the market. 
 This modifying element of quantity call Q ; and then 
 any existing price in any particular corn-market will 
 always be c -{- Q in the case where there is a deficiency ; 
 always c Q in the case where there is an excess ; 
 always c (i. e. a mononomial) in the case where there is 
 neither deficiency nor excess, consequently where market 
 price does not take place, but, on the contrary, the price 
 which contradicts market price, or, in Adam Smith's 
 language, natural price. 
 
 Thus it is shown, by pursuing the problem to the 
 last, that every possible case of technical market value
 
 100 THE LOGIC OK POLITICAL KCONOMY. 
 
 (that is, not value in a market, but value in a market 
 whose equilibrium has been disturbed) cannot by possi- 
 bility rest upon a single law, (whether cost on the ono 
 liand, or relation of supply to demand on the other,\ 
 but of necessity upon two laws; briefly, that it mu.-t 
 be a BitiomiaL It is scandalous and astonishing that 
 Adam Smith, the introducer of this im[x>rtant distinction, 
 should himself be the first, in very many cases, to con- 
 found it with its own formal antithesis. It is still more 
 scandalous that Ricardo actually making war upon the 
 logic of Adam Smith, and founding his theory upon a 
 much severer logic should equally liave confounded the 
 law of market value with the direct contradiction to 
 that law. Both did so under the misleading of a ver- 
 bal equivocation 28 in the term "market;" and the pos- 
 sibility of this equivocation would be banished henceforth 
 by substituting for "market value" the term Binomial 
 value. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 THERE are four elements in the condition of every 
 working body, which (like so many organs of a complex 
 machine) must eternally operate by aiding or by thwart- 
 ing each other. According to the social circumstances 
 at the time given, these elements must act either in the 
 same direction or m different directions ; and conform- 
 ably to the modes of combining the action under foui
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL KCONOMY. 101 
 
 distinct causes, operating by different proportions, and 
 often in conflicting directions, must be the practical 
 result, the tendencies upwards or downwards which 
 will affect wages universally. 
 The four elements are these: 
 
 1. The rate of movement in the POPULATION : Is 
 that steadily advancing or slowly receding? Does that 
 tend to raise the value of wages, or to depress it? 
 
 2. The rate of movement in the national CAPITAL : 
 Is that advancing or receding? And does it pro tanto 
 therefore tend to raise or to depress the rate of w r ages ? 
 
 3. The fluctuations in the price of necessaries, but, 
 above all, of FOOD : Are those fluctuations from one 
 decennium to another tending, upon the whole, to an 
 advance or to a decline ? Is the price of food from 
 century to century, when taken with its complementary 
 adjunct in the price of clothes, fire, and lodging, such 
 as, upon the whole, to sustain wages to stimulate wages 
 or to depress them? 
 
 4. The traditional STANDARD OF LIVING : Is that for- 
 tunately high and exacting in its requisitions ? or is " man's 
 life," to cite a strong word from Shakespeare, (whose 
 profound humanity had fixed his attention upon the vast 
 importance of a high scale in domestic comfort,) " is 
 man's life cheap as brutes' ? " Is it in short an old 
 English standard 29 which prevails, or a modern Irish 
 standard? Is it that standard which elevated the noble 
 yeomanry of England through six centuries, or that which 
 lias depressed to an abject animal existence the Irish 
 serfs ; and depressed the houseless lazzaroni of Naples, 
 Peru, and Mexico to a sensual dependence upon sun- 
 shine and sleep? To these four elements some hasty 
 thinkers would add a fifth, viz. the relative quantity 
 of work to be done, and this certainly is important ;,
 
 
 102 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 for, undoubtedly, if the population should increase, it 
 will be a balance to that increase if the national work 
 increases by the same proportion ; and it will be more 
 than a balance if the national work should increase more 
 than proportionally. But the element of work to be 
 done is already expressed implicitly in the first two ele- 
 ments of population and of capital ; for, if the popula- 
 tion increase, then the work of raising food must increase 
 commensurately : and, again, if the capital increase, it 
 will force some corresponding employment for itself by 
 tentatively exploring every kind of new work that has 
 any chance of proving profitable. 
 
 It is more important to notice, that all these four modify- 
 ing causes of wages, though each separately for itself capa- 
 ble of several action, are also fitted, to act in pairs, each 
 two as a separate combination, ffuyor, or yoke of forces. 
 Thus No. 1, or population, will act on wages at any rate ; 
 but it will act differently according as it is supported or 
 thwarted by concurrent changes in capital. Population 
 moving forward too rapidly would, ceeteris paribus, be un- 
 favorable to the prosperous movement of wages ; yet if No. 
 2, the national capital, i. e. if the funds for employing 
 labor, should advance even faster than the labor, then it 
 might happen that wages would rise, although under a state 
 of the population otherwise unfavorable to wages. This 
 conditional action of one element according to the state of 
 the other is continually exhibited, and often ruinously, in 
 our infant colonies. Work of some kind, in such colonies, 
 there must be ; for there is a population of some class and 
 quality to feed and to furnish with dwelling-houses, firing, 
 and the very coarsest manufactures ; as to the finer, these 
 are long supplied by importation. But with this primary 
 basis for going to work, sometimes there is labor in excess 
 present with little capital for employing it ; sometimes there
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 103 
 
 is capital in excess, with no adequate labor of a proper 
 quality for receiving the action of capital. Veiy lately, 
 and therefore after all the benefit of our long experience 
 on such subjects, the government commissioners sent down 
 to Paisley (with a view to the relief of that town from her 
 surplus population) shipped off to distant settlements in 
 strange climates mechanics and weavers, who were found 
 more useless for colonial labors than a band of mere gen- 
 tlemen ; having none of the hardy habits which, more even 
 than practised skill, are requisite for rural industry, and, in 
 general, for industry of that elementary class required in 
 young or infant communities. And universally it may be 
 said, as a first consideration in the general theory of colo- 
 nization, that not only capital and labor should be harmo- 
 niously combined, so that neither agency may languish from 
 defect of the appropriate reagency, but also that labor 
 itself, in its several subdivisions, should be more cautiously 
 assorted than has generally been the case. Houses form 
 an instantaneous class of necessaries in new colonies ; those 
 rare cases being excepted in which the season of the year 
 and the climate allow of a long encampment. 80 Yet how 
 can houses advance harmoniously (that is, in such a con- 
 currency of the parts that one part may not be kept wait- 
 ing for the other) unless the masons or bricklayers are in 
 due proportion to the carpenters, both to the woodcut- 
 ters and sawyers, and all four classes to the plasterers, 
 slaters, (or tilers,) and glaziers ? Or, again, supposing the 
 forest game to be scarce, but that a river, frith, or bay, near 
 to the settlement, offers an unusual abundance of fine fish, 
 how injurious must be that neglect which should defeat this 
 bountiful provision of nature by leaving unsummoned a due 
 proportion of fishermen, boats, nets, &c., and, in some cases, 
 f a curing establishment, completely mounted. Five hun- 
 dred rren thus employed might support the whole colony,
 
 I<>1 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and leave its main labor disposable for a wide variety of 
 mixed pursuits ; whilst, otherwise, the whole strength of 
 the colony must be unavoidably sequestered into the one 
 channel of raising subsistence. Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's 
 improvement in colonization, first suggested about ten years 
 ago, was the earliest step taken upon principle in the phi- 
 losophic theory of this subject. He saw the fatal schism 
 or divorce which took place continually between capital 
 and labor. Rich men had hitherto bought vast tracts of 
 land at a small cost, not with any view of really enclosing 
 and cultivating their allotments, but in the confidence that 
 u public interest would grow up in the colony, that other 
 lands would be improved, and tliat their own private shares 
 (however neglected) being weil situated, and at length in- 
 sulated by thriving farms, would benefit by the reacting 
 value from the circumjacent lands; upon which consum- 
 mation taking place, it would become their policy to selL 
 Thus was a considerable capital transferred to the colony, 
 but not a capital which had much tendency to attract labor. 
 Mr. Wakefield's system put an end to this abuse, or, at 
 least, to its ruinous operation upon labor. The funds raised 
 by the sale of the colonial land were applied, under regu- 
 lations of law, and by fixed proportions, to the transporta- 
 tion of proper working families ; as fast as the land sold 
 itself, so fast were the funds raised for the attraction of 
 labor ; consequently, the want, the chief demand, bred com- 
 mensurately its o\vn relief, land, as at any rate it is a 
 call for labor, now became a pledge or security for lalx>r. 
 This was a great improvement. But there is still much of 
 the colonizing theory in arrear as respects the organization, 
 in more salutary proportions, of labor according to its great 
 capital varieties. We see that an army is a machine, not 
 merely in the sense of its unity as. to purpose through the 
 great artifice of its discipline, but also through the variety
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 105 
 
 of its arms, or organs, for services differing in kind, though 
 yet co-operating to a common result. Social life requires 
 a composition of the same nature in the adjustment of the 
 labor by which it advances towards its purposes ; and this 
 composition cannot be neglected without deranging colonies 
 in their infancy, by retarding, if such neglect of assortment 
 does not wholly intercept and strangle, their expansive 
 energies. 
 
 From all this, so far as we have yet gone, what is the 
 inference ? The inference is, that of the four great ele- 
 ments for determining wages, not one can be relied upon 
 as an insulated or unconditional force ; all are dependent 
 upon each, and each upon all. For, if we call the rate of 
 advancing population p, and the rate of advancing capital 
 C, then, because P expresses the supply of men, and c ex- 
 presses the demand for men, (since men are supplied in the 
 ratio denoted by the growth of population, and men are 
 demanded in the ratio denoted by the growth of capital for 
 employing them,) it follows that in fact p -\- c makes but 
 one compound force as regards wages ; the final effect upon 
 wages being determined by the excess of either element, 
 p or C, in its modification of the other. And again, if we 
 denote the average rate of price, upwards or downwards, 
 upon the necessaries of workmen by N, and the traditional 
 standard of living amongst the workmen of that nation by 
 s, then will s -j- N express practically, through each period 
 of a generation, not two separate forces acting upon wages, 
 but one single force, resulting from the balance or inter- 
 modification between the two. In this way the treatment 
 of the question is simplified : we are not called upon, like 
 an Indian juggler, always to play with four balls at once. 
 The four elements, working in pairs, become two ; and the 
 problem is this, to compute a priori, (that is, by inference 
 from a principle,) or to trace a posteriori^ (that is, experi-
 
 106 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 mentally,) the degree in which wages (known already as 
 an average rate) are modified for the present by the bal- 
 ance resulting from p -)- c, and secondly, by the balance 
 resulting from N -f- S. Population as working against 
 capital; price of necessaries as working against the old 
 traditionary standard of comfort, these, in effect, are 
 the ordinary forces operating in the same direction, or in 
 different directions, upon wages. 
 
 In illustration of this principle, we have had of late 
 years a memorable case in our slave colonies. We all 
 know at present, if we did not know at the time, that 
 no legislative experiment was ever conducted with so 
 much sentimental folly, and mischievous disregard of 
 reversionary interests as the sudden emancipation of our 
 West India slaves, that is, the sudden admission to 
 the rank of men, of those who, intellectually and in self- 
 restraint, were below the condition of children. Our 
 own levity in granting was dramatically mimicked by 
 their levity in using. They were as ready to abuse 
 ungratefully as we to concede absurdly. At present 
 we are suffering the penalties of our folly ; and amongst 
 them the mortification of seeing that ancient enemy of 
 ours, always so full of light-minded precipitancy, and 
 once in this very field of slavery manifesting that pre- 
 cipitancy in results so bloody, (causing, in fact, a gen- 
 eral massacre of her own children by the legislation of 
 fifteen minutes,) now, alas ! building wisdom upon our 
 irretrievable madness, and putting forth a statesmanlike 
 providence such as used to be characteristic of our English 
 senate, while that English senate has trifled sentimen- 
 tally in the way once characteristic of Paris. The French 
 scheme now in preparation is as thoughtful and cautious 
 as the English scheme, unhappily irrevocable, was pit- 
 iably frantic. More truly and comprehensively than ever
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMT. 107 
 
 that word was applied to such a case, it may be said that 
 the British Parliament ruined the West Indies. For 
 if Spain by her narrow policy ruined both herself and 
 her magnificent colonies, it cost her three centuries to 
 do so ; but we " did the trick " in about as many years, 
 a consummation that could not have been possible except 
 in the case of sugar-colonies, which were in reality mere 
 factories. All human follies, however, whether tragic 
 or comic, must have their better and worse scenes. 81 
 And this was the more to be expected in the West Indies, 
 as circumstances forbade any free circulation of labor 
 between the several islands. Accordingly, in some islands, 
 where the balance upon r -j- c was particularly favorable 
 to the laborer, (as, for instance, in Jamaica and Trinidad,) 
 there the derangement of all social interests upon this 
 harlequin experiment was total. The slaves, by relation 
 to the funds for employing them regularly, were in defect, 
 whilst the funds for employing them irregularly, i. e. 
 so as to set their natural superiors at defiance, were 
 vast. For, amongst other follies, our senate at home 
 had quite forgotten to make any regulations against 
 their throwing themselves for luxurious indolence (the 
 besetting vice of negroes and lazzaroni) upon the ample 
 waste lands. The same state of things amongst the 
 negroes the same capital oversights in Parliament 
 applied also to part of our continental colonies, as Brit- 
 ish Guiana. But, on the other hand, in islands like 
 Antigua and Barbadoes, where the natural circumstances 
 were different, p in relation to c being much nearer on 
 a level, and no such plentiful resources for idleness to 
 fall back upon, the blow fell more lightly. N -{- s, as 
 being probably near to the same level in all these islands, 
 might be safely neglected in a question of wages. Now, 
 from this West Indian condition of the laboring class,
 
 108 TltE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 suddenly summoned to a mighty revolution by a legisla- 
 ture which took no thought of this condition, nor for 
 this condition, turn to a laboring class ranking in the 
 opposite extreme amongst European nations. The Swiss 
 population are not, per se, (that is, by any superiority 
 of nature, intellectual or moral,) an interesting race. 
 But by their social economy, they are amongst the most 
 respectable working orders on the Continent. Their pop- 
 ulation advances, in some places, in the healthiest way, 
 not by excessive births counterworking excessive deaths, 
 but by few deaths (locally not more than one annually 
 upon seventy-five) compensating their few births, (some- 
 times one annually upon forty-five.) The rate of increase 
 is therefore generally moderate. On the other hand, 
 capital is nearly stationary. Thus far, therefore, as con- 
 cerns p -\- c, the situation of Switzerland is not hope- 
 ful; and but for emigration, (which in Switzerland does 
 not act as it will do generally, to defeat itself by extra 
 stimulation to the rate of population,) the distress would 
 be much greater than as yet it appears to be. But why 
 is this ? By what privilege in her institutions or usages, 
 does Switzerland escape the curse which has so contin- 
 ually besieged the Scottish Highlands, and other regions 
 of a redundant population? There is nothing romanti- 
 cally fine in the present condition of the Swiss. On the 
 contrary, they are a nation of low-toned sensibility ; and, 
 from the languor amongst them of all religious principle, 
 they are in danger of great eventual demoralization. But, 
 in the mean time, they struggle with some success against 
 the downward tendencies of their situation ; and they 
 do not yet exhibit a squalid Irish surplus upon their 
 population, one out of four, fierce, famishing, and with- 
 out prospect of regular employment. Still less do the 
 Swiss carry the contagion and causes of pauperism
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMT. 109 
 
 amongst their next neighbors, as do the Irish. Their 
 own cup of woe has long been full for the Irish ; and 
 through the last score of years, or since the improvement 
 of steam navigation, its overflowings have been settling 
 ruinously upon England 82 and on Scotland. Now, Swit- 
 zerland at least evades these evils : she neither exhibits 
 misery in her own bosom, as the Scottish Highlands often, 
 and Ireland for ever ; nor is she the rank cause of misery 
 to neighboring nations, as is Ireland. But again I ask, 
 through what advantage or privilege of her situation ? 
 The answer is undeniable : it is simply through her high 
 patriarchal standard of comfort and respectability. In 
 some countries, merely through the one habit of living 
 too much abroad and in the open air, it has happened 
 that a very low standard of comfort or pleasure is con- 
 nected with the domestic hearth. Home is not there a 
 word of sanctity or endearment. This is the case pretty 
 widely upon Italian ground, and not solely amongst the 
 lazzaroni of Naples. This is the case in Peru, in Mexico, 
 and indeed more or less everywhere in South America. 
 The genial climate has defeated itself as a blessing. 
 Co-operating by its own temptations with the constitu- 
 tional luxurious languor in the natives, the climate has 
 become a withering curse to the better instincts of the 
 people. But Ireland, but Switzerland, have not been 
 subject to that mode of temptation. Welcome the appar- 
 ent curses, which (like labor itself) finally become bless- 
 ings, of stern northern climates ! Yet the same tempta- 
 tion, in effect, has operated upon both, through a different 
 channel. The luxury of excessive indolence had, from 
 the earliest period, fascinated Ireland into a savage life. 
 A scale almost brutal of diet and of lodging had already 
 long reconciled itself to the Irish feelings in the labor- 
 ing class, when the fatal gift of the potato stepped in to
 
 110 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 make the impi'ogressive state compatible with a vast 
 expansion of the population. To Switzerland, agitated 
 nobly by the storms of the Reformation, and starting 
 from a much higher point of self-valuation, such a tempta- 
 tion proved none at all. To this day she adheres indom- 
 itably to the ancient habits of her fathers. Other nations 
 preserve their economy through their morals ; Switzerland 
 preserves her morals through her economy ; and even 
 yet her children will not marry without guarantees for 
 the continued prospect, in the coming generation, of 
 what they witnessed in the last. And thus two nations, 
 not originally standing upon a very different basis of 
 landed wealth, are now seen in the most absolute repul- 
 sion to each other, upon the two polar extremities as 
 to comfort and self-respect. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 HITHERTO we find nothing peculiar to Ricardo in the 
 forces acting upon labor. It was necessary to notice these 
 four elements in that complex machinery which finally 
 moulds the vicissitudes of wages ; but, after all, it is only 
 one of the four, viz. the current price of the articles essen- 
 tial to a poor man's household, which can, by any sudden 
 change, produce a correspondingly sudden change upon 
 wages. The rate of increase upon population, the changes 
 incident to capital, the national traditionary standard of 
 domestic life, all these are slow to move, and, when they 
 have moved, slow to embody themselves in corresponding 
 effects. Population, for instance, perseveres often through 
 generations in the same prevailing rate ; and if this rate 
 should, from any cause, sustain the most abrupt change, it 
 fcould take a score of years before that change could begin
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. Ill 
 
 to tell upon the labor market. But the fourth element, the 
 daily cost of necessaries, alters sometimes largely in one 
 day; and upon this, therefore, must be charged the main 
 solution of those vicissitudes in wages which are likely to 
 occur within one man's life. The other forces vary, by 
 degrees fine and imperceptible, so as to affect the condition 
 of working men deeply and radically from century to cen- 
 tury. But such an effect, though sure, and important to 
 the historical grandeur of nations, is not rapid enough to 
 be concurrent with the corresponding changes upon other 
 functions of productive power. We look for an agency 
 upon wages able to keep abreast of these other agencies, 
 fitted by its easy motion for receiving their effects, and for 
 returning to them a continual modification from itself. 
 
 Here, therefore, it is, upon this one force out of four 
 which control the price of labor ; viz. upon the poor man's 
 household consumption for the diet of his family, for their 
 clothing, their lodging, for the annual dividend upon the 
 cost and maintenance of his furniture, (amongst which only 
 the beds and bedding are expensive,) for his fuel, (some- 
 times, from land-carriage, costly,) for his candles and his 
 soap, with a small allowance for medicine and medical 
 attendance, and too often (though most naturally) a large 
 one for strong liquors, upon these items in a poor man's 
 expenditure it is, that the main agency of change settles, 
 schooling for his children he generally obtains gratis. 
 
 Now the reader is aware, that, according to Ricardo's 
 view, an expenditure on this humble scale is chiefly deter- 
 mined by the costs of production upon the land. Yet 
 why ? The furniture and the clothes (with the exception 
 of the woollen or iron parts amongst them) do not arise 
 from the domestic soil, though much of the food does ; yet, 
 even amongst that, the tea and the sugar (two very impor- 
 tant articles) are wholly foreign ; and all the other articles,
 
 112 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 except fuel, are trivial in price. Certainly it must be 
 granted that the habit of estimating the laborer's expenses 
 by the cost of his diet, (nay, exclusively by one item of his 
 diet, bread,) is radically false ; and of that Ricardo is 
 sensible, though apparently he does not allow sufficiently 
 for the true proportion held. The corn-law incendiaries 
 here, as everywhere when they approach the facts or the 
 principles of the question, betray an ignorance which could 
 not be surpassed if the discussion were remitted to Ashan- 
 tee or Negroland. They calculate a change of ten per 
 cent upon wheat as if it meant a change of ten per cent on 
 wages, (though, by the way, often denying elsewhere that 
 wages at all sympathize with the price of food.) Now, 
 suppose the total food of a working man's family to cost 
 two fifths of his total wages, and suppose that of these two 
 fifths one moiety, i. e. one fifth of the wages, is spent upon 
 flour, and oatmeal, and bread ; in that case a change of ten 
 per cent upon wheat will amount to one tenth upon one 
 fifth of the total wages. But one tenth of one fifth is one 
 fiftieth, or two per cent upon the total wages ; so trivial is 
 the result upon wages from a change in wheat which i.s 
 very considerable. Suppose the change upon wheat to be 
 even as much as fifteen shillings less upon sixty, i. e. twen- 
 ty-five per cent, then the total change will be one fourth of 
 one fifth, which is one twentieth, that is, five per cent 
 upon the total wages ; and everybody is aware that a fall 
 of fifteen shillings upon sixty, is greater than we often 
 experience in any single season. Ricardo, indeed, attempts 
 to justify the supposition, that, as a natural state of things, 
 an English laborer might spend one half of his wages upon 
 wheat, (p. 106,) and the other half upon "other things," 
 by alleging (p. 97) that " in rich countries a laborer, by the 
 sacrifice of a very small quantity only of his food, is able 
 to provide liberally for all his other wants." No; not
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 113 
 
 necessarily. That remark arises only through a neglect 
 (habitual to Ricardo) of the antagonist principle, which is 
 eternally at work to compensate the declensions of land, by 
 countervailing improvements of endless kinds : so that at 
 this time, all over western Europe, there cannot be a doubt 
 that, with a far worse soil as the regulating soil for cost, 
 wheat is cheaper than it was a thousand years ago. Yet, 
 if Ricardo were right in supposing a laborer to spend half 
 his wages upon wheat only, then his beer, bacon, cheese, 
 milk, butter, tea, and sugar, must proportionably cost, at 
 the very least, all the rest of his wages ; so that for clothes, 
 lodging, fuel, to say nothing of other miscellanies, he would 
 have no provision at all. But these are romantic esti- 
 mates, and pardonable in Ricardo from his city life, which 
 had denied him, until his latest years, all opportunities of 
 studying the life of laborers. 
 
 Meantime it will not be denied, that flour and bread 
 compose an important item upon the laborer's housekeep- 
 ing, though not by possibility so important as Ricardo 
 chooses to fancy. Now then, so far as this flour and bread 
 are obtained from a soil continually worse, (since, 1st, 
 population forces culture for ever upon worse soils ; and, 
 2dly, the very worst always gives the price for the whole,) 
 so far the flour and bread would be continually dearer were 
 there no such compensating law as that which I, almost too 
 frequently, have noticed, for the reason that Ricardo too 
 systematically forgets it. Let us also forget it for the pres- 
 ent, so as to pursue the principle of wages more clearly by 
 pushing it into an extreme, which in practice does but 
 rarely take place to that extent. On this basis the follow- 
 ing short extract from Ricardo, (pp. 105, 10G.) accompanied 
 by a single word of commentary, will explain the whole of 
 what is peculiar to Ricardo in his theory of wages : 
 8
 
 114 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 " When wheat was at 4 per quarter, suppose the laborer's 
 wages to be 24 per annum, or the value of six quarters of 
 wheat, and suppose half his wages to be expended on wheat, 
 and the other half (or 1 2) on other things, he would receive 
 
 24, 14s. ) (4 4 8) ( 6.83 quarters. 
 
 25, 10s. L when wheat J 4 10 ( or the val- j 6.66 quarters. 
 
 26, 8s. f was at J 4 16 [ ue of J 6.50 quarters. 
 
 27, 6s. 8<1. ) (. 6 2 10 ) ( 6.33 quarters. 
 
 He would receive these wages to enable him to live 
 just as well, and no better than, before ; for, when 
 corn was at 4 per quarter, he would expend for 
 three quarters of corn, at 4 per quarter, . . 12 
 And on other things, . > --.-.; 12 
 
 When wheat was at 4, 10s., three quarters of 
 
 wheat would cost . . . . . .13100 
 
 And other things, . . . . 12 
 
 25 10"0 
 
 When at 4 IGs., three quarters of wheat would 
 
 cost ... .1480 
 
 Other things, . . . . 12 
 
 26 80 
 
 "In proportion as corn became dear, he" (the laborer) " would 
 receive less corn wages, but his money would always increase ; 
 whilst his enjoyments, on the above supposition, would be pre- 
 cisely the same. But, as other commodities would be raised in 
 price, in proportion as raw produce entered into their composi- 
 tion, he would have more to pay for some of them. Although 
 his tea, sugar, soap, candles, and house-rent would probably be 
 no dearer, he would pay more for his bacon, cheese, butter, 
 linen, shoes, and cloth ; and therefore, even with the above in- 
 crease of wages, his situation would be comparatively worse." 
 
 The principle of advance is this : When wheat was at 
 80s. per quarter, the laborer had received 24; when 
 wheat rose to 90s., it might seem that he should receive
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 115 
 
 27 ; because 80 : 90 : : 24 : 27. But, in fact, he re- 
 ceives only one half of the difference, viz. 30s. His wages 
 are now 25, 10s. Why is this ? Because only one half 
 of his original wages had been spent on wheat. But the 
 full development of this principle I refer to the chapter on 
 Rent, that I may not be obliged to repeat myself. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SECTION I. RENT. 
 
 THE particular situation of this chapter in Ricardo, 
 placed immediately after the chapter on Value, is not with- 
 out significance. By placing the consideration of Rent 
 where he does place it, he is to be understood as viewing 
 Rent under the idea of a disturbance to Value. Under 
 that fiction, or at least under that relation, selected from 
 other relations equally conspicuous, he brings up the ques- 
 tion before his own bar. For the ordinary and continual 
 disturbances of value, growing out of the varying propor- 
 tions between fixed and circulating capital, Ricardo had 
 allowed, in a striking part of his opening chapter. He had 
 shown conclusively, that the universal principle of varying 
 quantity in the producing labor as the cause of varying 
 price, is subject to two modifications; as, first, that the 
 price will be greater in the case where circulating capital 
 predominates, than in the opposite case where fixed capital 
 predominates ; secondly, that the tendency will be in the 
 same direction, according to the degrees in which the fixed
 
 116 THE LOGIC OF 1'OLITICAi ECONOMY. 
 
 capital has less and less of durability ; for the plain reason, 
 that so far the fixed capital approximates in virtue to the 
 separate nature of circulating capital. These are settled 
 reagencies of co-causes, which sometimes arise jointly with 
 the great general cause of price, sometimes arise singly, 
 and sometimes not at all. They must not be called anom- 
 alies or irregularities, any more than the resistance of the 
 air is an irregularity or exception to the law governing the 
 motion of projectiles. It is convenient to abstract from 
 this resistance in the first steps of the exposition. But 
 afterwards, when you allow for it, this allowance is not to 
 be considered in the light of any concession, as if origi- 
 nally you had gone too far, and now wished to unmask the 
 whole truth by instalments. Not at all. The original 
 force, as you had laid it down from the first, continues to 
 be the true force : it exerts its whole agency, and not a part 
 or fraction of its agency, even under the co-presence of the 
 opposing and limiting cause. If, being left to itself, it 
 ought to have reached an effect of 50, but, under this lim- 
 iting force, it has fallen to 35, then the true logic is not to 
 say that it has yielded to an exception, or suffered an irreg- 
 ularity : on the contrary, all is regular. Since, if at first 
 sight, it seems simply to have lost 15, (which, pro tanto, 
 seems an irregularity,) on severer examination it appears 
 to have expended that 15 on neutralizing a counter-agency ; 
 so that the total force exerted has been equally 50 accord- 
 ing to the theory, and according to the true concrete case 
 of experience. 
 
 Now, then, is rent a disturbance of value simply in 
 the sense of being a modification, (as here explained,) 
 or does it suspend and defeat that law? Ricardo han 
 not pushed the question to that formal issue ; but gener- 
 ally, he has endeavored to bring the question of rent 
 in to immediate relation with value, by putting the ques-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 117 
 
 tion upon it in this shape, " Whether the appropriation 
 of land, and the consequent creation of rent, will occa- 
 sion any variation in the relative value of commodities, 
 independently of the quantity of labor necessary to pro- 
 duction ? " Whether, in short, the proportions between 
 the two labors producing A and B will continue, in spite 
 of rent, to determine the prices of A and B ; or whether 
 this law will be limited by the law of rent ; or whether, 
 in any case, this law will be actually set aside by rent ? 
 Upon Adam Smith's principles, rent introduced a new 
 element into price. Is that so ? It is the question moved 
 at present. 
 
 So important a question brings forward the obligation 
 of investigating the new doctrine of rent as a duty even 
 for Ricardo, who else could not have any particular 
 interest in discussing a doctrine which had not been 
 discovered by himself. The modern doctrine of rent 
 was, in reality, one of those numerous discoveries which 
 have been made many times over before they are made ; 
 that is, it had been ideally detected at different eras by 
 some inquisitive and random intellect, prying where it 
 had no business, several times before it was perceived 
 to involve those weighty consequences which give dignity 
 to the" truth, by giving practical motives for remembering 
 it. Ricardo had been acquainted with this truth for 
 nearly two years when he wrote his own book. It is 
 not improbable that, previously to this knowledge, he had 
 tentatively sketched his theory of value; but he must 
 have been impeded by the defect of such knowledge 
 in carrying out this theory into a satisfactory harmony 
 with the laws regulating wages and profits; for both 
 these presuppose the law of rent. Without knowing 
 rent and its principles, it is impossible to know the princi- 
 ples which control wages in the first place, and profits 
 in the second.
 
 118 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Natural it is, when a man enters upon a new theme, 
 that he should introduce it by a definition ; and, as regards 
 what logicians call the nominal definition, such a course 
 is perfectly right. But as to the real definitio*n, this 
 is so far from taking precedency in the natural process 
 of thought, that, on the contrary, it ought to be the last 
 result 88 from the total discussion. However, without 
 insisting upon this, what is the definition? "Rent," 
 says Ricardo, " is that portion of the products of the earth 
 which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original 
 and indestructible powers of the soil." 
 
 Can this definition be sustained ? Certainly not. The 
 word " indestructible " is liable to challenge ; and, in order 
 that the student may see why, first let me explain to 
 him under what prepossession it was that Ricardo intro- 
 duced that word. He was thinking of the casual and 
 the intermitting when he suggested the indestructible. 
 At pp. 50 and 51, he notices two cases one being the 
 case of a Norway forest, and the other of a coal-mine or 
 a stone-quarry where Adam Smith had applied the 
 popular term "rent" as strictly pertinent. But Ricardo 
 thinks otherwise. In any one of these cases he views 
 the payment for the mine or quarry, colloquially called 
 "the rent," as no rent at all in any strict sense. ' Now, 
 as against Adam Smith, in the quoad Jiominem sense, 
 the censure of Ricardo is not applicable : he is but con- 
 sistent ; for he could not be bound to any strictness of 
 distinction growing out of a doctrine which in his days 
 was unknown. But understand Ricardo as speaking of 
 Adam Smith, in an argument spoken to more modern 
 writers, and still, even in that case, Ricardo is wrong. 
 He contemplates the Norway forest, the coal-mine, the 
 stone-quarry, as if all alike leased out to the tenant, nof 
 with any view to a continued succession of crops, but
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 119 
 
 {is simply transferred on the consideration of that crop 
 now ready for removal. He puts the question, in fact, 
 precisely as he would do on the case of a man's leasing 
 out his coal-cellar to another with the privilege of empty- 
 ing it. Now, this is not the real case of a forest or 
 u coal-mine. In the forest there is a regular process 
 pursued with the purpose of creating a continual suc- 
 cession of " falls," so arranged that, by the fifteenth year, 
 for instance, the section thinned in the first year may 
 he ready again for thinnings, and so on perpetually, ac- 
 cording to the nature of the wood. In a coal-mine, again, 
 the known uncertainty of the veins as to direction and 
 density of the different strata, gives a reasonable pros- 
 pect of continuous succession in the annual yield. But 
 suppose all this not to be so. Take the case as Ricardo 
 apparently shapes it, viz. that you let off a coal-cellar 
 with liberty to the lessee of emptying it within a year 
 or two. Here the profitable product, the " crop," of the 
 cellar is known beforehand to a hundred-weight, and 
 you are not to suppose any concealment as to this fact, 
 or any deception. Clearly, now, this coal cannot be 
 described as any produce from " the original and inde- 
 structible powers " of, the cellar. And therefore, says 
 Ricardo, 84 the term " rent " could not be applied in any 
 other than an improper sense to the consideration paid 
 by the lessee of the cellar. But is that so ? Not at all. 
 Tri the modern (and most exclusive) sense of the term, 
 " rent " might be paid by such a lessee. For take the 
 cellar, or take the stone-quarry, and imagine the coal, 
 the stone, or the stercoraceous deposit in the vast crypts 
 cleaned out by Hercules, to have been accurately meas- 
 ured, it would be no impossible bargain that a day's 
 produce from the labor of fifty men in any one of the 
 chambers supposed, should be set off against a similar
 
 120 TJIK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 product from known mines, quarries, crypts, in the same 
 neighborhood, and should be charged with a rent corre- 
 sponding to the assignable differences in the "put-out." 
 A neighboring coal-mine, for instance, worked by a hun- 
 dred colliers, would furnish a standard for the com- 
 parison. If our carbonaceous crypt, or our stercoraceous 
 crypt, yielded a produce larger by twenty-five per cent 
 upon the same quantity of labor, then we should have 
 a good ground for rent in the severest sense, although 
 the crypt were notoriously exhaustible in one, two, or 
 three years. 
 
 It is not, therefore, the inherent or indestructible powers 
 of a subject which will make it capable of rent, but the 
 differential powers ; and the true definition of rent is, 
 in the strictest terms, that portion of tJie produce from 
 the soil (or from any agency of production) which is 
 paid to the landlord for the iise of its differential powers, 
 as measured by comparison with those of similar agencies 
 operating on the same market. Though Aristotle should 
 rise from the dead, that definition (I humbly submit) 
 will stand. 
 
 Undoubtedly, there are found cases in England, and 
 cases very numerous, where, at first sight, Ricardo's defini- 
 tion seems almost indispensable for reaching the true dis- 
 tinction between what is rent, and what ig not. For 
 insUmce, he himself supposes the case where " of two 
 adjoining farms," otherwise exactly equal, (same size, same 
 quality,) " one had all the conveniences of farming build- 
 ings, was, besides, properly drained and manured, and 
 advantageously divided by hedges, fences, and walls ; while 
 the other had none of these advantages." Now, surely 
 Ricardo has the right to presume, that for the improved 
 farm " more remuneration would naturally be paid " than 
 for the unimproved. But would that excess of remunera
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 121 
 
 tiou be " rent ? " " No," says Ricardo himself, " it would 
 not ; bift, popularly, it would be called rent. And then he 
 goes on to show that the true rent, which probably would 
 be the same in each case, is that part of the total " remu- 
 neration" which is "paid for the original and indestructible 
 powers of the soil ; " whilst that part of the remuneration 
 which is strictly pseudo-rent, must be viewed as " paid for 
 the use of the capital" sunk in the improvements. Is that 
 not sound ? Certainly it is ; quite sound : and, by the way, 
 it is the more noticeable in Ricardo, because it has been 
 accidentally his ordinary oversight to talk of rent as if this 
 were the one great burden on the farmer of land : wherea? 
 so much greater is the burden in this island from the capi- 
 tal required, that Mr. Jacob 85 (well known in past times to 
 the British government as an excellent authority) reports 
 the proportion of capital to rent, needed in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, as being then little less than four to one. From 
 fifty-two reports made to a Committee of the Lords in the 
 year before Waterloo, the result was, that upon one hun- 
 dred acres, paying in rent no more than 1G1 : 12 : 7, the 
 total of other expenses (that is, of the capital fixed and cir- 
 culating) was 601 : 15 : 1 per annum. And in some 
 other cases, as, for instance, in bringing into tillage the 
 waste lands known technically as " cold clays," the propor- 
 tion of capital required for some years appeared to be 
 much greater, on an average, three times greater ; so 
 that the capital would be ten or eleven times as much as 
 the rent ; and, in such circumstances, the total sacrifice of 
 rent by the landlord would be no serious relief to the im- 
 proving tenant. Such being the true relation of agricultu- 
 ral capital to rent, which generally Ricardo seems to over- 
 look, it would be strange indeed to blame him for this 
 particular passage, in which he does not overlook it. The 
 distinction is just and necessary. The payment for th
 
 122 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 house, barns, stables, fences, drains, &c., is rightly distin- 
 guished from the rent; it is interest paid uporf capital 
 invested in the farm, and therefore, in fact, lent to the far- 
 mer. As reasonably might you call the interest upon 
 twenty thousand pounds, which the farmer had brought 
 into his business, either as a loan from the neighboring 
 bank or as his own patrimonial inheritance, part of his 
 rent But still the rent (speaking with that strictness 
 which must always be a duty where we are speaking 
 polemically) is to be calculated from the rating, from the 
 place occupied on the differential scale, howsoever that 
 place has been reached. Now, at this moment, much land 
 is thus or thus rich, in consequence of this or that sum of 
 capital co-operative with its original powers. You are not 
 careful to distinguish between the original power and the 
 acquired power ; any more than, with regard to a man of 
 talents, you care to say, " So much is due to nature, so 
 much to education and personal efforts." Often you cannot 
 distinguish. The farmer, indeed, as a private secret, may 
 guess that so much of his nominal rent arises upon the im- 
 provements, so much upon the original powers of the land. 
 But the true rent is calculated severely upon these differ- 
 ential powers, however obtained, as found by comparing it 
 with other lands cultivated on the prospect of the same 
 markets ; and the only ground for separating the nominal 
 rent into true rent and pseudo-rent, is because some im- 
 provements do not directly increase the differential powers 
 of a particular estate, but only increase the convenience, 
 the respectability in appearance, the variable divisibility of 
 the estate ; or, potentially, they raise a basis upon which, 
 as yet, no additional power perhaps has been raised, but on 
 which the tenant (being a man of energy) can raise such 
 a power much sooner than otherwise he could. For in- 
 stance, an excellent road has been made to lime or marl,
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 123 
 
 or new pits of those manures have been opened. Now, it 
 is for the tenant to use those advantages. If he does not 
 use them, to him they are as if they did not exist ; but, if 
 he does, then lie finds a saving of possibly fifty per cent 
 upon all that he fetches, which may be seven or ten per 
 cent on his total costs. So, again, as to better divisions of 
 lands, by which they may be applied to a larger cycle of 
 uses ; or, where the divisions have previously existed, here- 
 tofore they may have been rude and fixed. Now, by 
 means of light iron hurdles, they may be much more 
 effectual, and yet susceptible of variable arrangement, 
 according to the wants of the particular season. Or, 
 again, the house upon the estate, the approach to it, and 
 the outhouses universally, may have been improved. 
 Where, indeed, the improvement has tended to the direct 
 conservation of the produce, as by leaded tanks of shallow 
 capacity for receiving cream, or by granaries fenced against 
 vermin, or by reservoirs prepared for receiving manure 
 without Avaste, they are equivalent to direct augmentations 
 in the soil of natural power. 
 
 The logical incidence of the last paragraph, though plain 
 in its parts, may seem obscure in the whole ; and I add this 
 explanation. There is a large distinction into two cases to 
 be made for agricultural improvements. And this was not 
 overlooked by Ricardo. The difference is, that one class 
 actually augments the power of your land : it did produce 
 ten, it does produce twelve. But the other class leaves 
 the power where it was ; having produced ten formerly, it 
 produces ten now. How, then, is it an improvement ? In 
 this way, that, whereas formerly this ten required a cost of 
 five guineas, now it requires only a cost of three. I do 
 not at all overlook that oftentimes this saving Is but an in- 
 verse form of announcing an increased power, since the 
 two guineas saved may be used in further corresponding
 
 121 THIi LOGIC OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 production ; and the blindness to this possible inversion of 
 the case is that which so unaccountably misled Malihus. 
 But sometimes it happens that improvements are not so 
 used, and do not naturally suggest such a use. For in- 
 stance, on obtaining marl cheaper, you save annually ; but 
 perhaps, even at the old price of marl, you had enough. 
 You feel the difference, therefore, not in a larger amount 
 of marl, for you want no more ; and perhaps you spend the 
 difference as income, not productively. So, again, if " Re- 
 becca's Daughters" save 7 you five guineas a summer on 
 tolls, naturally you spend the money in drinking Rebecca's 
 health, not upon improvements. Now, this distinction 
 of cases is of a nature to fortify Ricardo's distinction be- 
 tween the indestructible advantages of land, and its casual 
 advantages in convenience. The first will, the second will 
 not, operate upon the future rent. So far it seems as if I 
 were justifying Ricardo. But what I do say is, that the 
 special plausibility, in this instance, of Ricardo's illustra- 
 tion must not lead us away from the fact, that even here it 
 is not the indestructibility of the powers, taken singly, 
 which could sustain the difference of the two improvements 
 stated, were not that indestructibility manifested on a differ- 
 ential scale. 
 
 SECTION H. 
 
 RENT having been thus defined as the series of in- 
 crements arising upon the differential qualities of land, 
 no matter in what way that land may happen to be 
 employed, it follows tliat this series will begin to expand 
 itself concurrently with the earliest advances of the 
 population. 
 
 And because these original differences in quality of 
 soils, keeping pace altogether in their development with
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 1-25 
 
 the movement of the population, are best understood 
 by a scale of graduations addressed to the eye, at 
 this point, ready for the references and explanations 
 which may be found necessary hereafter, I place such a 
 diagram or ocular construction of the case : - 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 In Tuscany there may be 300, in England many 
 more than 300, qualities of soil expanded; but three, as 
 amply as 300, will explain the law for the whole. 
 
 No. 1 represents the class of soils first brought under 
 culture. And why first ? For the natural reason that 
 these soils were seen obviously to be the most productive 
 under an equal expenditure of capital: they are first in 
 order of development, which is an act of human choice, 
 because they are first in order of merit, which is a con- 
 sequence of natural endowment. The precedency allotted 
 by man does but follow and advertise the precedency 
 allotted by nature. And if a second-rate soil close to 
 a great market like Birmingham, if a third-rate soil 
 close to a great seaport like Newcastle, is sometimes 
 more profitable in the very same year, 1770, than a 
 first-rate soil in the wilds of central Cardiganshire, 
 possessing at that time neither a domestic population 
 for consuming its produce, nor roads of any kind for 
 transporting such supplies to the corresponding centres 
 of demand, thus far no doubt the regular expansion of 
 the series will be slightly disturbed: to that extent it 
 cannot be denied that the rigor of that graduation must
 
 120 
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 be interrupted. But it is a sufficient answer to say, 
 that, in so large a territory as England, the final effect 
 upon the general balance will be trivial ; and, secondly, 
 that lands which are thus accidentally privileged, for 
 which the local position is able to defeat the natural en- 
 dowment, will be inevitably raised artificially by the 
 compensations of culture and rich manures to the real 
 rank of No. 1, which originally they had usurped. 
 
 No. 2 represents the second class of soils, called up 
 into the series as soon as the growing population has 
 made No. 1 insufficient. 
 
 No. 3 represents the third class of soils called up under 
 the same pressure continually increasing. 
 
 Now, in the next step, retaining the very same diagram, 
 let us circumstantiate its internal relations by filling in the 
 secondary divisions, which shall be distinguished by a 
 dotted line: 
 
 No. 1. 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 The novice understands, that the increments or excesses, 
 by which each superior No. runs beyond its next lower 
 No., express and measure the relations of quantity amongst 
 the products. For example, the product upon No. 2 ex- 
 ceeds that upon No. 3, the product upon No. 1 exceeds 
 that upon No. 2 ; but by how much ? By the section 
 which the dotted lines mark off*. But this section on each 
 of the upper soils, (No. 1 and No. 2,) this absciss 
 marked off" by dotted lines, is RENT.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 127 
 
 Finally, to complete this preparation of the diagram 
 before any argument or explanation is applied to it, let us 
 mount the whole scaffolding of subdivisions, the tertiary 
 as well as the secondary changes which follow the develop- 
 ment of the scale, adding the letters denoting the particular 
 function of revenue to which each of these sections corre- 
 sponds. 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 AV 
 
 1' 
 
 
 R 
 
 R R 
 
 2. 
 
 w 
 
 p 
 
 
 K 
 
 R 
 
 3. 
 
 w 
 
 P 
 
 
 R 
 
 
 4. 
 
 w 
 
 p 
 
 
 
 
 To this third and final diagram, is added a fourth soil ; 
 whereas, in general, it is quite needless to persecute the 
 reader with a scale carried lower than the third round. I 
 suppose it almost superfluous to add, that w expresses 
 the function of wages, p of profit, and R the several 
 increments of rent, as they emerge successively under the 
 series of agricultural expansions. When No. 2 was first 
 summoned into use, one single chamber out of the six 
 marked R (viz. that on the extreme east or right hand of 
 the diagram) was struck off ipso facto from No. 1 by that 
 movement of No. 2. In the next stage, when No. 3 was 
 summoned, two chambers (ranging north and south on the 
 diagram) were simultaneously struck off from No. 2 and 
 No. 1, as equally disposable for rent. And, finally, when 
 No. 4 was summoned, three chambers (all rising perpen- 
 dicularly on the same meridian, but varying in latitude) 
 were again simultaneously struck off, as being each the
 
 ll'.S THE LOGIC OF 1'OLITICAL ECOXOMV. 
 
 separate absciss for rent, which became due for the same 
 reason, and therefore at the same moment, on No. 1, No. 
 2, and No. 3. 
 
 SECTION HI. 
 
 "Now," having prepared my tables, and sufficiently 
 armed myself for the decent conjurations of political 
 economy, in the language of Prospero, " Now, I arise," 
 and the reader will suppose me pointing with a long 
 wand, or caduceus, to the hieroglyphics of the diagram ; 
 and if he would further suppose these subdivisions framed 
 of mosaic tablets, ivory and ebony, for instance, (as on 
 a chess-board,) for symbolizing even to the random eye 
 the separate sections of wages and profit, whilst golden 
 tessellse at the very least would be proper to express 
 the eternal encroachments of rent, 80 (Acherontis avari,) 
 the logic of what follows would then become more em- 
 phatic, and more authoritative, as it always does by many 
 degrees, where it is made to speak sensuously to the 
 eye. A construction (i. e. a geometrical exhibition) 
 of any elaborate truth, is not often practicable; but, 
 wherever it is so, prudence will not allow it to be neg- 
 lected. "What is called evidentia, that sort of demon- 
 stration which " shows out " which is ostensive, (in the 
 old language of mathematicians,) and not merely dis- 
 cursire, or founded on dialectic discursus of the under- 
 standing, is, by a natural necessity, more convincing to 
 the learner. And, had Ricardo relied on this constructive 
 mode of illustrating his chapters upon rent and upon 
 wages, they would not have tried the patience of his 
 students in the way they have done ; still less would they 
 have baffled the efforts of really able men (when not sup-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 129 
 
 ported by some obstinate interest in the study) at de- 
 ciphering the very outline of their principles. The case 
 is astonishing. Two doctrines in Ricardo's system, viz. 
 value and rent, (with its complement in wages,) consti- 
 tute the well-heads of his economy: these mastered, all 
 is mastered ; for the rest runs down in a torrent of in- 
 ferences from these prcecognita. Yet these two chapters 
 in Ricardo are perhaps his obscurest. Upon value, 
 though churlishly penurious in illustrations and in guard- 
 ed distinctions between cases liable to be confounded, 
 the exposition is substantially present ; it lias a local 
 manifestation. But upon rent it is not quite certain that 
 all the grounds of decision are present, even in cipher. 
 What is clear, is general and expansive ; what is special, 
 what involves the differential portion of the truth, the 
 novel, the esoteric, and the characteristic, all this is 
 thrown upon the overcharged duty of one single page 
 (viz. the last page in the chapter). It is therefore dis- 
 proportionately brief at any rate ; but by a most unhappy 
 arrangement, even so much as is communicated, lies 
 dispersed and vagrant through a complex table of numer- 
 ical proportions ; whilst for this table there is wanting 
 some guiding Ariadne's thread to the explorer, before 
 he can apprehend even the principium motus, that 
 is, in which one of the several columns he must look for 
 the origincA impulse to the series of changes displayed. 
 Action and reaction he perceives to be going on strenu- 
 ously ; but where do they commence ? 
 
 Suppose, now, the wand pointed to diagram the first, and 
 striking the upper part of this diagram. What I wish first 
 to engage the reader's attention is the original starting-point 
 of society as to rent, which (fiercely as many people have 
 disputed it, even in the sense of a possibility,) must be 
 assumed even as a postulate of the understanding. It is a
 
 130 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 mere necessity of logic to assume as the starting-point that 
 primitive condition of the land under which it neither did 
 nor could pay rent. Originally, when the population had 
 called only for No. 1, it is seen by looking back to diagram 
 I. that the land did not trisect itself into rent, profit, and 
 wages. There was no rent ; there could be none ; the 
 land bisected itself only into the two capital sections of 
 wages and profit. But exactly on this point it is that 
 many a coarse sceptic comes forward. Let political econ- 
 omy say what it will, he for his part will not believe that 
 any proprietor of land would give up his land gratuitously 
 to the public service. Alt others engaged in the laborious 
 manufacture of corn, of oxen, and of horses, being so noto- 
 riously moved to it by considerations reasonably selfish, 
 why should the landowner stand alone in his unappreciated 
 patriotism ? 
 
 But it is not alleged that he will. And now, since this 
 mode of argument has been adopted as the main thesis of 
 separate books and pamphlets, it is worth noticing it by a 
 severe and formal exposure. For the Jirst thing broadly 
 noticeable in such an argument, is the puerile style of ana- 
 chronism which it betrays ; assuming (as if it were a mat- 
 ter of course) the modern perfect subdivision of the agri- 
 cultural class into owners and tenants by lease. On the 
 part of society there is a necessity for an article, which, on 
 the part of the owner, it seems by the objection there Is no 
 motive for giving up to the public service. But how so ? 
 In a period of society so early as that must be when only 
 No. 1. is called for, no separate class of occupants or ten- 
 ants distinct from the class of owners can have been 
 formed. As yet, no motive towards such a class can have 
 arisen in the secretion of rent, as a separate function of 
 revenue, from profit. There goes to wreck the total objec- 
 tion ; for, at this stage of society, profit upon land will be
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 131 
 
 enormous. Now, what reason can there be for supposing 
 that the owner will deny himself an immoderate income, 
 because it happens to reach him under the name of profit, 
 rather than under the name of rent ? Simply by that one 
 exposure, we see how thoroughly the objector has been 
 mastered by his own modern prepossessions. 
 
 But next, as the necessity for substitutes and locum-te- 
 nentes on landed properties (i. e. in some sense, for tenants 
 or lessees,) must have arisen in every period of society, 
 under personal accidents, of lunacy, orphan nonage, mili- 
 tary absence, &c., long before the case arose as a profes- 
 sional classification, defined and separately guarded by law, 
 it follows that, for such tenants, where at all they existed, 
 necessity would suggest a mode of payment : that payment 
 would naturally be charged on the high rate of profit inci- 
 dent to that early era of society. A division of profits 
 would, in such times, give a higher return to both parties 
 than the whole profits, in other times, to one. But then, 
 that would not be in a technical sense rent? True, it 
 would not : and rent in that scientific sense is exactly what 
 we are denying, as a possibility, at this stage of expansion 
 upon land, viz. when only No. 1 was in cultivation. 
 
 Thirdly, as the estate could be delegated on the land- 
 lord's account to a servant or ministerial agent, even the 
 second arrangement, and also the first, is not indispensable ; 
 so that, even in that false sense, rent would not often or 
 necessarily arise. 
 
 Fourthly, where a nominal quitrent is received in con- 
 sideration of kinship or past services, or where feudal inci- 
 dents of aid might be rendered, both the first, the second, 
 and the third arrangement, would often be needless. 
 
 Fifthly, upon whatever scheme of partition, or of feudal 
 service substituted for partition, a landlord might choose to 
 make his estates profitable, this result is palpable : the land
 
 132 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 is cultivated, or it is not cultivated ; and in either 
 what is the event to us ? How are we (the maintainers of 
 rent technical in the modern sense) interested in either 
 issue ? Say that the land is not cultivated : in that case 
 none of us, on either side, is affected. Say that the land is 
 cultivated, and on what terms. The landlord receives only 
 some recognition of his feudal superiority : here, then, is 
 confessedly no rent Again, the landlord, upon some 
 arrangement or other, first, second, or third, enters upon a 
 share, known or unknown, of the profits. Still, what is 
 that to us ? Profits are profits, and rent is rent ; and the 
 things will not be confounded because an obstinate man 
 attempts to confound the words. It is altogether needless 
 to waste arguments on proving that, in the circumstances 
 supposed, rent proper could not rise. For until No. 2 is 
 called into action, how can any difference exist upon the 
 products of soils? Until a difference exists, how can an 
 excess founded on that difference exist ? Until such a dif- 
 ferential excess exists, how can rent be measured ? In any 
 other sense we do not deny rent ; in this sense the objector 
 does not affirm it, unless he is of opinion that an excess or 
 difference could arise upon No. 1, by comparison with itself. 
 " Sambo and Quaco are very like each other, but particu- 
 larly Sambo." On the other hand, if the objector fancies 
 a possibility of refusing this definition, and says, " In my 
 eyes anything shall be rent which is paid to the landlord, 
 in consideration of the right conceded to cultivate; and 
 from whatever fund that payment is derived, equally if 
 deduced by the laborers from their wages, or by the occu- 
 pying capitalist from his profits ; " in that case where is 
 the dispute between us ? Is it we that deny the power of 
 laborers to make such a deduction from wages, and to pay 
 this over to the landlord ? On the contrary, this has been 
 practised for generations in Ireland, as respects the conacre.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 133 
 
 is it we that deny the power of the farming tenant to 
 deduct a sum for the landlord's demand, 1. From his 
 own profits ; 2. From the income of some other property 
 Delonging to himself; 3. From the bounty of an indulgent 
 aunt or grandmother ? On the contrary, this is going on for 
 ever even at this day in England : and to deny it would be 
 to affirm that every man occupied in farming must uni- 
 formly succeed : wheresoever he does not, the rent (if paid 
 at all) will be paid out of alien funds ; in that case it is 
 rent only by a verbal trick. So long as words are the only 
 representatives of our ideas, so long there will always be 
 an opening for a trickster to charge upon any verbal dis- 
 tinctions the pretence of verbalism. But the short answer 
 in this case is, that rent, considered as an index or expo- 
 nent to a series of differences upon a scale of soils, obeys 
 one set of laws, whilst rent, in the ordinary lax sense, 
 obeys none. The ebbs or flowings of rent, taken in the 
 strict sense, are governed by laws as regular as marine 
 tides ; but in the vague sense of an acknowledgment to 
 the landlord, made from any fund whatever, rent will be as 
 capricious in its regulating principles, as in its original 
 motives. 
 
 Next, let me point to that feature in all the three dia- 
 grams, that always the lowest soil yields no rent. The 
 cause of this, and the effect, are equally apparent. The 
 cause is, that no soil yields rent until a soil lower than 
 itself has defined and marked off a difference of produce. 
 For the same reason why there can be no rent on No. 1, 
 when no other No. is used, there can never be any rent on 
 the No. which happens to be lowest in the scale : equally 
 in both cases there is wanting a lower soil, to mark off a 
 difference. Rent is the excess of produce upon any given 
 quality of soil, by comparison with another quality worse 
 Vhan itself. Until this worse quality comes into play, there
 
 134 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMT. 
 
 can be no such comparison, and, by consequence, no such 
 excess. Until there is a point of comparison, that is, 
 until the soil now last in the scale becomes the penultimate, 
 you cannot point to any difference as more than a future 
 possibility. All soils promise a potential difference ; but 
 this cannot be realized until a lower base of comparison 
 arises. Such is the cause : the effect is more likely to be 
 contested. It is this. According to the modern doctrine, 
 the price of the produce on all the soils is regulated by this 
 lowest soil ; and for this reason, that the price of pro- 
 duce must be such as to cover that which is grown on the 
 least advantageous terms. A price, sufficient for the upper 
 soils, would be quite insufficient to continue the culture 
 upon the lower ; since, in a market, no distinction can be 
 allowed in the price for differences of advantage. Of those 
 differences the public has no knowledge; or, if it had, 
 could not allow for them. Results are allowed for : quali- 
 ties of grain, affirmatively better, sell higher ; but grounds 
 of qualities, as, that a man has spent more capital upon his 
 grain, or that he has won an equal grain from a worse soil 
 by superior skill, for these there can be no allowance. 
 And, in fact, it is from these disadvantages, as graduated 
 into a regular descending scale, that a regular series of 
 increments becomes disposable for rent. So far an oppo- 
 nent will submit, because he must ; but he will dispute the 
 possibility of any such lowest soils existing by a whole 
 class as rentless soils. This, however, is the same question 
 recurring, which has already been recently canvassed with 
 respect to No. 1. And in a field, where it is impossible to 
 find room for every discussion, it is quite sufficient to make 
 these three replies: (1st,) That a lowest class of soils 
 may always be available as rentless soils, in the case where 
 the owner unites with that character the character of occu- 
 pying farmer. (2dly,) That the mode of the non-payment
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 135 
 
 often explains its possibility. A tenant has been able to 
 pay a rent upon land not absolutely the worst, but the pe- 
 nultimate : at this rent he has been warranted in bestowing 
 upon the land so much capital : secondly, he stimulates the 
 land by more capital, and obtains a second though inferior 
 crop : for that secondary crop, equivalent to the crop on a 
 lower soil, he pays no rent. Now, here the rentless capi- 
 tal will be concealed and masked to the general eye by the 
 associated capital which does pay rent. This is one of the 
 cases in which virtually the lowest land is concerned ; for 
 those secondary powers in a higher soil, which have been 
 called out by the second application of capital, are often 
 exactly on a level with the primary qualities of the lowest. 
 (3dly,) A very common case, sometimes a very extensive 
 one, is where the tenant holds, jointly with superior land, 
 other land of the very lowest quality at present susceptible of 
 culture. The one quality, out of which really is paid all 
 the rent that he does pay, shelters and disguises the other 
 quality, out of which, in fact, he pays none. Not the by- 
 standers only, but even himself and his landlord, are pos- 
 sibly deceived. An entire estate comprehending much 
 good land, but also some too bad for cultivation, has been 
 let on a surveyor's calculation, 85 acres of the land No. 
 4 and No. 5, lying dispersed amongst 1140 of land No. 3, 
 2, and even 1, have virtually not affected the contract; 
 they have been, in fact, thrown in gratuitously. No. 5 it 
 has been found at that period unprofitable to cultivate. 
 But No. 4 is cultivated, and is part of that land which fixes 
 price, by paying wages and profits only. It ought, there- 
 fore, as the lowest soil actually in use, to pay no rent ; how 
 that is possible, has been shown by the circumstances of the 
 contract ; and how such a fact may escape the knowledge 
 even of the parties to that contract, is explained by the 
 scattered interfusion of some bad land amongst much that 
 very good or in various degrees better.
 
 136 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Now remains the final task. It is seen, it has been 
 proved, that an eternal series of differences is developed 
 upon the land by the unresting advance of population. 
 These differences, these increments, are undeniable : a 
 question arises, How are they disposed of? How do 
 they operate? How do these eternal changes on the 
 land effect the distribution of its produce? We know 
 how a certain phenomenon called rent arises. Its ori- 
 gin, its mode of advancing, these are no longer doubt- 
 ful. But what we now want to know, what as yet we 
 do not know, is the results of this phenomenon upon 
 all interests connected with the land ; its operation upon 
 the amount of their several shares. 
 
 Here is, at first sight, a perplexing question. Had 
 that question been confined to this, What becomes of the 
 increments eternally arising upon land, as each lower qual- 
 ity is developed? in that case the answer would have 
 been easy. We all know, by this time, that these incre- 
 ments are rent ; no rent except from these increments ; 
 no increments which can be applied otherwise than to 
 rent But the real question is larger. There is a sin- 
 gular delusion which takes place here. Because the 
 increment takes place on occasion of the inferior soil 
 being called up, there is a natural subreptio tntellectus, 
 a hasty impression left on the mind, that the inferior 
 soil actually causes the increment, actually produces 
 the addition which becomes available for rent. So far 
 from that, so far from adding anything, every descent 
 of this kind upon a lower soil takes away something. 
 It seems to add and for the landlord's benefit it does 
 add for it makes that a portion of his share which
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 137 
 
 previously had been the share of other people. But 
 absolutely (that is, in relation to the aggregate claims 
 of capitalist, farmer, laborer) this increment is mani- 
 festly a decrement, and never anything else. Fast as 
 these increments travel westwards* 1 on the diagram, 
 exactly in that ratio does the residuum the portion 
 available for the other shares on the land grow ever 
 narrower and narrower. The evolution of No. 2 (which 
 suppose to have occurred during the Saxon polyarchy) 
 did not add anything to the actual produce on No. 1. The 
 action of No. 2 was simply to measure off on No. 1 a 
 portion equal to its own defect, and to make it other- 
 wise disposable than it had been. But obviously this 
 separation on No. 1 has not enlarged the total shares : 
 absolutely, the total produce on No. 1 is left exactly 
 where it was, and the only real change is a different 
 distribution of this produce. 
 
 This distribution is the subject of the present section ; 
 and it will most merit the attention of the student, first, 
 because (being already per se the most difficult part of 
 the subject) it happens to be that part most cursorily 
 explained by Ricardo. And secondly, it is charged with 
 illusions from the first. One of these I have explained, 
 the random impression that the series of increments, 
 which are increments only quoad hoc, is a series of 
 actual bona fide additions. A second illusion is this, 
 Because all the increments, as fast as they take place, 
 pass into rent, it is a most natural inference that these 
 successive additions do not disturb the distribution of 
 the other shares. Were any part of the increments 
 otherwise applicable than to rent, inversely, were any 
 part of rent otherwise derivable than from the increments, 
 you feel that the work of assigning their several shares 
 to profits, wages, &c., would become perplexed. But
 
 138 
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 you fancy it to be kept exceedingly simple by the known 
 fact, that the constant excesses arising through the devel- 
 opment of the land-scale are not divisible upon any 
 mixed principle, so much to profits, so much to wages ; 
 but go in mass, and without one farthing of reservation, 
 to rent. The natural but false, conclusion from this 
 will be, that rent, being itself quite unaffected by the 
 other shares, will reciprocally not in the least affect those 
 other shares. This, however, is altogether erroneous. 
 From the moment when rent becomes developed upon 
 the land, a perpetual change is going on derivatively in 
 the shares allotted to laborers and to farmers. The 
 grounds, the clockwork, of this change, lurks in a tabular 
 statement of proportions by Ricardo ; this I shall trans- 
 fer accurately from his pages to my own ; and then, be- 
 cause all judicious readers complain heavily of the man- 
 ner in which Ricardo has treated the exposition of this 
 subject, I shall make it my business to fill up the scheme 
 which he, from carelessness, (and perhaps more from nat- 
 ural inaptitude 88 for the task of simplifying knowledge,) 
 has left so obscure. 
 
 TABLE OF PROPORTIONS drawn tip by Ricardo, for the Purpose of ex- 
 plaining the Collateral or Parallel Changes ichich take place in the Affec- 
 tions of Value, through all Interests, upon die Land, contingently upon 
 each successive Development of Lower Soils. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Price 
 per 
 Quarter. 
 
 Rent 
 in 
 Wheat. 
 
 Rent 
 in 
 
 Money. 
 
 Profit 
 in 
 Wheat 
 
 Profit 
 in 
 Money. 
 
 Wages 
 in 
 Wheat. 
 
 Wages 
 in 
 Money. 
 
 Money for 
 
 \\.-i-.-. 1'r.. 
 fit, & Rent. 
 
 s. d. 
 A. 4 
 
 None. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 None. 
 
 qrs. 
 120 
 
 s. d. 
 
 480 
 
 qw. 
 60 
 
 s. d. 
 
 240 
 
 . i d. 
 720 
 
 B. 4 4 8 
 
 10 
 
 42 7 6 
 
 111.7 '473 
 
 68.3 
 
 247 762 76 
 
 C. 4 10 
 
 20 
 
 90 
 
 103.4 465 8 
 
 66.6 
 
 255 810 00 
 
 D. 4 16 
 
 30 
 
 144 
 
 95.0 456 
 
 65 
 
 264 864 00 
 
 E. 6 2 10; 40 
 
 205 13 4 
 
 86.7 445 15 
 
 63.3 1274 6 926 13 4
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 133 
 
 COMMENTARY. 
 
 IN this table the case A indicates the original condition 
 of rural husbandry, when as yet no land is under culture 
 but the best (or No. 1 of the Diagrams). Case B indi- 
 cates, therefore, the secondary condition, when No. 2 is 
 called for. Case c the tertiary condition, when No. 3 is 
 called for, and so onwards. The price of wheat per quarter 
 in the one sole case A, must be understood to have been 
 arbitrarily assumed by Ricardo ; everywhere else it is not 
 arbitrary. It could not signify what price was assumed at 
 the starting-point, only that Ricardo should have explained 
 how much of his table was assumption, and not have left 
 to students a perplexing inquiry about his reasons, where, 
 in fact, no reasons at all existed. It was sufficient at the 
 starting-point to take for a basis any possible price ad 
 libitum. But ever afterwards, in the descending scale of 
 cases B, c, D, &c., there is no further room for discretion or 
 arbitrary choice. Each price of wheat in the four which 
 follow is determined by an a priori principle : it is derived 
 (as will be shown immediately) by a rule-of-three propor- 
 tion from the amount of produce on the land, compared 
 with the same amount when diminished by the growing 
 deductions for rent. These modifications of price, derived 
 from rent, are very important ; for through this organ of 
 price it is that rent operates upon the money compen- 
 sations (however imperfect compensations) to decaying 
 wages, and still more decaying profits. By throwing his 
 eye down the proper columns, the reader will see that 
 wages are always declining in wheat returns, but always 
 rising (though not proportionably rising) in money returns. 
 Profits, on the other hand, suffer in both modes. Their 
 corn returns sell, indeed, with the same advantage from the
 
 140 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 new price of wheat as that which benefits the wages ; but 
 still, as the positive declension of these corn returns is con- 
 siderably greater for profits than for wages, the money 
 returns will be seen to decline absolutely for profits, and not 
 merely (as in the case of wages) proportionately. Lastly, 
 by looking down the two contiguous columns for the 
 changes on rent, the reader will see that rent benefits in 
 both ways, viz. in corn returns and in money returns. 
 And even that is a careless expression of the case ; for, in 
 a sense, both wages and even profits benefit ; that is, if 
 they sjaffer, they certainly suffer less than they otherwise 
 would do, in consequence of a higher price being obtained 
 for land produce concurrently with every expansion of rent. 
 How, then, does the case of rent differ from their case ? 
 It differs thus : rent benefits absolutely in all senses, in wheat 
 not less than in money ; wages benefit in money, but lose 
 upon the wheat return ; profits lose upon both returns. 
 Originally, for instance, (case A,) ten laborers had received, 
 collectively, sixty quarters of wheat, or (at 4 per quarter) 
 240 sterling, giving to each man sixty quarters, or, in 
 money, 24. Now, in case B, when rent has commenced, 
 the abstraction of ten quarters for this purpose makes it 
 impossible that the remainder, left for distribution between 
 wages and profits, can allow the same corn return. Ac- 
 cordingly, wages sink in wheat from 60 to 58 quarters, 
 plus three tenths of a quarter. But, on the other hand, as 
 a compensation pro tanto, this diminished quantity of wheat 
 sells for 7 more. The ten laborers receive now 247 
 instead of 240. Does that addition (of 14s. a man) 
 reimburse his loss ? Not at all. To do this, the money 
 addition ought to have been double. Each man, if no part 
 of his expenditure were for bread and flour, might rejoice 89 
 that his money wages were more, even if not commensur 
 ately more. But, for every eight bushels of wheat
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 141 
 
 his family consumes, he must now pay four guineas, plus 
 eightpence, instead of faur pounds. Say that his house- 
 hold were of four and a half heads, here (under the usual 
 random computation of eight bushels annually per head) 
 we have four and a half times four shillings and eight- 
 pence extra, that is, precisely one guinea extra on the 
 man's annual outlay ; whilst, upon the table of Ricardo, his 
 relief proceeds no further than by 14s., i. e. two thirds of 
 his loss. This, besides, in the case B ; but, if such things 
 happen in the green ear, what will happen on the full har- 
 vest of development under c, D, E, and quarters of the 
 alphabet still more ominous ? By any law that Ricardo 
 impresses on his student, the very wheels of the social 
 watchwork must be clogged and motionless long before the 
 land-scale would come in sight of detestable M, or even of 
 gloomy H. Only through that great antagonist force for 
 ever at work in Great Britain, through skill, capital, and 
 the energy of freemen ; only by an antagonist law for ever 
 operative in throwing back the descents, in raising the 
 soil of case E, in the year 1700, to the level of B as it was 
 jn 1500, the soil of o, in the year 1800, to the level of K 
 as it stood in 1 600, thus, and only thus, do we escape, 
 have escaped, and shall escape, the action of rent ; which 
 action, by the just exposures of Ricardo, tends always to 
 engulf us ; which action, by the unjust concealments o*' 
 Ricardo, ought long ago to have frozen us into a dead lock, 
 anything to the contrary, notwithstanding, which has 
 ever been insisted on by that great master of economy. 
 The tendencies of a natural law like that of rent, (which 
 word rent I use as a shorthand expression for the case, 
 otherwise it is not rent, but the cause of rent, or degradua- 
 tion of soils, which in very truth is the original principle 
 of movement.) these tendencies it is always right to 
 expose ; and Ricardo first did expose them. Others had
 
 142 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 discovered the law ; he first applied his sagacious sense to 
 its consequences upon profits, wages, price ; and, through 
 them, upon universal economy. That was right ; for that 
 we are irredeemably his debtors. But it was not right to 
 keep studiously out of sight that eternal counter-movement 
 which tends, by an equivalent agency, to redress the dis- 
 turbed balance. This concealment has the effect of intro- 
 ducing marvels into a severe science ; since, else, what 
 other than a miracle is it that rent has not long ago ab- 
 sorbed the whole landed produce, a result to which so 
 manifestly it tends ? Secondly, this concealment with- 
 draws from the notice of young students a truly philosophic 
 instance, or case, of that providential benignity which 
 meets every natural growth of comprehensive evil by a 
 commensurate compensation, or else by a process of posi- 
 tive counteraction. Our own social system seems to har- 
 bor within itself the germ of our ruin. Either we must 
 destroy rent, i. e. that which causes rent, or rent will 
 destroy us, unless in the one sole case where this destroy- 
 ing agency can be headed back uniformly as it touches the 
 point of danger, that point where it would enter into 
 combination with evil co-agencies. Now this great case of 
 reservation, this saving clause, (which by the intervention 
 of an " unless," i. e. of an " if not," entitled, of course, to 
 the benefits of a Shakespearian " if" defeats a dreadful ten- 
 dency always lying couchant in our social mechanism,) 
 being almost unnoticed by Ricardo, or not finding a syste- 
 matic locus in his exposition, besides leaving room for a 
 sort of wonderment not creditable to a severe science, has 
 the further bad effect of inviting a malignant political dis- 
 affection. Both in France, Germany, and England, a 
 dreadful class is forming itself of systematic enemies to 
 property. As a wild, ferocious instinct, blind as a Cyclops 
 and strong as a Cyclops, this anti-social frenzy has natu-
 
 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 143 
 
 rally but too deep a root in the predispositions of hopeless 
 poverty. And it happens (though certainly not with any 
 intentional sanction from so upright a man as David 
 Ricardo) that in no instance has the policy of gloomy dis- 
 organizing Jacohinism, fitfully reviving from age to age, 
 received any essential aid from science, excepting in this 
 one painful corollary from Ricardo's triad of chapters on 
 Rent, Profit, and Wages. A stress lies on this word triad; 
 for it is not from insulated views of rent that the wicked 
 inference arises : it is by combined speculations upon the 
 three. Separate, the doctrine of rent offers little en- 
 couragement to the anarchist ; it is in connection with 
 other views that it ripens into an instrument of mischief 
 the most incendiary. Since Ricardo's time, the anti-social 
 Jacobins, attacking, in France, the whole theory of taxa- 
 tion, of public worship, of national education ; in England, 
 attacking the fabric of civil administration, the liability of 
 one generation to the debts or civil obligations of another, 
 the right to property or to accumulations of any kind ; and, 
 in Germany, going far beyond these insanities of licen- 
 tiousness find often a convenient policy in having ex- 
 oteric and minor degrees of initiation. To the aspirant, 
 during his novitiate, they preach the abolition of entails, of 
 regal courts, of ambassadors, and privileged bodies of sol- 
 diery, as appendages of courts ; but on no phasis of the 
 social economy now prevailing, do they dwell with more 
 effectual bitterness than on the tendencies of rent as 
 exposed by Ricardo. Here is a man, they argue, not hos- 
 tile to social institutions, nor thinking of them in connec- 
 tion with any question of elementary justice, who reveals 
 as a mere sequel, as an indirect consequence, as a collateral 
 effect from one ordinary arrangement of landed property, 
 that it does, and must encroach steadily, by perpetual 
 stages, upon other landed claims, through all varieties of
 
 144 THE LOGIC Ob' POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 kind and of degree. The evil, they allege, is in the nature 
 of an eclipse ; it travels by digits over the face of the 
 planet. A shadow of death steals gradually over the 
 whole disk of what once had offered a luminous field of 
 promise. And that which was meant for the auspicious 
 guarantee of indefinite expansion to human generations, 
 viz. the indefinite expansibility of food and clothing from 
 the land, becomes the main counteraction of these pur- 
 poses of Providence, and the most injurious monument of 
 social misarrangement. The class of landlords, they urge, 
 is the merest realization of a scriptural idea, unjust men 
 reaping where they have not sown. They prosper, not 
 pending the ruin, not in spite of the ruin, but by the ruin 
 of the fraternal classes associated with themselves on the 
 land. Not by accident, but by necessity, not by inter- 
 mitting effects of position, but by very coercion of their 
 original tenure, it is the organic function of rent-receivers 
 to encroach, to engulf all the shares at last, and to approxi- 
 mate this consummation of total absorption by yearly 
 stages of partial absorption ; like Schiller's cannon-ball, 
 
 " Shattering what it reaches, and shattering that it may reach." 
 
 And thus, whilst universal society is viewed as the 
 victim of institutions, yet this fatal necessity is received as 
 no plea for those whom it coerces ; but the noblest order of 
 men amongst us, our landed aristocracy, is treated as the 
 essential scourge of all orders beside. Now, were all this 
 true, God forbid that it should be charged upon Ricardo as 
 an offence to have exposed it ! But it is the little learning 
 here, as elsewhere, which grounds the ignorance and prop- 
 agates the calumny. No man could know this better than 
 Ricardo. And yet he has suffered these perilous false- 
 hoods (perilous, because fatally " simular " of truth) to 
 accredit themselves upon his authority. These pestilent
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 145 
 
 errors, oftentimes preached by dull men, have borrowed 
 wings and buoyancy from his profound truths unfortunately 
 mutilated. For the whole truth, when not one hemisphere, 
 but both hemispheres are exhibited at once, is, that logi- 
 cally speaking, rents are themselves inevitable consequen- 
 ces, bound up with the necessities of the case ; secondly, 
 that, as inevitable results, these increments upon land 
 import no blame to landlords, seeing that under any system 
 of civil interests, and any administration of those interests, 
 such increments eternally arising must be enjoyed by 
 somebody ; thirdly, that having thus reduced the question 
 to a simple case of comparison between country gentlemen 
 (as the most ordinary class of rent receivers) and any 
 other assignable receivers, Ricardo was too conscientious 
 to pretend that this class was not, amongst us, one of our 
 noblest. If we have led Europe in political counsels since 
 1642 ; if we first founded a representative government, 
 by whom else than our country gentlemen, in Parliament 
 assembled, were we ourselves guided ? 
 
 But, fourthly, Ricardo is chiefly blamable as overlooking 
 that great pursuing counter-agency which travels after the 
 tendency on land, overtakes it continually, and once at 
 least in each century, like an annus Platonicus, restores 
 the old relations of our system. Ricardo knew, in that 
 extent which made it a duty to proclaim, that to this 
 indefinite expansion of rent, absolutely unlimited as it is 
 by original tendency, on that very argument, and merely 
 by that proof, some active and commensurate remedy must 
 have always been operating. Too evidently the evil must 
 have found or have generated its own check, else why had 
 it not long ago destroyed us ? I have made it a point to 
 dwell a little on this great question, because here chiefly it 
 is that political economy inosculates with politics and the 
 philosophy of social life ; and because, from mere inad-
 
 146 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 vertence, Ricardo is here found in a painful collusion with 
 the most hateful of anarchists. 
 
 Now remains one sole task. The novice has seen gen- 
 erally, that the laborer and the capitalist are affected by 
 changes in rent ; it remains to ask, In what exact propor- 
 tions ? Although every fresh projection of rent is carried 
 off " neat " and entire by its own class of owners, and 
 therefore it might be supposed that this class would go off, 
 leaving the two other classes to settle their dividends un- 
 disturbed by the action of rent, that is not so. Every fresh 
 pulse of rent causes a new arrangement even for that 
 which rent leaves behind ; and this new arrangement more 
 and more favors wages at the expense of profits. One 
 short explanation will make this clear, and finish the whole 
 development. 
 
 Looking back to Ricardo's table, let us take the case c. 40 
 And, in order to begin at the beginning, what is the prin- 
 cipium movendi ? Where arises the initial movement ? It 
 arises in the fact that, by some descent upon a worse soil, 
 a second separation of rent has taken place. In the first 
 descent, marked B, there had occurred a separation of 10 
 quarters for rent ; in the second descent, marked c, a 
 separation (upon the same soil) of 20 quarters has occurred 
 for the same purpose. 
 
 Here pause : for now comes the screw which moves the 
 whole machine. The produce of the soil under discussion 
 is assumed always to be the same total quantity, viz. 180 
 quarters ; for the reader has been told that it is one and 
 the same soil concerned in all the five cases. Conse- 
 quently, when 10 quarters were made disposable for rent, 
 the remainder was 170 ; when 20 are taken, the remainder 
 is 160. Now, as 
 
 ICO: 180:: 4: 4, 10s.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 147 
 
 WTien the original move had been made, wheat was selling 
 at eighty shillings a quarter : it rose under this first move 
 (B) to eighty-four shillings and eightpence. And why ? 
 because 170 is to 180 as 4 is to 4 4s. 8d. But when 
 another move (c) has abstracted from the total crop of 180 
 quarters not less than 20 for rent, by a rule-of-three pro- 
 portion we see that the price will rise to ninety shillings. 
 
 Step the Second. Next, after this case of price, comes 
 the case of wages. How it is that Ricardo would himself 
 have explained the process of adjustment (as sketched on 
 his own table) between wages and the changes caused by 
 rent, perhaps nobody can say. My explanation is this, 
 which must (I presume) be sound, as it coincides in the 
 arithmetical result with his. Look down the column of 
 prices for wheat, and uniformly the difference between any 
 case, as c and the original case A, must be halved. Thus 
 the half of ten shillings (the difference between c and A) 
 is five. Then, because each laborer's original share had 
 been six quarters, multiply six by five shillings, and the 
 product is thirty shillings. This, for ten laborers, will 
 make, collectively, 15 ; and so much additional money 
 wages, viz. 15, must be paid to the aggregate share 
 of wages under case c, compared with case A. Accord^ 
 ingly, in the column of " wages in money," you see that, 
 having had 240 in case A, the ten laborers will have 
 255 in case c. Again, for a similar reason, 41 in case D, 
 the price of wheat per quarter is sixteen shillings more 
 than in case A. Half sixteen shillings is eight shillings; 
 and multiplying the original quarters of each laborer, viz. 
 six, by eight, you have forty-eight shillings as the addi- 
 tional sum for each laborer, 24 therefore as the aggregate 
 addition for ten laborers. Accordingly, by the same col- 
 umn of " wages in money," you see that the shore of wages 
 on case D, as compared with case A, has risen from 240 
 *n 264.
 
 148 THK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Step the Third, Remains to ask, what will be the 
 share left for profits? When abstracting Ricardo's law of 
 profits, I said, by way of condensing the truth in a brief 
 formula, " Profits are the leavings of wages : " meaning, 
 that whatever addition is assigned to wages by the law con- 
 trolling them, must be taken from profits ; for, if not, 
 whence can it come? What other source is available? 
 Here (as you see) the initial movement, by abstracting 20 
 quarters from the land produce for rent, has determinately 
 forced on another movement, viz. a change in wages. 
 This has given 15 extra to the ten workmen: but where 
 was that 15 obtained? If you say it was obtained from 
 the new price of wheat, now much enhanced, I reply, 
 No : that is quite impossible. First, from the fact, the 
 price of wheat is now 10s. a quarter more than it was 
 under case A. This extra sum upon 180 quarters makes 
 exactly 90. But 90 is the very sum now paid for 
 rent; the 20 quarters for rent, at 4 10s., amount to 90. 
 Consequently, all that is gained in the new money price of 
 wheat goes away upon rent Secondly, the same thing 
 may be shown a priori. For what is it that has raised 
 the price of wheat ? The cause of that new price is the 
 inferiority of some new soil not particularly noticed in Ri- 
 cardo's table, except in its effects. This worse soil, which 
 for that reason regulates the price upon oil soils, could not 
 furnish the same produce of 180 quarters, except at a 
 higher cost. That higher cost appears to be 90. So far 
 only, and by this process, has the price of wheat been 
 raised; but not through any rise of wages, which rise, 
 besides, is consequential and posterior to the rise in wheat, 
 and cannot therefore have been causative to the new price 
 of wheat. Not to insist again, at this point, on the doctrine 
 of Ricardo, so fully demonstrated, that no change in price 
 can ever be effected by a change in wage... In the in-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 149 
 
 Btance now before us, the 15 extra must be paid from 
 pome quarter ; but it is doubly demonstrated that it cannot 
 have been paid by the new price, i. e. by consumers. 
 It remains, therefore, that it must be paid out of profits ; 
 for no other fund exists. And accordingly, by looking into 
 the column of money profits, you see that, in case c, these 
 profits have sunk from 480 to 4G5. In other words, 
 the 30s. per man paid extra to the laborer, making 15 
 for the ten laborers, has, been obtained entirely at the cost 
 of profits. The laborers obtain 15 more; but the capi- 
 talist is left with 15 less. 
 
 Thus, finally, we read off the table of Ricardo into its 
 true interpretation. We are able to construct it into a sci- 
 entific sense for the understanding. The last column to 
 the right hand, I must observe, simply adds to the invari- 
 able sum of 720, always disposable for profit and wages, 
 the new sum obtained by a new prioe of wheat for rent. 
 For example, in case c, where 20 quarters become dispos- 
 able for rent, and therefore, in money, 90 under the new 
 price of wheat, add this 90 to the old 720, and the total 
 money produce of the land under c is 810. So again, 
 under K, where the price of wheat has risen to 5 2s. lOd. 
 per quarter, the total money value of rent, now claiming 
 40 quarters of the 180, will be 205 13s. 4d. ; and this 
 sum, added to the old 720, makes (as we see) 925 13s. 
 4d. But now, if we strike out this final column on the 
 right hand, which is simply an arithmetical register or sum- 
 mation of values travelling along with the expansions of 
 rent, we shall have seven columns remaining, viz. one 
 for the prices of wheat, two for rent, two for profits', and 
 two for wages. And the Ariadne's thread for passing along 
 the labyrinth is briefly this : that the second column is a 
 nure assumption, and justly so, where you are entitled to 
 take any quantities you please for a basis. From this sec-
 
 150 TIIK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ond column you take your start; and, by a comparison 
 derived from this assumption of wheat rent, in a way 
 already explained, (viz. by stating the remainder of wheat 
 produce, suppose 150 quarters after paying rent, against 
 the invariable total of wheat produce, viz. 180 quarters,) 
 you determine to a fraction the new price per quarter of 
 wheat This known, next, by a rule which seems arbitrary, 
 you learn precisely the new amount (as in column seventh) 
 that will now be required for money wages. But, because 
 the new price of wheat is also known, out of that (combined 
 with the money addition to the laborer's wages) you are 
 able to detennine the question of column sixth, viz. how 
 much the laborer has lost in corn wages ; and then, as the 
 money gained to the laborer measures the money lost to 
 the capitalist, easily you settle the question of column fifth 
 (money profits) out of column seventh, (money wages.) 
 Next, through the price of wheat, (known in column first 
 and by column second) you ascertain readily the question 
 of column fourth ; i. e. of wheat profits. There remains 
 only column third, (the money value of rent.) But this is 
 obviously nothing more than a multiplication of column 
 second, as to any given item, by the corresponding item in 
 column first. As to the objections against the rule for 
 deriving the new rate of money wages, that it seems to 
 be arbitrary, I fancy that Ricardo referred to a basis 
 assumed in the chapter on wages, which represents the 
 laborer as originally requiring one half of his wages for 
 food or for wheat ; so that the increase in money wages acte 
 only on that half. To the latter part of that chapter, in 
 my own account of it, I therefore refer the reader.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 151 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 PROFITS. 
 
 THIS chapter will occupy us for a longer space than the 
 rest ; first, because (as a dependency upon rent and wages) 
 it furnishes a sort of commentary on those doctrines ; sec- 
 ondly, because, more than any other doctrine, it is liable, 
 on its own account, to popular fallacies. 
 
 Price, rent, and wages, having now been developed, we 
 may say, with respect to the law of profits, not so properly 
 that it is deduced from these three principles by Ricardo, 
 as that it deduces itself. Let me not be thought, in saying 
 that, to mean any disparagement of Ricardo's services. 
 Greater cannot be imagined. He it was who first made it 
 possible to deduce wages from rent, and therefore to 
 deduce profits from wages. He had so disembarrassed the 
 ground of all perplexities by the time he reached this ques- 
 tion of profits, that the true theory rather flowed spontane- 
 ously from the conditions, as they had been now explained, 
 than called for any effort of inference. But then the very 
 necessity and inevitableness of this inference, the very pos- 
 sibility of dispensing with further discoveries, were due 
 exclusively to Ricardo's previous simplifications. Only by 
 having merited so much in former stages, could he have 
 made it possible, even for himself, to merit so little in 
 this. 
 
 In one brief formula, it might be said of profits, that
 
 102 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 they are the leavings of wages : so much will the profit be 
 upon any act of production, whether agricultural or manu- 
 facturing, as the wages upon that act permit to be left 
 behind. 
 
 But left^ behind from what? From the price. The 
 price, even of landed produce, splits always into wages and 
 profits ; and what the price is, predetermines the joint 
 amount for wages and profits. If the price is ten shillings, 
 then by this principle it is asserted, that wages and 
 profits, taken as a whole, cannot exceed ten shillings. (No 
 rise in wages could increase this sum of ten shillings.) 
 But do not the wages and profits as a whole, themselves, 
 on the contrary, predetermine the price ? No ; that is the 
 old superannuated doctrine. But the new economy has 
 shown that all price is governed by proportional quantity 
 of the producing labor, and by that only. Being itself 
 once settled, then, ipso facto, price settles the fund out of 
 which both wages and profits must draw their separate 
 dividends. Call the price x : that sum, that x, makes up 
 the joint values of wages and profits. Taken together, the 
 two functions of wages and profits will always compose x ; 
 cannot be less, cannot be more. 
 
 But, if that is true, then it follows that wages and profits 
 vary inversely : whatever the one loses the other gains ; 
 and the gain of either can only be through the loss of the 
 other. Neither of the two can gain absolutely or irrespec- 
 tively of the other; wages being eight shillings, and profits 
 two, then it is possible that profits might rise to three, but 
 only by wages previously falling to seven. Any other rise 
 in profits, such as should leave wages virtually undimin- 
 ished, could be only an apparent rise through some depre- 
 ciation in the currency ; and that depreciation, changing 
 any one thing nominally, must change all other things 
 affecting all apparently, really it would affect none.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 153 
 
 This being settled, viz. that any motion or change 
 between wages and profits will always be reciprocal, next 
 comes the question, in which of the two will such a 
 change commence ? Is it possible, for instance, that an 
 original change should take place in profits, and that wages 
 should be affected only in a secondary way ? No ; this is 
 not possible. Any change that can disturb the existing 
 relations between wages and profits, must originate in 
 wages : whatever change may silently take place in profits, 
 always we must view as recording and measuring a previ- 
 ous change in wages. 
 
 Hence we are brought to the conclusion, that to 
 wages, and to wages only, we must look for an explanation 
 of all principles which govern either themselves or profits. 
 Ricardo's chapter upon profits is substantially no more 
 than a reiteration of his two chapters upon wages and rent. 
 It is known already from those chapters, that in all national 
 communities alike, there is the same constant tendency 
 (through the increase of population) to descend upon worse 
 soils. There is a counter-tendency which holds this primal 
 tendency in check ; viz. the gradual elevation of bad soils 
 to the rank of better, by means of improving science. But 
 this antagonist principle acts very unequally in different 
 communities, and in the same community at different 
 periods. Consequently, the tendency to increased cost of 
 food, by continual descent upon worse wheat land, worse 
 barley land, and worse grazing land, is sometimes for a 
 century together proceeding with activity ; whilst the 
 counter-tendency, which depends much upon previous 
 improvements in roads, markets, &c., and upon general 
 progress in science, may be altogether torpid. We see, 
 therefore, a natural reason why wages upon the land 
 should, through such a century, continually grow heavier, 
 and the profits, therefore, continually decline. It is only
 
 154 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 when the antagonist tendency gets into powerful play, or 
 whilst the population happens to be stagnant, that this 
 downward movement is checked. But says the student, 
 by a most natural objection, what has that to do with 
 manufactures? Industry, applied to land, grows dearer, 
 because the declining qualities of the soil oblige the culti- 
 vator to employ eleven or twelve men on the worst soil 
 used in the last year of a century; whereas, upon the 
 worst soil used in the first year of that century there were 
 employed only ten. It is the quantity of labor which has 
 increased (viz. as must always be remembered, on the 
 lowest or regulating soil) ; and that explains why the 
 manufacturer of wheat or oxen must have more wages to 
 pay ; he has twelve men to pay instead of ten. But why 
 should the manufacturer of shoes be affected by such a 
 change ? Because more men are required upon a score of 
 acres, it will not follow that more will be required upon a 
 score of boots or shoes. Why, therefore, should not the 
 effect upon profits confine itself to capitals employed upon 
 land ? The answer is this, even upon shoes there will 
 be a small increase of labor, because the raw material will 
 grow a little dearer as hides grow dearer ; and hides will 
 grow dearer as cattle grow dearer, by descending upon 
 worse pasture lands. But this is not the channel through 
 M-hich profits are affected, either upon one sort of industry 
 or another. It is not because the quantity of labor in- 
 creases, that corn profits will diminish. That change will 
 merely affect prices. A farmer, indeed, who has to pay an 
 eleventh laborer, will certainly have more wages to pay. 
 "Where he paid two hundred pounds formerly, now he 
 must pay two hundred and twenty. But the shoemaker will 
 need no eleventh man. True : yet he must pay his ten 
 men at a higher rate. The payment fastened upon the 
 farmer for an extra man, for an extra quantity of labor, is
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. Io5 
 
 not that payment which will diminish his profits. For that 
 he will be indemnified in the altered price of his produce 
 Sect. 3. of Chap. I. (on value) has sufficiently established, 
 that all changes in the quantity of producing labor, 
 whether up or down, settle by corresponding changes upon 
 the price : if the labor required is more, the price of the 
 product is more : if less, less. And the new price indem- 
 nifies the employer whether farmer or shoemaker for 
 the new quantity of labor. So far, therefore, the cost of 
 the eleventh man is nothing to him : yet the eleventh man 
 must be paid for ; and that is something to the public, for, 
 in order to pay him, ten per cent will now be added to the 
 price of their wheat. But thus far the farmer is no further 
 affected by the change than as he also, in the persons of 
 his household, is a consumer of wheat. To that extent he 
 must be a sufferer, in common with everybody else, but 
 not as a producer. Next, however, comes another change : 
 in consequence of this rise in wheat, caused by the neces- 
 sity of an eleventh man, all the ten men and the eleventh 
 besides will need extra wages. Some addition must be 
 made to their wages, or else at the new price of wheat a 
 class of men, to whom wheat forms so large an item upon 
 so small a total expenditure, would sink suddenly in the 
 scale. Now, here it is that the shoemaker will be caught. 
 His shoes, it is true, will not cost more labor in making, 
 because wheat costs more labor, except indeed by the trifle 
 additional on hides ; and that trifle will be repaid in the 
 price of shoes. But how will that indemnify the shoemaker 
 for the new rate of wages paid to the old quantity of labor ? 
 Suppose him to keep ten journeymen, he (you allege) is 
 not in the situation of the farmer : he is under no call to 
 employ an eleventh, as a conditio sine qua non for obtain- 
 ing the old amount of produce. Ten men will produce as 
 many shoes now as they did before. True : but will these
 
 1-36 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ten- men be contented with the same rate of wages ? They 
 cannot ; upon them, as much as upon the farmer's men, 
 rests a necessity for reimbursement with re?pect to the new 
 ten per cent charged upon wheat. Suppose wheat to form 
 one half of their household expenditure, then five per cent 
 upon their total wages will be requisite to meet the ten per 
 cent upon grain. Suppose (which is more probable) that 
 wheat forms one third of their total expenditure, then 
 3 6s. 8d. upon every hundred pounds paid in wages will 
 be the requisite increase. But, considering the concurrent 
 increase which will affect all articles (such as wool) de- 
 pending equally with wheat upon the home soil, and con- 
 sidering the increased costs upon advances of capital, it is 
 not too much to say, that a ten per cent rise in grain 
 will raise wages universally by five per cent. And in that 
 word " universally " we are reminded of the nexus between 
 agricultural and manufacturing industry, which effects the 
 translation of changes from the one to the other. The 
 original " move " in the game, viz. the descent upon a soil 
 of lower capacities, is undeniably nothing to the shoe- 
 maker. His shoemaking does not therefore descend upon 
 less productive journeymen or more intractable hides : 
 wheat is less in quantity, but shoes are not less in quantity. 
 No ; but soon the reagency of the first change travels back 
 upon the shoemaker by a second. Wheat forms a con- 
 spicuous part in the household system of diet for all labor- 
 ers alike. A man does not grow fat because he drives fat 
 oxen : nor does a ploughman's family consume more wheat, 
 because the head of it produces wheat. The shoemaker's 
 family consumes as much. And although the primary 
 change, viz. the increased labor upon growing wheat, is a 
 matter of very great interest to the landowners, and of 
 very little interest to the owners of shoemaking industry; 
 yet eventually that primary change which throws new
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. l')7 
 
 labor on the land, has the secondary effect of raising price 
 upon its produce : and then the change becomes quite as 
 interesting to shoemakers as to ploughmen. The shoe- 
 maker escapes at first : true ; and there is no wonder in 
 that ; for even the farmer escapes. He hires a new man ; 
 but he knows that the new price to be anticipated for grain 
 will pay for the new man. Yet, no sooner is this prospect 
 realized, than the farmer finds himself suddenly reached 
 by the new price in his character of consumer ; and unfor- 
 tunately every workman in his service, both ten old ones 
 and an eleventh superadded, is also a consumer. So here 
 comes a sudden call for a bonus to twelve families, those of 
 the farmer and his eleven men, notwithstanding the pay- 
 ment of the eleventh man (as to the old rate of wages) is 
 undertaken by the public in the new price of wheat. But 
 precisely these secondary changes reach, the shoemaker 
 and all his workmen through the very same agency at the 
 same time. 
 
 Here, therefore, in this complex process, always exist- 
 ing by way of tendency in improving countries, we read 
 the whole law of profits. A change commences upon the 
 land, which is nothing at the first to any interest but the 
 landed. Originally, it is a change which has its beginning 
 and its end upon the land. But unfortunately that inevit- 
 able " end " is an augmentation of price upon the produce of 
 land. And then in one hour all the world is overtaken by 
 the change, every man in his consumption, capitalists in 
 wages. In every department of industry, unless so far as it 
 is conducted by non-wheat-consuming machines, wages rise 
 so as to indemnify the animal laborer (man, horse, or bul- 
 lock) for the increased cost of his consumption. And yet 
 this rise of wages, this rise in the price of labor (as opposed 
 to a rise in the quantity of labor) cannot be fetched back in 
 the price of the products : that has been shown at length in
 
 158 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Chapter I.: nevertheless, it must be paid; and what fund 
 is there available for the payment, except profits ? Clearty 
 there is no other ; and, therefore, profits must eternally pay 
 by diminution for these increases in the rate of wages. 
 Consequently, by the natural nisus in every country, profits 
 are always descending. But, on the other hand, there is a 
 nisus, directly antithetic to this, which is always tending to 
 raise profits, viz. the continual improvement of soils, (either 
 a as to the cost of working them, or /3 as to the amount 
 of their produce under the same cost,) which in effect, upon 
 any period of two centuries, acts for us precisely as an orig- 
 inal endowment of the land with much higher capacities. 
 Land which ranked as No. 20 at the Crusades, may now, 
 perhaps, stand at the same rating on the scale, it is still 
 No. 20 ; but the No. 20 land of these days is equal in ab- 
 solute produce to the No. 4 land of the Crusades. Hence 
 it is, viz. by this counter-m'sus in the land, that profits 
 have not long ago fallen to nothing. There is a continual 
 tendency towards nothing, which would soon become effect- 
 ual, through the expansion of population forcing land upon 
 worse soils, were it not continually retarded and fought 
 back through this opposite expansion in the everlasting im- 
 provement of science, practical skill, social arrangements, 
 or capital. But whether profits, under the one tendency, 
 are hurrying downwards for hah a century, or, under the 
 antagonist tendency, are abruptly ascending, or, under the 
 two acting in combination, are held stationary alike m 
 all cases we see that it is the land which gives the original 
 impulse to profits ; and, alike in all cases, by and through 
 the same agency of wages. Always there can be no rise 
 or fall for profits which will not presuppose a correspond- 
 ing fall and rise for wages ; always the initial movement 
 piust take place in the wages. 
 
 One sole evasion of this doctrine I can imagine as po-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 159 
 
 Bible even to a thoughtful man, since I have been acquaint- 
 ed with Mr. Malt-bus's " Economy." * He might argue 
 thus : " You talk of an eleventh man, as required by the 
 descent of tillage upon a worse soil. And probably you 
 make way for your arguments by that assumption ; but 
 there is no such necessity. Tillage descends upon the in- 
 ferior soil by means of the ten men." Well, be it so ; but 
 mark what follows. The produce under these men must 
 be less, or else the very case in discussion is abandoned ; 
 the soil would not be inferior, if ten men (the same number as 
 work the penultimate land) could obtain the same produce. 
 The produce is less by the very terms of the hypothesis. 
 Now, it signifies not a straw for the principle concerned 
 how much less. But say that each man raises, by one- 
 tenth part, less than he did upon the next superior land. 
 Each in short raises from the new land nine tenths of his 
 former product upon superior land: so that, had the total 
 product of the ten been 100 quarters of wheat before the 
 change, it will be 90 after the change. But who does not 
 see that, by mere conversion of the terms, if the whole pro- 
 duce of 100 has been reduced to 90, then each individual 
 quarter of wheat has cost one ninth of a man, whereas be- 
 fore it cost only one tenth of a man ? Yet this most obvi- 
 ous truth Mr. Malthus failed to see ; and he has repeatedly 
 argued, in a case where the produce had sunk whilst the 
 labor employed was the same, as though the return had 
 varied, but not by any variation in the producing labor. It 
 is, indeed, the common paralogism, and too natural to excite 
 much wonder for itself, that if upon the same farm you 
 have always kept five men, and in 1800 their product was 
 95 quarters, but in 1840 was 50 quarters, you are apt to 
 riew the produce only as variable, and the labor as con- 
 
 * " Principles of Political Economy " first published in 1820.
 
 ICO Tir.i: LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMT. 
 
 slant : whereas virtually both have varied. In 1 800, each 
 quarter must have cost one fifth part of a man, in 1840, 
 each has cost no more than one tenth part of a man. If 
 the wheat harvest of 1844, by some unprecedented blight 
 or locust attacking the plant in England, should fall sud- 
 denly to one tenth part of what it was in 1843, you could 
 not say with any accuracy that the labor had been the 
 same, but the result different. On the contrary, for the 
 very reason that the number of laborers had been the 
 same, the producing labor must have been by ten times 
 greater. For surely it has cost, by the supposition, ten 
 times as much labor to raise any given portion of produce, 
 (one bushel, a thousand bushels, &c.,) as it did in 1843. It 
 is, therefore, a matter of no consequence at all whether we 
 assume an eleventh man in order to sustain the same pro- 
 duce, or assume a diminished produce from the ten men. 
 This is but an inversion of the same formula. 4a Nor 
 would it have deserved this notice, were not the blunder so 
 common, and especially so in the " Principles " of Mr. 
 Malthus. 
 
 In this instance, therefore, the objector is silenced ; be- 
 cause his own case, supposing a less produce with the same 
 labor, does in so many words confess that, with the same 
 number of men to pay, (viz. ten, upon his way of stating 
 the case,) there will in the first place be a diminished fund 
 for paying them. Undoubtedly, in the second place, this 
 diminished corn fund will be compensated in a higher 
 money price. But then, in the third place, this higher 
 price, which merely restores to the farmer the lost powers 
 of labor, (that is, makes the ten less effective men equally 
 valuable to him in the money result as the ten men on the 
 old standard,) will not also pay the difference between the 
 old and new wages ; for the same cause which makes the 
 total produce smaller, makes each bushel of that produce
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1G1 
 
 dearer : in this it is alleged the farmer finds his indemnifi- 
 cation. True, he does so : but that cuts both ways ; for 
 precisely in this higher and indemnifying price, when it 
 comes to affect the consumption of himself and his men, he 
 finds also his own damage. 
 
 But there is still a final evasion likely to move subcon- 
 sciously in the thoughts of a student, which it is better to 
 deepen and strengthen until it becomes generally visible 
 than to leave it behind as a rankling perplexity. IJe has 
 a confused idea that, in the distributions of landed produce, 
 the shares which grow less in quantity sometimes grow 
 larger in value. If a laborer, who got 6 quarters last year, 
 gets only 5 this year, undeniably his corn wages have 
 fallen, and yet his money wages may have risen ; for 5 
 quarters, when wheat is selling for five guineas, will be 
 worth twenty-five guineas ; whereas G quarters, when 
 wheat sold for four guineas, would be worth only twenty- 
 four guineas. The laborer is therefore poorer in wheat, 
 but he is a little richer in money. Now, the student may 
 fancy that, by an indemnity similar in kind, but perhaps 
 even greater in degree, profits may evade the declension 
 which otherwise accompanies the expansion of agriculture. 
 Where the value of each assignable part may be less, 
 might not a larger quantity fall to the share of profits ; and 
 where a smaller quantity was allotted to profits, might it 
 not compensate that defect by a much greater value? No: 
 if the reader pursues the turns of the case through all 
 changes, he will find the following result invariably follow- 
 ing : As worse land is taken into use, the landlord's share 
 rises both in quantity and value : secondly, the laborer's 
 share lessens in quantity but increases in value ; whilst, 
 thirdly the profitee's (or farmer's) share lessens both in 
 quantity and value. Of two possible advantages, allowed 
 under the circumstances, Rent comes in for both Wages 
 11
 
 162 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 for one Profits for neither. And the sole resource for 
 profits against a never-ending declension, is that antagon- 
 istic tendency by which from time to time man defeats the 
 original tendency of the land, raising indifferent land in 
 1840 to the level of what was very good land in 1340 
 consequently restoring profits (and often much more than 
 restoring them) to that station which they had lost in the 
 interval. 
 
 Except by this eternal counter-agency, profits cannot 
 protect themselves by any special remedy against a con- 
 tinual degradation ; that redress, which for rent procures 
 much more than an indemnity, and for wages an imper- 
 fect indemnity, will not operate at all in behalf of profits. 
 And this shall be exemplified in a simple case. Eight 
 men, upon a known farm, have hitherto raised 80 quar- 
 ters of wheat. By a descent upon worse land, under the 
 coercion of rising population, ten men are now required 
 to produce the same 80 quarters. That is, heretofore 
 each man of the eight produced ten ; but now, on the 
 lower soil, each man of the ten produces eight. Conse- 
 quently, on that land which determines the price of wheat, 
 (see Chapter III. on Rent,) eight men now produce 64 
 quarters. This produce (since the least advantageously 
 grown must rule the price) now becomes the regulating 
 scale for price. Last year, when the produce of 80 quar- 
 ters from eight men had been the lowest round of the 
 ladder, the price had been 4 the quarter. Now, when 
 a produce of 64 quarters from eight men is the lowest, 
 the price will rise to 5. For 64 : 80 :: 4 : o. 
 
 But, when the produce was 80 quarters, selh'ng at 
 4, the total money produced was 320. From which 
 amount deduct the wages of eight men, (receiving, sup- 
 pose each 5 quarters, or 160 in the whole,) and there 
 will remain 160 for the profits.
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1G3 
 
 Now, when the produce is G4 quarters, selling at o, 
 the total money produce will be still 320 ; the higher 
 price having so far compensated the lower produce. 
 From which amount deduct the wages of eight men, 
 receiving each the value of 5 quarters, (or 200 in the 
 whole,) and there will remain only 120 for profits. 
 
 It is true that the new rate of wages will not proceed 
 on the old scale of quantity ; the corn Avages will some- 
 what decline ; but this will not help the result :' each 
 man may not receive 5 quarters as heretofore, but always 
 he will receive the value of more than 4 quarters at 
 5: always the eight men will receive more than 1GO; 
 or else their wages will not have risen under a rise in 
 the price of corn. Always therefore, from the same 
 fixed sum of 320, the deduction for wages being greater, 
 what remains for profit must be less. 
 
 This, however, it may be said, is an example drawn 
 from the last round of the ladder, from the very last 
 land under culture ; first from that which was last some 
 time back ; secondly, from that which at present is last. 
 Now, upon such land, it has been shown already, (Chap- 
 ter III. on Rent,) that the entire return always divides 
 between wages and profits ; nothing at all is retained 
 for rent. But you persuade yourself that on superior 
 land, on rent-paying land, possibly the result for profits 
 might turn out otherwise. One sentence will settle that 
 point, and convince you that the logic of the case cannot 
 be disturbed. What is it that determines the amount 
 of rent upon any land whatever ? It is simply the differ- 
 ence of product between the land assigned and the lowest 
 under cultivation. For instance, in the case just now 
 considered, the difference between the produce of the 
 land now lowest, and that of the land lately lowest, is 
 the difference between 80 quarters and 64 ; that is, a
 
 1C4 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 difference of 16 quarters. This whole difference would 
 become rent upon the penultimate land. And therefore 
 it will serve no purpose to plead the higher money value 
 upon each one of the 64, compared with the old value 
 upon the 80. For it is evident, that when the 16 are 
 deducted for -rent, no matter at what price, the remainder 
 of 64 must follow the same exact division between wages 
 and profits as took effect upon the 64 of the lowest land 
 according to the first exemplification. When the rent 
 is deducted, precisely the same quantity remains for the 
 penultimate land as on the very lowest land disposable 
 for precisely the same two calls of wages and profits 
 and disposable under the precisely same law of division. 
 Here, therefore, we see the whole law of profits as it 
 acts upon the largest scale. But at the same time we 
 are made sensible, that under this law there must be 
 exceptions. The law is founded ultimately on the decline 
 of land, and consequently of profits on land; to which 
 sort of profits, "speaking generally, all others must con- 
 form. Yet that sometimes they do not, is evident from 
 this, that in that case no rate of profits in any one specu- 
 lation would or could differ from the ordinary rate. The 
 land is always the same, and subject to the same sort 
 of gradual degradation. If, therefore, the land furnished 
 the sole principle of regulation, then in any one country, 
 (as England,) having the same common land-standard, 
 there could be only one rate of profit. But this we all 
 know to be false. Whence, therefore, come the anom- 
 alies? Where lie the other principles which modify 
 and disturb that derived from the land? 
 
 It is generally and rightly pleaded, as a sufficient 
 explanation of the irregularities in profits, that origi- 
 nally they ranged themselves upon a scale, differing ap- 
 parently in order that they might not differ virtually;
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 05 
 
 in fact, on the same principle as wages. Why do "wages 
 differ? Why is it that one workman gets a guinea 
 a day, and another has some difficulty in obtaining a 
 shilling ? Notoriously because, whilst rude labor is open 
 almost to universal competition, some special labor is 
 hazardous, or disgusting, or under a variable demand, 
 or even disreputable from its incidents ; but above all, 
 because it happens to be difficult of execution, and pre- 
 supposes an elaborate (generally an expensive) education. 
 The laborer is often to be regarded not in the light 
 of a man receiving merely wages, but of a man receiving 
 wages for his daily work, and a considerable interest 
 on the capital which he had been obliged to sink in his 
 education. And often it happens that, as the modern 
 processes of art or trade become more and more scientific, 
 wages are continually rising. The qualifications of a 
 master or of a mate, even in the commercial navy, are 
 now steadily rising. Possibly the wider range of chemical 
 knowledge, in such employments as dyeing, brewing, 
 calico-printing, may devolve in its growing responsibilities 
 chiefly upon a superior rank of workmen. In coining, 
 or striking medals, where the ambition of nations is now 
 driving their governments into substituting for that base 
 mechanic art prevalent in Christendom, the noble fine art 
 patronized in Pagan ages, it is probable that a higher 
 class of workmen is slowly coming into request. And 
 in the business of forgery applied to bank-notes, a busi- 
 ness which once gave employment to much capital and 
 various talent, simply by a rise in one qualification that 
 whole interest has been suppressed. Besides a peculiar 
 paper, manufactured with difficulty and hazard, the talent 
 of engraving was required in provincial practice. No\v, 
 the profits might have paid for skill of that nature ; an 
 accomplice might have been elaborately educated for
 
 1G6 THK LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the purpose; but inevitably, as this man attained the 
 requisite point of excellence, he found that his talent 
 was opening to him a safer channel for employing it: 
 he could now keep a conscience. In the service of one 
 vast public agency, that of travelling, so great has been 
 the rise of qualifications, that of late even an academic 
 examination has been talked of for the working engineers, 
 &c., or (as a vicarious measure) a probationary appoint- 
 ment, contingent for its ratification upon the results of a 
 rigorous trial. In medicine again, the improvement, hav- 
 ing kept pace with the expansions of chemistry, botany, 
 and physiology, has spread downwards to the body of 
 druggists: these are the lowest class of medical prac- 
 titioners ; and I believe that now they look for higher 
 attainments in their servants, or for a higher fee as the 
 condition of communicating such advantages. 
 
 The writer of the " Critical Dissertation on Value " 
 offended heavily against logic, when he represented these 
 varieties of level in wages as inconsistent with Ricardo's 
 doctrine upon the relative quantities of labor. Too readily 
 he allowed himself to suppose that Ricardo had " over- 
 looked" facts or consequences, which, by possibility, to 
 have overlooked, would have argued a sheer incompetence 
 in one whom elsewhere he does not deny to have been 
 vigilant as well as able. Prices, says Ricardo, are directly 
 as the producing quantities of labor ; and the objection is, 
 that an article which costs three days' labor at half a 
 crown, bears a price, suppose of ten shillings ; whilst 
 another article, costing the very same quantity of labor, 
 but of labor paid at the rate of one guinea a day, may 
 bear a price, possibly, of five guineas. How, then, does 
 mere quantity of labor express itself exactly in the price ? 
 Answer, the gamut, the scale of differences as to the 
 quality of labor is postulated from the first ; no man could
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 107 
 
 be so slothful in his intellect as to have overlooked that : it 
 forms the starting-point of the whole calculation. In this 
 objection there is nothing which affects Ricardo. He is 
 not called upon to reply. What would be an objection, is 
 the case in which it should be shown that, doubling or 
 trebling the quantities of labor, you would not, therefore, 
 double or treble the prices of the product. Show that, on 
 the rise of labor, in each case, from three days to six days, 
 the price would not rise from ten shillings to twenty, or 
 that it would not rise from five guineas to ten, (after mak- 
 ing the allowances for machinery, &c., which it is super- 
 fluous to repeat,) and then you have destroyed Ricardo, 
 but not else. 
 
 To profits the very same considerations apply. Profits 
 are a mode of wages upon capital ; and, naturally, men 
 must be tempted by higher gains, contingent upon success, 
 in order to compensate greater disadvantages arising to 
 themselves from a particular employment. For instance, 
 amongst modern Christian nations, what between a few 
 sincere and many insincere prohibitions, at length the com- 
 merce in slaves has been denounced and made punishable. 
 But that which at any period sustained and alimented this 
 extensive trade, was the institution of slavery. Now this, 
 considered as a bribe on the trade in slaves, flourishes more 
 than ever. So long as a vast machinery of servile labor ex- 
 ists, diffused through the continent and islands of America, 
 PO long there will be a silent bounty always proclaiming itself 
 upon the supplies needed for keeping up that machinery ; 
 for African slaves, under whatsoever causes, rarely keep 
 up their own race. Talk, therefore, in what delusive or 
 self-deluding language they may, our home politicians have 
 yet devised no effectual means for suppressing a trade con- 
 tinually more lucrative, or for defeating a commercial 
 interest which thrives by its own r'nns. The losses by
 
 1C8 Tllli LOGIC OJf POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 interception are very great. Doubtless ; but these losses 
 furnish a sound plea for extra profits. The higher profit, 
 up to a certain point, is indeed no more than insurance 
 upon the general adventure ; but the great advance on the 
 personal share of the risk, which cannot be shifted from 
 the captain, or chief authority on board, entitles him to 
 look separately for an advance on his own individual divi- 
 dend. This rate of advance, concurrent between the two 
 interests of the captain and the owner, must grow with the 
 growing embarassments of the trade. At length, indeed, 
 these excesses of risk might reach a point at which they 
 would no longer be supported by a corresponding develop- 
 ment in the affirmative values of slave labor. A cost or 
 negative value cannot transcend the affirmative value. A 
 slave is but a working machine. So much work may be 
 extracted from him ; and the value of this work will mount 
 for a time, as the cost of the slave mounts. But at length 
 the work itself, the product, of the slave, will have readied 
 its maximum of price. After that, if the cost should still 
 go on increasing, the slave passes into a source of loss. This 
 tendency, according to the variety of circumstances, local 
 or personal, ranges through a large scale of degrees : not 
 until it becomes absolute can we look for an extinction of 
 the commerce. 
 
 Such and many other causes for variation in profits are 
 always at work. And this variation is real, and propor- 
 tional to its known causes. But, finally, we are crossed 
 by a new consideration, which sometimes seems to concern 
 the mere ratio coynoscendi, and sometimes the ratio essendi. 
 Often, to this day, it continues to be difficult, and in ruder 
 times it must have been impossible, to approximate, even 
 by conjecture, towards the true rate of profits in very 
 many employments of capital. The dispute is not on the 
 realities of the case, (here the profits are twenty, there,
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 63 
 
 for no adequate cause, fifty,) but on the constructions of 
 the case (this man rates the profits at twenty, that man 
 at fifty) : or, again, the differences are reversed. Alter- 
 nately, in short, we are puzzled by the principium essendi, 
 and again, by the principium cognoscendi. 
 
 Now, then, with respect to both of these principles, the 
 principle which makes profits what they are, and the 
 principle which appreciates profits, I will call the reader's 
 attention to four important mistakes. 
 
 I. It has been a blunder long current in books, and yet 
 so momentous in its consequences, that no epithet of blame 
 can be too strong for it, practically to confound the mere 
 replacement of capital with the profits upon that capital. 
 When a man distributes the cost of all articles into rent, 
 profit, and wages ; or when, upon a sounder economy, he 
 distributes this cost into profits and wages, evidently he 
 commits that mistake : much of the cost is frequently 
 neither rent, profit, nor wages. It is simply a restitution 
 of capital, which leaves the whole positive returns unaf- 
 fected. 
 
 II. Adam Smith has sharpened our attention to the 
 common case, where that, which really is no more than 
 wages for services performed, ranks in popular apprecia- 
 tion as profit. A surgeon, for instance, receives as the 
 reward or honorarium of his science, what is falsely classed 
 as profit on his capital. Under the former case, that 
 which is alike foreign to profit and wages was classed as 
 profit ; under this, the confusion takes place internally be- 
 tween the two. 
 
 III. When the question arises : How are profits kept 
 down to the average level, or, in other words, suppose that,
 
 170 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by any combination amongst capitalists, it were determined 
 arbitrarily to raise profits, where lies the true natural coun- 
 teraction to such an attempt? the common answer is, in 
 competition. It is rashly assumed that all such injurious 
 attempts are defeated by the instantaneous introduction of 
 more capital, under rival interests, into the trade or manu- 
 facture. But this is not always possible. Capitalists do 
 not so easily enter a trade or withdraw from it. In a coun- 
 try so exquisitely organized as England, it is true that cap- 
 ital moves with velocity where the capitalist cannot move ; 
 and of this we have a luminous explanation in Ricardo. 
 
 Ricardo, who, as a stockbroker, stood in the very centre 
 of the vast money machinery accumulated in London, had 
 peculiar advantages for observing and for investigating the 
 play of this machinery. If our human vision were fitted 
 for detecting agencies so impalpable, and if a station of 
 view could be had, we might sometimes behold vast arches 
 of electric matter continually passing and repassing be- 
 tween either pole and the equatorial regions. Accordingly 
 as. the equilibrium were disturbed suddenly or redressed, 
 would be the phenomena of tropical hurricanes, or of 
 auroral lights. Somewhat in the same silent arches of 
 continual transition, ebbing and flowing like tides, do the 
 reagencies of the capital accumulated in London modify, 
 without sound or echo, much commerce in all parts of the 
 kingdom. Faithful to the monetary symptoms, and the 
 fluctuations this way or that, eternally perceptible in the 
 condition of every trade, the great moneyed capitalist stand- 
 ing at the centre of this enormous web, throws over his 
 nrch of capital or withdraws it, with the precision of a fire- 
 man directing columns of water from an engine upon the 
 remotest quarter of a conflagration. It is not, as Ricardo 
 almost professionally explains to us, by looking out for 
 new men qualified to enter an aspiring trade, or by with-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOM1". 171 
 
 drawing some of the old men from a decaying trade, that 
 the equilibrium is recovered. Such operations are difficult, 
 dilatory, often personally ruinous, and disproportionately 
 noisy to the public ear in the process of execution. But 
 the true operation goes on as silently as the growth of 
 light. The moneyed man stands equidistantly related to 
 many different staple interests, the silk trade, the cotton 
 trade, the iron trade, the timber and grain trade. Rarely 
 does he act upon any one of them by direct interpolation 
 of new firms, or direct withdrawals of old ones. An effect 
 of this extent is generally as much beyond his power as 
 beyond his interest. 
 
 Not a man has been shifted from his station ; possibly 
 not a man has been intruded, yet power and virtue have 
 been thrown into vast laboratories of trade, like shells into 
 a city. But all has been accomplished in one night by the 
 inaudible agency of the post-office, co-operating with the 
 equally inaudible agencies of capital moving through banks 
 and through national debts, funded or unfunded. Such is 
 the perfection of our civilization. By the simple pressure 
 of a finger upon the centre of so vast an organization, a 
 breath of life is hurried along the tubes, a pulse is en- 
 livened or depressed, a circulation is precipitated or 
 checked, without those ponderous processes of change in- 
 dispensable on the Continent, and which so injuriously 
 disturb the smooth working of general business. Acknowl- 
 edging, therefore, as a fact first exposed clearly by Ricardo, 
 that enormous changes may be effected, and continually 
 are effected, without noise or tumult, through the exquisite 
 resources of artificial action, first made possible by the 
 great social development of England ; acknowledging by 
 consequence that, for the purposes of competition, capital 
 to any amount may be discharged with a velocity inappre- 
 ciable to the Continent, upon a considerable variety of
 
 172 THE LOGIC OF TOLITICAL KCOXOMY. 
 
 creative industry, there is yet good reason to deny the 
 possibility of that competition which is so geneniEy relied 
 on for the practical limitation of profits seeming to bo in 
 excess. 
 
 Upon serious reflection, how can any rational man imag- 
 ine that, as a matter of course, by increasing the manufac- 
 ture of razors or of scissors, he could increase their sale ? 
 That sale is predetermined by the need ; and though un- 
 doubtedly a very slight need may come to operate as a 
 great need Avhen the price is suddenly or much lowered, 
 yet that is merely a transitional effect ; the lower price is 
 probably binomial price, and binomial price cannot hist ; 
 by its very nature it is a force tending to a particular 
 effect, viz. to equilibrate the supply with the demand, and, 
 as soon as that tendency is accomplished, there it ceases. 
 
 The expression, however, of such a case may be design- 
 edly made equivocal. Let us, therefore, force the lurking 
 notions in this sophistry to "show out" and expose them- 
 selves ; by which means we shall know how to shape the 
 reply. 
 
 Case a. The insinuation is sometimes this, That the 
 rale of profits will be diminished ; that there will be a dif- 
 ference of so much per cent on the manufacture of the 
 given article ; and that, by giving to the buyer the benefit 
 of this difference, free competition will reduce profits 
 through an extended pale. But in a large mass of cases 
 no such agency is possible. A man buys an article of in- 
 stant applicability to his own purposes the more readily 
 and the more largely as it happens to be cheaper : silk 
 handkerchiefs having fallen to half price, he will buy, per- 
 haps, in threefold quantity; but he does not buy more 
 eteam-engines because the price is lowered. His demand 
 for steam-engines is almost always predetermined by the 
 circumstances of Lid situation. So fur as he considers the
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 173 
 
 cost at all, it is much more the cost of working this engine 
 than the cost upon its purchase. But there are many arti- 
 cles for which the market is absolutely and merely limited 
 by a pre-existing system, to which those articles are attached 
 as subordinate parts or members. How could we force the 
 dials or faces of timepieces by artificial cheapness to sell 
 more plentifully than the inner works or movements of such 
 timepieces? Could the sale of wine-vaults be increased 
 without increasing the sale of wine ? Or the tools of ship- 
 wrights find an enlarged market whilst shipbuilding was 
 stationary? The articles and the manufacturing interests 
 are past counting which conform to the case here stated ; 
 viz. which are so interorganized with other articles or other 
 interests, that apart from that relation, standing upon 
 their own separate footing, they cannot be diminished in 
 price through any means or any motive depending upon 
 the extension of sale. Oner to a town of 3000 inhabitants 
 a stock of hearses, no cheapness will tempt that town into 
 buying more than one. Offer a stock of yachts, the chief 
 cost lies in manning, victualling, repairing ; no diminution 
 upon the mere price to a purchaser will tempt into the 
 market any man whose rank, habits, and propensities had 
 not already disposed him to such a purchase. So of pro- 
 fessional costume for bishops, lawyers, students at Oxford, 
 or the separate costume for Cantabs. 
 
 From cases of the same class, absolutely past counting, 
 we must be sure that the conceit of competition, having 
 any unconditional power answerably to contract or expand 
 the market for commodities, is fitted only for a childish or 
 inactive understanding. Universally all things Avhich are 
 sold may be thrown into three classes, first, a small class, 
 m which the very least bias given favorably to the price 
 will increase the sale ; secondly, a much larger class, hi 
 which nothing short of a verv strong bias will avail for
 
 174 TilE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 such an increase ; thirdly, a class the largest, in which no 
 bias whatever, from the very strongest impulse communi- 
 cated to the price, can overcome the obstacles to an ex- 
 tended sale. 
 
 Case /3. But under this delusive form of words lurks 
 often quite another meaning : not the rate of profit is to be 
 diminished by competition, but the separate dividends of 
 each individual. It is not that profits are to fall from 16 
 to 12 per cent ; no, the 16 per cent is to continue ; but the 
 ten thousand pounds annually disposable on such a 16 per 
 cent will be otherwise distributed ; forty capitalists will 
 have crowded in, to average a gain of 250 for each, where 
 previously twenty had averaged 500. This, however, is 
 a change in many cases quite impracticable ; in others, far 
 from beneficial 48 to the public interests ; and in any case, 
 having no tendency at all to the diminution of price, con- 
 sequently no possible tendency to an extension of the 
 market. What puzzles the student is this : from Ricardo 
 he has learned that a change in profits will not produce 
 any change in price. Such a change settles upon wages, 
 in fact it has settled already upon wages. Any change in 
 profits argues "a foregone conclusion," presupposes a cor- 
 responding change already made in wages, before the 
 change in profits could ai-ise. And if, therefore, a violent 
 or conventional reduction should take place originally in 
 profits, he is at a loss to trace the consequences of what he 
 has been taught to view as impossible. For Ricardo has 
 taught him that a change cannot commence in profits ; that 
 function of industry is not liable to any original affection 
 of change ; any change must be derivative, must be second- 
 ary, which reaches profits. Yet how, if a sudden and vio- 
 lent reduction were made primarily upon individual profits 
 as a desperate resource of competition ? Conventionally and 
 arbitrarily such a change might be made by a little faction
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 175 
 
 of sellers for the sake of underselling others, without any 
 power on their part to meddle with wages. Out of a profit 
 nominally 30 per cent, the piratical minority might agree 
 to sacrifice a third ; and sometimes the more easily, be- 
 cause on large establishments a considerable percentage is 
 often made into a mere fund for replacement of costs that 
 do not exist for petty establishments. For instance, the 
 virtual obligation resting upon a great inn, to keep rooms, 
 with fires burning and other accommodations, baths, ser- 
 vants, &c., always in readiness for summary calls, forms 
 one of the titles under which such an inn charges a higher 
 price for a dinner substantially the same in quality, than a 
 petty inn exonerated from a similar obligation. As much 
 as 10 per cent calculated on a mean proportional between 
 the little inn and the great inn, may perhaps be seques- 
 tered for such extra replacements, before the great inn and 
 little one could start fairly in competition. So that un- 
 doubtedly, there is room, there is an opening, for such a 
 violent reduction of profits ; and, a fortiori, there is room 
 when there happen to be two funds for meeting that reduc- 
 tion viz. the fund of replacement, (falsely called profits,) 
 pressing exclusively on the one of two competitors ; the 
 fund of true profits, accidentally high for both. Yet, sup- 
 posing such a case actually to occur, eventually it will not 
 disturb any reasonings of Ricardo. After all it is no more 
 than that case of competition so common in England before 
 the era of railways, where two rival coach proprietors ran 
 down the ladder of prices until at length the strife lay on 
 the other side the equation which of the two competitors 
 should have the honor of giving the more costly dinner 
 gratuitously to their passengers. I have myself travelled 
 by coaches who were rapidly nearing the point at which 
 their contest would be not for payment to be received, but 
 for payment to be given. How did all such struggles end?
 
 17G THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 By the defeat and retirement of the one party when ex- 
 hausted of his resources, by the final establishment of the 
 other in a virtual monopoly. Yet on behalf of our English 
 social condition it speaks well, that this monopoly, out of 
 which the victor naturally paid himself for his sacrifices, 
 was never pushed to any blamable excess. "True," it 
 will be said ; " but that was because he feared to provoke 
 another competition." Very possibly ; and often undoubt- 
 edly it was so. Yet that result of itself shows how excel- 
 lent is the training of a sound and healthy economic state 
 for moderation, equity, reasonable enterprise, and all the 
 moral qualities incident to the position of capitalists in that 
 rank. This is a separate theme hitherto untouched ; but, 
 undoubtedly, it will furnish a subject hereafter for special 
 speculation that as a good police, a good system of 
 national education, a good legislation, a good executive 
 jurisprudence, so also a good basis of political economy re- 
 commends itself, inter alia, by showing a far greater 
 natural adaptation to the virtues which need encourage- 
 ment in the productive classes. The case, as a difficulty in 
 political economy, or as any demur to Ricardo, does not 
 merit consideration ; nor should I have considered it, ex- 
 cept that naturally it arises in the series of phenomena for 
 some notice, and that M. Baptiste Say (who, with as little 
 logical power as Malthus, has even more of ingenuity) 
 choose?, under another form, to consider it weighty. 
 Meantime, it is sufficient to reply as to any conceivable 
 disturbance in price accomplished by a sudden conven- 
 tional renunciation in profits that it falls to the ground 
 through one simple explanation. Political Economy un- 
 dertakes to explain the natural and mechanic effects from 
 the inter-agencies of certain elements ; but wherever these 
 effects are disturbed by voluntary human interferences* 
 there ceases the duty of economy. As well might you
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 177 
 
 demonstrate the 47th of 1st " Euclid" by sabring a man 
 who should deny it ; or insist that the cost of wheat at forty 
 shillings a quarter would not govern its price, because a 
 Turkish pacha, under those circumstances, had fixed the 
 maximum at thirty shillings ; or that gravitation would not 
 cause a guinea to tend downwards, because you had nailed 
 it to the wall. Once for all, the tendencies or natural 
 effects in political economy, any more than in physics, are 
 not overruled as principles, because an external coercion 
 hinders them from operating as facts. Silent inter arma 
 leges ; and the same thing is true of natural and immanent 
 laws, such as those which silently govern the agencies and 
 re-agencies of the several forces at work in Political 
 Economy. External coercion suspends those laws ; and 
 for the time of suspension Political Economy has no exist- 
 ence. 
 
 IV. Upon this subject of profit?, it becomes plain a* 
 we advance, that the esse is closely connected with the 
 scire. To make even a plausible guess at the possi- 
 bility of diminishing profits, it is essential to know what 
 regularly they are. Now, Avhen it is considered how 
 often mere wages pass for profits, (as noticed at page 
 1G9 under No. II.) how often the simple replacement 
 of costs will pass for profits, ( as explained at page 1G9 
 under No. I.) IK>W often an excess of profits will be 
 fancied when there is merely a remuneration for extra 
 #kill, extra risk, extra trouble, extra uncertainty, (as noticed 
 at page 175) everybody must see that it is a very 
 elaborate problem to ascertain even for one year, sti'.l 
 more for a fair average of years, what has been the 
 true rate of profits upon the capital employed in any 
 one trade. Nobody but the individual tradesman has the 
 means of ascertaining his own profits ; even he very un- 
 12
 
 178 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMT. 
 
 certainly ; and, as regards the profits of his own occupa- 
 tion generally, he can do no more than guess at them. 
 How, then, is anything at all known to economists on 
 this subject, or even to practical enterprisers ? I answer 
 that, as a general case, very little is known. In ninety- 
 nine cases out of a hundred, no man knows even the gross 
 nominal profit, far less the true and net profit which re- 
 mains after all the allowances and distinctions explained. 
 Confidential servants, it is true, and banking-houses, cause 
 the revelation of many secrets ; for a manufacturer, 
 eager to obtain aid, will volunteer to his banker that 
 unreserved communication of his affairs which he would 
 scornfully refuse to the demand of curiosity. But no 
 man can reveal more than he knows ; and it is certain 
 that, unless in those simple trades which rest on a pri- 
 mary necessity of life, (as, for instance, the trade of a 
 miller or of a baker,) few managers of an extensive 
 business could safely declare any rate of profit upon 
 less than a seven years' average. When an outward- 
 bound vessel from England arrives at Madras or Cal- 
 cutta, she can declare a daily rate of sailing ; but it would 
 be impossible for her to do so (not being a steamer) 
 in any serviceable sense, after a single fortnight's absence 
 from the Thames. Now, when to this difficulty of ap- 
 proximating towards any representative rate of profit, 
 is added the impossibility already explained, in a majority 
 of cases, for any competitor to act upon such a declara- 
 tion of profits, unless he could also and simultaneously 
 extend the sale of the article, enough has been said 
 to show the puerility of that little receipt current amongst 
 economists, viz. unlimited competition for keeping down 
 profits to one uniform level The sole principle under 
 which profits can rudely be known, is the principle under 
 which, in any age, profits can at all exist. And what
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECOXO3IY. ITS 
 
 is that? As already explained, it is the rate of profit 
 allowed upon land. For, through one natural link, viz. 
 the equal necessity of landed produce to all workmen 
 alike, this rate becomes the operative rate, in a gross 
 sense, for all productive industry whatsoever. The pas- 
 ture land and the corn land of every nation constitute, 
 in effect, the vis regulatrix for appraising the rate of profit 
 upon all capital, in whatever direction employed. But, 
 because cultivation is always travelling downwards towards 
 land worse and worse, does not this general law of profit 
 authorize us to say, that profits must be continually de- 
 scending as society advances ? No. The student knows, 
 but he cannot too often be reminded of a truth every- 
 where forgotten by Ricardo, that always the land is 
 travelling downwards, but that always the productive 
 management of land is travelling upwards. The two 
 tendencies are eternally moving upon opposite tacks ; 
 and the result is, that now, in 1844, under the great 
 lady of the isles, profits are undoubtedly higher than 
 in 1344, a period of corresponding splendor under 
 Edward III. Not in an absolute sense merely they are 
 higher, as if total England in one age Avere balanced 
 against total England in another that they are by an 
 excess too enormous to measure, but in the ratio they 
 are higher, in the returns relatively to the capital em- 
 ployed. 
 
 Is there no other mode, simpler and shorter, for as- 
 certaining the rate of profits ? Can we no otherwise 
 learn what profits are than by reading a priori in the 
 agriculture what the possibilities will allow them to be? 
 Yes, notoriously there is an index, far simpler and readi- 
 er of application, had it always been kept true to itself. 
 This index is INTEREST Much will be given for money, 
 when much can be made of it But unfortunately in
 
 180 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Bemi-barbarous ages the converse does not hold ; (he 
 inference is not good, that much can be then made of 
 money-, simply because much is given for it. Until 
 insurance-offices, a regular post-office, mercantile law, 
 international intercourse, and other securities to commerce 
 had arisen with rising civilization, a very large propor- 
 tion of all usury exhausted itself upon the mere insecu- 
 rity of capital : the losses were then enormous "through 
 social imperfections ; and, after ten years, run in such 
 a lottery, the real profits would oftentimes be less than 
 under the very moderate usuiy now exacted. Trading 
 upon borrowed capital was then undoubtedly a rare case. 
 This is to be lamented : because else, interest would bu 
 a common measure for profits as between all ages alike. 
 We might then say universally, that the rate of interest 
 was the principium coynoscendi in relation to mean 
 profits ; and reciprocally, that the rate of profits was the 
 principium essendi in relation to ordinary interest Prof- 
 its would cause interest to be thus or thus : interest 
 would ascertain profits to be thus or thus. But, between 
 ages in which the proportions allowed on every loan 
 for its mere insurance vary so widely, the ratio of the 
 two is no safe criterion. 
 
 Even at present there is a form of speech current 
 amongst public men, silently corrected by the knowledge 
 of all who have any experience, and yet in the last degree 
 misleading to the recluse economist and to the public. It 
 is said daily in every morning paper, it is said in the 
 House of Commons, that money is not at this time worth 
 two per cent. Why, surely it is not pretended, that as yet 
 there has been any difficulty found in buying into the 
 funds. Now the funds will give a trifle more than three 
 per cent ; whilst upon a small part of these funds, for the 
 foolish reason that the dividends upon them are paid at the
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. ' 181 
 
 South Sea house and not at the Bank, (which leads people 
 into fancying that they are less solidly engrafted on the 
 national faith.) a trifle more can be had. " Ay, but this 
 was money, you are to understand, which I wished to em- 
 ploy during an odd interval between two other employ- 
 ments of it." Yes, now the truth comes out ; the brief 
 explanation is, that the money could be lent only under 
 the condition of recalling it on a summary notice, or on 
 none at all ; and for this condition, which constitutes a 
 special privilege in favor of the lender, naturally (as for 
 any other privilege) he is obliged to pay. A peculiar case 
 has entitled the borrower to a peculiar discount : how does 
 that establish any general or prevailing rate of interest ? 
 The very case of Exchequer bills may show that it does 
 not. Ricardo, as a man daily witnessing the traffic in such 
 bills, and himself largely partaking in it, reasonably had 
 his attention drawn to the fact, that they bore an interest 
 far from corresponding to that on the funded debt. The 
 interest was not so high as it ought to be. Yet why? 
 Could it be denied that the security was equal upon the 
 Exchequer bills ? Nay, was it not the very same ? For 
 that man deceives himself who fancies that the wicked 
 anti-social enemies of our public prosperity "Socialist," 
 " Jacobins," " Chartists," would make any distinction 
 between a debt resting upon the assignment of special 
 funds, and another debt resting only upon pledges of Par- 
 liamentary faith. If that fatal day should ever dawn upon 
 England, when villains of this quality will be able " to lay 
 their hands upon the ark of our magnificent and awful 
 cause," of the two debts, they would treat with more con- 
 sideration this latter, as being rarely more than one to 
 forty when compared with the other. But what they might 
 choose to do in an event abominated by all upright men, 
 luckily has never yet seemed near enough to be worth
 
 182 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 estimating on the tariff of evil contingencies. No fraction 
 of interest has yet been paid extra on the chance of being 
 spared by public robbers ; no fraction has been deducted 
 from interest on the notion of standing first in the lists of 
 confiscation. It could not be here, it could not be in this 
 remote contingency, that the lower interest yielded by an 
 Exchequer bill found its justification. No, it lay in the 
 instant convertibility of this security into money. Had 
 you lodged a thousand pounds with a London banker, 
 doubtless you could draw it out by a check within the next 
 ten minutes ; but then for that very reason, by way of bal- 
 ancing so summary a liability, this London banker will 
 allow you no interest, not if you left it in his hands for five 
 years. On the other hand, had you lodged it with an 
 Edinburgh or Glasgow banker, he would have allowed you 
 a fair interest on the sum, whilst the security would be 
 equal ; but then for that very reason, by way of balancing 
 that liability to interest, the Scotch banker will not allow 
 you to draw it out unless after a long notice. But throw 
 your thousand pounds into the shape of an Exchequer bill, 
 and without further anxiety you may place it in your 
 writing-desk, certain of realizing both advantages ; viz. the 
 London advantage of instant availability, the Scotch (or 
 English provincial) advantage of current interest during 
 the interval of non-employment. So far the Exchequer 
 bill has a conspicuous advantage, which, under a limitation 
 to the amount of such bills, is very considerable. As com- 
 pared again with stock in the three per cent consols, the 
 Exchequer bill has other advantages, which for a banker 
 become very important. In reality, so great were the 
 advantages when Ricardo wrote, (1817,) that he estimates 
 the interest per cent on an Exchequer bill at 4 ; whilst 
 on a hundred pounds of a stock then existing at five per 
 cent, (which could be bought at that moment for 95,)
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 183 
 
 the interest was about 5. The advantage must evidently 
 have been inversely as the interest ; and that advantage 
 lay partly in the instant convertibility, partly in other 
 accidents of convenience valuable to bankers. 
 
 But in many other cases of advantage, which upon a 
 gross view seems equalized, there is often an excess upon 
 one side from causes not instantly perceptible. Why 
 should a three per cent stock have been more valuable 
 than a five per cent stock, both debts having been con- 
 tracted on the same virtual basis of interest ? It is not so 
 where circumstances forbid any expectation that either 
 will be paid off. But when the fall of interest in the gen- 
 eral market has made it certain that a prudent government 
 will use the opportunity for reducing their debt, it becomes 
 evident that in England they will commence the operation 
 upon the five per cents. If money should really sink to 
 two per cent, it will then answer to pay off the three per 
 cents. But we are safe until that happens ; and we are 
 safe even after it happens, so long as any higher stock of 
 sufficient magnitude interposes to receive the first assault. 
 A 3 per cent, or a four per cent stock becomes an out- 
 work, exhausting for some years the efforts of government, 
 and in the mean time giving security to the inner citadel 
 of the three per cents. That sacred fund enjoys the privi- 
 lege of Outis in the den of the Cyclops, viz. of being swal- 
 lowed last of all. Consequently, it must pay for that 
 privilege. And thus, but not until times in which the 
 downward tendency of interest 44 should raise a growing 
 presumption of extensive operations for diminishing the 
 public debt, might a three per cent fund bear a higher 
 relative price in the market than a 3 per cent, (both 
 being supposed to stand on our present English footing in 
 their origin.) 
 
 Ricardo mentions another case, with which I will close
 
 104 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 this sub-section, as furnishing in fact the direct converse 
 to the case so mendaciously paraded, where money yields 
 only two per cent, and as furnishing therefore the appro- 
 priate answer. " To pay the interest of the national debt, 
 large sums of money are withdrawn from circulation four 
 times in the year for a few days." Four times, and not 
 twice, because the half-yearly dividends fall at one period 
 for certain stocks, at a different period for other stocks ; by 
 which means the disturbance, though reiterated more fre- 
 quently, is lightened for each operation. Such is the fact, 
 what is the consequence ? " These demands for money, 
 being only temporary, seldom affect prices ; they are gen- 
 erally surmounted by the payment of a large rate of inter- 
 est." (P. 415.) Now, would it not be monstrous to urge 
 that casual tilt upwards in the rate of interest as a repre- 
 sentative change in the current and prevailing rate ? 
 Equally dishonest it is, ex analogo, to urge, under the 
 notion of being any representative rate, that occasional 
 two per cent which is caught at by elaborate artists in the 
 use of money, not as in itself the highest interest, but as 
 the highest compatible with a much higher rate lying in 
 the rear, though suspended for a few weeks. 
 
 V. From all these details of the 4th section, I argue 
 that although the TO esse and the TO percipi, with respect to 
 profits, stand in some practical relation to each other, espe- 
 cially under the guidance which exists in the mean rate of 
 interest still, even this guidance, as regards any given 
 mode of industry, is doubtful, and not at all certain as the 
 index to the average ; whilst to act upon it, to apply fresh 
 capital simply because there seems to be an opening adver- 
 tised for such an application in the reputed rate profits, 
 would often be found impossible often ruinous. It would 
 be saying in effect " Because the Grand Junction Canai 
 is reputed to pay a higher return on its shares than is cus-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 185 
 
 ternary since the depression of canals by railroads, there- 
 fore we will make two Grand Junction canals." The pro- 
 fits, perhaps, after all, are not accurately known under all 
 the quinquennial or decennial deductions for repairs, for 
 fluctuations of traffic, for injurious taxes, &c. ; but, if they 
 were, so far from justifying a second canal, that second 
 canal would probably ruin both. Meantime there is one 
 cause of difference in the very esse of profits, as alleged by 
 M. Jean Baptiste Say, 45 which is too momentous if true, 
 and too extravagant if false, to permit me to pass it over 
 in silence. There is a special reason why no English 
 writer should overlook M. Baptiste Say, since he, (accord- 
 ing to the remark at p. 3 Go, vol. i. of his translator and very 
 able annotator, Mr. Prinsep,) beyond other French econo- 
 mists, " has profited so largely by his observation of 
 English affairs, and his acquaintance with English writers." 
 M. Say did not altogether understand Kicardo ; but he 
 first, among all Frenchmen, read him, adopted him, and at 
 times fancied that he opposed him. In the present ques- 
 tion of profits, he had properly and thoughtfully distin- 
 guished between profit as " derivable from the employment 
 of capital " on the one hand, and profit on the other hand 
 as " derivable from the industry which turns it to account." 
 (P. 153, vol. ii.) So far he is right, if I understand him; 
 and it is difficult to explain the sudden perverseness of his 
 annotator, Mr. Prinsep, who chooses to reject the distinction 
 in toto as a " useless refinement." 
 
 But, in the course of an attempt (which immediately fol- 
 lows) to illustrate the distinction, he puts forward this 
 case : " Suppose two houses, in the fur trade, for example, 
 to work each upon a capital of 100,000 francs ; and to make 
 on the average an annual profit the one of 24,000 francs 
 the other of 6000 f ratios only ; a difference of 18,000 
 francs." Very well ; what is the inference, what is the
 
 186 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 M moral," which M. Say deduces from such an astonishing 
 disparity in the profits ? Upon a capital of little more than 
 four thousand pounds sterling, the one furrier raises annu- 
 ally for himself a net return of not less than a thousand 
 pounds ; whilst his rival pockets only two hundred and 
 forty pounds upon the very same capital, invested at the 
 same time in the very same trade. Now, if this were the 
 result of some single year, it would express no more than 
 one of those casualties, (through bad debts, property unin- 
 sured, losses by embezzlements, &c.,) to which all commer- 
 cial houses are liable in turn. But this, by the supposition, 
 is the regular relation between the parties from year to 
 year. How then is it explained by M. Say ? How does 
 he wish us to understand it ? Why, as " fairly referable to 
 the different degrees of skill and labor " : the thousand 
 pound man is active and intelligent ; the two hundred and 
 forty pound man is stupid and lazy. Personal qualities, in 
 short, make the difference. 
 
 Yet is that possible ? Not, undoubtedly, for the logical 
 purpose to which it is applied by M. Say. Differences 
 there may be, and differences there are, and differences 
 even to that extent, between man and man between 
 house and house ; but not founded on that open and pro- 
 fessed negligence. For this under the action of our social 
 machinery, hardly any opening exists. 
 
 " Nobis non licet csse tarn disertis 
 Qui musas coliraus sevcriorcs." 
 
 Excesses of negligence, amounting to such a result an- 
 nually, would in the case where they are possible, offer no 
 instruction ; in the case where they could offer instruction, 
 they would not be possible. For, if M. Say is exposing a 
 mere lachete of youthful luxury, then it is a case rather for 
 a moralist than for an economist. But, if he means it as a
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 187 
 
 representative case, involving some principle as yet undis- 
 cussed, then it is insufficiently explained. But it is impos- 
 sible ; and precisely on the following argument : If, by 
 employing four thousand pounds in his trade, the man 
 could annually clear only two hundred and forty, (or very 
 little more than the interest at 5 per cent,) which, without 
 risk or trouble, he could have obtained at the date of M. 
 Say's book, and this at the very time when others were 
 realizing four times as much ; in that case, the true differ- 
 ence must arise from his turning over his capital only once, 
 whilst his rivals turned over theirs four and five times. 
 But every prudent tradesman would accept this as a warn- 
 ing to withdraw three fourths of his capital, when a second 
 year's experience had taught him that he could obtain only 
 one fourth of the profits reaped by others trading on the 
 same terms as himself; and, a fortiori, this policy will be 
 adopted by M. Say's furrier, who is supposed to act in mere 
 laziness. His profits will be the same upon one fourth of 
 the capital employed unintermittingly, as upon the four 
 fourths employed in succession : his risk will be reduced ; 
 and there will be a clear gain by the interest upon the 
 three fourths of capital now transfei-red to other hands. 
 Consequently, as cases to be argued in political economy, 
 as exemplary cases, these extreme ratios of profit, low and 
 high, stated hypothetically by M. Say, could not exist. As 
 individual accidents, ceasing to operate from the moment 
 when they are ascertained, they fall into that general fund 
 of known counter-agencies, which, upon all modes of pro- 
 ductive industry, compel us to compute by averages and by 
 prevailing tendencies. No man could persist in so perverse 
 a conflict with the manifest current and set of the tide run- 
 ning against him. Or, in the case of actually persisting, 
 his folly would indicate a mere individual anomaly ; and 
 such irregularities having no scientific influence on any
 
 188 THE LOGIC OP POLITICAL KCOXOMY. 
 
 general principles of economy, it could be no purpose of ^L 
 Say to deal with. 
 
 Yet, generally, that many openings exist for a licentious 
 latitude of profits, under circumstances the very same to 
 the public eye, had been long apparent. It was impossible 
 to be otherwise than incredulous as to the current asser- 
 tions on this subject, which were equally discredited, a 
 priori, by the known difficulty of ascertaining anything, 
 and, a posteriori, by the frequent inconsistency of their own 
 particular results. That the current rate of profits, as a 
 thing settled and defined, must be a chimera this was 
 certain ; and for the simple reason that, in each separate 
 walk of commerce, this rate of profits was a thing imper- 
 fectly known to the tradesman concerned. If he if the 
 men exercising the trade, cannot tell you the general rate 
 of profits even in this one trade, or even his own rate after 
 allowing for all the numerous deductions to be made upon 
 an average of ten years, how much less can a non-commer- 
 cial economist pretend to draw such a representative esti- 
 mate for all trades ? The pretence is monstrous under any 
 machinery which as yet we command for such a purpose. 
 
 In harmony with these views, let the reader take the 
 following case of judicial exposure upon this subject, re- 
 membering that similar exposures are almost of weekly 
 recurrence : A bankrupt (described as a mercer) was 
 under examination before a commissioner of bankruptcy, or 
 of insolvency. The commissioner asked him What, to 
 the best of his belief and knowledge, had been his custom- 
 ary rate of profit? The bankrupt replied firmly, "six per 
 cent." How, thought every man of consideration, did you 
 indeed face for years this risk, laborious attendance, and, 
 (worst of all) this anxiety, for so miserable an addition (two 
 and a half per cent) upon that income which, without either 
 labor, or risk, or anxiety, you might at any rate have
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 189 
 
 obtained from the national funds of your country ? In less 
 than a quarter of an hour, by some turn in the exami- 
 nation, it was extracted from him that he turned over his 
 capital every two months. The commodity in which he 
 had chiefly dealt appeared to have been Parisian silks, &c. ; 
 and in this trade, upon every thousand pounds, the sum 
 gained was not sixty pounds annually, as he had led the 
 court previously to suppose, but six times sixty, or three hun- 
 dred and sixty. It is true, on the other hand that not 
 improbably the bankrupt had taken no pains to distinguish 
 the mere replacements from the profits, strictly so called. 
 But still it could not be doubted that, in the very strictest 
 sense, his profits were far beyond the low standard under- 
 stood by the court at first if not thirty-six per cent, prob- 
 ably twenty-five to twenty-eight per cent ; whilst, from the 
 language of the court, as it fell under each impression suc- 
 cessively, no inference could be drawn that either had been 
 viewed as startling. 46 
 
 Now, what is it that I infer from this case ? I infer, 
 1st, that no definite rate of profit can be notorious to the 
 world of commerce, where a court, which may be consid- 
 ered one of its organs, can so quietly adopt by turns a 
 statement so entirely different. I infer, 2dly, that M. 
 Baptiste Say has, in a partial sense, grounds for his doc- 
 trine ; it cannot be denied him, that a possible tradesman 
 may turn over his large capital, three, four, or six times, 
 whilst an obscure tradesman in the same line may barely 
 turn over his own small capital once. The very fact of a 
 large capital is by itself a sort of invitation to such a re- 
 sult ; for gods and men alike disapprove of the wretch who 
 cannot offer credit. Now, the annual rate upon each hun- 
 dred pounds must be four times greater to him who four 
 times raises a profit upon that hundred, than to him who 
 raises such a profit but once. This is undeniable ; and it
 
 190 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 is therefore undeniable that, upon the two extremes in 
 respect of advantages for selling, the annual profits may be 
 in any degree different. But, in answer to M. Say, it must 
 be argued, 1st, that from all such extreme cases the 
 practice is and must be to abstract; and that, probably, 
 such extremes compensate each the other ; the average, the 
 prevailing tendency, is what we look at : %dly, that such 
 a case does not prove any different rate of profits ; for any- 
 thing that appears to the contrary, the little tradesman has 
 realized the same rate of profit upon each hundred pounds 
 as the big tradesman, only his absolute profits have been 
 less, both in the ratio of his less capital, and of his less 
 power to employ it with effect. Power to turn over a hun- 
 dred pounds four times instead of once, is in fact no more 
 than the power to command four hundred pounds instead 
 of one. The same consequences will take place. And, 
 reciprocally, where a man really has the four hundred, with 
 a virtual power only of profitably employing one hundred, 
 (which case is the very case propounded by M. Say,) he 
 will think himself obliged to withdraw three of the hun- 
 dreds ; for he will look upon it as the locking up of so much 
 useless capital. Or, if M. Say should retort, " No : just 
 the contrary ; because this man can turn over his hundred 
 pounds only once against the four turns of the big man ; a 
 fortiori, he must work his four hundred where else he 
 might bo content to work one hundred : that is the only 
 resource towards balancing matters, so far, at least, as 
 his power extends ; " yet, on the other hand, this is not the 
 case put by M. Say. He supposed a man to make less 
 profit, through industry in that proportion less ; but, in this 
 possible answer of M. Say, we have a disadvantage of 
 mere position balancing itself, or tending to do so, by indus- 
 try in that proportion greater. And in the last result we 
 find the true moral of the case to be, simply, that one man
 
 THE LOGIC OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 191 
 
 in the same trade can employ a greater capital than 
 another; sometimes directly, by employing twenty hun- 
 dreds of pounds where the other can employ only five ; 
 sometimes indirectly, by turning over several times (i. e. by 
 using for several distinct operations) each separate portion 
 of capital, whilst the other man turns it over only once. 
 But of all such differences between man and man, we may 
 say either that they do not affect the rate of profits by the 
 least disturbance ; or if in any case they do, in a Avorld of 
 practice where the principle of average must be applied to 
 wages, to rent, and to every mode of return, the inference 
 will simply be, that we must apply that principle also to 
 profits. I have already stated my own incredulity as to 
 the notoriety (not as to the existence) of any definite rate 
 upon profits at any period. Such a rate may be approxi- 
 mated conjecturally ; it cannot be known. But if it could, 
 that result must be obtained by abstracting from all ex- 
 tremes, whether one way or the other; and therefore to 
 have proved an extreme would not have disproved a mean 
 rate. 
 
 Finally, I will answer two important questions likely to 
 rise up in the end before every student : 
 
 Is there, he will ask, any known objection or demur to 
 the law of profits, as stated by Ricardo ? That is, any 
 demur to this particular doctrine as distinct from objection 
 to the entire system of Ricardo? I answer that there is 
 none, except the following of Mr. Malthus. He in his 
 Principles, at p. 301, (1st edit.) insists upon it, that there 
 is " a main cause which influences profits," quite overlooked 
 by Ricardo. What may that cause be ? " The proportion 
 which capital bears to labor." Ricardo had laid it down, 
 that the rate of profit upon the land last brought under 
 tillage, upon that land which is presumably the worst in 
 use, must be the regulating rate for all profits whatso-
 
 192 T11E LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ever. No, replies Mr. Malthus ; not necessarily. That is 
 one regulating cause, no doubt ; but there is another. 
 " When capital is abundant compared with labor, nothing 
 can prevent low profits " ; and inversely, no fertility in the 
 land as yet taken up can separately maintain high profits, 
 "unless capital is scarce compared with labor." But to 
 this, however tortuous the objection becomes by Mr. Mal- 
 thus's clouded logic, the answer is short. The action is 
 supposed to lie through wages. Mr. Malthus means that 
 the laborers will receive higher wages when capital is 
 redundant, so that the part of the produce left for profits 
 will be smaller ; and versa vice. But without entering into 
 the changes incident to the price of labor, (for labor does 
 not depend for its value upon any one element as capital, 
 but upon several, which may be all acting in one direction, 
 or all in opposite directions,) thus much is evident, that 
 only the binomial (or market) price of the labor could be 
 affected in the circumstances supposed, consequently only 
 the binomial value of profits. A disturbed relation be- 
 tween capital and labor, would no otherwise affect labor in 
 its price than as the rate of population would affect it. 
 When population advances too rapidly, the tendency of 
 wages must pro tanto be downwards ; and so of other ele- 
 ments concurring to the complex value of labor. But none 
 of these potential modifications escaped the eye of Ricardo : 
 again and again he has pointed them out as fit subjects for 
 allowance when they occur, though he has designedly and 
 avowedly neglected them where they would have interfered 
 with the simplicity of the principal law. What Mr. Mal- 
 thus brings forward as a second law, such as ought there- 
 fore to be capable of defeating and intercepting the first, is 
 nothing more than a tendency to modify the first. In the 
 same spirit of high promise and trivial performance, Mr. 
 Malthus had menaced the whole of Ricardo's doctrine upon
 
 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 193 
 
 value. The quantity of labor, he would show us, did not 
 always constitute the cost of an ai'ticle ; nor the cost of an 
 article always constitute its price. Why, then, what did? 
 With loud laughter Ricardo heard, as if this were some 
 new and strange proposition, that hy possibility the too 
 much or too little of the article might also affect the price, 
 a price of twenty might by a scarcity of five be raised 
 to twenty -five ; or by a redundancy of five be lowered to 
 fifteen. But who doubted, or had ever doubted, this? 
 That is binomial price. All the points which Malthus ex- 
 posed as weak and assailable points, had always been 
 exposed by Ricardo as points liable to a separate caution. 
 But this is not to answer Ricardo's doctrine of profits : this 
 is simply to exhibit Ricardo's doctrine with those modifica- 
 tions broadly expanded, which for good reasons Ricardo 
 hail left indicated in a briefer shape. 
 
 The other question remains a practical question, and 
 carrying along with it a sting of anxiety to whole genera- 
 tions. It is this. Amongst all men (even those who pre- 
 tend to no scientific economy) there is a misgiving that 
 profits, and by consequence interest, must be under a fatal 
 necessity of gradually sinking, until at length they touch 
 the point of extinction. Even Ricardo has too much 
 authorized this false idea. There is no essential tendency 
 downwards in profits, more than upwards. True, there is 
 ?i constant motion downwards upon the land scale from 
 good to bad, from bad to worse : and as that happens to be 
 chiefly concerned in the doctrine of rent, which again reap- 
 pears in the doctrines of profits and wages, Ricardo had a 
 disproportionate necessity for continually dwelling on that 
 particular movement. But to this, which acts from year to 
 year, there is a tendency strictly antagonist, which acts 
 much more slowly at times, and is felt most from century 
 to century. The principle has been repeatedly brought
 
 194 THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 forward and explained; so that there is no reason for 
 dwelling on it here. But, by way of a single illustration 
 from our modern experience in this particular, it may be 
 well to mention these facts. Go back to a period two cen- 
 turies from 1844, and the current rate of interest will be 
 found nearer to 8 than 7 per cent. Go back to a period 
 only one century from 1844, and interest is found to have 
 fallen so low as 3 per cent. This was the prevailing rate 
 through that part of Sir Robert Walpole's public life which 
 lay in the reign of George II., or, in general terms, from 
 1727 to about 1739-43. In the course of this latter 
 period, interest again began to advance ; and in forty or 
 forty-five years more it had risen beyond 5 per cent. 
 During the great revolutionary war, although limited at 
 that time by law, interest rose in the market much beyond 
 that legal maximum. It was more than double what- it 
 had been in the reign of George II. In our present era 
 of peace, uninterrupted for twenty-eight years, it has again 
 receded. But this brief abstract of experience through 
 two centuries, unites with the a priori theory in showing, 
 that the rate of interest is under no immutable law of 
 declension. During these two centuries it has not uni- 
 formly declined, on the contrary, it has oscillated in all 
 directions ; and by that one fact, so abundantly established, 
 we are released from all apprehensions of a downward 
 destiny. Our fate in that respect is not sealed; it rests 
 very much in our own hands.
 
 DIALOGUES OF THREE TEMPLARS 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 CHIEFLY IN RELATION TO THE PRINCIPLES 
 OF MR. RICARDO. 
 
 ORIGINAL ADVERTISEMENT, IN APRIL, 1824. 
 
 I HAVE resolved to fling my analysis of Mr. Ricardo's system into 
 ihe form of Dialogues. A few words will suffice to determine the 
 principles of criticism which can fairly be applied to such a form of 
 composition on such a subject. It cannot reasonably be expected that 
 dialogues on Political Economy should pretend to the appropriate 
 beauty of dialogues as dialogues, by throwing any dramatic interest 
 into the parts sustained by the different speakers, or any character- 
 istic distinctions into their style. Elegance of this sort, if my time 
 had allowed of it, or I had been otherwise capable of producing it, 
 would have been here misplaced. Not that I would say even of 
 Political Economy, in the words commonly applied to such subjects, 
 that "Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri:" for all things have 
 their peculiar beauty and sources of ornament determined by their 
 ultimate ends, and by the process of the mind in pursuing them. 
 Here, as in the processes of nature and in mathematical demonstra- 
 tions, the appropriate elegance is derived from the simplicity of the 
 means employed, as expressed in the " Lex Parcimoniro " (" Frustra 
 fit per plura, quod fieri fas erat per pauoiora "), and other maxims 
 of that sort. This simplicity, however, must be looked for in the 
 order and relation of the thoughts, and in the steps through which 
 they are trained to lead into each other, rather than in any anxious 
 'onoteeness as to words; which, on the contrary, I have rather sought 
 U avoid in the earlier Dialogues, in order that I might keep those 
 distinctions longer before the reader from which all the rest were to 
 be derived. For he who has fully mastered the doctrine of Value is 
 %lready a good political economist. Now, if any man should object, 
 ,'iiat in the following dialogues 1 have uniformly given the yictory
 
 IOC THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES. 
 
 to myself, he will make a pleasant logical blunder . for the trm 
 logic of the case is thU : Not that it is myself to whom I give the 
 victory ; but that he to whom I give the victory (let me call him 
 by what name I will) is of necessity myself; since I cannot be sup- 
 posed to have put triumphant arguments into any speaker's mouth, 
 unless they had previously convinced my own understanding. 
 Finally, let me entreat the reaier not to be impatient under the 
 disproportionate length (as he may fancy it) of the opening discus- 
 sions on Value : even for its own sake, the subject is a matter of 
 curious speculation ; but in relation to Political Economy it is all 
 in all ; for most of the errors (and, what is much worse than errors, 
 most of the perplexities) prevailing in this science take their rise 
 from this source. Mr. Ricardo is the first writer who has thrown 
 light on the subject ; and even he, in the last edition of his book, 
 Btill found it a "difficult" one (see the Advertisement to the Third 
 Edition). What a Ricardo has found difficult, cannot be adequately 
 discussed in few words ; but, if the reader will once thoroughly 
 master this part of the science, all the rest will cost him hardly any 
 effort at all. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY DIALOGUE. 
 
 (SPEAKERS THROUGHOUT THE DIALOGUES ARK PHJEDKUS, 
 PHILEBUS, AND X. T. Z. ) 
 
 Phcedrus. THIS, Philebus, is my friend X. Y. Z., 
 whom I have long wished to introduce to you ; he 
 has some business which calls him into this quarter 
 of the town for the next fortnight ; and during that 
 time he has promised to dine with me ; and we are 
 to discuss together the modern doctrines of Political 
 Economy ; most of which, he tells me, are due to 
 Mr. Ricardo. Or rather, I should say, that I am tc 
 become his pupil ; for I pretend to no regular knowl 
 edge of Political Economy, having picked up what 
 little I possess in a desultory way amongst the writ- 
 ers of the old school ; and, out of that little. X
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 197 
 
 obligingly tells me that three fourths are rotten. 1 
 am glad, therefore, that you are in town at this time, 
 and can come and help me to contradict him. Mean- 
 lime X. has some right to play the tutor amongst 
 us ; for he has been a regular student of the science : 
 another of his merits is, that he is a Templar as 
 well as ourselves, and a good deal senior to either 
 of us. 
 
 Philebus. And for which of his merits is it that 
 you would have me contradict him ? 
 
 Phced. 0, no matter for his merits, which doubt- 
 less are past all computation, but generally as a 
 point of hospitality. For I am of the same opinion 
 
 as M , a very able friend of mine in Liverpool, 
 
 who looks upon it as criminal to concede anything a 
 man says in the process of a disputation : the nefari- 
 ous habit of assenting (as he justly says) being the 
 pest of conversation, by causing it to stagnate. On 
 this account he often calls aside the talking men of 
 the party before dinner, and conjures them with a 
 pathetic earnestness not to agree with him in any- 
 thing he may advance during the evening ; and at 
 his own table, when it has happened that strangers 
 were present who indulged too much in the habit of 
 politely assenting to anything which seemed to de- 
 mand no particular opposition, I have seen him sud- 
 denly pause with the air of the worst-used man in 
 the world, and exclaim, " Good heavens ! is there 
 ro be no end to this ? Am I never to be contra- 
 dicted ? I suppose matters will soon come to that 
 pass that my nearest relations will be perfidiously 
 %greeing with me ; th,e very wife of my bosom will 
 refuse t,i contradict me ; and I shall not have a friend
 
 198 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 left on whom I can depend for the consolations of 
 opposition." 
 
 Phil. Well, Phsedrus, if X. Y. Z. is so much de- 
 voted as you represent to the doctrines of Mr. Ri- 
 cardo, I shall perhaps find myself obliged to indulge 
 your wishes in this point more than my own taste in 
 conversation would lead me to desire. 
 
 X. And what, may I ask, is the particular ground 
 of your opposition to Mr. Ricardo ? 
 
 Phced. I suppose that, like the man who gave his 
 vote against Aristides, because it wearied him to 
 hear any man surnamed the just, Philebus is annoyed 
 by finding that so many people look up to Mr. Ri- 
 cardo as an oracle. 
 
 Phil. No : for the very opposite reason ; it is be- 
 cause I hear him generally complained of as obscure, 
 and as ambitiously paradoxical ; two faults which 1 
 cannot tolerate : and the extracts from his writings 
 which I have seen satisfy me that this judgment is 
 a reasonable one. 
 
 Phced. In addition to which, Philebus, I now rec- 
 ollect something which perhaps weighs with you 
 still more, though you have chosen to suppress it ; 
 and that is, that you are a disciple of Mr. Malthus, 
 ^very part of whose writings, since the year 1816 
 (I am assured), have had one origin jealousy of 
 Mr. Ricardo, " quern si non aliqua nocuisset, mortuus 
 esset." 
 
 X. No, no, Phsedrus ; we must not go so far as 
 that ; though undoubtedly it is true that Mr. Malthui 
 has often conducted his opposition in a most vexa- 
 tious and disingenuous manner.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 199 
 
 Phil. How BO ? In what instance ? In what In- 
 Btance ? 
 
 X. In this, for one. Mr. Malthus, in his "Politi- 
 cal Economy" (1820), repeatedly charged Mr. Ri 
 cardo with having confounded the two notions of 
 " cost " and " value : " I smile, by the way, when I 
 repeat such a charge, as if it were the office of a Ri- 
 cardo to confound, or of a Malthus to distinguish : 
 but 
 
 " Non usque adeo permiscuit imis 
 Longns summa dies, ut non si voce Metelli 
 Serventur leges malint a Caesare tolli." * 
 
 Phil " Imis ! " Why, I hope, if Mr. Ricardo may 
 do for the Csesar of the case, Mr. Malthus is not 
 therefore to be thought the Hetellus! " Imis," in- 
 deed ! 
 
 X. As to this, he is : his general merits of good 
 sense and ingenuity we all acknowledge ; but for the 
 office of a distinguisher, or any other which demands 
 logic in the first place, it is impossible to conceive 
 any person below him. To go on, however, with my 
 instance : this objection of Mr. Malthus' about 
 " cost" and " value " was founded purely on a very 
 great blunder of his own so great, that (as I shall 
 show in its proper place) even Mr. Ricardo did not 
 see the whole extent of his misconception : thus 
 much, however, was plain, that the meaning of Mr. 
 Malthus was, that the new doctrine of value allowed 
 
 * For the sake of the unclassical reader, I add a prose translation. 
 Not to such an extent has the lapse of time confounded thing! 
 . ighest with things lowest, as that if the laws can bo saved only 
 . j the voice of a Metellus they would not rather choose to be 
 kolished by a Caesar.
 
 200 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 for wages, but did not allow for profits ; and thus, 
 according to the Malthusian terminology, expressed 
 the cost but not the value of a thing. What was 
 Mr. Ricardo's answer ? In the third edition of his 
 book (p. 46), he told Mr. Malthus that, if the word 
 "cost" were understood in any sense which excluded 
 profits, then he did not assert the thing attributed to 
 him ; on the other hand, if it were understood in a 
 sense which included profits, then of course he did 
 assert it ; but, then, in that sense Mr. Malthus him- 
 self did not deny it. This plain answer was published 
 in 1821. Will it be believed that two years after 
 (namely, in the spring of 1823), Mr. Malthus pub- 
 lished a pamphlet, in which he repeats the same 
 objection over arid over again, without a hint that it 
 had ever met with a conclusive explanation which it 
 was impossible to misunderstand ? Neither must it 
 be alleged that Mr. Malthus might not have seen 
 this third edition ; for it is the very edition which he 
 constantly quotes in that pamphlet. 
 
 Phced. What say you to this, my dear Philebus ? 
 7ou seem to be in perplexity. 
 
 X. But an instance of far greater disingenuous- 
 ness is this : Mr. Ricardo, after laying down the 
 general law of value, goes on to state three cases in 
 which that law will be modified ; and the extraor- 
 dinary sagacity with which he has detected and 
 stated these modifications, and the startling conse- 
 quences to which they lead, have combined to make 
 this one of the most remarkable chapters in his 
 books. Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, that these very 
 estrictions of his own law so openly stated aa 
 icstrictions by Mr. Ricardo are brought forward by
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 201 
 
 Mr. Malthas as so many objections of his own to 
 upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of 
 notice ; for it is as if, in a question about the force 
 of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance 
 of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a 
 capital objection to it. What I here insist on, how- 
 ever, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a 
 subject which it is unpleasant to pursue ; and the 
 course of our subject will of itself bring us but too 
 often across the blunders and misstatements of Mr. 
 Malthus. To recur, therefore, to what you objected 
 about Mr. Ricardo that he was said to be paradox- 
 ical and obscure I presume that you use the word 
 " paradoxical " in the common and improper sense, 
 as denoting what has a specious air of truth and sub- 
 tlety, but is in fact false ; whereas I need not tell 
 you that a paradox is the very opposite of this 
 meaning in effect what has a specious air of falsehood, 
 though possibly very true ; for a paradox, you know, 
 is simply that which contradicts the popular opinion 
 which in too many cases is the false opinion ; and 
 in none more inevitably than in cases as remote from 
 the popular understanding as all questions of severe 
 science. However, use the word in what sense you 
 please, Mr. Ricardo is no ways interested in the 
 charge. Are my doctrines true, are they demonstra- 
 ble ? is the question for him ; if not, let them be 
 overthrown ; if that is beyond any man's power, 
 what matters it to him that the slumbering intellect 
 >f the multitude regards them as strange ? As to 
 obscurity in general it is of two kinds one arising 
 out of the writer's own perplexity of thought ; which 
 e a vicious obscurity ; and in this sense the oppo-
 
 202 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 nents of Mr. Ricardo are the obscurest of all econo 
 mists. Another kind 
 
 Phced. Ay, now let us hear what is a virtuoua 
 obscurity. 
 
 -X". I do not say, Phsedrus, that in any case it can 
 be meritorious to be obscure ; but I say that in many 
 cases it is very natural to be so, and pardonable in 
 profound thinkers, and in some cases inevitable. Frr 
 the other kind of obscurity which I was going to 
 notice is that which I would denominate elliptical 
 obscurity ; arising-, I mean, out of the frequent ellipsis 
 or suppression of some of the links in a long chain 
 of thought ; these are often involuntarily suppressed 
 by profound thinkers, from the disgust which they 
 naturally feel at overlaying a subject with superfluous 
 explanations. So far from seeing too dimly, as in 
 the case of perplexed obscurity, their defect is the 
 very reverse ; they see too clearly ; and fancy that 
 others see as clearly as themselves. Such, without 
 any tincture of confusion, was the obscurity of Kant 
 (though in him there was also a singular defect of the 
 art of communicating knowledge, as he was himself 
 aware) ; such was the obscurity of Leibnitz (who 
 otherwise was remarkable for his felicity in explain- 
 ing himself); such, if any, is the obscurity of 
 Ricardo ; though, for my own part, I must acknowl- 
 edge that I could never find any ; to me he seems a 
 model of perspicuity. But I believe that the very 
 ground of his perspicuity to me is the ground of bin 
 apparent obscurity to some others, and that is his 
 inexorable consistency in the use of words ; and this 
 is one of the cases which I alluded to in speaking of 
 in " inevitable obscurity ;" for, wherever men hav
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 20S 
 
 been accustomed to use a word in two senses, and 
 have yet supposed themselves to use it but in one, 
 a writer, who corrects this lax usage, and forces 
 them to maintain the unity of the meaning, will 
 always appear obscure ; because he will oblige them 
 to deny or to affirm consequences from which they 
 were hitherto accustomed to escape under a constant 
 though unconscious equivocation between the two 
 senses. Thus, for example, Mr. Ricardo sternly 
 insists on the true sense of the word Value, and 
 (what is still more unusual to most men) insists on 
 using it but in one sense ; and hence arise conse- 
 quences which naturally appear at once obscure and 
 paradoxical to M. Say, to Mr. Malthus, to the 
 author of an Essay on Value ; * and to all other lax 
 thinkers, who easily bend their understandings to 
 the infirmity of the popular usage. Hence, it is not 
 surprising to find Mr. Malthus complaining ("Polit. 
 Econ.," p. 214) of " the unusual application of com- 
 mon terms " as having made Mr. Ricardo's work 
 " difficult to be understood by many people ;" though, 
 in fact, there is nothing at all unusual in his applica- 
 tion of any term whatever, but only in the steadiness 
 with which he keeps to the same application of it. 
 
 Phil. These distinctions of yours on the subject of 
 obscurity I am disposed to think reasonable ; and, 
 unless the contrary should appear in the course of 
 our conversations, I will concede them to be applica- 
 ble to the case of Mr. Ricardo ; his obscurity may 
 be venial, or it may be inevitable, or even none at 
 
 * I forget the exact title ; but it was pricted for Hunter, St. Faul'i 
 yard.
 
 204 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 all (if you will have it so). But I cannot allow of 
 the cases of Kant and Leibnitz as at all relevant to 
 that before us. For, the obscurity complained of in 
 metaphysics, etc., is inherent in the very objects con- 
 templated, and is independent of the particular mind 
 contemplating, and exists in defiance of the utmost 
 talents for diffusing light ; whereas the objects about 
 which Political Economy is concerned are acknowl- 
 edged by all persons to be clear and simple enough, 
 BO that any obscurity which hangs over them must 
 arise from imperfections in the art of arranging and 
 conveying ideas on the part of him who undertakes 
 to teach it. 
 
 X. This I admit: any obscurity which clouds 
 Political Economy, unless where it arises from want 
 of sufficient facts, must be subjective ; whereas the 
 main obscurity which besets metaphysics is objective ; 
 and such an obscurity is in the fullest sense inevi- 
 table. But this I did not overlook ; for an objective 
 obscurity it is in the power of any writer to aggra- 
 vate by his own perplexities ; and I alleged the cases 
 of Kant and Leibnitz no further than as they were 
 said to have done so ; contending that, if Mr. Ricardo 
 were at all liable to the same charge, he was entitled 
 to the same apology ; namely, that he is never obscure 
 from any confusion of thought, but, on the contrary, 
 from too keen a perception of the truth, which may 
 have seduced him at times into too elliptic a develop- 
 ment of his opinions, and made him impatient of the 
 tardy and continuous steps which are best adapted 
 to the purposes of the teacher. For the fact is, that 
 the laborers of the Mine (as I am accustomed to call 
 them), or those who dig up the metal of truth, are
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 205 
 
 seldom fitted to be also laborers of the Mint that is, 
 to work up the metal for current use. Besides 
 which, it must not be forgotten that Mr. Ricardo did 
 not propose to deliver an entire system of Political 
 Economy, but only an investigation of such doctrines 
 as had happened to be imperfectly or erroneously 
 stated. On this account, much of his work is 
 polemic ; and presumes, therefore, in the reader an 
 acquaintance with the writers whom he is opposing. 
 Indeed, in every chapter there is an under reference, 
 not to this or that author only, but to the whole cur- 
 rent of modern opinions on the subject, which 
 demands a learned reader who is already master of 
 what is generally received for truth in Political 
 Economy. 
 
 Phil. Upon this statement it appears at any rate 
 that Mr. Ricardo's must be a most improper book as 
 an elementary one. But, after all, you will admit 
 that even amongst Mr. Ricardo's friends there is a 
 prevailing opinion that he is too subtle (or, as it is 
 usually expressed, too theoretic) a writer to be safely 
 relied on for the practical uses of legislation. 
 
 X. Yes. And, indeed, we are all so deeply in- 
 debted to English wisdom on matters where theories 
 really are dangerous, that we ought not to wonder 
 or to complain if the jealousy of all which goes under 
 lhat name be sometimes extended to cases in which 
 t is idle to suppose any opposition possible between 
 the true theory and the practice. However, on the 
 whole question whir-h has been moved in regard to 
 Mr. Ricardo's obscurity or tendency to paradox or 
 to over refinement and false subtlety, I am satisfied 
 if I have won you to any provisional suspension of
 
 206 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 your prejudices ; and will now press it no further 
 willingly leaving the matter to be settled by the 
 result of our discussions. 
 
 Phced. Do so, X. ; and especially because my 
 watch informs me that dinner an event too awfully 
 practical to allow of any violation from mere sublu- 
 nary disputes will be announced in six minutes ; 
 within which space of time I will trouble you to 
 produce the utmost possible amount of truth with 
 the least possible proportion of obscurity, whether 
 " subjective " or " objective," that may be con- 
 venient. 
 
 X. As the time which you allow us is so short, I 
 think that I cannot better employ it than in reading 
 a short paper which I have drawn up on the most 
 general distribution of Mr. Ricardo's book ; because 
 this may serve to guide us in the course of our future 
 discussions. 
 
 " Mr. Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy 
 consisted in the second edition of thirty-one chapters, 
 to which, in the third edition, was added another, 
 making thirty-two. These thirty-two chapters fall 
 into the following classification: Fourteen are on 
 the subject of Taxation, namely, the eighth to the 
 eighteenth,* inclusively, the twenty-second, twenty- 
 
 * The eleventh is on Tithes ; and the eighteenth on Poor Rates ; 
 but these of course belong to the subject of Taxation properly defined. 
 The present Lord Chancellor (late Earl of Eldon) said on some cause 
 which came before him about a year ago, that Tithes were unjustly 
 tailed a Tax ; meaning only that Tithes were not any arbitrary im- 
 position of the government, but claimed by as good a tenure as any 
 other sort of property. In this doctrine no doubt the Chancellor was 
 perfectly right ; and only wrong in supposing that any denial of that 
 doctrine is implied by the Political Economists in calling Tithes a
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 207 
 
 third, and twenty-ninth; and these may be entirely 
 omitted by the student, and ought at any rate to be 
 omitted on his first examination of the work. For, 
 though Mr. Ricardo has really been not the chief so 
 much as the sole author of any important truths on 
 the subject of Taxation, and though his fourteen 
 chapters on that head are so many inestimable corol- 
 laries from his general doctrines, and could never 
 have been obtained without them, yet these general 
 doctrines have no sort of reciprocal dependency upon 
 what concerns Taxation. Consequently, it will 
 greatly lighten the burden to a student if these four- 
 teen chapters are sequestered from the rest of the 
 work, and reserved for a separate and after investi- 
 gation, which may furnish a commentary on the first. 
 The chapters on Taxation deducted, there remain, 
 therefore, seventeen in the second edition, or eighteen 
 in the third. These contain the general principles, 
 but also something more which may furnish matter 
 for a second subtraction. For, in most speculations 
 of this nature it usually happens that, over and above 
 the direct positive communication of new truths, a 
 writer finds it expedient (or, perhaps, necessary in 
 some cases, in order to clear the ground for himself) 
 to address part of his efforts to the task of meeting 
 the existing errors ; hence arises a division of his 
 work into the doctrinal or affirmative part, and the 
 polemic * or negative part. In Mr. Ricardo's writings, 
 
 Tax ; which, on the true definition of a Tax (as I shall show here- 
 ifter), they certainly are. 
 
 * Polemic. There is an occasional tendency in the use and prac- 
 tice of the English language capriciously to limit the use of certaiv 
 Adonis. Thus, for instance, the word condign is used only in oonnec
 
 208 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 all parts (as I have already observed) have a latent 
 polemic reference ; but some, however, are more 
 directly and formally polemic than the rest ; and 
 these may be the more readily detached from the 
 main body of the work, because (like the chapters 
 on Taxation) they are all corollaries from the general 
 laws, and in no case introductory to them. Divided 
 
 tion with the word punishment ; the word implicit is used only (unless 
 by scholars, like Milton) in connection with faith, or confidence. So 
 also putative is restricted most absurdly to the one sole word father, 
 in a question of doubtful affiliation. These and other words, if un- 
 locked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively 
 useful. We should say, for instance, " condign honors," " condign 
 rewards," " condign treatment " (treatment appropriate to the 
 merits) thus at once realizing two rational purposes : namely, 
 giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none ; and 
 also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise 
 is left without means of uttering itself, except through a ponderous 
 circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and 
 absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according 
 tc the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable con- 
 nection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish 
 chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology ; 
 but so there is of all knowledge ; so there is of every science. The 
 radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic it 
 found in our own parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, as con- 
 trasted with the good debater. The good speaker is he who unfolds 
 the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these 
 aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and 
 symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he 
 who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden 
 objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or 
 difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geo- 
 metrical smoothness of a priori abstractions with the coarse angulari- 
 ties of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of neces 
 lity, and almost in every page, polemic ; whilst very often the 
 particular objections or difficulties to which it replies are not indi- 
 lated at all being spread through entire systems, and assumed at 
 Recognita that are familiar to the learned student.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 209 
 
 3n this principle, the eighteen chapters fall into the 
 following arrangement : 
 
 Chap. 
 
 1. 
 
 4. 
 JO. 
 
 2. 
 
 3. 
 
 5. 
 
 6. 
 
 7. 
 19. 
 21. 
 25. 
 27. 
 II. 
 
 Affirmative Chapters, 
 on Value ; 
 
 on Rent ; 
 
 on Wages ; 
 
 on Profits ; 
 
 on Foreign Trade ; 
 
 on Sudden Changes in Trade ; 
 
 on Accumulation ; 
 
 on Colonial Trade ; 
 
 on Currency and Banks ; 
 
 on Machinery. 
 
 Chap. Negative (or Polemic) Chapters 
 
 20. on Value and Riches : against 
 Adam Smith, Lord Lauder- 
 dale, M. Say ; 
 
 24. Bent of Laud: against Adam 
 Smith ; 
 
 26. Gross and Net Revenue 
 against Adam Smith ; 
 
 28. Relations of Gold, Corn, and 
 Labor, under certain cir- 
 cumstances : against A 
 Smith ; 
 
 32. Rent : against Mr. Malthus. 
 
 Deducting the polemic chapters, there remain 
 thirteen affirmative or doctrinal chapters ; of which 
 one (the twenty-seventh), on Currency, &c., ought 
 always to be insulated from all other parts of Polit- 
 ical Economy. And thus, out of the whole thirty- 
 two chapters, twelve only are important to the 
 student on his first examination ; and to these I 
 propose to limit our discussions. 
 
 Phced. Be it so, and now let us adjourn to more 
 solemn duties. 
 
 DIALOGUE THE FIRST. 
 
 ON THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Phced. To cut the matter short, X. Y. Z., and to 
 
 begin as near as possible to toe end is there any 
 
 one principle in Political Economy froia which all the 
 
 *est can be deduced ? A principle, I mean, which 
 
 14
 
 10 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 nil others presuppose, but which itself presupposes 
 none. 
 
 X. There is, Phaedrus ; such a principle exists in 
 the doctrine of Value truly explained. The ques- 
 tion from which all Political Economy will be found 
 to move the question to which all its difficulties 
 will be found reducible is this : What is the ground 
 of exchangeable value ? My hat, for example, bears 
 the same value as your umbrella ; double the value 
 of my shoes ; four times the value of my gloves ; one 
 twentieth of the value of this watch. Of these several 
 relations of value, what is the sufficient cause ? If 
 they were capricious, no such science as that of 
 Political Economy could exist ; not being capricious, 
 they must have an assignable cause ; this cause 
 what is it ? 
 
 Phced. Ay, what is it ? 
 
 X. It is this, Phaedrus ; and the entire merit of 
 the discovery belongs to Mr. Ricardo. It is this ; 
 and listen with your whole understanding : the ground 
 of the value of all things lies in the quantity (but mark 
 well that word " quantity ") of labor which produces 
 them. Here is that great principle which is the 
 corner-stone of all tenable Political Economy ; which 
 granted or denied, all Political Economy stands OP 
 falls. Grant me this one principle, with a few square 
 feet of the sea-shore to draw my diagrams upon, 
 and I will undertake to deduce every other truth in 
 the science. 
 
 Phced. Take it and welcome. It would be impos- 
 sible for most people to raise a cabbage out of the 
 sea-shore, though the sand were manured by pno- 
 tiples the noblest. You, therefore, my dear friend
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 2H 
 
 lhat promise to raise from it, not a cabbage, but a 
 system of Political Economy, are doubly entitled to 
 your modicum of sand, and to your principle beside ; 
 which last is, I dare say, a very worthy and respect- 
 able principle, and not at all the worse for being as 
 old as my great-grandfather. 
 
 X. Pardon me, Phaedrus ; the principle is no older 
 than the first edition of Mr. Ricardo's book ; and 
 when you make me this concession so readily under 
 the notion that you are conceding nothing more than 
 has long been established, I fear that you will seek 
 to retract it, as soon as you are aware of its real 
 import and consequences. 
 
 Phced. In most cases, X., I should hesitate to con- 
 tradict you peremptorily upon a subject which you 
 have studied so much more closely than myself; but 
 here I cannot hesitate ; for I happen to remember 
 the very words of Adam Smith, which are 
 
 X. Substantially the same, you will say, as those 
 which I have employed in expressing the great 
 principle of Mr. Ricardo : this is your meaning, 
 Phsedrus ; and excuse me for interrupting you ; I 
 am anxious to lose no time ; and therefore let me 
 remind you, as soon as possible, that " the words " 
 of Adam Smith cannot prove any agreement with 
 Mr. Ricardo, if it appears that those words are used 
 as equivalent and convertible at pleasure with certain 
 other words not only irreconcilable with Mr. Ri- 
 cardo's principle, but expressing the very doctrine 
 which Mr. Ricardo does, and must in consistency, 
 set himself to oppose. Mr. Ricardo's doctrine is, 
 that A and B are to each other in value as the 
 quantity of labor is which produces A to the quantity
 
 212 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 which produces B ; or, to express it iu the very 
 shortest formula by substituting the term base, aa 
 synonymous with the term producing labor, Ail tilings 
 are to each other in value as their bases are in quantity, 
 This is the Ricardian law : you allege that it was 
 already the law of Adam Smith ; and in some sense 
 you are right ; for such a law is certain to be found 
 in the " Wealth of Nations." But, if it is explicitly 
 affirmed in that work, it is also implicitly denied : 
 formally asserted, it is virtually withdrawn. For 
 Adam Smith everywhere uses, as an equivalent 
 formula, that A and B are to each other in value as 
 the value of the labor which produces A to the value 
 of the labor which produces B. 
 
 Phced. And the formula for Mr. Ricardo's law is, 
 if I understand you, that A and B are to each other 
 in value not as the value, but as the quantity of the 
 labor which produces A to the quantity which pro- 
 duces B. 
 
 X. It is. 
 
 Phced. And is it possible that any such mighty 
 magic can lurk in the simple substitution of quantity 
 for value f Surely, X., you are hair-splitting a little 
 in this instance, and mean to amuse yourself with 
 my simplicity, by playing off some logical legerde- 
 main upon me from the "seraphic" or "angelic" 
 doctors. 
 
 X. The earnestness and good faith of my whole 
 logic and reasoning will soon become a pledge for 
 me that I am incapable of what you call hair-split- 
 ting ; and in this particular instance I might appeal 
 to Philebus, who will tell you that Mr. Malthus has 
 grounded his entire opposition to Mr. Ricardo on th
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 213 
 
 rery distinction which you are now treating as aerial. 
 But the fact is, you do not yet perceive to what 
 extent this distinction goes ; you suppose me to be 
 contending for some minute and subtle shades of 
 difference ; so far from Qiat, I mean to affirm that the 
 one law is the direct, formal, and diametrical nega- 
 tion of the other : I assert in the most peremptory 
 manner that he who says, "The value of A is to the 
 value of B as the quantity of labor producing A is to 
 the quantity of labor producing B," does of necessity 
 deny by implication that the relations of value be- 
 tween A and B are governed by the value of the 
 labor which severally produces them. 
 
 Phil. X. is perfectly right in his distinction. You 
 know, Pheedrus, or you soon will know, that I differ 
 from X. altogether on the choice between the two. 
 laws : he contends that the value of all things is 
 determined by the quantity of the producing labor ; 
 I, on the other hand, contend that the value of all 
 things is determined by the value of the pi-oducing 
 labor. Thus far you will find us irreconcilable ir. 
 our difference ; but this very difference implies that 
 we are agreed on the distinction which X. is now 
 urging. In fact, so far are the two formulae from 
 presenting merely two different expressions of the 
 same law, that the very best way of expressing 
 negatively Mr. Ricardo's law (namely, A is to B in 
 ealue as the quantities }f the producing labor) would 
 L/C to say, A is not to B in value as the values of the 
 producing labor. 
 
 Phced. Well, gentlemen, I suppose you must be 
 right ; I am sure you are by the logic of kings, and 
 "according to the flesh;" for you are two to one
 
 214 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 Yet, to my poor glimmering understanding, which i 
 all I have to guide me in such cases, I must acknowl- 
 edge that the whole question seems to be a mere 
 dispute about words. 
 
 X. For once, Phaedrus, I am not sorry to heai 
 you using a phrase which in general is hateful to my 
 ears. " A mere dispute about words " is a phrase 
 which we hear daily ; and why ? Is it a case of 
 such daily occurrence to hear men disputing about 
 mere verbal differences ? So far from it, I can truly 
 say that I never happened to witness such a dispute 
 in my whole life, either in books or in conversation ; 
 and indeed, considering the small number of absolute 
 synonymes which any language contains, it is 
 scarcely possible that a dispute on words should 
 arise which would not also be a dispute about ideas 
 (that is, about realities). Why, then, is the phrase 
 in every man's mouth, when the actual occurrence 
 must be so very uncommon ? The reason is this, 
 Phaedrus : such a plea is a " sophisma pigri intel- 
 lectus," which seeks to escape from the effort of 
 mind necessary for the comprehending and solving 
 of any difficulty under the colorable pretext that it is 
 a question about shadows, and not about substances, 
 and one therefore which it is creditable to a man's 
 good sense to decline ; a pleasant sophism this, 
 which at the same time flatters a man's indolence 
 and his vanity. For once, however, I repeat that I 
 am not .sorry to hear such a phrase in your mouth, 
 Phaedrus : I have heard it from you before ; and I 
 will frankly tell you that you ought to be ashamed 
 of such a plea, which is becoming to a slothful intel 
 lect, but very unbecoming to yours. On this account
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 215 
 
 it gives me pleasure that you have at length urged 
 It in a case where you will be obliged to abandon it 
 If that should happen, remember what I have said ; 
 and resolve never more to shrink effeminately from 
 the toil of an intellectual discussion under any pre- 
 tence that it is a verbal dispute. In the present case, 
 I shall drive you out of that conceit in less time than 
 it cost you to bring it forward. For now, Pheedrus, 
 answer me to one or two little questions which I will 
 put. You fancy that between the expressions " quan- 
 tity of producing labor" and "value of producing 
 labor" there is none but a verbal difference. It fol- 
 lows, therefore, that the same effect ought to take 
 place whether the value of the producing labor be 
 altered or its quantity. 
 
 Phced. It does. 
 
 X. For instance, the production of a hat such as 
 mine has hitherto cost (we will suppose) four days' 
 labor, at three shillings a day : now, without any 
 change whatsoever in the quantity of labor required 
 for its production, let this labor suddenly increase in 
 value by twenty-five per cent. In this case, four 
 days' labor will produce a hat as heretofore ; but the 
 value of the producing labor being now raised from 
 three shillings a day to three shillings and nine 
 pence, the value of the total labor necessary for the 
 production of a hat will now be raised from twelve 
 shillings to fifteen shillings. Thus far, you can have 
 nothing to object? 
 
 Phced. Nothing at all, X But what next ? 
 
 X. Next, let us suppose a case in which the labor 
 of producing hats shall increase, not in value (as in 
 the preceding case), but in quantity Labor is still
 
 216 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGURA 
 
 at its old value of three shillings a day ; but, from 
 increased difficulty in any part of the process, five 
 days' labor are now spent on the production of a hat 
 instead of four. In this second case, Phsedrus, ho\v 
 much will be paid to the laborer ? 
 
 Phced. Precisely as much as in the first case : that 
 is, fifteen shillings. 
 
 X. True : the laborer on hats receives fifteen shil- 
 lings in the second case as well as in the first ; but 
 in the first case for four days' labor, in the second 
 for five : consequently, in the second case, wages (or 
 the value of labor) have not risen at all, whereas in 
 the first case wages have risen by twenty-five per 
 cent. 
 
 Phoed. Doubtless : but what is your inference ? 
 
 X. My inference is as follows : according to your- 
 self and Adam Smith, and all those who overlook the 
 momentous difference between the quantity and the 
 value of labor, fancying that these are mere varieties 
 of expression for the same thing, the price of hats 
 ought, in the two cases stated, to be equally raised, 
 namely, three shillings in each case. If, then, it be 
 utterly untrue that the price of hats would be equally 
 raised in the two cases, it will follow that an altera- 
 tion in the value of the producing labor, and an altera- 
 tion in its quantity, must terminate in a very different 
 result ; and, consequently, the one alteration cannot 
 )e the same as the other, as you insisted. 
 
 Phced. Doubtless. 
 
 X. Now, then, let me tell you, Phacdrus, that the 
 price of hats would not be equally raised in the two 
 eases ; in the second case, the price of a hat will rise
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 217 
 
 by three shillings, in the first case it will not rise 
 at all. 
 
 Phced. How so, X. ? How so ? Your own state- 
 ment supposes that the laborer receives fifteen shil- 
 lings for four days, instead of twelve shillings ; that is, 
 three shillings more. Now, if the price does not rise 
 to meet this rise of labor, I demand to know whence 
 the laborer is to obtain this additional three shil- 
 lings. If the buyers of hats do not pay him in the 
 price of hats, I presume that the buyers of shoes will 
 not pay him. The poor devil must be paid by some- 
 body. 
 
 X. You are facetious, my friend. The man must 
 be paid, as you say ; but not by the buyers of hats 
 any more than by the buyers of shoes : for the price 
 of hats cannot possibly rise in such a case, as I have 
 said before. And, that I may demonstrate this, let 
 us assume that when the labor spent on a hat cost 
 twelve shillings, the rate of profits was fifty per 
 cent. ; it is of no consequence what rate be fixed 
 on : assuming this rate, therefore, the price of a hat 
 would, at that time, be eighteen shillings. Now, 
 when the quantity of labor rose from four to five days, 
 this fifth day would add three shillings to the amount 
 of wages ; and the price of a hat would rise in con- 
 sequence from eighteen shillings to a guinea. On 
 the other hand, when the value of labor rose from 
 twelve shillings to fifteen shillings, the price of a hat 
 would not rise by one farthing 1 , but would still con- 
 tinue at eighteen shillings. 
 
 Phced Again I ask, then, who is to pay the three 
 shillings ? 
 
 X. The three shillings will be paid out of profits.
 
 S18 THE TEMPLARS DIALOGUES 
 
 Phced. What, without reimbursement ? 
 
 X. Assuredly, without a farthing of reimburse, 
 ment : it is Mr. Ricardo's doctrine that no variation 
 in either profits or wages can ever affect the price ; 
 if wages rise or fall, the only consequence is, that 
 profits must fall or rise by the same sum ; so again, 
 if profits rise or fall, wages must fall or rise accord 
 ingly. 
 
 Phced. You mean, then, to assert that, when the 
 value of the labor rises (as in the first of your two 
 cases) by three shillings, this rise must be paid out 
 of the six shillings which had previously gone to 
 profits. 
 
 X. I do ; and your reason for questioning this 
 opinion is, I am sure, because you think that no cap- 
 italist would consent to have his profits thus dimin- 
 ished, but would liberate himself from this increased 
 expense by charging it upon the price. Now, if I 
 prove that he cannot liberate himself in this way, 
 and that it is a matter of perfect indifference to him 
 whether the price rises or not, because in either case 
 he must lose the three shillings, I suppose that I 
 shall have removed the sole ground you have for 
 opposing me. 
 
 Phced. You are right : prove this, X., " et eris 
 mihi magnus Apollo." 
 
 X. Tell me, then, Phaedrus, when the value of 
 labor rises in :.ther words, when wages rise what 
 is it that causes them to rise ? 
 
 Phced. Ay, what is it that causes them, as you 
 eay ? I should be glad to hear your opinion on thaf 
 uibjoct
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 219 
 
 X. My opinion is, that there are only two * great 
 cases in which wages rise, or seem to rise : 
 
 1. When money sinks in value ; for then, of 
 course, the laborer must have more wages nomi- 
 nally, in order to have the same virtually. But this 
 is obviously nothing more than an apparent rise. 
 
 2. When those commodities rise upon which wages 
 are spent. A rise in port wine, in jewels, or in horses, 
 will not affect wages, because these commodities are 
 not consumed by the laborer ; but a rise in manufac- 
 tured goods of certain kinds, upon which perhaps 
 two fifths of his wages are spent, will tend to raise 
 wages : and a rise in certain kinds of food, upon 
 which perhaps the other three fifths are spent, will 
 raise them still more. Now, the first case being only 
 an apparent rise, this is the only case in which wages 
 can be said really to rise. 
 
 Phced. You are wrong, X. ; I can tell you of a 
 third case which occurs to me whilst you are speak- 
 ing. Suppose that there were a great deficiency of 
 laborers in any trade, as in the hatter's trade, for 
 instance, that would be a reason why wages should 
 rise in the hatter's trade. 
 
 X. Doubtless, until the deficiency were supplied, 
 which it soon would be by the stimulus of higher 
 wages. But this is a case of market value, when the 
 supply happens to be not on a level with the demand : 
 
 * There is another case in which wages have a constant tendenoj 
 to rise namely, when the population increases more slowly than the 
 demand for labor. But this case it is not necessary to introduce into 
 the dialogue : first, because it is gradual and insensible in its opera- 
 tion ; secondly, because, if it were otherwise, it would not disturb 
 Vny part of the argument.
 
 20 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 DOW, throughout the present conversation I wish 
 studiously to keep clear of any reference to market 
 value, and to consider exclusively that mode of ex- 
 changeable value which is usually called natural 
 value that is, where value is wholly uninfluenced 
 by any redundancy or deficiency of the quantity. 
 Waiving this third case, therefore, as not belonging 
 to the present discussion, there remains only the 
 second ; and I am entitled to say that no cause can 
 really and permanently raise wages but a rise in the 
 price of those articles on which wages are spent. In 
 the instance above stated, where the hatter's wages 
 rose from three shillings to three shillings and nine 
 pence a day, some commodity must previously have 
 risen on which the hatter spent his wages. Let this 
 be corn, and let corn constitute one half of the 
 hatter's expenditure ; on which supposition, as his 
 wages rose by twenty-five per cent., it follows that 
 corn must have risen by fifty per cent. Now, tell 
 rne, Phaedrus, will this rise in the value of corn affect 
 the hatter's wages only, or will it affect wages in 
 general ? 
 
 Phasd. Wages in general, of course : there can be 
 no reason why hatters should eat more corn than any 
 other men. 
 
 -X". Wages in general, therefore, will rise by twen- 
 ty-five per cent. Now, when the wages of the hatter 
 rose in that proportion, you contended that this rise 
 must be charged upon the price of hats ; and the 
 price ot' a hat having been previously eighteen shil- 
 lings, you insisted that it must now be twenty-one 
 shillings ; in which case a rise in wages of twenty 
 five per cent, would have raised the price of bat*
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 22 I 
 
 fcbout sixteen and one half per cent. And, if this 
 were possible, two great doctrines of Mr. Ricardo 
 would have been overthrown at one blow : 1st, that 
 which maintains that no article can increase in price 
 except from a previous increase in the quantity of 
 labor necessary to its production : for here is no 
 increase in the quantity of the labor, but simply in 
 its value ; 2d, that no rise in the value of labor can 
 ever settle upon price ; but that all increase of wages 
 will be paid out of profits, and all increase of profits 
 out of wages. I shall now, however, extort a suffi- 
 cient defence of Mr. Ricardo from your own conces- 
 sions. For you acknowledge that the same cause 
 which raises the wages of the hatter will raise wages 
 universally, and in the same ratio that is, by twen- 
 ty-five per cent. And, if such a rise in wages could 
 raise the price of hats by sixteen and one half per 
 cent., it must raise all other commodities whatsoever 
 by sixteen and one half per cent. Now, tell me, 
 Phaedrus, when all commodities without exception 
 are raised by sixteen arid one half per cent., in what 
 proportion will the power of money be diminished 
 under every possible application of it ? 
 
 Phced. Manifestly by sixteen and one half per 
 tent. 
 
 X. If so, Phaadrus, you must now acknowledge 
 that it is a matter of perfect indifference to the hatter 
 whether the price of hats rise or not, since he cannot 
 under any circumstances escape the payment of the 
 hree shillings. If the price should not rise (as 
 assuredly it will not), he pays the three shillings 
 - irectly ; if the price were to rise by three shillings, 
 tons implies of necessity that prices rise universally
 
 222 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 (for it would answer no purpose of your argument to 
 suppose that hatters escaped an evil which affected 
 all other trades). Now, if prices rise universally, 
 the hatter undoubtedly escapes the direct payment 
 of the three shillings, but he pays it indirectly ; inas- 
 much as one hundred and sixteen pounds and ten 
 shillings is now become necessary to give him the 
 same command of labor and commodities which was 
 previously given by one hundred pounds. Have you 
 any answer to these deductions ? 
 
 Phced. I must confess I have none. 
 
 X. If so, and no answer is possible, then I have 
 here given you a demonstration of Mr. Ricardo's 
 great law : That no product of labor whatsoever can 
 be affected in value by any variations in the value of 
 the producing labor. But, if not by variations in its 
 "alue, then of necessity by variations in its quantity, 
 for no other variations are possible. 
 
 Phced. But at first sight, you know, variations in 
 the value of labor appear to affect the value of its 
 product : yet you have shown that the effect of such 
 variations is defeated, and rendered nugatory in the 
 end. Now, is it not possible that some such mode of 
 argument may be applied to the case of variations in 
 'he quantity of labor ? 
 
 X. By no means : the reason why all variations 
 in the value of labor are incapable of transferring 
 themselves to the value of its product is this : that 
 these variations extend to all kinds of labor, and 
 therefore to all commodities alike. Now, that which 
 raises or depresses all things equally leaves their 
 relations to each other undisturbed. In order to dis- 
 turb the relations of value between A, B, and C, 1
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 223 
 
 aaust raise one at the same time that I do not raise 
 another ; depress one, and not depress another ; raise 
 or depress them unequally. This is necessarily done 
 by any variations in the quantity of labor. For ex- 
 ample, when more or less labor became requisite for 
 the production of hats, that variation could not fail 
 to affect the value of hats, for the variation was con- 
 fined exclusively to hats, and arose out of some cir- 
 cumstance peculiar to hats ; and no more labor was 
 on that account requisite for the production of 
 gloves, or wine, or carriages. Consequently, these 
 and all other articles remaining unaffected, whilst 
 hats required twenty-five per cent, more labor, the 
 previous relation between hats and all other com- 
 modities was disturbed ; that is, a real effect was 
 produced on the value of hats. Whereas, when hats, 
 without requiring a greater quantity of labor, were 
 simply produced by labor at a higher value, this 
 change could not possibly disturb the relation be- 
 tween hats and any other commodities, because they 
 were all equally affected by it. If, by some applica- 
 tion of any mechanic or chemical discovery to the 
 process of making candles, the labor of that process 
 were diminished by one third, the value of candles 
 would fall ; for the relation of candles to all other 
 articles, in which no such abridgment of labor had 
 been effected, would be immediately altered : two 
 days' labor would now produce the same quantity 
 of candles as three days' labor before the discovery. 
 But if, on the other hand, the wages of three days 
 had simply fallen in value to the wages of 1wo days, 
 that is, if the laborer received only six shillings 
 for three days, instead of nine shillings, this could
 
 224 THE TEMPLARS DIALOGUES 
 
 not affect tbo value of caudles ; for the fall of wages, 
 extending to all other things whatsoever, would 
 leave the relations between them all undisturbed , 
 everything else which had required nine shillings 
 worth of labor would now require six shillings' 
 worth ; and a pound of candles would exchange for 
 the same quantity of everything as before. Hence, 
 it appears that no cause can possibly affect the value 
 of anything that is, its exchangeable relation to 
 other things but an increase or diminution in the 
 quantity of labor required for its production : and 
 the prices of all things whatsoever represent the 
 quantity of labor by which they are severally pro- 
 duced ; and the value of A is to the value of B uni- 
 versally as the quantity of labor which produces A 
 to the quantity of labor which produces B. 
 
 Here, then, is the great law of value as first ex- 
 plained by Mr. Ricardo. Adam Smith uniformly 
 takes it for granted that an alteration in the quantity 
 of labor, and an alteration in wages (that is, the 
 value of labor), are the same thing, and will produce 
 the same effects ; and, hence, he never distinguishes 
 the two cases, but everywhere uses the two expres- 
 sions as synonymous. If A, which had hitherto 
 required sixteen shillings' worth of labor for its pro- 
 duction, should to-morrow require only twelve shil- 
 'ings' worth, Adam Smith would have treated it as 
 a matter of no importance whether this change had 
 arisen from some discovery in the art of manufactur- 
 ing A, which reduced the quantity of labor required 
 'rora four days to three, or simply from some fa\
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 225 
 
 hi wages which reduced the value of a day 's labor from 
 four shillings to three shillings. Yet, in the former 
 case, A would fall considerably in price as soon as 
 the discovery ceased to be monopolized ; whereas, 
 in the latter case, we have seen that A could not 
 possibly vary in price by one farthing. 
 
 Phced. In what way do you suppose that Adam 
 Smith came to make so great an oversight, as I now 
 confess it to be ? 
 
 -X". Mr. Malthus represents Adam Smith as not 
 having sufficiently explained himself on the subject, 
 " lie does not make it quite clear," says Mr. Mal- 
 thus, " whether he adopts for his principle of value 
 the quantity of the producing labor or its value." 
 But this is a most erroneous representation. There 
 is not a chapter in the " Wealth of Nations " in 
 which it is not made redundantly clear that Adam 
 Smith adopts both laws as mere varieties of expres- 
 sion for one and the same law. This being so, how 
 could he possibly make an election between two 
 things which he constantly confounded and regarded 
 as identical ? The truth is, Adam Smith's attention 
 was never directed to the question : he suspected 
 uo distinction ; no man of his day, or before his day, 
 had ever suspected it ; none of the French or Italian 
 writers on Political Economy had ever suspected it : 
 indeed, none of them have suspected it to this hour. 
 One single writer before Mr. Ricardo has insisted 
 on the quantity of labor as the true ground of value ; 
 ^nd, what is very singular, at a period when Political 
 Economy was in the rudest state, namely, in the 
 early part of Charles II. 's reign. This writer was 
 Sir William Petty, a man who would have greatly 
 15
 
 226 THE TEMPLARS* DIALOGUES 
 
 advanced the science if he had been properly sec- 
 onded by his age. In a remarkable passage, too 
 long for quotation, he has expressed the law of value 
 with a Ricardian accuracy : but it is scarcely pos- 
 sible that even he was aware of his own accuracy ; 
 'or, though he has asserted that the reason why any 
 > *o articles exchange for each other (as so much corn 
 ' f Europe, suppose, for so much silver of Peru) is 
 because the same quantity of labor has been employed 
 on their production ; and, though he has certainly 
 not vitiated the purity of this principle by the usual 
 heteronomy (if you will allow me a learned word), 
 that is, by the introduction of the other and oppo- 
 site law derived from the value of this labor, yet, 
 it is probable that in thus abstaining he was guided 
 by mere accident,, and not by any conscious purpose 
 of contradistinguishing the one law from the other ; 
 because, had that been his purpose, he would hardly 
 have contented himself with forbearing to affirm, 
 but would formally have denied the false law. For 
 it can never be sufficiently impressed upon the stu- 
 dent's mind, that it brings him not one step nearer 
 to the truth to say that the value of A is determined 
 by the quantity of labor which produces it, unless 
 by that proposition he means that it is not determined 
 by the value of the labor which produces it. 
 
 To return to Adam Smith : not only has he " made 
 it quite clear " that he confounded the two laws, 
 and had never been summoned to examine whether 
 they led to different results, but I go further, and 
 will affirm that if he had been summoned to such an 
 examination, he could not have pursued it with any 
 success until the discovery of the true law of Profits
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 227 
 
 For, iu the case of the hats, as before aigued, he would 
 bave said, " The wages of the hatter, whether they 
 have been augmented by increased quantity of labor, 
 or by increased value of labor, must, in any case, be 
 paid." Now, what is the answer ? They must be 
 paid, but from what fund ? Adam Smith knew of 
 no fund, nor could know of any, until Mr. Ricardo 
 had ascertained the true law of Profits, except Price : 
 in either case, therefore, as Political Economy then 
 etood, he was compelled to conclude that the fifteen 
 shillings would be paid out of the price, that is, 
 that the whole difference between the twelve shil- 
 lings and the fifteen shillings would settle upon the 
 purchaser. But we now know that this will happen 
 only in the case when the difference has arisen from 
 increased labor ; and that every farthing of the dif- 
 ference which arises from increased value of labor 
 will be paid out of another fund, namely, Profits. 
 But this conclusion could not be arrived at without 
 the new theory of Profits (as will be seen more fully 
 when we come to that theory) ; and thus one error 
 was the necessary parent of another. 
 
 Here I will pause, and must beg you to pardon 
 my long speeches in consideration of the extreme 
 importance of the subject ; for everything in Politi- 
 cal Economy depends, as I said before, on the law of 
 value ; and I have not happened to meet with one 
 writer who seemed fully to understand Mr. Ricardo's 
 [aw, and still less who seemed to perceive the im- 
 mense train of consequences which it involves. 
 
 Phced. I now see enough to believe that Mr. Ri- 
 "ardo is right ; and, if so, it is clear that all former 
 Writers are wrong. Thus far i am satisfied with
 
 828 THK TEMPLARS' DIOLOGUES 
 
 your way of conducting the argument, though some 
 little confusion still clouds my view. But, with re- 
 gard to the consequences you speak of, how do you 
 explain that under so fundamental an error (as you 
 represent it) many writers, but above all Adam 
 Smith, should have been able to deduce so large a 
 body of truth, that we regard him as one of the chief 
 benefactors to the science ? 
 
 X. The fact is, that his good sense interfered 
 everywhere to temper the extravagant conclusions 
 into which a severe logician could have driven him.* 
 
 * The " Wealth of Nations " has never yet been ably reviewed, nor 
 latisfactorily edited. The edition of Mr. Buchanan is unquestionably 
 the best, and displays great knowledge of Political Economy as it 
 stood before the revolution effected by Mr. Ricardo. But having the 
 misfortune to appear immediately before that revolution, it is already 
 to some degree an obsolete book. Even for its own date, however, it 
 was not good as an edition of Adam Smith, its value lying chiefly in 
 the body of original disquisitions which composed the fourth volume ; 
 for the notes not only failed to correct the worst errors of Adam Smith 
 (which, indeed, in many cases is saying no more than that Mr. Bu- 
 chanan did not forestall Mr. llicardu), but were also deficient in the 
 history of English finance, and generally in the knowledge of facts. 
 How much reason there is to call for a new edition, with a comment- 
 ary adapted to the existing state of the science, will appear on this 
 consideration : the " Wealth of Nations" is the text-book resorted to 
 by all students of Political Economy. One main problem of this 
 science, if not the main problem (as Mr. Ricardo thinks), is to deter- 
 mine the la.ws which regulate Rents, Profits, and Wages ; but every- 
 body who is acquainted with the present state of the science must 
 acknowledge that precisely on these three points it affords "very 
 little satisfactory information." These last words are the gentle criti- 
 cism of Mr. Ricardo : but the truth is, that not only does it afford very 
 little information on the great heads of Rent, Profits, and Wages, but 
 (which is much worse) it gives very false and misleading information. 
 
 P. S. September 27, 1854. It is suggested to me by a friend, th 
 in this special notice of Mr. Buchanan's edition, I shall be interpreted 
 u having designed some covert reflection upon the edition of Adam
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 229 
 
 A.t this very day, a French and an English econo- 
 mist have reared a Babel of far more elaborate errors 
 on this subject ; M. Say, I mean, and Mr. Malthus 
 both ingenious writers, both eminently illogical, 
 especially the latter, with whose " confusion worse 
 confounded" on the subject of Value, if reviewed by 
 some unsparing Rhadamantnus of logical justice, 1 
 believe that chaos would appear a model of order and 
 light. Yet the very want of logic, which has betrayed 
 these two writers into so many errors, has befriended 
 them in escaping from their consequences ; for they 
 leap with the utmost agility over all obstacles to any 
 conclusions which their good sense points out to 
 them as just, however much at war with their own 
 premises. With respect to the confusion which you 
 complain of as still clinging to the subject, this nat- 
 urally attends the first efforts of the mind to disjoin 
 two ideas which have constantly been regarded as 
 one. But, as we advance in our discussions, illus- 
 tration and proof will gradually arise from all quar- 
 ters, to the great principle of Mr. Eicardo which we 
 have just been considering ; besides which, this 
 principle is itself so much required for the illustra- 
 tion and proof of other principles, that the mere 
 practice of applying it will soon sharpen your eye to 
 a steady familiarity with all its aspects. 
 
 Smith published by Mr. M'Culloch. My summary answer to any such 
 insinuation is, that this whole paper was written in the spring of 1824, 
 that is, thirty and a half years ago : at which time, to the best of my 
 knowledge, Mr. M'Culloch had not so much as meditated any such 
 edition. Let me add, that if I had seen or fancied any reason for a 
 iriticism unfriendly to Mr. M'Culloch, or to any writer whatever, I 
 ihould not have offered it indirectly, but cpenly, frankly, and in tha 
 ipirit of liberal candor due to an honorable contemporary.
 
 230 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 DIALOGUE THE SECOND. 
 
 REDUCTIO AD ABSUBDUM. 
 
 Phil. X., I see, is not yet come : I hope he does 
 not mean to break his appointment, for I have a de- 
 sign upon him. I have been considering his argu- 
 ment against the possibility of any change in price 
 arising out of a change in the value of labor, and 1 
 have detected a flaw in it which he can never get 
 over. I have him, sir I have him as fast as ever 
 spider had a fly. 
 
 Phced. Don't think it, my dear friend : you are 
 a dexterous retiarius ; but a gladiator who is armed 
 with Ricardian weapons will cut your net to pieces. 
 He is too strong in his cause, as 1 am well satisfied 
 from what passed yesterday. He '11 slaughter you, 
 to use the racy expression of a friend of mine in 
 describing the redundant power with which one fancy 
 boxer disposed of another, he '11 slaughter you 
 " with ease and affluence." But here he comes. 
 Well, X., you 're just come in time. Philebus says 
 that you are a fly, whilst he is a murderous spider, 
 and that he'll slaughter you with "ease and afflu- 
 ence ; " and, all things considered, I am inclined to 
 think he will. 
 
 Phil. Phaedrus does not report the matter quite 
 accurately ; however, it is true that I believe myself 
 to have detected a fatal error in your argument of 
 yesterday on the case of the hat ; and it is this : 
 When the value of labor rose by twenty-five per 
 cent., you contended that this rise would be paid 
 out of profits. Now, up to a certain limit this mat
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY 231 
 
 be possible ; beyond that it is impossible. For the 
 price of the hat was supposed to be eighteen shil- 
 lings : and the price of the labor being assumed 
 originally at twelve shillings, leaving six shillings 
 for profits, it is very possible that a rise in wages 
 of no more than three shillings may be paid out of 
 these profits. But, as this advance in wages in- 
 creases, it comes nearer and nearer to that point at 
 which it will be impossible for profits to pay it ; 
 since, let the advance once reach the whole six shil- 
 lings, and all motive for producing hats will be ex- 
 tinguished ; and let it advance to seven shillings, 
 there will in that case be no fund at all left out of 
 which the seventh shilling can be paid, even if the 
 capitalist were disposed to relinquish all his profits 
 Now, seriously, you will hardly maintain that the 
 hat could not rise to the price of nineteen shillings 
 or of any higher sum ? 
 
 X. Recollect, Philebus, what it is that I maintain ; 
 assuredly the hat may rise to the price of nineteen 
 shillings, or of any higher sum, but not as a conse- 
 quence of the cause you assign. Taking your case. 
 I do maintain that it is impossible the hat should 
 exceed, or even reach, eighteen shillings. When I 
 say eighteen shillings, however, you must recollect 
 that the particular sum of twelve shillings for labor, 
 and six shillings for profits, were taken only for the 
 sake of illustration ; translating the sense of the 
 vroposition into universal forms, what I assert is, 
 that the rise in the value of the labor can go no 
 r urther than the amount of profits will allow it : 
 profits swallowed up, there will remain no fund out
 
 232 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 of ^lich an increase of wages can be paid, and the 
 production of hats will cease. 
 
 PHI. This is the sense in which I understood you ; 
 and in this sense I wish that you would convince 
 me that the hat could not, under the circumstances 
 supposed, advance to nineteen shillings or twenty 
 shillings. 
 
 X. Perhaps, in our conversation on Wages, you 
 will see this more irresistibly; you yourself will 
 then shrink from affirming the possibility of such an 
 advance as from an obvious absurdity ; meantime, 
 here is a short demonstration of it, which I am sur- 
 prised that Mr. Ricardo did not use as the strongest 
 and most compendious mode of establishing his 
 dr-ctrine. 
 
 Let it be possible that the hat may advance to 
 niaeteen shillings; or, to express this more gener- 
 ally, from x (or eighteen shillings) which it was 
 worth before the rise in wages to x -f- y ; that is 
 to say, the hat will now be worth x -f- y quantity of 
 money having previously been worth no more than 
 x. That is your meaning ? 
 
 Phil. It is. 
 
 X. And if in money, of necessity in everything 
 else ; because otherwise, if the hat were worth more 
 money only, but more of nothing besides, that would 
 simply argue that money had fallen in value ; in 
 which case undoubtedly the hat might rise in any 
 proportion that money fell ; but, then, without gain- 
 ing any increased value, which is essential to your 
 argument. 
 
 Phil. Certainly ; if in money, then in everything 
 else.
 
 ON POLITIOAL ECONOMY. 233 
 
 X. Therefore, for instance, in gloves ; having pre- 
 riously been worth four pair of buckskin gloves, the 
 hat will now be worth four pair -f y ? 
 
 Phil. It will. 
 
 X. But, Philebus, either the rise in wages is uni- 
 versal or it is not universal. If not universal, it 
 must be a case of accidental rise from mere scarcity 
 of hands ; which is the case of a rise in market value ; 
 and that is not the case of Mr. Ricardo, who is lay- 
 ing down the laws of natural value. It is, therefore, 
 universal ; but, if universal, the gloves from the 
 same cause will have risen from the value of x to 
 x + y. 
 
 Hence, therefore, the price of the hat, estimated 
 in gloves, is = x -f- y. 
 
 And again, the price of the gloves, estimated in 
 hats, is = x + y. 
 
 In other words, H y = x. 
 E-{-y = x. 
 
 That is to say, H y = H -f- y. 
 
 Phced. Which, I suppose, is an absurdity ; and, 
 in fact, it turns out, Philebus, that he has slaughtered 
 you with " ease and affluence." 
 
 X. And this absurdity must be eluded by him 
 who undertakes to show that a rise in the wages of 
 labor can be transferred to the value of its product. 
 
 DIALOGUE THE THIRD. 
 
 l_Et sequiori sano animo feres, cum hie de primis agatur principifo, 
 i superstitiose omnia examinavi, viamque quasi palpando singu- 
 \aque cnriosiua contrectando, lente. mo promori et testudineo grado.
 
 234 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 Video enim ingcmum humanum ita coinparatum esse ut faciliui 
 longe quid consequens sit dispiciat, quam quid in natura primo verum ; 
 tiostramijue omuiuin conditionetn nun uiultuiu ab ilia Archiincdii 
 nbludero Adf nov aru K.a.1 Ktvqau ri)v yijv. Ubi primum figamai 
 pedem, invenire multo magis satagimus, quatn (ubi invenimus) ulto- 
 riua progredi. Henricva Morus in Epiat. ad Cartesium.] 
 
 PEINCIPLE OF VALUE CONTINUED. 
 
 Phced. In our short conversation of yesterday, 
 X., you parried an objection brought forward by 
 Philebus in a way which I thought satisfactory. 
 You reduced him to an absurdity, or what seemed 
 such. In fact, I did verily believe that you had 
 slaughtered Philebus ; and so I told him. But we 
 have since reconsidered the matter, and have settled 
 it between ourselves that your answer will not do ; 
 that your " absurdity," in fact, is a very absurd 
 absurdity. Philebus will tell you why. I, for my 
 part, shall have enough to do to take care of a little 
 argument of my own, which is designed to meet 
 something that passed in our first dialogue. Now, 
 my private conviction is, that both I and Philebus 
 shall be cudgelled ; I am satisfied that such will be 
 the issue of the business. And my reason for think- 
 ing so is this, that I already see enough to discern 
 a character of boldness and determination in Mr. 
 Ricardo's doctrines which needs no help from sneak- 
 ing equivocations, and this with me is a high pre- 
 sumption that he is in the right. In whatever rough 
 way his theories are tossed about, they seem always, 
 :ike a cat, to light upon their legs. But, notwith- 
 btanding this, as long as there is a possibility that 
 tie may be in the wrong, I shall take it for granted 
 that he is, and do my best to prove him so.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 235 
 
 X. For which, Phsedrus, I shall feel greatly in- 
 lebted to you. We are told of Trajan, that, in the 
 camp exercises, he not only tolerated hard blows, 
 but courted them ; " alacer virtute militum, et laetus 
 quoties aut cassidi suse aut clypeo gravior ictus ii>- 
 cideret. Laudabat quippe ferientes, hortabaturque 
 ut auderent." When one of our theatres let down 
 an iron curtain upon the stage as a means of insulat- 
 ing the audience from any fire amongst the scenery, 
 and sent men to prove the strength of this curtain 
 by playing upon it with sledge-hammers in the sight 
 and hearing of the public, who would not have 
 laughed at the hollowness of the mummery, if the 
 blows had been gentle, considerate, and forbearing ? 
 A. "make-believe" blow would have implied a 
 " make-believe " hammer and a " make-believe cur- 
 tain. No ! hammer away, like Charles Martel ; 
 "fillip me with a three-man beetle ;" be to me a 
 malleus hcereticorum ; come like Spenser's Talus 
 an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the 
 straw of my logic ; rack me ; put me to the ques- 
 tion ; get me down ; jump upon me ; kick me ; 
 throttle me ; put an end to me in any way you can. 
 
 Phced. I will, I will, my dear friend ; anything to 
 oblige you ; anything for peace. So now tie your- 
 self to the stake, whilst we bait you. And you 
 begin, Philebus ; unmuzzle. 
 
 Phil. I shall be brief. The case of the hat is 
 what I stand upon ; and, by the way, I am much 
 ooliged to you, X., for having stated the question in 
 that shape -, it has furnished me with a very manage- 
 able formula for recalling the principle at issue. 
 The wages alter from two different causes in one
 
 36 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUE* 
 
 case, because there is the same quantity of labor at 
 a different rate ; in another case, because there is a 
 different quantity at the same rate. In the latter 
 case, it is agreed that the alteration settles upon 
 price ; in the former case you affirm that it will not: 
 I affirm that it will. I bring an argument to prove 
 it ; which argument you attempt to parry by another. 
 But in this counter argument of yours it strikes me 
 that there lurks a petitio principii. Indeed, I am 
 Bure of it. For observe the course of our reasoning. 
 I charge it upon your doctrine as an absurd conse- 
 quence that, if the increase of wages must be paid 
 out of profits, then this fund will at length be eaten 
 out ; and as soon as it is, there will be no fund at 
 all for paying any further increase ; and the produc- 
 tion must cease. Now, what in effect is your answer ? 
 Why, that as soon as profits are all eaten up, the 
 production will cease. And this you call reducing 
 me to an absurdity. But where is the absurdity ? 
 Your answer is, in fact, an identical proposition ; 
 for, when you say, " As soon as profits are absorbed," 
 I retort, Ay, no doubt " as soon " as they are ; but 
 when will that be ? It requires no Ricardo to tell 
 us that, when profits are absorbed, they will be ab- 
 sorbed ; what I deny is, that they ever can be ab- 
 sorbed. For, as fast as wages increase, what is to 
 hinder price from increasing paripassu? In which 
 case profits will never be absorbed. It is easy 
 enough to prove that price will not increase, if you 
 may assume that profits will not remain stationary 
 For then you have assumed the whole point in dis- 
 pute ; and after that, of course you have the game in 
 four own hands ; since it is self-evident that if any
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 237 
 
 boJy is made up of two parts P and W, so adjusted 
 that all which is gained by either must be lost by 
 the other, then that body can never increase. 
 
 Phced. Nor decrease. 
 
 Phil. No, nor decrease. If my head must of neces- 
 sity lose as much weight as my trunk gains, and 
 vice versa, then it is a clear case that I shall never 
 be heavier. But why cannot my head remain sta- 
 tionary, whilst my trunk grows heavier ? This is 
 what you had to prove, and you have not proved it. 
 
 Pliced. ! it 's scandalous to think how he has 
 duped us ; his " reductio " turns out to be the merest 
 swindling. 
 
 X. No. Phaedrus, I beg your pardon. It is very 
 true I did not attempt to prove that your head might 
 not remain stationary ; I could not have proved this 
 directly, without anticipating a doctrine out of its 
 place ; but I proved it indirectly, by showing that, 
 if it were supposed possible, an absurdity would 
 follow from that supposition. I said, and I say 
 again, that the doctrine of wages will show the very 
 supposition itself to be absurd ; but, until we come 
 to that doctrine, I content myself with proving that, 
 let that supposition seem otherwise ever so reason- 
 able (the supposition, namely, that profits may be 
 stationary whilst wages are advancing), yet it draws 
 after it one absurd . consequence, namely, that a 
 thing may be bigger than *hat to which it is con- 
 fessedly equal. Look back to the noles of our con- 
 versation, and you will see that this is as I say. 
 You say, Philebus, that I prove profits in a particular 
 sase to be incapable of remaining stationary, by as- 
 suming that price cannot increase ; or, if I am called
 
 238 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 upon lo prove that assumption namely, that price 
 cannot increase I do it only by assuming that prof- 
 its in that case are incapable of remaining stationary . 
 But, if I had reasoned thus, I should not only have 
 been guilty of a petitio prindpii (as you alleged), but 
 also of a circle. Here, then, I utterly disclaim and 
 renounce either assumption : I do not ask you to 
 grant me that price must continue stationary in the 
 case supposed ; I do not ask you to grant me that 
 profits must recede in the case supposed. On the 
 contrary, I will not have them granted to me ; I 
 insist on your refusing both of these principles. 
 
 Phil. Well, I do refuse them. 
 
 Phced. So do I. I '11 do anything in reason as well 
 as another. " If one knight give a testril " * 
 
 X. Then let us suppose the mines from which we 
 obtain our silver to be in England. 
 
 Phced. What for ? Why am I to suppose this ? I 
 don't know but you have some trap in it. 
 
 X. No ; a Newcastle coal-mine, or a Cornwall tin- 
 mine, will answer the purpose of my argument just 
 as well. But it is more convenient to use silver as 
 the illustration ; and I suppose it to be in England 
 simply to avoid intermixing any question about 
 foreign trade. Now, when the hat sold for eighteen 
 shillings, on Mr. Ricardo's principle why did it sell 
 <br that sum ? 
 
 Phil. I suppose, because the quantity of silver in 
 that sum is assumed to be the product of four days' 
 labor in a silver-mine. 
 
 X. Certainly ; because it is the product of tli 
 
 Sir Andrew Agueoheek, In " Twelfth Night."
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 239 
 
 same quantity of labor as that which produced the 
 hat. Calling twenty shillings, therefore, four ounces 
 of silver, the hat was worth nine tenths of four 
 ounces. Now, when wages advance from twelve 
 shillings to fourteen shillings, profits (you allege) 
 will not pay this advance, but price. On this sup- 
 position the price of the hat will now be what ? 
 
 Phil. Twenty shillings ; leaving, as before, six 
 shillings for profit. 
 
 X. Six shillings upon fourteen shillings are not 
 the same rate of profit as six shillings upon twelve 
 shillings ; but no matter ; it does not affect the argu- 
 ment. The hat is now worth four entire ounces of 
 silver, having previously been worth four ounces 
 minus a tenth of four ounces. But the product of 
 four days' labor in a silver-mine must also advance 
 in value, for the same cause. Four ounces of silver, 
 which is that product, will now have the same power 
 or value as 22.22s. had before. Consequently the 
 four ounces of silver, which had previously com- 
 manded in exchange a hat and the ninth of a hat, will 
 now command a hat and two ninths, fractions neg- 
 lected. Hence, therefore, a hat will, upon any Anti- 
 Ricardian theory, manifestly buy four ounces of sil- 
 ver ; and yet, at the same time, it will not buy four 
 ounces by one fifth part of four ounces. Silver and 
 the denominations of its qualities, being familiar, make 
 it more convenient to use that metal ; but substitute 
 lead, iron, coal, or anything whatsoever the argu- 
 ment is the same, being in fact a universal demon- 
 stration that variations in wages cannot produce 
 corresponding variations in price. 
 
 Phced. Say no more, X ; I see that you are right ,
 
 240 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 and it 's all over with our cause, unless I retrieve it 
 To think that the whole cause of the Anti-Ricardian 
 economy should devolve upon me ! that fate should 
 ordain me to be the Atlas on whose unworthy shoul- 
 ders the whole system is to rest ! This being my 
 destiny, 1 ought to have been built a little stronger. 
 However, no matter. I heartily pray that I may 
 prove too strong for you ; though, at the same time, 
 I am convinced 1 shall not. Remember, therefore, 
 that you have no right to exult if you toss and gore 
 me, for I tell you beforehand that you will. And, 
 if you do, that only proves me to be in the right, 
 and a very sagacious person ; since my argument has 
 all the appearance of being irresistible, and yet such 
 is my discernment that I foresee most acutely that 
 it will turn out a most absurd one. It is this : your 
 answer to Philebus issues in this that a thing 
 A is shown to be at once more valuable and yet not 
 more valuable than the same thing B. Now, this 
 answer I take by the horns ; it is possible for A to 
 be more and yet not more valuable than the same 
 thing. For example, my hat shall be more valuable 
 than the gloves ; more valuable, that is, than the 
 gloves were : and yet not more valuable than the 
 gloves ; not more valuable, that is, than the gloves 
 now are. So of the wages ; all things preserve their 
 former relations, because all are equally raised. This 
 is my little argument. Wl-\t do you think of it? 
 'Vill it do ? 
 
 X. No. 
 
 Phced. Why, so I told you. 
 
 X. I have the pleasure, then, to assure you tha 
 you were perfectly right. It will not do. But I un
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 241 
 
 derstand you perfectly. You mean to evade my 
 argument that the increase of wages shall settle upon 
 profits ; according to this argument, it will settle 
 upon price, and not upon profits ; yet again on price 
 in such a way as to escape the absurdity of two rela- 
 tions of value existing between the very same things. 
 But, Pbsedrus, this rise will be a mere metaphysical 
 ens, and no real rise. The hat, you say, has risen ; 
 but still it commands no more of the gloves, because 
 they also have risen. How, then, has either risen ? 
 The rise is purely ideal. 
 
 Phced. It is so, X. ; but that I did not overlook ; 
 for tell me on Mr. Bicardo's principle, will not all 
 things double their value simultaneously, if the quan- 
 tity of labor spent in producing all should double 
 Birnultaneously ? 
 
 X. It will, Phasdrus. 
 
 Phced. And yet nothing will exchange for more or 
 less than before. 
 
 X. True ; but the rise is not ideal, for all that, but 
 will afl'ect everybody. A pound of wheat, which 
 previously bought three pounds of salt, will still buy 
 three pounds ; but, then, the salt-maker and the wheat- 
 maker will have only one pound of those articles 
 where before he had two. However, the difference 
 between the two cases cannot fully be understood, 
 without a previous examination of certain distinc- 
 tions, which I will make the subject of our next dia- 
 logue : and the rather, because, apart from our present 
 question, at every step we should else be embar- 
 rassed, as all others have been by the perplexity 
 attending these distinctions. Meantime, as an an 
 rwer to your argument, the following consideratioii 
 16
 
 242 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 will be quite sufficient. The case which your argu- 
 ment respects is that in which wages are supposed 
 to rise? Why? In consequence of a real rise in 
 corn or something else. As a means of meeting this 
 rise, wages rise ; but the increased value of wages is 
 only a means to an end, and the laborer cares about 
 the rise only in that light. The end is to give 
 him the same quantity of corn, suppose. That end 
 attained, he cares nothing about the means by which 
 it is attained. Now, your ideal rise of wages does 
 not attain this end. The corn has really risen ; this 
 is the first step. In consequence of this, an ideal rise 
 follows in all things, which evades the absurdities 
 of a real rise and evades the Ricardian doctrine 
 of profits ; but, then, only by also evading any real 
 rise in wages, the necessity of which (in order to 
 meet the real rise in corn) first led to the whole 
 movement of price. But this you will more clearly 
 see after our next dialogue. 
 
 DIALOGUE THE FOURTH 
 
 F THE USE AND ABUSE OP TWO CELEBRATED DISTINCTIONS IB 
 THE THEORY OF VALUE. 
 
 X. Now, gentlemen, I come to a question which 
 -<ii a double account is interesting : first, because it 
 is indispensable to the fluency of our future prog- 
 ress that this question should be once for all de-. 
 cided ; secondly, because it furnishes an experiment 
 vm crucis for distinguishing a true knowledge o*
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY 243 
 
 Mr. Ricardo's theory from a spurious or half-knowl- 
 edge. Many a man will accompany Mr. Ricardo 
 thus far, and will keep his seat pretty well until he 
 comes to the point which we have now reached at 
 which point scarcely one in a thousand will escape 
 being unhorsed. 
 
 Phced. Which one most assuredly will not be my- 
 self. For I have a natural alacrity in losing my 
 seat, and gravitate so determinately to the ground, 
 that (like a Roman of old) I ride without stirrups, by 
 way of holding myself in constant readiness for pro- 
 jection ; upon the least hint, anticipating my horse's 
 wishes on that point, and Growing myself off as fast 
 as possible ; for what 's the use of taking the negative 
 Bide in a dispute where one's horse takes the affirma- 
 tive ? So I leave it to Philebus to ride through the 
 steeple-chase you will lead him ; his be the honor of 
 the day and his- the labor. 
 
 X But that cannot be ; Philebus is bound in duty 
 to be dismounted, for the sake of keeping Mr. Mal- 
 thus with many others in countenance. For at thia 
 point, Phaedrus, more than at any other almost, there 
 is a sad confusion of lords and gen tlem^fe, that I could 
 name thrown out of the saddle pell-melpBpon their 
 mother earth. 
 
 Phil. " S they among themselves in pleasant vein 
 
 Stood scoffing." 
 
 I suppose I may add 
 
 " Heightened in their thoughts beyond 
 All doubts of victory." 
 
 Meantime, what is it you allude to ? 
 
 X. You are acquainted, I doubt not, Phflebus,
 
 244 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 with the common distinction between real and nomi- 
 nal value ; and in your judgment upon that distinction 
 I presume that you adopt the doctrine of Mr 
 Malthus. 
 
 Phil. I do ; but I know not why you should call 
 it the doctrine of Mr. Maltbus ; for, though he has 
 reiirged it against Mr. Ricardo, yet originally it 
 belongs to Adam Smith. 
 
 X. Not so, Philebus ; a distinction between real 
 and nominal value was made by Adam Smith, but 
 not altogether the distinction of Mr. Malthus. It is 
 true that Mr. Malthus tells us ("Polit. Econ.," p. 
 63) that the distinction is " exactly the same." 
 But in this he is inaccurate ; for neither is it exactly 
 the same ; nor, if it had been, could Mr. Malthus 
 have urged it in his "Political Economy" with the 
 same consistency as its original author. This you 
 will see hereafter. But no matter ; how do you 
 understand the distinction ? 
 
 Phil. " I continue to think," with Mr. Malthus, 
 and in his words, "that the most proper definition 
 of real value in exchange, in contradistinction to 
 nominal value in exchange, is the power of command- 
 ing the necessaries and conveniences of life, includ- 
 ing labor, as distinguished from the power of com- 
 manding the precious metals." 
 
 X. You think, for instance, that if the wages of a 
 laborer should in Ei. gland be at the rate of five shil- 
 lings a day, and in France of no more than one shilling 
 a day, it could not, therefore, be inferred that wages 
 vere at a high real value in England, or a low rea. 
 value in France. Until we know how much food, &c.. 
 could be had for the five shillings in England, anc
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 245 
 
 how much in France for the one shilling 1 , all that we 
 could fairly assert would be, that wages were at a 
 high nominal value in England and at a low nominal 
 value in France ; but the moment it should be ascer- 
 tained that the English wages would procure twice 
 as much comfort as the French, or the French twice 
 as much as the English, we might then peremptorily 
 affirm that wages were at a high real value in England 
 on the first supposition, or in France on the second : 
 this is what you think ? 
 
 Phil. It is, and very fairly stated, I think this, 
 in common with Mr. Malthus ; and can hold out but 
 little hope that I shall ever cease to think it. 
 
 -5T. " Why, then, know this, 
 
 Thou think'st amiss , 
 And, to think right, thou must think o'er again." 
 
 Phced. But is it possible that Mr. Ricardo can 
 require me to abjure an inference so reasonable as 
 this ? If so, I must frankly acknowledge that I am 
 out of the saddle already. 
 
 X. Reasonable inference ? So far from that, there 
 is an end of all logic if such an inference be tolerated. 
 That man may rest assured that his vocation in this 
 world is not logical, who feels disposed (after a few 
 minutes' consideration) to question the following 
 proposition, namely : That it is very possible for A 
 continually to increase in value in real value, ob- 
 serve and yet to command a continually decreasing 
 - quantity of B ; in short, that A May acquire a thou- 
 sand times higher value, and yet exchange for ten 
 thousand times less of B. 
 
 * Suckling's well-knov,a song.
 
 246 THE TEMPLARS'* DIALOGUES 
 
 Phced. Why, then, " chaos is come again ! " 10 
 this the unparadoxical Ricardo ? 
 
 X. Yes, Phaedrus ; but lay not this unction to 
 your old prejudices, which you must now prepare to 
 part with forever, that it is any spirit of wilful paia- 
 dox which is now speaking ; for get rid of Mr. Ri- 
 cardo, if you can, but you will not, therefore, get rid 
 of this paradox. On any other theory of value 
 whatsoever, it will still continue to be an irresistible 
 truth, though it is the Ricardian theory only which 
 can consistently explain it. Here, by the way, is a 
 specimen of paradox in the true and laudable sense 
 in that sense according to which Boyle entitled a 
 book " Hydrostatical Paradoxes;" for, though it 
 wears a prima facie appearance of falsehood, yet in 
 the end you will be sensible that it is not only true, 
 but true in that way and degree which will oblige 
 him who denies it to maintain an absurdity. Again, 
 therefore, I affirm that, when the laborer obtains a 
 large quantity of corn, for instance, it is so far from 
 being any fair inference that wages are then at a 
 high real value, that in all probability they are at a 
 very low real value ; and inversely I affirm, that 
 when wages are at their very highest real value, the 
 laborer will obtain the very smallest quantity of corn 
 Or, quitting wages altogether (because such an 
 illustration would drive me into too much anticipa- 
 tion), I affirm universally of Y (that is, of any as- 
 signable thing whatsoever), that it shall grow more 
 valuable adinfinitum, and yet by possibility exchange 
 for less and less ad infinitum of Z (that is, cf any 
 >ther assignable thing). 
 
 Phced. Well, all I shall say is this, am I in a world
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 247 
 
 where men stand on their heads or on their feet ? 
 But there is some trick in all this ; there is some 
 snare. And now I consider what's the meaning 
 of your saying " by possibility "? If the doctrine 
 you would force upon me be a plain, broad, straight- 
 forward truth, why fetter it with such a suspicious 
 restriction ? 
 
 X. Think, for a moment, Phaedrus, what doctrine 
 it is which I would force upon you ; not, as you seem 
 to suppose, that the quantity obtained by Y is in the 
 inverse ratio of the value of Y ; on the contrary, if that 
 were so, it would still remain true that an irresistible 
 inference might be drawn from the quantity pur- 
 chased to the value of the thing purchasing, and 
 vice versa, from the value of the thing purchasing to 
 the quantity which it would purchase. There would 
 still be a connection between the two ; and the sole 
 difference between my doctrine and the old doctrine 
 would be this that the connection would be no 
 longer direct (as by your doctrine), but inverse. 
 This would be the difference, arid the sole difference. 
 But what is it that I assert ? Why, that there is no 
 connection at all, or of any kind, direct or inverse, 
 between the quantity commanded and the value 
 commanding. My object is to get rid of your infer- 
 ence, not to substitute any new inference of my own. 
 I put, therefore, an extreme case. This case ought 
 by your doctrine to be impossible. If, therefore, it 
 be not impossible, your doctrine is upset. Simply 
 AS a possible case, it is sufficient to destroy you 
 But, if it were more than a possible case, it would 
 destroy me. For if, instead of demonstrating the 
 possibility of such a case, I had attempted to sho~vi
 
 248 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 that it were a universal and necessary case, I should 
 again be .introducing the notion of a connection 
 between the quantity obtained and the value obtain 
 ing, which it is the very purpose of my whole argu- 
 ment to exterminate. For my thesis is, that no such 
 connection subsists between the two as warrants 
 any inference that the real value is great because 
 the quantity it buys is great, or small because the 
 quantity it buys is small ; or, reciprocally, that, 
 because the real value is great or small, therefore 
 the quantities bought shall be great or small. From, 
 or to, the real value in these cases, I contend that 
 there is no more valid inference, than from, or to, the 
 nominal value with which it is contrasted. 
 
 Phil. Your thesis, then, as I understand it, is this : 
 that if A double its value, it will not command double 
 the quantity of B. I have a barouche which is worth 
 about six hundred guineas at this moment. Now, if 
 I should keep this barouche unused in my coach- 
 house for five years, and at the end of this term it 
 should happen from any cause that carriages had 
 doubled in value, my understanding would lead me 
 to expect double the quantity of any commodity 
 for which I might then exchange it, whether (hat 
 were money, sugar, besoms, or anything whatsoever. 
 But you tell me no. And vice versa, if I found 
 that my barouche at the end of five years obtained 
 for me double the quantity of sugar, or besoms, 01 
 political economists, which it would now obtain, ! 
 should think myself warranted in drawing an infer 
 ence that carriages had doubled their value. But 
 jrou tell me no ; "non valet consequential' 
 
 X You are in the right, Phaedrus ; I do telJ you
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 249 
 
 BO. But you do not express my thesis quite accu- 
 rately, which is, that if A double its value, it will not 
 'hzrefore command double the former quantity of B. 
 It may do so ; and it may also command five hundred 
 times more, or five hundred times less. 
 
 Phaid. ternpora ! mores ! Here is my friend 
 X., that in any other times would have been a man 
 of incorruptible virtue ; and yet, in our unprincipled 
 age, he is content to barter the interests of truth and 
 the "majesty of plain-dealing 1 " fora brilliant para- 
 dox, or (shall I say ?) for the glory of being reputed 
 an accomplished disputant. 
 
 X. But, Phaedrus, there could be little brilliancy 
 in a paradox which in the way you understand it 
 will be nothing better than a bold defiance of com- 
 mon sense. In fact, I should be ashamed to give the 
 air of a paradox to so evident a truth as that which I 
 am now urging, if I did not continually remind my- 
 self that, evident as it may appear, it yet escaped 
 Adam Smith. This consideration, and the spectacle 
 of so many writers since his day thrown out and at 
 a fault precisely at this point of the chase, make it 
 prudent to present it in as startling a shape as 
 possible ; in order that, the attention being thor- 
 oughly roused, the final assent may not be languid 
 or easily forgotten. Suffer me, therefore, Phtedrus, 
 in a Socratic way, to extort an assent from your 
 own arguments allow me to drive you into an 
 absurdity. 
 
 Fhced. With all my heart ; if our father Adam is 
 wrong, I am sure it would be presumptuous in me to 
 pe light ; so drive me as fast as possible. 
 
 X. You say that A, by doubling its own value,
 
 250 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 shall command a double quantity of B. Where, by 
 A, you do not mean some one thing in particular, 
 but generally any assignable thing whatever. Now, 
 B is some assignable thing. Whatever, therefore, ia 
 true of A, will be true of B ? 
 
 Phced. It will. 
 
 X. It will be true, therefore, of B, that, by 
 doubling its own value, it will command a double 
 quantity of A ? 
 
 Phced. 1 cannot deny it. 
 
 X. Let A be your carriage ; and let B stand for 
 six hundred thousands of besoms, which suppose to 
 express the value of your carriage in that article at 
 this present moment. Five years hence, no matter 
 why, carriages have doubled in value ; on which 
 supposition you affirm that in exchange for your 
 barouche you will be entitled to receive no less than' 
 twelve hundred thousands of besoms. 
 
 Phced. I do ; and a precious bargain I shall have 
 of it ; like Moses with his gross of shagreen specta- 
 cles. But sweep on, if you please ; brush me into 
 absurdity. 
 
 X. I will. Because barouches have altered in 
 value, that is no reason why besoms should not have 
 altered ? 
 
 Phced. Certainly ; no reason in the world. 
 
 X. Let them have altered ; for instance, at the 
 end of the five years, let them have been doubled in 
 value. Now, because your assertion is this simply 
 by doubling in value, B shall command a double 
 quantity of A it follows inevitably, Phsodrus, that 
 besoms, having doubled their value in five years 
 vill at the end of that time command a double quan>
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 251 
 
 irity of barouches. The supposition is, that six hun 
 dred thousand, at present, command one barouche ; 
 in five years, therefore, six hundred thousand will 
 command two barouches ? 
 
 Phced. They will. 
 
 X. Yet, at the very same time, it has already ap- 
 peared from your argument that twelve hundred 
 thousand will command only one barouche ; that is, 
 a barouche will at one and the same time be worth 
 twelve hundred thousand besoms, and worth only 
 one fourth part of that quantity. Is this an absurd- 
 ity, Phsedrus ? 
 
 Phced. It seems such. 
 
 X. And, therefore, the argument from which it 
 flows, I presume, is false ? 
 
 Phced. Scavenger of bad logic ! I confess that it 
 looks so. 
 
 Phil. You confess ? So do not I. You die " soft," 
 Phgedrus ; give me the cudgels, and I '11 die " game," 
 at least. The flaw in your argument, X., is this : you 
 summoned Phaedrus to invert his proposition, and 
 then you extorted an absurdity from this inversion. 
 But that absurdity follows only from the particular 
 form of expression into which you threw the original 
 proposition. I will express the same proposition in 
 other terms, unexceptionable terms, which shall 
 evade the absurdity. Observe. A and B are at 
 this time equal in value ; that is, they now ex 
 change quantity for quantity. Or, if you prefer your 
 own case, I say that one barouche exchanges for six 
 hundred thousand besoms. I choose, however, to 
 express this proposition thus : A (one barouehe) 
 *nd B (six hundred thousand besoms) are severally
 
 252 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 equal in value to C. When, therefore, A doubles ita 
 value, I say that it shall command a double quantity 
 of C. Now, mark how I will express the inverted 
 case. When B doubles its value, I say that it shall 
 command a double quantity of C. But these two 
 cases are very reconcilable with each other. A may 
 command a double quantity of C at the same time 
 that B commands a double quantity of C, without 
 involving any absurdity at all. And, if so, the dis- 
 puted doctrine is established, that a double value 
 implies a double command of quantity ; and recipro- 
 cally, that from a doubled command of quantity we 
 may infer a doubled value. 
 
 X. A, and B, you say, may simultaneously com- 
 mand a double quantity of C, in consequence of 
 doubling their value ; and this they may do without 
 absurdity. But how shall I know that, until I know 
 what you cloak under the symbol of C ? For if the 
 same thing shall have happened to C which my 
 argument assumes to have happened to B (namely, 
 that its value has altered), then the same demonstra- 
 tion will hold ; and the very same absurdity will fol- 
 low any attempt to infer the quantity from the value, 
 or the value from the quantity. 
 
 Phil. Yes, but I have provided against that; for 
 by C I mean any assignable thing which has not 
 altered its own value. I assume C to be stationary 
 in value. 
 
 X. In that case, Philebus, it is undoubtedly true 
 that no absurdity follows from the inversion of the 
 proposition as it is expressed by you. But then the 
 short answer which I return is this : your thesis 
 Avoids the absurdity by avoiding the entiie question
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 253 
 
 m dispute. Your thesis is not only not the same as 
 that which we are now discussing ; not only differ- 
 ent in essence from the thesis which is now disputed ; 
 but moreover it affirms only what never was disputed 
 by any man. No man has ever denied that A, by 
 doubling its own value, will command a double 
 quantity of all things which have been stationary in 
 value. Of things in that predicament, it is self- 
 evident that A will command a double quantity. 
 But the question is, whether universally, from 
 doubling its value, A will command a double quan- 
 tity : and inversely, whether universally, from the 
 command of a double quantity, it is lawful to infer a 
 double value. This is asserted by Adam Smith, and 
 is essential to his distinction of nominal and real 
 value ; this is peremptorily denied by us. We offer 
 to produce cases in which from double value it shall 
 not be lawful to infer double quantity. We offer to 
 produce cases in which from double quantity it shall 
 not be lawful to infer double value. And thence we 
 argue, that until the value is discovered in some 
 other way, it will be impossible to discover whether 
 .t be high or low from any consideration of the quan- 
 tity commanded ; and again, with respect to the 
 quantity commanded that, until known in some 
 other way, it shall never be known from any consid- 
 eration of the value commanding. This is what we 
 say ; now, your " C " contradicts the conditions ; 
 " until the value is discovered in some other way, it 
 fiLall never be learned from the quantity command- 
 ed." But in your " C " the value is already dis- 
 "overed ; for you assume it ; you postulate that C is 
 itationary in value : and hence it in easy indeed to
 
 254 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES. 
 
 Infer that, because A commands double quantity of 
 ' C," it shall therefore be of double value ; but this 
 inference is not obtained from the single considera- 
 tion of double quantity, but from that combined with 
 the assumption of unaltered value in C, without 
 which assumption you shall never obtain that infer- 
 ence. 
 
 Phced. The matter is clear beyond what I require ; 
 yet, X., for the satisfaction of my " game " friend 
 Philebus, give us a proof or two ex abundanti, by 
 applying what you have said to cases in Adam Smith 
 or others. 
 
 X. In general it is clear that, if the value of A 
 increases in a duplicate ratio, yet if the value of B 
 increases in a triplicate ratio, so far from command- 
 ing a greater quantity of B, A shall command a 
 smaller quantity ; and if A continually goes on squar- 
 ing its former value, yet if B continually goes on 
 cubing its former value, then, though A will contin- 
 ually augment in value, yet the quantity which it 
 will command of B shall be continually less, until at 
 length it shall become practically equal to nothing.* 
 Hence, therefore, I deduce, 
 
 1. That when I am told by Adam Smith that the 
 money which I can obtain for my hat expresses only 
 its nominal value, but that the labor which I can 
 obtain for it expresses its real value I reply, that 
 
 * The reader may imagine that there is one exception to this case 
 namely, if the values of A and B were assumed at starting to be = 1 ; 
 because, in that case, the squares, cubes, and all other powers alike, 
 would be = 1 ; and thus, under any apparent alteration, the real re- 
 Cations of A and B would always remain the same. Bat this is an 
 Impossible and unmeaning case in Political Economy, as might euilj 
 be shown.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 255 
 
 the quantity of labor is no more any expression of 
 the real value than the quantity of money ; both are 
 equally fallacious expressions, because equally equiv- 
 ocal. My hat, it is true, now buys me x quantity of 
 labor, and some years ago it bought f- quantity of 
 labor. But this no more proves that my hat has ad- 
 vanced in real value according to that proportion, 
 than a double money price will prove it. For how 
 will Adam Smith reply to him who urges the double 
 money value as an argument of a double real value ? 
 He will say No ; non valet con&equentia. Your 
 proof is equivocal ; for a double quantity of money 
 will as inevitably arise from the sinking of money as 
 from the rising of hats. And supposing money to 
 have sunk to one fourth of its former value, in that 
 case a double money value so far from proving hats 
 to have risen in real value will prove that hats have 
 absolutely fallen in real value by one half; and they 
 will be seen to have done so by comparison with all 
 things which have remained stationary ; otherwise 
 they would obtain not double merely, but four times 
 the quantity of money price. This is what Adam 
 Smith will reply in effect. Now, the very same ob- 
 jection I make to labor as any test of real value. 
 My hat now obtains x labor ; formerly it obtained 
 only one half of x. Be it so ; but the whole real 
 change may be in the labor ; labor may now be at 
 one half its former value ; in which case my hat ob- 
 tains the same real price ; double the quantity of 
 labor being now required to express the same value 
 Nay, if labor has fallen to one tenth of its former 
 value, so far from being proved to have risen one 
 uundred per cent, in real valuo by now purchasing
 
 258 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 double quantity of labor, my hat is proved to hav 
 fallen to one fifth of its former value ; else, instead 
 of buying me only x labor, which is but the double 
 of its former value (f ), it would buy me 5 x, or ten 
 times its former value. 
 
 Phil. Your objection, then, to the labor price, as 
 any better expression of the real value than the 
 money price, would be that it is an equivocal ex- 
 pression, leaving it doubtful on which side of the 
 equation the disturbance had taken place, or whether 
 on both sides. In which objection, as against others, 
 you may be right ; but you must not urge this 
 against Adam Smith ; because, on his theory, the 
 expression is not equivocal ; the disturbance can be 
 only on one side of the equation, namely, in your 
 hat. For as to the other side (the labor), that is 
 secured from all disturbance by his doctrine that 
 labor is always of the same value. When, therefore, 
 your hat will purchase x quantity of labor instead 
 of half x, the inference is irresistible that your hat 
 has doubled its value. There lies no appeal from 
 this ; it cannot be evaded by alleging that the labor 
 may have fallen, for the labor cannot fall. 
 
 X. On the Smithian theory it cannot ; and there- 
 fore it is that I make a great distinction between the 
 error of Adam Smith and of other later writers. He, 
 though wrong, was consistent. That the value of 
 labor is invariable, is a principle so utterly unten- 
 able, that many times Adam Smith abandoned it him- 
 self implicitly, though not explicitly. The demon- 
 stration of its variable value indeed follows naturally 
 from the laws which govern wages ; and, therefore 
 I will not here anticipate it. Meantime, having once
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 257 
 
 adopted that theory of the unalterable value of labor, 
 Adam Smith was in the right to make it the expres- 
 sion of real value. But this is not done with the 
 same consistency by Mr. Mai thus at the very time 
 when he denies the possibility of any invariable 
 value. 
 
 Phil. How so ? Mr. Malthus asserts that there is 
 one article of invariable value ; what is more, this 
 article is labor, the very same as that formerly 
 alleged for such by Adam Smith ; and he has written 
 a book to prove it. 
 
 X. True, Philebus, he has done so ; and he now 
 holds that labor is invariable, supposing that his 
 opinions have not altered within the last twelve 
 months. But he was so far from holding this in 
 1820 (at which time it was that he chiefly insisted 
 on the distinction between nominal and real value), 
 that he was not content with the true arguments 
 against the possibility of an invariable value, but 
 made use of one, as I shall soon show you, which 
 involves what the metaphysicians call a non-ens or 
 an idea which includes contradictory and self-destroy- 
 ing conditions. Omitting, however, the inconsist- 
 ency in the idea of real value as conceived by Mr. 
 Malthus, there is this additional error engrafted 
 upon the Smithian definition, that it is extended to 
 " the necessaries and conveniences of life " in gen- 
 eral, and no longer confined exclusively to labor. I 
 shall, therefore, as another case for illustrating and 
 applying the result of our dispute, 
 
 2. Cite a passage from Mr. Malthus' "Political 
 Economy " (p. 59) : " If we are told that the wages 
 of day-labor in a particular country are, at the pres- 
 17
 
 J58 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 ent lime, fourpence a day, or that the revenue of a 
 particular sovereign, seven or eight hundred years 
 ago, was four hundred thousand pounds a year, these 
 statements of nominal value convey no sort of infor 
 mation respecting the condition of the lower class of 
 people in the one case, or the resources of the sov- 
 eieign in the other. Without further knowledge on 
 the subject, we should be quite at a loss to say 
 whether the laborers in the country mentioned were 
 starving or living in great plenty ; whether the king 
 in question might be considered as having a very 
 inadequate revenue, or whether the sum mentioned 
 was so great as to be incredible.* It is quite ob- 
 vious that in cases of this kind, and they are of con- 
 stant recurrence, the value of wages, incomes, or 
 commodities, estimated in the precious metals, will 
 be of little use to us alone. What we want further is 
 some estimate of a kind which may be denominated 
 real value in exchange, implying the quantity of the 
 necessaries and conveniences of life which those 
 wages, incomes, or commodities, will enable the pos- 
 sessor of them to command." 
 
 In this passage, over and above the radical error 
 about real value, there is also apparent that confu- 
 sion, which has misled so many writers, between 
 value and wealth; a confusion which Mr. Eicardo 
 first detected and cleared up. That we shall not be 
 able to determine, from the mere money wages, 
 whether the laborers were " starving or living in 
 
 Hume very reasonably doubts the possibility of William the Con- 
 .jneror's revenue being four hundred thousand pounds a year, as rep- 
 resented by an ancient historian, and adopted by subsequent writer* 
 Note of Mr. MaUktu.
 
 OK POLITICAL ECONOMY. 259 
 
 great plenty," is certain ; and that we shall be able 
 to determine this as soon as we know the quantity 
 of necessaries, etc., which those wages commanded, 
 is equally certain ; for, in fact, the one knowledge is 
 identical with the other, and but another way of 
 expressing it ; we must, of course, learn that the 
 laborer lived in plenty, if we should learn that his 
 wages gave him a great deal of bread, milk, venison, 
 salt, honey, etc. And as there could never have 
 been any doubt whether we should learn this from 
 what Mr. Malthus terms the real value, and that we 
 should not learn it from what he terms the monej* 
 value, Mr. Malthus may be assured that there never 
 can have been any dispute raised on that point. The 
 true dispute is, whether, after having learned that 
 the laborer lived in American plenty, we shall have 
 at all approximated to the appreciation of his wages 
 as to real value : this is the question ; and it is plain 
 that we shall not. What matters it that his wages 
 gave him a great deal of corn, until we know whether 
 corn bore a high or a low value ? A great deal of 
 corn at a high value implies wages of a high value ; 
 but a great deal of corn at a low value is very con- 
 sistent with wages at a low value. Money wages, 
 't is said, leave us quite in the dark as to real value. 
 Doubtless ; nor are we at all the less in the dark for 
 blowing the corn wages, the milk wages, the grouse 
 ftrages, etc. Given the value of corn, given the value 
 of milk, given the value of grouse, we shall know 
 whether a great quantity of those articles implies a 
 nigh value, or is compatible with a low value, in the 
 wages which commanded them ; but, until that is 
 {fiven, it has been already shown that the quantity
 
 60 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 alone is an equivocal test, being equally capable of 
 coexisting with high wages or low wages. 
 
 Phil. Why, then, it passes my comprehension to 
 understand what test remains of real value, if neither 
 money price nor commodity price expresses it. When 
 are wages, for example, at a high real value ? 
 
 X. Wages are at a high real value when it requires 
 much labor to produce wages ; and at a low real 
 value when it requires little labor to produce wages : 
 and it is perfectly consistent with the high real value 
 that the laborer should be almost starving ; and 
 perfectly consistent with the low real value that the 
 laborer should be living in great ease and comfort. 
 
 Phil. Well, this may be true ; but you must allow 
 that it sounds extravagant. 
 
 X. Doubtless it sounds extravagant, to him who 
 persists in slipping under his notion of value another 
 and heterogeneous notion, namely, that of wealth. 
 But, let it sound as it may, all the absurdities (which 
 are neither few nor slight) are on the other side. 
 These will discover themselves as we advance. 
 Meantime, I presume that in your use, and in every- 
 body's use, of the word value, a high value ought to 
 purchase a high value, and that it will be very absurd 
 if it should not. But, as to purchasing a great quan- 
 tity, that condition is surely not included in any 
 nan's idea of value. 
 
 Phil. No, certainly ; because A is of high value, 
 't does not follow that it must purchase a great 
 quantity ; that must be as various as the nature of 
 the thing with which it is compared. But having 
 once assumed any certain thing, as B, it does seen 
 to follow that, however small a quantity A may pur.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 2G1 
 
 chase of this (which I admit may be very small, 
 though the vaiue of A should be very great), yet 
 it does seem to follow, from everybody's notion of 
 value, that this quantity of B, however small at first, 
 must continually increase, if the value of A be sup- 
 posed continually to increase. 
 
 X. This may " seem " to follow ; but it has been 
 shown that it does not follow ; for if A continually 
 double its value, yet let B continually triple or 
 quadruple its value, and the quantity of B will be 
 so far from increasing, that it will finally become 
 evanescent. In short, once for all, the formula is 
 this : Let A continually increase in value, and it shall 
 purchase continually more and more in quantity 
 than what ? More than it did ? By no means ; but 
 more than it would have done, but for that increase 
 in value. A has doubled its value. Does it therefore 
 purchase more than it did before of B ? No ; perhaps 
 it purchases much less ; suppose only one fourth part 
 as much of B as it did before ; but still the doubling 
 of A's value has had its full effect ; for B, it may hap- 
 pen, has increased in value eight-fold ; and, but for 
 the doubling of A, it would, instead of one fourth, 
 have bought only one eighth of the former quantity. 
 A, therefore, by doubling in value, has bought not 
 double in quantity of what it bought before, but d* mble 
 in quantity of what it would else have bought. 
 
 The remainder of this dialogue related to the dis- 
 tinction between "relative" value, as it is termed, 
 and " absolute " value ; clearing up the true use of 
 that distinction. But, this being already too long, 
 the amount of it will be given hereafter, with a speci- 
 men of the errors which have arisen from the abuse 
 of this distinction.
 
 262 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 DIALOGUE THE FIFTH. 
 
 OM THE IMMEDIATE USES OF THE NEW TJ1KORY OF VALUE. 
 
 X. THE great law which governs exchangeable 
 value has now been stated and argued. Next, it 
 seems, we must ask, what are its uses ? This is a 
 question which you or I should not be likely to ask ; 
 fur with what color of propriety could a doubt be 
 raised about the use of any truth in any science ? 
 Btill less, about the use of a leading truth ? least of 
 all, about the use of (he leading truth ? Nevertheless, 
 such a doubt has been raised by Mr. Malthus. 
 
 Phced. On what ground or pretence. 
 
 X. Under a strange misconception of Mr. Ricar- 
 do's meaning. Mr. Malthus has written a great 
 deal, as you may have heard, against Mr. Ricardo's 
 principle of value ; his purpose is to prove that it is 
 a false principle ; independently of which, he con- 
 tends that, even if it were a true principle, it would 
 be of little use.* 
 
 Phced. Little use ? In relation to what ? 
 
 X. Ay, there lies the inexplicable mistake : of lit- 
 tle use as a measure of value. Now, this is a mis- 
 take for which there can be no sort of apology ; for 
 it supposes Mr. Ricardo to have brought forward 
 his principle of value as a standard or measure ol 
 value ; whereas, Mr. Ricardo has repeatedly informed 
 Lis reader that he utterly rejects the possibility of 
 any such measure. Thus (at p. 10, edit. 2d), after 
 'aying down the conditio sine qua non under which 
 
 VW the foot-note to p. 54 of "The Measure of Value."
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 263 
 
 my commodity could preserve an unvarying value, 
 he goes on to say : " of such a commodity we have 
 no knowledge, and consequently are unable to fix on 
 any standard of value." And, again (at p. 343 of 
 the same edition), after exposing at some length the 
 circumstances which disqualify " any commodity, or 
 all commodities together," from performing the office 
 of a standard of value, he again states the indispens- 
 able condition which must be realized in that com- 
 modity which should pretend to such an office ; and 
 again he adds, immediately, " of such a commodity 
 we have no knowledge." But what leaves this mis- 
 take still more without excuse is, that in the third 
 edition of his book Mr. Ricardo has added an express 
 section (the sixth) to his chapter on value, having 
 for its direct object to expose the impossibility of 
 any true measure of value. Setting aside, indeed, 
 these explicit declarations, a few words will suffice 
 to show that Mr. Ricardo could not have consistently 
 believed in any standard or measure of value. What 
 does a standard mean ? 
 
 Phced. A standard is that which stands still whilst 
 other things move, and by this means serves to in- 
 dicate or measure the degree in which those other 
 things have advanced or receded. 
 
 X. Doubtless ; and a standard of value must itself 
 \ tand still or be stationary in value. But nothing 
 could possibly be stationary in value upon Mr. Ricur- 
 lo's theory, unless it were always produced by the 
 same quantity of labor ; since any alteration in the 
 quantity of the producing labor must immediately 
 itflfect the value of the product. Now, what is there 
 which can always be obtained by the same quantity
 
 264 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 of labor ? Raw materials (for reasons which will ap- 
 pear when we consider Rent) are constantly tending 
 to grow dearer * by requiring more labor for their 
 production ; manufactures, from the changes in ma- 
 chinery, which are always progressive and never 
 retrograde, are constantly tending to grow cheaper 
 
 * " Constantly tending to grow dearer." To the novice in Political 
 Economy, it will infallibly suggest itself that the direct contrary is 
 the truth ; since, even in rural industry, though more tardily improv- 
 ing its processes than manufacturing industry, the tendency is always 
 in that direction : agriculture, as an art benefiting by experience, 
 has never yet been absolutely regressive, though not progressive by 
 such striking leaps or sudden discoveries as manufacturing art. But, 
 for all that, it still remains true, as a general principle, that raw mate- 
 rials won from the soil are constantly tending to grow dearer, whilst 
 these same materials as worked up for use by manufacturing skill 
 are constantly travelling upon an opposite path. The reason is, that, 
 in the case of manufacturing improvements, no conquest made is evet 
 lost. The course is never retrogressive towards the worse machinery, 
 or towards the more circuitous process ; once resigned, the inferior 
 method is resigned forever. But in the industry applied to the soil 
 this is otherwise. Doubtless the farmer does not, with his eyes open, 
 return to methods which have experimentally been shown to be infe- 
 rior, unless, indeed, where want of capital may have forced him to do 
 so ; but, as population expands, he is continually forced into descend- 
 ing upon inferior soils ; and the product of these inferior soils it is 
 which gives the ruling price for the whole aggregate of products. Say 
 that soils Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, had been hitherto sufficient for a nation, 
 where the figures express the regular graduation downwards in point 
 of fertility ; then, when No. 5 is called for (which, producing less by 
 the supposition, costs, therefore, more upon any given quantity), the 
 price upon this last, No. 5, regulates the price upon all the five soils. 
 And thus it happens that, whilst always progressive, rural industry 
 is nevertheless always travelling towards an increased cost. The 
 product of N.os. 1, 2, 3, 4, is continually tending to be cheaper ; but 
 when the cost of No. 5 (and so on forever as to the fresh soils required 
 lo meet a growing population) is combined with that of the superior 
 lolls, the quotient from the entire dividend, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, if alway 
 tending gradually to a trgher expression.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 265 
 
 by requiring less ; consequently, there is nothing 
 which, upon Mr. Ricardo's theory, can long continue 
 stationary in value. If, therefore, he had proposed 
 *uy measure of value, he must have forgotten his 
 own principle of value. 
 
 Phil. But allow me to ask, if that principle is not 
 proposed as a measure of value, in what character is 
 it proposed ? 
 
 X. Surely, Philebus, as the ground of value ; 
 whereas a measure of value is no more than a criie~ 
 rion or test of value. The last is simply a p^in- 
 cipium cognoscendi, whereas the other is a p-nn- 
 vipium essendi. 
 
 Phil. But wherein lies the difference ? 
 
 X. Is it possible that you can ask such a ques- 
 tion ? A thermometer measures the temperature of 
 the air ; that is, it furnishes a criterion for ascertain- 
 ing its varying degrees of heat ; but you cannot even 
 imagine that a thermometer furnishes any ground of 
 this heat. I wish to know whether a day's labor at 
 the time of the English Revolution bore the same 
 value as a hundred years after at the time of the 
 French Revolution ; and, if not the same value, 
 whether a higher or a lower. For this purpose, if I 
 believe that there is any commodity which is immu- 
 table in value, I shall naturally compare a day's 
 labor with that commodity at each period. Some, for 
 instance, have imagined t\iat corn is of invariable 
 value ; and, supposing one to adopt so false a notion, 
 we should merely have to inquire what quantity of 
 corn a day's labor would exchange for at each period, 
 and we should then have determined the relations 
 f value between labor at the two periods. In this
 
 266 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 case, I should have used corn as the measure oi (he 
 value of laboi ; but I could not rationally mean to 
 say tnat corn was the ground of the value of labor ; 
 and, if I said that I made use of corn to determine 
 the value of labor, I should employ the woixl " deter- 
 mine " in the same sense as when I say that the 
 thermometer determines the heat namely, that it 
 ascertains it, or determines it to my knowledge (as 
 a principium cognoscendi) . But, when Mr. Ricardo 
 eays that the quantity of labor employed on A de- 
 termines the value of A, he must of course be under- 
 stood to mean that it causes A to be of this value, 
 that it is the ground of its value, the principium es- 
 sendi of its value ; just as when, being asked what 
 determines a stone to fall downwards rather than 
 upwards, I answer that it is the earth's attraction, 
 or the principle of gravitation, meaning that this 
 principle causes it to fall downwards ; and if, in this 
 case, I say that gravitation "determines" its course 
 downwards, I no longer use that word in the sense 
 of ascertain ; I do not mean that gravitation ascer- 
 tains it to have descended ; but that gravitation has 
 zausalively impressed that direction on its course ; 
 in other words, I make gravitation the principium. 
 tssendi of its descent. 
 
 Phced. I understand your distinction ; and in 
 which sense do you say that Mr. Malthas has used 
 the term Measure of Value in the sense of a 
 ground, or of a criterion ? 
 
 X. In both senses; he talks of it as "accounting 
 for " the value of A, in which case it means a ground 
 of value; and as "estimating" the value of A, IL 
 which case it means a criterion of value. I mentior
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 2B7 
 
 these expressions as instances ; but, the truth is, 
 that, throughout his es^ay entitled " The Measure 
 of Value Stated and Illustrated/' and throughout 
 Ms "Political Economy" (but especially in the 
 second chapter, entitled " The Nature and Measures 
 of Value"), he uniformly confounds the two ideas 
 of a ground and a criterion of value under a riuch 
 greater variety of expressions than I have time to 
 enumerate. 
 
 Phil. But, admitting that Mr. Malthus has pro- 
 ceeded on the misconception you state, what is the 
 specific injury which has thence resulted to Mr. 
 Ricardo ? 
 
 X. I am speaking at present of the uses to be 
 derived from Mr. Ricardo's principle of value. Now, 
 if it had been proposed as a measure of value, we 
 might justly demand that it should be "ready and 
 easy of application," to adopt the words of Mr. 
 Malthus ("Measure of Value," p. 54); but it ia 
 manifestly not so ; for the quantity of labor employed 
 in producing A " could not in many cases " (as Mr. 
 Malthus truly objects) "be ascertained without con- 
 siderable difficulty ; " in most cases, indeed, it could 
 not be ascertained at all. A measure of value, how- 
 ever, which cannot be practically applied, is worth- 
 less ; as a measure of value, therefore, Mr. Ricardo's 
 law of value is worthless ; and if it had been offered 
 as such by its author, the blame would have settled 
 on Mr. Ricardo ; as it is, it settles on Mr. Malthus, 
 who has grounded an imaginary triumph on his own 
 yross misconception. For Mr. Ricardo never dreamed 
 of offering a standard or fixed measure of value, or
 
 268 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 of tolerating any pretended measure of that sort, by 
 whomsoever offered. 
 
 Thus much I have said for the sake of showing 
 what is not the use of Mr. Ricardo's principle in the 
 design of its author ; in order that he may be no 
 longer exposed to the false criticism of those who 
 are looking for what is not to be found, nor ought to 
 be found,* in his work. On quitting this part cf 
 the subject, I shall just observe that Mr. Malthus, 
 in common with many others, attaches a most un- 
 reasonable importance to the discovery of a measure 
 of value. I challenge any man to show that the 
 great interests of Political Economy have at all 
 suffered for want of such a measure, which at best 
 would end in answering a few questions of unprofit- 
 able curiosity ; whilst, on the other hand, without a 
 knowledge of the ground on which value depends, 
 or without some approximation to it, Political Econ- 
 omy could not exist at all, except as a heap of base- 
 less opinions. 
 
 Phced. Now, then, having cleared away the imag- 
 inary uses of Mr. Ricardo's principle, let us hear 
 something of its real uses. 
 
 X. The most important of these I expressed in 
 
 * At p. 36 of " The Measure of Value " (in the foot-note), this 
 misconception as to Mr. Ricardo appears in a still grosser shape ; 
 for not only does Mr. Malthus speak of a " concession " (as he calls 
 't ) of Mr. Ricardo as being " quite fatal " to the notion of a standard 
 of value, as though it- were an object with Mr. Ricardo to establish 
 tuch a standard. but this standard, moreover, is now represented 
 13 being gold. And what objection does Mr. Malthus make to gold 
 &i> a standard ? The identical objection which Mr. Ricardo bad 
 aimself insisted on in that very page of his third edition to which 
 Mr. Malthus refer*
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 269 
 
 ihe last words I uttered : That without which a 
 science cannot exist is commensurate in use with 
 the science itself; being the fundamental law, 
 it will testify its own importance in the changes 
 which it will impress on all the derivative laws. 
 For the main use of Mr. Ricardo's principle, I refer 
 you therefore to all Political Economy. Meantime, 
 I will notice here the immediate services which it 
 has rendered by liberating the student from those 
 perplexities which previously embarrassed him on 
 his first introduction to the science ; I mention two 
 cases by way of specimen. 
 
 1. When it was asked by the student what deter- 
 mined the value of all commodities, it was answered 
 that this value was chiefly determined by wages. 
 When again it was asked what determined wages, 
 it was recollected that wages must generally be ad- 
 justed to the value o f the commodities upon which 
 they were spent ; and the answer was in effect that 
 wages were determined by the value of commodities. 
 And thus the mind was entangled in this inextricable 
 circle that the price of commodities was deter- 
 mined by wages, and wages determined by the price 
 uf commodities. From this gross Judfylos (as the 
 logicians call it), or see-saw, we are now liberated ; 
 {or the first step, as we are now aware, is false : the 
 value of commodities is not determined by wages ; 
 since wages express the value of labor ; and it haa 
 been demonstrated that not the value but the quantify 
 of labor determines the value of its products. 
 
 2. A second case, in which Mr. Ricardo's law has 
 introduced a simplicity into the science which had 
 'n vain been sought for before, is this r all forme?
 
 270 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 economists, in laying down tne component parts of 
 price, had fancied it impossible to get rid of what 
 is termed the raw material as one of its elements. 
 This impossibility was generally taken for granted : 
 but an economist of our times, the late Mr. Fran- 
 cis Horner, had (in the Edinburgh fieview) ex 
 pressly set himself to prove it. " It is not true," 
 said Mr. Homer, " that the thing purchased in every 
 bargain is merely so much labor : the value of the 
 raw material can neither be rejected as nothing, nor 
 estimated as a constant quantity." Now, this re- 
 fractory element is at once, and in the simplest way 
 possible, exterminated by Mr. Ricardo's reformed 
 law of value. Upon the old system, if I had resolved 
 the value of my hat into wages and profits, I should 
 immediately have been admonished that I had for- 
 gotten one of the elements : " wages, profits, and 
 raw material, you mean," it would have been said. 
 Raw material I Well, but on what separate prin- 
 ciple can this raw material be valued ? or on what 
 other principle than that on which the hat itself was 
 valued? Like any other product of labor, its value 
 is determined by the quantity of labor employed in 
 obtaining it ; and the amount of this product is 
 divided between wages and profits as in any case of 
 a manufactured commodity. The raw material of 
 the hat suppose to be beaver : if, then, in order to 
 take the quantity of beavers which are necessary to 
 furnish materials for a thousand hats, four men have 
 been employed for twenty-five days, then it appears 
 that the raw material of a thousand hats has cost a 
 hundred days' labor, which will be of the same value 
 in exchange as the product of a hundred days' labor
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 271 
 
 (previously equated and discounted as to its quality) 
 In any other direction ; as, for example, if a hundred 
 days' labor would produce two thousand pairs of 
 stockings of a certain quality, then it follows that 
 the raw material of my hat is worth two pairs 
 of such stockings. And thus it turns out that an 
 element of value (which Mr. Horner and thousands 
 of others have supposed to be of a distinct nature, 
 and to resist all further analysis) gives way before 
 Mr. Eicardo's law, and is eliminated ; an admirable 
 simplification, which is equal in merit and use to 
 any of the rules which have been devised, from time 
 to time, for the resolution of algebraic equations. 
 
 Here, then, in a hasty shape, I have offered two 
 specimens of the uses which arise from a better law 
 of value ; again reminding you, however, that the 
 main use must lie in the effect which it will impress 
 on all the other laws of Political Economy. And 
 reverting for one moment, before we part, to the 
 difficulty of Philebus about the difference between 
 this principle as a principium cognoxcendi or measure, 
 and a principium essendi or determining ground, let 
 me dusire you to consider these two essential marks 
 of distinction : 1. that by all respectable economists 
 any true measure of value has been doubted or de- 
 nied as a possibility : but no man can doubt the 
 sxistence of a ground of value ; 2. that a measure is 
 posterior to the value ; for, before a value can be 
 measured or estimated, it must exist: but a ground 
 of value must be antecede.it to the value, like anj 
 other cause to its effect.
 
 272 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 DIALOGUE THE SIXTH. 
 
 ON THE OBJECTIONS TO THE NEW LAW OP VALUE. 
 
 X. THE two most eminent economists * who have 
 opposed the Ricardian doctrines are Mr. Malthus 
 and Colonel Torrens. In the spring of 1820 Mr. 
 Malthus published his "Principles of Political Econ- 
 omy/' much of which was an attack upon Mr. Ri- 
 cardo ; and the entire second chapter of eighty-three 
 pages, " On the Nature and Measures of Value," 
 was one continued attempt to overthrow Mr. Ri- 
 cardo's theory of value. Three years afterwards he 
 published a second attack on the same theory in a 
 distinct essay of eighty-one pages, entitled, "The 
 Measure of Value Stated and Illustrated." In this 
 latter work, amongst other arguments, he has relied 
 upon on'e in particular, which he has chosen to ex- 
 hibit in the form of a table. As it is of the last 
 importance to Political Economy that this question 
 should be settled, I will shrink from nothing that 
 wears the semblance of an argument: and I will 
 now examine this table ; and will show that the 
 whole of the inferences contained in the seventh, 
 t-ighth, and ninth columns are founded on a gross 
 blunder in the fifth and sixth ; every number in 
 which < olumns is falsely assigned. 
 
 The reader must continue to remember that this paper w* 
 rrttteu in 1824.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 273 
 
 HR. JCALTHUS' TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE INVARIABLE VALUS 
 OF LABOR AND ITS RESULTS. 
 
 (From p. 38 of " The Measure of Value Stated and Illustrated.' 
 London : 1823.) 
 
 N. B. The sole change which has been made in this reprint of 
 'he original Table is the assigning of names (Alpha, Beta, etc.) to 
 the several cases, for the purpose of easier reference and distinction. 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 
 i. 
 
 3 
 
 r ^ 
 
 C 3 
 
 fj a 
 
 84 
 
 aj fl 
 
 i i 1 
 
 |gi| 
 
 
 = g 
 
 tlj u 
 
 
 
 1^ sJs 
 
 _ |s 
 
 I" 5 
 
 "o'Sb c 
 
 2 M 
 
 ill 
 
 ? ojB 1 
 
 CASE. 
 
 O v 
 
 > c 
 
 !f -2 so 
 
 ,3 "H .5 
 
 S 
 
 5 * *3 
 
 o> 2 
 
 ^ U 00 
 
 
 ^4 
 
 r * 
 
 o .S 
 
 (^ p. 1 "" 1 
 
 c 
 
 *> **"" *S 
 
 O "^ y 
 
 
 
 "5 0> 
 
 O " 
 
 ,= ) 
 
 3""= 
 
 O rf 
 
 . > 
 
 jj i- 
 
 3 s'2 
 
 **t3'c a 
 
 
 aj " 
 
 " 
 
 -- M L? ?J 
 
 ^.- on 
 
 ^" 
 
 J2 ^ ^ 
 
 tt-i C g 
 
 ^ 33 
 
 
 Is "3 
 
 oj 
 
 1?* 
 
 O C o 
 
 '5 S 3. 
 
 
 ~ !?S 
 
 O c'S* 
 
 5 c S 
 
 
 I" 
 
 1 
 
 S 5 
 
 |sS 
 
 1^ 
 
 I 1 - 1 
 
 &** 
 
 5 .'> 5" 
 
 CS O h an 
 
 3 i_ i 
 rt o*=i w 
 
 Alpha ... 
 
 150 
 
 Qrs. 
 12 
 
 Qrs. 
 120 
 
 PIT Ct. 
 
 25 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 8.33 
 
 12.5 
 
 Beta 
 
 150 
 
 13 
 
 130 15.38 
 
 8.66 
 
 1.34 
 
 10 
 
 7.7 
 
 11.53 
 
 Gamma . 
 
 150 
 
 10 
 
 100 50 
 
 6.6 
 
 3.4 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 15 
 
 Delta.... 
 
 140 
 
 12 
 
 120116.66 
 
 8.6 
 
 1.4 
 
 10 
 
 7.14* 
 
 11.6 
 
 Epsilon.. 
 
 140 
 
 11 
 
 110 
 
 27.2 
 
 7.85 
 
 2.15 
 
 10 
 
 9.09 
 
 12.7 
 
 Zeta [130 
 
 12 
 
 120 
 
 8.3 
 
 9.23 
 
 0.77 
 
 10 
 
 8.33 
 
 10.8 
 
 Eta 
 
 130 
 
 10 
 
 100 
 
 30 
 
 7.7 
 
 2.3 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 13 
 
 Theta.... |120 
 
 11 
 
 110 
 
 9 
 
 9.17 
 
 0.83 
 
 10 
 
 9.09 
 
 10.9 
 
 Iota 
 
 120 
 
 10 
 
 100 
 
 20 
 
 8.33 
 
 1.67 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 12 
 
 Kappa... 
 
 110 
 
 10 
 
 100 
 
 10 
 
 9.09 
 
 0.91 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 Lambda 110 
 
 9 
 
 90 
 
 22.2 
 
 8.18 
 
 1.82 
 
 10 
 
 11.1 
 
 12.2 
 
 My 100 
 
 9 
 
 90 
 
 11.1 
 
 9 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 11.1 
 
 11.1 
 
 Ny 
 
 100 
 
 8 
 
 80 
 
 25 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 12.5 
 
 12.5 
 
 Xi 
 
 90 
 
 8 
 
 80112.5 
 
 8.88 
 
 1.12 
 
 10 
 
 12.5 
 
 11.25 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Pficed. Now, X., you know that I abhor arithmet- 
 ical calculations ; besides which, I have no faith in 
 
 * This is an oversight on the part of Mr. Malthus, and not an errcr 
 of the press ; for 7.14 would be the value of the 100 quarters on the 
 supposition that the entire product of the ten men (namely, 140 quar- 
 ters) went to wages ; but the wages in tnis case (Delta) being 120 
 [[uartere, the true value on the principle of this table ia manifestly 
 S.33. 
 
 18
 
 274 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 any propositions of a political economist which he 
 cannot make out readily without all this elaborate 
 machinery of tables and figures. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, I put it to you, as a man of feeling, 
 whsther you ought to inflict upon me this alarming 
 pile of computations ; which, by your gloomy coun- 
 tenance, I see that you are meditating. 
 
 X. Stop, recollect yourself: not I it is, remembei, 
 that impose this elaborate " table " upon you, but 
 Mr. Malthus. The yoke is his. I am the man sent 
 by Providence to lighten this yoke. Surrender 
 yourself, therefore, to my guidance, Phaedrus, and I 
 will lead you over the hill by so easy a road that 
 you shall never know you have been climbing. You 
 bee that there are nine columns ; that, I suppose, 
 does not pass your skill in arithmetic. Now, then, 
 to simplify the matter, begin by dismissing from your 
 attention every column but the first and the last ; 
 fancy all the rest obliterated. 
 
 Phoed. Most willingly ; it is a heavenly fancy. 
 
 X, Next look into the first column, and tell me 
 vtrhat you see there. 
 
 Phced, I see " lots " of 150s and 140s, and other 
 ill-looking people of the same description. 
 
 X. Well, these numbers express the products of 
 the same labor on land of different qualities. The 
 quantity of labor is assumed to be always the same ; 
 namely, the labor of ten men for a year (or one man 
 Tor ten years, or twenty men for half a year, etc.). 
 The producing labor, I say, is always the same ; but 
 the product is constantly varying. Thus, in the case 
 Alpha the product is one hundred and fifty quarters ; 
 in the cases Delta and Epsilon, when cultivation has
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 275 
 
 been compelled by increasing population to descend 
 upon inferior land, the product of equal labor is no 
 more than one hundred and. forty quarters ; and in 
 the case Iota it has fallen to one hundred and twenty 
 quarters. Now, upon Mr. Ricardo's principle of 
 valuation, 1 demand to know what ought to be the 
 price of these several products which vary so much 
 in quantity. 
 
 Phced. Why, since they are all the products of 
 the same quantity of labor, they ought all to sell for 
 the same price. 
 
 X. Doubtless ; not, however, of necessity for the 
 same money price, since money may itself have 
 varied, in which case the same money price would 
 be really a very different price ; but for the same 
 price in all things which have not varied in value. 
 The Xi product, therefore, which is only ninety 
 quarters, will fetch the same real price as the Alpha 
 or Gamma products, which are one hundred and fifty. 
 But, by the way, in saying this, let me caution you 
 against making the false inference that corn is at the 
 same price in the case Xi as in the case Alpha or 
 Gamma ; for the inference is the very opposite ; since, 
 if ninety quarters cost as much as one hundred and 
 fifty, then each individual quarter of the ninety costs 
 a great deal more. Thus, suppose that the Alpha 
 product sold at four pounds a quarter, the price of the 
 whole would be six hundred pounds. Six hundred 
 pounds, therefore, must be the price of Xi, or the 
 ninety quarters ; but that is six pounds, thirteen shil- 
 lings, four pence, a quarter. This ought to bo a 
 needless caution ; yet I have known economists of 
 great name ^tand much in need of it.
 
 276 
 
 THE TEMPLARS 7 DIALOGUES 
 
 Phced. I am sure / stand in need of it, and of all 
 sort of assistance, for I am " ill at these numbers." 
 But let us go on ; what you require my assent to. 
 I understand to be this : that all the different quan- 
 tities of corn expressed in the first column will be of 
 the same value, because they are all alike tb* 1 product 
 of ten men's labor. To this I do assent ; and what 
 next ? Does anybody deny it ? 
 
 X. Yes, Mr. Malthus : he asserts that the value 
 will not be always the same ; and the purpose of the 
 ninth column is to assign the true values ; which, by 
 looking into that column, you may perceive to be 
 constantly varying : the value of Alpha, for instance, 
 is twelve and five tenths ; the value of Epsilon is 
 twelve and seven tenths ; of Iota, twelve ; and of 
 Xi, eleven and twenty-five one-hundredths. 
 
 Phced. But of what ? Twelve and five tenths of 
 what? 
 
 X. Of anything which, though variable, has in fact 
 happened to be stationary in value ; or, if you choose, 
 of anything which is not variable in value. 
 
 Phced. Not variable ! But there is no such thing. 
 
 X. No ! Mr. Malthus, however, says there is ; 
 .'abor, he asserts, is of unalterable value. 
 
 Phcsd. What ! does he mean to say, then, that the 
 laborer always obtains the same wages ? 
 
 X. Yes, the same real wages ; all differences being 
 only apparently in the wages, but really in the com- 
 jaodity in which the wages are paid. Let that com- 
 modity be wheat ; then, if the laborer receives teii 
 quarters of wheat in 1800, and nine in 1820, that 
 would imply only that wheat was about eleven pel 
 cent, dearer in the latter year. Or let money be
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 277 
 
 that commodity ; then, if the laborer receives this 
 century two shillings, and next century three shil- 
 lings, this simply argues that money has fallen in 
 value by fifty per cent. 
 
 Phced, Why, so it may ; and the whole difference 
 in wages may have arisen in that way, and be only 
 apparent. But, then, it may also have arisen from a 
 change in the real value of wages ; that is, on the 
 Ricardian principle, in the quantity of labor necessary 
 to produce wages. And this latter must have been 
 the nature of the change, if Alpha, Iota, Xi, etc., 
 should be found to purchase more labor ; in which 
 case Mr. Ricardo's doctrine is not disturbed ; for he 
 will say that Iota in 1700 exchanges for twelve, and 
 Kappa in 1 800 for eleven, not because Kappa has fallen 
 in that proportion (fo- Kappa, being the product of 
 the same labor ao I< ta, cannot fall below the value 
 of Iota), but becaurf^ the commodity for which they 
 are exchanged has rsen in that proportion. 
 
 X . He will ; but Mr. Malthus attempts to bar that 
 answer in this case, by alleging that it is impossible 
 for the commodity in question (namely, labor) to rise 
 or to fall in that or in any other proportion. If, then, 
 the change cannot be in the labor, it must be in 
 Alpha, Beta, etc. ; in which case Mr. Ricardo will be 
 overthrown ; for they are the products of the same 
 quantity of labor, and yet have not retained the 
 same value. 
 
 Phced. But, to bar Mr. Ricardo's answer, Mr. Mal- 
 thus must not allege this merely ; he must prove it. 
 
 X. To be sure ; and the first seven columns of this 
 table are designed to prove it. Now, then, we have 
 ione with the ninth column, and also with the eighth ;
 
 278 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 for they are both mere corollaries from all the restj 
 and linked together under the plain i lie of three. 
 Dismiss these altogether ; and we will uow come to 
 the argument. 
 
 SECTION n. 
 
 The table is now reduced to seven columns, and 
 the logic of it is this : the four first columns express 
 the conditions under which the three following ones 
 are deduced as consequences ; and they are to be 
 read thus, taking the case Alpha by way of example : 
 Suppose that (by column one) the land cultivated is 
 of such a quality that ten laborers produce me one 
 hundred and fifty quarters of corn ; and that (by 
 column two) each laborer receives for his own wages 
 twelve quarters ; in which case (by column three) the 
 whole ten receive one hundred and twenty quarters ; 
 and thus (by column four) leave me for my profit 
 thirty quarters out of all that they have produced ; 
 that is, twenty-five per cent. Under these conditions, 
 I insist (says Mr. Mai thus) that the wages of ten 
 men, as stated in column three, let them be produced 
 by little labor or much labor, shall never exceed or 
 fall below one invariable value expressed in column 
 seven ; and, accordingly, by looking down that col- 
 umn, you will perceive one unifown valuation of 10 
 Upon this statement, it is manifest that the whole 
 force of the logic turns upon the accuracy with which 
 column three is valued in column seven. If that 
 valuation be correct, then it follows that, under all 
 changes in the quantity of labor which produces 
 them, wages never alter in real value ; in othe 
 leords, the value of labor is invariable.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 270 
 
 Phced. But of course you deny that the valuation 
 is correct ? 
 
 X. I do, Phajdrus ; the valuation is wrong, even 
 on Mr. Malthus' or any other man's principles, in 
 every instance ; the value is not truly assigned in a 
 single case of the whole fourteen. For how does 
 Mr. Malthus obtain this invariable value often ? lie 
 resolves the value of the wages expressed in column 
 three into two parts ; one of which, under the name 
 " labor, 1 ' he assigns in column five ; the other, under 
 the name "profits," he assigns in column six; and 
 column seven expresses the sum of these two parts ; 
 which are always kept equal to ten by always com- 
 pensating each other's excesses and defects. Hence, 
 Phasdrus, you see that as column seven simply 
 expresses the sum of columns five and six if those 
 columns are right, column seven cannot be wrong. 
 Consequently, it ip in columns five and six that we 
 are to look for the root of the error ; which is indeed 
 a very gross one. 
 
 Phil. Why, now, for instance, take the case 
 Alpha, and what is the error you detect in that ? 
 
 X. Simply, this that in column five, instead of 
 eight, the true value is 6.4 ; and in column six, in- 
 stead of two, the true value is 1.6 ; the sum of which 
 values is not ten, but eight ; and that is the figure 
 which should have stood in column seven. 
 
 Phil. How so, X. ? In column five Mr. Malthus 
 undertakes to assign the quantity of labor necessary 
 (under the conditions of the particular case) to pro- 
 duce the wages expressed in column three, which in 
 this case Alpha are one hundred and twenty quarters. 
 Now, you cannot deny that he has assigned it truly ;
 
 28C THE TEMPJJLRS' DIALOGUES 
 
 for, when ten men produce one hundred and fifty 
 (by column one) that is, each man fifteen it 
 must require eight to produce one hundred and 
 twenty ; for one hundred and twenty is eight times 
 fifteen. Six men and four tenths of a man, the num- 
 ber you would substitute, could produce only ninety- 
 six quarters. 
 
 X. Very true, Philebus ; eight men are necessary 
 to produce the one hundred and twenty quarters 
 expressed in column three. And now answer me : 
 what part of their own product will these eight pro- 
 ducers deduct for their own wages ? 
 
 Phil. Why (by column two), each man's wages in 
 this case are twelve quarters ; therefore the wages 
 of the eight men will be ninety-six quarters. 
 
 X. And what quantity of labor will be necessary 
 to produce these ninety-six quarters ? 
 
 Phil. Each man producing fifteen, it will require 
 six men's labor, and four tenths of another man's 
 labor. 
 
 X. Very well ; 6.4 of the eight are employed in 
 producing the wages of the whole eight. Now tell 
 me, Philebus, what more than their own wages do 
 the whole eight produce ? 
 
 Phil. Why, as they produce in all one hundred 
 and twenty quarters, and their own deduction ia 
 ninety-six, it is clear that they produce twenty-fcur 
 quarters besides their own wages. 
 
 X. And to whom do these twenty-four quarters 
 go? 
 
 Phil. To their employer, for his profit 
 
 X. Yes ; and it answers the condition expressed in 
 column four ; for a profit of twenty-four quarters on
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 281 
 
 ninety-six is exactly twenty-five pe\ , '. But to 
 go on you have acknowledged tha tue 'linety-six 
 quarters for wages would be producf d by the labor 
 of 6.4 men. Now, how much labor will be required 
 to produce the remaining twenty-four quarters for 
 profits ? 
 
 Phil. Because fifteen quarters require the labor of 
 one man (by column one), twenty -four will require 
 the labor of 1.6. 
 
 X. Right ; and thus, Philebus, you have acknowl- 
 edged all I wish. The object of Mr. Malthus is to 
 ascertain the cost in labor of producing ten men's 
 wages (or one hundred and twenty quarters) under 
 the conditions of this case Alpha. The cost resolves 
 itself, even on Mr. Malthus' principles, into so 
 much wages to the laborers, and so much profit to 
 their employer. Now, you or I will undertake to 
 furnish Mr. Malthus the one hundred and twenty 
 quarters, not (as he says) at a cost of ten men's 
 labor (for at that cost we could produce him one 
 hundred and fifty quarters by column one), but at a 
 cost of eight. For six men and four tenths will pro- 
 duce the whole wages of the eight producers ; and 
 one man and six tenths will produce our profit of 
 twenty-five per cent. 
 
 Phced. The mistake, then, of Mr. Malthus, if I 
 understand it, is egregious. In column five he esti- 
 mates the labor necessary to produce the entire one 
 hundred and twenty quarters which, he says, ia 
 the labor of eight men ; and so it is, if he means by 
 abor what produces both wages and f rofits ; other- 
 wise, not. Of necessity, therefore, he has assigned 
 Vhe value both of wages and profits in column five.
 
 282 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 Yet in column six he gravely proceeds to estimate 
 profits a second time. 
 
 X. Yes ; and, what- is still worse, in estimating 
 these profits a second time over, he estimates them 
 on the whole one hundred and twenty ; that is, he 
 allows for a second profit of thirty quarters ; else it 
 could not cost two men's labor (as by his valuation 
 it does) ; for each man in the case Alpha produces 
 fifteen quarters. Now, thirty quarters added to one 
 hundred and twenty, are one hundred and fifty. But 
 this is the product of ten men, and not the wages of 
 ten men ; which is the amount offered for valuation 
 in column three, and which is all that column seven 
 professes to have valued. 
 
 SECTION m. 
 
 Phced. I am satisfied, X. But Philebus seems 
 perplexed. Make all clear, therefore, by demonstrat- 
 ing the same result in some other way. With your 
 adroitness, it can cost you no trouble to treat us with 
 a little display of dialectical skirmishing. Show us 
 a specimen of manoeuvring ; enfilade him ; take him 
 in front and rear ; and do it rapidly, and with a light- 
 horseman's elegance. 
 
 X. If you wish for variations, it is easy to give 
 them. In the first argument, what I depended on 
 was this that the valuation was inaccurate. Now, 
 then, secondly, suppose the valuation to be accurate, 
 in this case we must still disallow it to Mr. Malthus ; 
 for, in columns five and six, he values by the quan- 
 tity of producing labor ; but that is the Ricardian 
 principle of valuation, which is the very principle 
 that he writes to overthrow.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 283 
 
 Phced. This may seem a good quoad hominem ar- 
 gument. Yet surely any man may use the principle 
 of his antagonist, in order to extort a particular 
 result from it ? 
 
 X. He may ; but in that case wil'i the result be 
 true, or will it not be true ? 
 
 Phced. If he denies the principle, he is bound to 
 think the result not true ; and he uses it as a reductio 
 ad absurdum. 
 
 X. Right ; but now in this case Mr. Malthus pre- 
 sents the result as a truth. 
 
 Phil. ' Yes, X. ; but observe, the result is the direct 
 contradiction of Mr. Ricardo's result. The quan- 
 tities of column first vary in value by column the 
 last; but the result, in Mr. Ricardo's hands, is 
 that they do not vary in value. 
 
 X. Still, if in Mr. Malthus' hands the principle 
 is made to yield a truth, then at any rate the princi- 
 ple is itself true ; and all that will be proved against 
 Mr. Ricardo is, that he applied a sound principle iin- 
 skilfully. But Mr. Malthus writes a book to prove 
 that the principle is not sound. 
 
 Phced. Yes, and to substitute another. 
 
 X. True ; which other, I go on thirdly to say, is 
 actually employed in this table. On which account 
 it is fair to say that Mr. Malthus is a third time 
 refuted. For, if two inconsistent principles of val- 
 uation be employed, then the table will be vicious, 
 because heteronymous. 
 
 Phil. Negatur minor. 
 
 X. I prove the minor (namely, that two incon- 
 ustent principles are employed) by column the
 
 ?84 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 ninth ; and thence, also, I deduct a fourth and 
 refutation of the table. 
 
 PhceJ. Eugel Now, this is a pleasant skirmish- 
 ing- 
 
 X, For, in column the last, I say that the princi- 
 ple of valuation employed is different from that em 
 ployed in columns five and six. Upon which I offer 
 you this dilemma : it is or it is not ; choose. 
 
 Phil. Suppose I say, it is ? 
 
 X. In that case, the result of this table is a case 
 of idem per idem ; a pure childish tautology. 
 
 Phil. Suppose I say, it is not ? 
 
 X. In that case, the result of this table is false. 
 
 Phil. Demonstrate. 
 
 X. I say, that the principle of valuation employed 
 in column nine is, not the quantity of producing 
 labor, but the quantity of labor commanded. Now, 
 if it is, then the result is childish tautology, as being 
 identical with the premises. For it is already intro- 
 duced into the premises as one of the conditions of 
 the case Alpha (namely, into column two), that 
 twelve quarters of corn shall command the labor of 
 one man ; which being premised, it is a mere variety 
 of expression for the very same fact to tell us, in col- 
 umn nine, that the one hundred and fifty quarters 
 of column the first shall command twelve men and 
 five tenths of a man ; for one hundred and forty-four, 
 being 1 twelve times twelve, will of course command 
 twelve men, and the remainder of six quarters will 
 of course command the half of a man. And it is 
 most idle to employ the elaborate machinery of nine 
 jolumns to deduce, as a learned result, what you
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 285 
 
 have already put into the premises, and postulated 
 amongst the conditions. 
 
 Phced. This will, therefore, destroy Mr. Mai thus' 
 theory a fourth time. 
 
 X. Then, on the other hand, if the principle cf 
 valuation employed in column nine is the same as 
 that employed in columns five and six, this principle 
 must be the quantity of producing labor, and not the 
 quantity of labor commanded. But, in that case, the 
 result will be false. For column nine values column 
 the first. Now, if the one hundred and fifty quarters 
 of case Alpha are truly valued in column first, then 
 they are falsely valued in column the last ; and, if 
 truly valued in column the last, then falsely valued 
 in column the first. For, by column the last, the one 
 hundred and fifty quarters are produced by the labor 
 of twelve and a half men ; but it is the very con- 
 dition of column the first, that the one hundred and 
 fifty quarters are produced by ten men. 
 
 Pliasd. (Laughing*). This is too hot to last. Here 
 we have a fifth refutation. Can't you give us a 
 sixth, X. ? 
 
 X. If you please. Supposing Mr. Malthus' the- 
 ory to be good, it shall be impossible for anything 
 whatsoever at any time to vary in value. For how 
 shall it vary ? Because the quantity of producing 
 labor varies ? But that is the very principle which 
 Vie is writing to overthrow. Shall it vary, then, be- 
 cause the value of the producing labor varies? But 
 (hat is impossible on the system of Mr. Malthus ; 
 for, according to this system, the value of labor is 
 invariable. 
 
 Phil. Stop ! I 've thought of a dodge. The thing
 
 286 THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES 
 
 shall vary because the quantity of labor commanded 
 shall vary. 
 
 X. But how shall that vary ? A can never com- 
 mand a greater quantity of labor, or of anything 
 which is presumed to be of invariable value, until A 
 itself be of a higher value. To command an altered 
 quantity of labor, which (on any theory] must be the 
 consequence of altered value, can never be the cause 
 of altered value. No alterations of labor, therefore, 
 whether as to quantity or value, shall ever account 
 for the altered value of A ; for, according to Mr 
 Malthus, they are either insufficient on the one hand, 
 or impossible on the other. 
 
 Phil. Grant this, yet value may still vary ; for 
 suppose labor to be invariable, still profits may 
 vary. 
 
 X. So that, if A rise, it will irresistibly argue 
 profits to have risen ? 
 
 Phil. It will ; because no other element can have 
 risen. 
 
 X. But now column eight assigns the value of a 
 uniform quantity of corn namely, one hundred 
 quarters. In case Alpha, one hundred quarters are 
 worth 8.33. What are one hundred quarters worth 
 in the case Iota ? 
 
 Phil. They are worth ten. 
 
 X. And that is clearly more. Now, if A have 
 risen, by your own admission I am entitled to infei 
 that profits have risen : but what are profits in the 
 case Iota ? 
 
 Phil. By column four they are twenty per cent. 
 
 X. And what in the case Alpha ? 
 
 Phil. By column four, twenty-five per cent.
 
 ON POLITICAL ECONOMY 287 
 
 X. Then profits have fallen in the case Iota, but, 
 because A has risen in case Iota from 8.33 to ten, it 
 is an irresistible inference, on your theory, that profits 
 ought to have risen. 
 
 Phced. (Laughing). Philebus, this is a sharp prac- 
 tice; go on, X., and skirmish with him a little more 
 in this voltigeur style. 
 
 N. B. With respect to " The Templars' Dialogues," it may possibly 
 be complained, that this paper is in some measure a fragment. My 
 answer is, that, although fragmentary in relation to the entire system 
 of Ricardo, and that previous system which he opposed, it is no frag- 
 ment in relation to the radical principle concerned in those systems. 
 The conflicting systems are brought under review simply at the locus 
 of collision: just as the reader may have seen the chemical theory of 
 Dr. Priestley, and the counter-theory of his anti-phlogistic opponents, 
 stated within the limits of a single page. If the principle relied on 
 by either party can be shown to lead into inextricable self-contradic 
 tion, that is enough. So much is accomplished in that case as wa-i 
 proposed from the beginning namely, not to exhaust the positive 
 elements of this system or that, but simply to settle the central logic 
 of their several polemics; to settle, in fact, not the matter ci what il 
 evolved, but simply the principle of evolution
 
 MALTHUS. 
 
 " Go, my son," said a Swedish chancellor to his son, 
 "go and see with how little cost of wisdom this 
 world is governed." " Go," might a scholar, in like 
 manner say, after a thoughtful review of literature, " go 
 and see how little logic is required to the composi- 
 tion of most books." Of the many attestations to this 
 fact, furnished by the history of opinions in our hasty 
 and unmeditative age, I know of none more striking than 
 the case of Mr. Malthus, both as regards himself and 
 his critics. About a quarter of a century ago Mr. Mal- 
 thus wrote his " Essay on Population," which soon rose 
 into great reputation. And why ? Not for the truth it 
 contained ; that is but imperfectly understood even at 
 present ; but for the false semblance of systematic form 
 with which he had invested the truth. Without any 
 necessity he placed his whole doctrine on the following 
 basis : man increases in a geometrical ratio the food 
 of man in an arithmetical ratio. This proposition, 
 though not the main error of his work, is one ; and 
 therefore I shall spend a few lines in exposing it. I 
 say then that the distinction is totally groundless ; both 
 tend to increase in a geometric ratio ; both have this 
 *cndency checked and counteracted in the same way. 
 En every thing which serves for the food of man, no 
 less than in man himself, there is a positive ground of 
 increase by geometrical ratios ; but in order that thii
 
 MALTHUS. 289 
 
 positive ground may go on to its effect, there must in 
 each case be present a certain negative condition (i. e., 
 conditio sine qua non G ) : for the food, as suppose for 
 wheat, the negative condition is soil on which it may 
 grow, and exert its virtue of self-multiplication ; for 
 mail the negative condition is food : i. e., in both cases 
 the negative condition is the same mutatis mutandis : 
 for the soil is to the wheat what the wheat is to man. 
 Where this negative condition is present, both will in- 
 crease geometrically ; where it is absent, neither. And 
 BO far is it from being true that man has the advantage 
 of the wheat, or increases according to any other law, 
 as Mr. Malthus affirms, that, on the contrary, the wheat 
 has greatly the advantage of man (though both increase 
 according to the same law). But, says Mr. Malthus, 
 you would find it impossible to increase the annual 
 supply of wheat in England by so much as the con- 
 tinual addition even of the existing quantity; whereas 
 man might, on a certain supposition, go on increasing 
 his species in a geometric ratio. What is that supposi- 
 tion ? Why this that the negative condition of in- 
 crease, the absence of which is the actual resistance in 
 both cases to the realization of a geometric increase, 
 is here by supposition restored to man but not restored 
 to the wheat. It is certainly true that wheat in Eng- 
 land increases only by an arithmetic ratio ; but then so 
 does man ; and the inference thus far would be, that 
 both alike were restricted to this law of increase. 
 "Aye, but then man," says Mr. Malthus, "will increase 
 by another ratio, if you allow him an unlimited supply 
 of food." Well, I answer and so will the wheat : to 
 suppose this negative condition (an unlimited supply of 
 19
 
 290 MALTUUS. 
 
 food) concurring with the positive principle of increase 
 in man, and to refuse to suppose it in the wheat, is not 
 only contrary to all laws of disputing but is also on 
 chis account the more monstrous, because the possibility 
 and impossibility of the negative concurring with this 
 positive ground of increase is equal, and (what is still 
 more to the purpose) is identical for both : wheresoever 
 the concurrence is realized for man, there of necessity 
 it is realized for the wheat. And, therefore, you have 
 not only a right to demand the same concession for the 
 wheat as for the man, but the one concession is actually 
 involved in the other. As the soil (S) is to the wheat 
 (W), so is the wheat (W) to man (M) ; i.e. S: W: : 
 W : M. You cannot even by way of hypothesis as- 
 sume any cause as multiplying the third term, which 
 will not also presuppose the multiplication of ths first : 
 else you suffer W as the third term to be multiplied, 
 and the very same W as the second term not to be 
 multiplied. In fact, the coincidence of the negative 
 with the positive ground of increase must of necessity 
 take place in all countries during the early stages of 
 society for the food of man no less than for man ; this 
 coincidence must exist and gradually cease to exist for 
 both simultaneously. The negative condition, without 
 which the positive principle of increase in man and in 
 the food of man is equally inefficient, is withdrawn in 
 fact as a country grows populous : for the sake of ar- 
 gument, and as the basis of a chain of reasoning, it 
 may be restored in idea to either ; but not more to one 
 ihan to the other. That proposition of Mr. Malthus, 
 therefore, which ascribes a different law of increase to 
 man and to the food of man (which proposition is ad
 
 MALTHUS. 201 
 
 vauced by Mr. Malthus and considered by most of big 
 readers as the fundamental one of his system) is false 
 and groundless. Where the positive principle of increase 
 meets with its complement the negative ground, there 
 the increase proceeds in a geometrical ratio alike in 
 man and in his food ; where it fails of meeting this com- 
 plement, it proceeds in an arithmetical ratio, alike in 
 both. And I say that wherever the geometrical ratio 
 of increase exists for man, it exists of necessity for the 
 food of man ; and I say that wherever the arithmetical 
 ratio exists for the food of man, it exists of necessity 
 for man. 
 
 Lastly, I repeat that, even where the food of man 
 and man himself increase in the same ratio (viz. a 
 geometrical ratio), yet that the food has greatly the 
 advantage in the rate of increase. For assume any 
 cycle of years (suppose 25) as the period of a human 
 generation, and as corresponding to the annual genera- 
 tions of wheat, then I say that, if a bushel of wheat 
 and a human couple (man and woman) be turned out 
 upon Salisbury plain or, to give them more area and 
 a better soil for the experiment, on the stage of Canada 
 and the uncolonized countries adjacent, the bushel of 
 wheat shall have produced its cube its 4th 10th 
 Mth power in a number of years which shall always be 
 fewer than the number of periods of 25 years in which 
 the human pair shall have produced its cube its 4th 
 10th Mth power, &c. And this assertion may be 
 easily verified by consulting any record of the average 
 produce from a given quantity of seed corn. 
 
 II. The famous proposition therefore about the 
 geometrical and arithmetical ratios as applied to man
 
 -'- MAI.THUS. 
 
 and his food is a radical blunder. I come now to a 
 still more remarkable blunder, which I verily believe 
 is the greatest logical oversight that has ever escaped 
 any author of respectability. This oversight lies in 
 Mr. Malthus's view of population considered not with 
 reference to its own internal coherency but as an an- 
 swer to Mr. Godwin. That gentleman, in common 
 with some other philosophers, no matter upon what 
 arguments, had maintained the doctrine of the "per- 
 fectibility" of man. Now, says Mr. Mai thus, without 
 needing any philosophic investigation of this doctrine, 
 I will overthrow it by a simple statement drawn from 
 the political economy of the human race : I will sup- 
 pose that state of perfection, towards which the human 
 species is represented as tending, to be actually estab- 
 lished : and I will show that it must melt away before 
 the principle which governs population. How is this 
 accomplished? Briefly thus: In every country the 
 food of man either goes on increasing simply in an 
 arithmetical ratio, or (in proportion as it becomes 
 better peopled) is rapidly tending to such a ratio. 
 Let us suppose this ratio everywhere established, as it 
 must of necessity be as soon as no acre of land remains 
 un tilled which is susceptible of tillage ; since no revo- 
 lutions in the mere science of agriculture can be sup- 
 oosed capable of transmuting an arithmetical into a 
 geometrical ratio of increase. Food then increasing 
 under this law can never go on pari passu with any 
 population which should increase in a geometric ratio ? 
 Now what is it that prevents population from increasing 
 in such a ratio ? Simply the want of food. But how ? 
 Not directly, but through the instrumentality of vict
 
 MALTHUS. 293 
 
 and misery in some * shape or other. These are the 
 repressing forces which everywhere keep down the 
 increase of man to the same ratio as that of his food 
 viz. to an arithmetical ratio. But vice and misery can 
 have no existence in a state of perfection ; so much ie 
 evident ex vi termini. If then these are the only re- 
 pressing forces, it follows that in a state of perfection 
 there can be none at all. If none at all, then the geo- 
 metric ratio of increase will take place. But, as the 
 arithmetical ratio must still he the law for the increase 
 of food, the population will be constantly getting ahead 
 of the food. Famine, disease, and every mode of 
 wretchedness will return ; and thus out of its own 
 bosom will the state of perfection have regenerated the 
 worst form of imperfection by necessarily bringing 
 back the geometric ratio of human increase unsup- 
 ported by the same ratio of increase amongst the food. 
 This is the way in which Mr. Malthus applies his doc- 
 trine of population to the overthrow of Mr. Godwin. 
 Upon which I put this question to Mr. Malthus. In 
 what condition must the human will be supposed, if 
 with the clear view of this fatal result (such a view as 
 must be ascribed to it in a state of perfection), it could 
 nevertheless bring its own acts into no harmony with 
 reason and conscience ? Manifestly it must be in a 
 most diseased state. Aye, says Mr. Malthus, but " I 
 take it for granted " that no important change will ever 
 take place in that part of human nature. Be it so, I 
 answer : but the question here is not concerning the 
 Absolute truth, Is there any hope that the will of man 
 can ever raise itself from its present condition of weak- 
 ness and disorder? The question is concerning the
 
 294 MALTHU8. 
 
 formal or logical truth concerning the truth relatively 
 to a specific concession previously made. Mr. Malthus 
 had consented to argue with Mr. Godwin on the suppo- 
 sition that a state of perfection might be and actually was 
 attained. How comes he then to " take for granted " 
 what in a moment makes his own concession void ? He 
 agrees to suppose a perfect state ; and at the same time 
 he includes in this supposition the main imperfection of 
 this world viz. the diseased will of man. This is to 
 concede and to retract in the same breath ; explicitly to 
 give, and implicitly to refuse. Mr. Godwin may justly 
 retort upon Mr. Malthus you promised to show that 
 the state of perfection should generate out of itself an 
 inevitable relapse into that state of imperfection ; but 
 your state of perfection already includes imperfection, 
 and imperfection of a sort which is the principal parent 
 of almost all other imperfection. Eve, after her fall, 
 was capable of a higher resolution than is here ascribed 
 to the children of perfection ; for she is represented by 
 Milton as saying to Adam 
 
 miserable it is 
 
 To be to others cause of misery, 
 
 Our own begotten ; and of our loins to bring 
 
 Into this cursed world a woeful race, 
 
 That after wretched life must be at last 
 
 Food for so foul a monster : in thy power 
 
 It lies yet, ere conception, to prevent 
 
 The race unblest to being yet unbegot, 
 
 Childless thou art, childless remain : 
 
 P. L., Book X. 
 
 What an imperfect creature could meditate, a perfect 
 ne should execute. And it is evident that if ever the 
 condition of man were brought to so desirable a poin
 
 MALTHUB. 295 
 
 us that, simply by replacing itself, the existing genera- 
 tion could preserve unviolated a state of perfection, it 
 would become the duty (and, if the duty, therefore the 
 inclination of perfect beings) to comply with that ordi- 
 nance of the reason. 49 
 
 III. Thus far on the errors of Mr. Malthus : now 
 let me add a word or two on the errors of his critics. 
 But first it ought in candor to be acknowledged that 
 Mr. Malthus's own errors, however important separately 
 considered, are venial as regards his system ; for they 
 leave it unaffected, and might be extirpated by the knife 
 without drawing on any consequent extirpations or even 
 any alterations. That sacrifice once made to truth and 
 to logic, I shall join with Mr. Ricardo (" Pol. Econ.," 
 p. 498, 2d ed.) in expressing my persuasion " that the 
 just reputation of the ' Essay on Population ' will spread 
 with the cultivation of that science of which it is so 
 eminent an ornament." With these feelings upon Mr. 
 Malthus's merits, it may be supposed that I do not 
 -egard his critics with much sympathy ; taking them 
 generally, they seem to have been somewhat captious, 
 and in a thick mist as to the true meaning and ten- 
 dency of the doctrine. Indeed, I qiiestion whether any 
 man amongst them could have begun his own work 
 by presenting a just analysis of that which he was assail- 
 '\pg; which, however, ought always to be demanded 
 peremptorily of him who assails a systematic work, for 
 the same reason that in the old schools of disputation 
 the respondent was expected to repeat the syllogism 
 of his opponent before he undertook to answer it, 
 Amongst others Mr. Coleridge, who probably contented 
 himself more suo with reading the first and last pages
 
 296 MALTHUS- 
 
 of the work, has asserted that Mr. Malthus had writ 
 ten a 4to volume (in which shape the second edition 
 appeared) to prove that man could not live without 
 eating. If this were the purpose and amount of the 
 Malthusian doctrine, doubtless an infra-duodecimo 
 would have been a more becoming size for his specu- 
 lations. But I,, who have read the 4to, must assure 
 Mr. Coleridge that there is something more in it than 
 that. I shall also remind him that if a man produces 
 a body of original and eminently useful truths, in that 
 case the more simple the more elementary the 
 more self-evident is the proposition on which he sus- 
 pends the chain of those truths, the greater is his 
 merit. Many systems of truth which have a sufficient 
 internal consistency, have yet been withheld from the 
 world, or have lost their effect, simply because the 
 author has been unable to bridge over the gulph be- 
 tween his own clear perceptions and the universal 
 knowledge of mankind has been unable to deduce 
 the new truths from the old precognita, I say there- 
 fore that our obligations to Mr. Malthus are the greater 
 for having hung upon a postulate, so simple as that 
 which Mr. Coleridge alleges, so much valuable instruc- 
 tion both theoretic and practical as his work contains. 
 Is it nothing for our theoretic knowledge that Mr. 
 Malthus has taught us to judge more wisely of the 
 pretended depopulations from battle, pestilence, and 
 famine, with which all history has hitherto teemed? 
 Is it nothing for our practical knowledge that Mr. 
 Malthus has taught the lawgivers and the governors 
 of the world to treat with contempt the pernicious 
 counsels of political economists from Athenian dayi
 
 MALTHU8. 297 
 
 Sown to our own clamoring for direct encourage- 
 ments to population ? Is it nothing for England that 
 he first has exposed the fundamental M vice of our Poor 
 Laws (viz. that they act as a bounty on population), 
 and placed a light-house upon the rocks to which our 
 course was rapidly carrying us in darkness ? Is it 
 nothing for science and the whole world that, by un- 
 folding the laws which govern population, he has given 
 to political economy its complement and sole desidera- 
 tum ; which wanting, all its movements were insecure 
 and liable to error ; which added, political economy 
 (however imperfect as to its development) has now 
 become, as to the idea of its parts, perfect and orbicu- 
 lar ? Is this, and more that might be alleged, noth- 
 ing? 1 say, Mr. Coleridge, 
 
 Is this nothing ? 
 
 Why then the world, and all that 's in 't, is nothing : 
 The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing. 
 
 Winter's Tale. 
 
 Others, who have been more just to Mr. Malthus 
 than to Mr. Coleridge, and have admitted the value of 
 the truths brought forward, have disputed his title to 
 the first discovery. A fuller development and a more 
 extensive application of these truths they concede to 
 him ; but they fancy that in the works of many others 
 before him they find the outlines of the same truths 
 more or less distinctly expressed. And doubtless in 
 some passages of former economists, especially of Sir 
 James Stewart, and in one work of Wallace (" Views of 
 Providence," &c.) there is so near an approach made to 
 ihe Malthusian doctrine that at this day, when we 
 ire iii possession of that doctrine, we feel inclined to
 
 298 MALTHU8. 
 
 exclaim in the children's language of blind-man's-blnfl 
 Lord ! how he burns ! But the best evidence that 
 none of these writers did actually touch the central 
 point of the doctrine, is this : that none of them de 
 duced from it those corollaries as to the English poor 
 laws foundling-hospitals endowments of cottages 
 with land and generally of all artificial devices for 
 stimulating population, which could not have escaped a 
 writer of ability who had once possessed himself of the 
 entire truth. In fact, such is the anarchy of thought 
 in most writers on subjects which they have nerer been 
 led to treat systematically that it is nothing uncom- 
 mon to meet with a passage written apparently under 
 Malthusian views in one page of a writer vho in the 
 next will possibly propose a tax on celibacy a prize 
 for early marriages or some other absurdity not less 
 outrageously hostile to those views. No ! let the 
 merit of Mr. Malthus be otherwise what it may, his 
 originality is incontestable unless an earlier writer 
 can be adduced who has made the same oblique appli- 
 cations of the doctrine, and in general who has shown 
 with what consequences that doctrine is pregnant 
 separate from which consequences the mere nake(? doc- 
 trine, in and for itself, is but a meagre truth.
 
 MEASURE OF VALUE. 
 
 To THE READER. This article was written and printed before 
 the author heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricario.* 
 
 IT is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to 
 whom Political Economy is so much indebted in one 
 chapter (viz. the chapter on Population), should in 
 every other chapter have stumbled at every step. On 
 a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His fail- 
 ures and his errors have arisen in all cases from the 
 illogical structure of his understanding ; his success was 
 in a path which required no logic. What is the brief 
 abstract of his success ? It is this : he took an obvious 
 and familiar truth, which until his time had been a 
 barren truism, and showed that it teemed with conse- 
 quences. Out of this position That in the ground 
 which limited human food lay the ground which limited 
 human increase united with this other position 
 That there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of pop- 
 ulation to pass that limit, he unfolded a body of most 
 Important corollaries. I have remarked in another 
 article on this subject how entirely these corollaries 
 had escaped all Mr. Malthus's n predecessors in the 
 same track. Perhaps the most striking instance of 
 this, which I could have alleged, is that of the cele- 
 
 * [This occurred in September, 1823. The above paper ap- 
 peared in the London Magazine for December, 1823, and ia 
 ulaced here owing to its connection with the preceding.]
 
 500 MEASURE OF VALUE. 
 
 brated French work " L'Ami des Hommes, ou TraiU 
 de la Population " (written about the middle of the 
 last century), which sets out deliberately from this 
 principle, expressed almost in the very words of Mr 
 Mai thus, Que la mesure de la Subsistance est celle dt 
 la Population ; beats the bushes in every directioi* 
 about it ; and yet (with the exception of one corollary 
 on the supposed depopulating tendency of war and 
 famine) deduces from it none but erroneous and Anti- 
 Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth apparently 
 so barren any corollaries were deducible was re- 
 served for Mr. Malthus to show. As corollaries, it 
 may be supposed that they imply a logical act of the 
 understanding. In some small degree, no doubt ; but 
 no more than necessarily accompanies every exercise 
 of reason. Though inferences, they are not remote 
 inferences, but immediate and proximate ; and not de- 
 pendent upon each other, but collateral. Not logic 
 but a judicious choice of his ground placed Mr. Mal- 
 thus at once in a station from which he commanded 
 the whole truth at aglance with a lucky dispensa- 
 tion from all necessity of continuous logical processes. 
 But such a dispensation is a privilege indulged to few 
 other parts of Political Economy, and least of all to 
 that which is the foundation of all Political Economy 
 viz. the doctrine of value. Having therefore re- 
 peatedly chosen to tamper with this difficult subject, 
 Mr. Malthus has just made so many exposures of his 
 intellectual infirmities which, but for this voluuteer 
 display, we might never have known. Of all the men 
 of talents, whose writings I have read up to this hour 
 Mr. Malthus has the most perplexed understanding
 
 MEASURE OF VALUE. 301 
 
 He is not only confused himself, but is the cause that 
 confusion is in other men. Logical perplexity is 
 shockingly contagious ; and he who takes Mr. Malthus 
 for his guide through any tangled question, ought to 
 be able to box the compass very well ; or before he 
 has read ten pages he will find himself (as the West- 
 moreland guides express it) " maffled," and disposed 
 to sit down and fall a crying with his guide at the sad 
 bewilderment into which they have both strayed. It 
 tends much to heighten the sense of Mr. Malthus's 
 helplessness in this particular point, that of late years 
 he has given himself the air too much of teazing Mr. 
 Ricardo, one of the " ugliest customers " in point of 
 logic that ever entered the ring. Mr. Ricardo is a 
 most " dangerous " man ; and Mr. Malth'us would do 
 well not to meddle with so " vicious " a subject, whose 
 arm (like Neate's) gives a blow like the kick of a 
 horse. He has hitherto contented himself very good- 
 naturedly with gently laying Mr. Malthus on his back; 
 but, if he should once turn round with a serious deter- 
 mination to " take the conceit " out of him, Mr. Mal- 
 thus would assuredly be " put into chancery," and 
 suffer a " punishment " that must distress his friends. 
 Amongst those whom Mr. Malthus has perplexed by 
 his logic, I am not one. In matter of logic I hold my- 
 self impeccable ; and, to say nothing of my sober days, 
 I defy the devil and all the powers of darkness to get 
 any advantage over me, even on those days when I am 
 drunk, in relation to " Barbara, Celarent, Darii, or 
 Verio." 
 
 " Avoid, old Satanas ! " I exclaim, if any man at- 
 empts to fling dust in my eyes by false syllogism, 01
 
 302 MEASURE OF VALUE. 
 
 any mode of dialectic sophism. And in relation to 
 this particular subject of value, I flatter myself that in 
 a paper* expressly applied to the exposure of Mr. 
 Malthus's blunders in his Political Economy, I have 
 made it impossible for Mr. Malthus, even though he 
 should take to his assistance seven worse logicians than 
 himself to put down my light with their darkness. 
 Meantime, as a labor of shorter compass, I will call the 
 reader's attention to the following blunder, in a later 
 work of Mr. Malthus's viz. a pamphlet of 80 pages, 
 entitled, " The Measure of Value, stated and applied " 
 (published in the spring of the present year).f The 
 question proposed in this work is the same as that 
 already discussed in his Political Economy viz. 
 What is the measure of value ? But the answer to it 
 is different ; in the Political Economy, the measure of 
 value was determined to be a mean between corn and 
 labor ; in this pamphlet, Mr. Malthus retracts that 
 opinion, and (finally, let us hope) settles it to his own 
 satisfaction that the true measure is labor ; not the 
 quantity of labor, observe, which will produce X, but 
 the quantity which X will command. Upon these two 
 answers, and the delusions which lie at their root, I 
 shall here forbear to comment; because I am now 
 ihasing Mr. Malthus's logical blunders ; and these de- 
 lusions are not so much logical as economic ; what I 
 now wish the reader to attend to, is the blunder in- 
 rolved in the question itself; because that blunder is 
 not economic, but logical. The question is what i 
 the msasure of value ? I say then that the phrase 
 
 * [This refers to the paper entitled " Malthus."] 
 t!823.
 
 MEASURE OF VALUE. 
 
 30?> 
 
 * measure of value " is an equivocal phrase ; and, iu 
 Mr. Malthus's use of it, means indifferently that which 
 determines value, in relation to the principium essendi, 
 and that which determines value, in relation to the 
 principium cognoscendi. Here, perhaps, the reader 
 will exclaim " Avoid, Satanas ! " to me, falsely sup- 
 posing that I have some design upon his eyes, and wish 
 to blind them with learned dust. But, if he thinks 
 that, he is in the wrong box : I must and will express 
 scholastic notions by scholastic phrases ; but, having 
 once done this, I am then ready to descend into the 
 arena with no other weapons than plain English can 
 furnish. Let us therefore translate measure of value 
 into that which determines value : and, in this shape, 
 we shall detect the ambiguity of which I complain. 
 For I say, that the word determines may be taken sub- 
 jectively for what determines X in relation to our 
 knowledge, or objectively for what determines X in 
 relation to itself. Thus, if I were to ask " what de- 
 termined the length of the race-course ? " And the 
 answer were "The convenience of the spectators 
 who could not have seen the horses at a greater dis- 
 tance," or " The choice of the subscribers," then it is 
 plain that by the word " determined," I was under- 
 stood to mean " determined objectively," i. e., in relation 
 to the existence of the object ; in other words, what 
 caused the race-course to be this length rather than 
 another length ; but, if the answer were " An actual 
 admeasurement," it would then be plain that by the 
 word " determined," 1 had been understood to mean 
 'determined subjectively," t. e.,in relation to our knowl- 
 edge : what ascertained it? Now, in the objective
 
 304 MKASUHE OK VALUE. 
 
 Bense of the phrase " determiner of value," the measure 
 of value will mean the ground of value : in the sub- 
 jective sense, it will mean the criterion of value. Mr. 
 Mai thus will allege that he is at liberty to use it ill 
 which sense he pleases. Grant that he is, but not 
 therefore in both. Has he then used it in both? He 
 will perhaps deny that he has, and will contend that 
 he has used it in the latter sense as equivalent to the 
 ascertainer or criterion of value. ] answer No : for, 
 omitting a more particular examination of his use in 
 this place, I say that his use of any word is peremp- 
 torily and in defiance of his private explanation to be 
 extorted from the use of the corresponding term in 
 him whom he is opposing. Now he is opposing Mr., 
 Ricardo : his labor which X commands is opposed to 
 Mr. Ricardo's quantity of labor which will produce X. 
 Call the first A, the last B. Now, in making B the 
 determiner of value, Mr. Ricardo means that B is the 
 ground of value, i. e., that B is the answer to the 
 question what makes this hat of more value than 
 this pair of shoes ? But, if Mr. Mai thus means by A 
 the same thing, then by his own confession he has used 
 the term measure of value in two senses ; on the other 
 hand, if he does not mean the same thing, but simply 
 the criterion of value, then he has not used the word in 
 any sense which opposes him to Mr. Ricardo. And 
 yet he advances the whole on that footing. On either 
 grc'ind, therefore, he is guilty of a logical error, which 
 'implies that, so far from answering his own question 
 he did not know what his own question was.
 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 WHEN a new comet is descried, we set ourselves 
 to trace the path on which it is moving ; so that, if 
 it seems likely to trespass on our own orbit, prudent 
 men may have warning to make all snug aloft, and 
 ready for action ; authors, in particular, seeking to 
 correct the proofs of any book they may be publish- 
 ing, before the comet has had time with its tail to 
 sweep all the types into " pye." It-is now becoming 
 a duty to treat California as a comet ; for she is going 
 ahead at a rate that beats Sinbad and Gulliver, 
 threatening (if we believe the star-gazers of our day) 
 to throw universal commerce into " pye ; " and other 
 Californias are looming in her wake, such as Australia 
 vnd the South Sea island now called Hawaii ; 52 they 
 are crowding all sail towards the same object of pri- 
 T ate gain and public confusion ; anxieties are arising 
 in various quarters ; and it is daily becoming more a 
 matter of public interest to assign the course upon 
 which they are really advancing, and to measure the 
 dangers (if any at all) with which they are practi- 
 >-ally charged. 
 
 In the case of California, the most painful feature 
 U thf outset of the termashaw was the torpor mani 
 20
 
 306 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Tested by all the governments of Christendom as to a 
 phenomenon that was leading their countrymen by 
 whi lesale into ruin. Helpless and ignorant as that 
 army of children, which in an early stage of the 
 Crusades set forward by land for Palestine ; knowing 
 us little as those children of the horrors that tesieged 
 the road, or of the disappointments that would seal 
 its terminus, supposing it ever to be reached ; from 
 every quarter of Europe rushed the excited plough- 
 man and artisan, as vultures on a day of battle to the 
 supper of carrion ; and not a word of warning or 
 advice from their government. On the continent 
 this neglect had its palliation. Most governments 
 were then too occupied by anxieties and agitations 
 derived from the approaching future, or even by 
 desperate convulsions derived from the present. But 
 whither shall we look for the excuse of our own 
 government ? Some years ago, it was, by inconsid- 
 erate radicals, made the duty of government to find 
 work for the people. That was no part of their 
 duty ; nor could be ; for it can be no duty to attempt 
 impossibilities. But it was a part of their duty, offi- 
 cially, to publish remonstrances and cautions against 
 general misapprehension of apparent openings, that 
 too often were no real openings, for labor, and 
 against a national dolusion that for ninety-nine out 
 of a hundred was sure to end in ruin. Two things 
 government were bound to have done, namely, firaft, 
 to have circulated a circumstantial account of the 
 different routes to San Francisco, each with its sepa- 
 rate distances assigned, and its separate varieties of 
 inconceivable hardship ; second, to have sent out a 
 party of surveyors and mineralogists, with instrno
 
 CALIFORNIA. 307 
 
 tions to report from time to time, at short intervals, 
 upon the real condition of the prospects before the 
 gold-diggers, upon the comparative advantages of 
 the several districts in California as yet explored, 
 with these mineral views, and upon the kind of 
 labors, and the kind of tools or other apparatus, that 
 had any reasonable chance of success. Had this 
 been done, some myriads of energetic and enterpris- 
 ing men, that have long since perished miserably, 
 would have been still available for the public service. 
 California, be its real wealth what it may, was a 
 "job ; " a colossal job ; and was worked as a job by 
 a regular conspiracy of jobbers. The root of this 
 conspiracy lay and lies (in all senses lies) up and 
 down the United States. It is no affront, nor in- 
 tended as such, to the American Union or to Mr. 
 Barnum, if I say that this gigantic republic (which, 
 by the seventh census, just now in the course of 
 publication, has actually extended its territorial com- 
 pass, in a space of ten years, from about two millions 
 of square miles, which it had in 1840, to three and a 
 quarter millions of square miles, 53 which it had reached 
 last midsummer) produces a race of Barnums on a 
 pre-Adamite scale, corresponding in activity to its 
 own enormous proportions. The idea of a Barnum 
 does not at all presuppose an element of fraud. 
 There are many honorable Barnums ; but also there 
 .B a minority of fraudulent Barnums. All alike, good 
 Barnums and bad Barnums, are characterized by 
 Titanic energy, such as would tear into ribbons a 
 .ittle island like ours, but is able to pull fearlessly 
 against a great hulk of a continent, that the very 
 won finds it fatiguing to sross. Now, it happened
 
 308 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 that the bad Barnums took charge of the California 
 swindle. They stationed a first-rate liar in San 
 Francisco, under whom, and accountable to whom, 
 were several accomplished liars distributed all the 
 way down to Panama, and thence to Chagres. All 
 along the Atlantic seaboard this gathering volley of 
 lies and Californian " notions " raced with the speed 
 of gunpowder trains up to New York, in which vast 
 metropolis (confounded amongst its seven hundred 
 thousand citizens) burrowed the central bureau of 
 the swindle. Thence in ten days these poetic hoaxes 
 crossed over to a line of repeating liars posted in 
 Liverpool and London, from which cities, of course, 
 the lies ran by telegraph in a few hours over the 
 European continent, and thence by Tartar expresses 
 overland to Indus and the Ganges. When the 
 swindle got into regular working order, it was as 
 good as a comedy to watch its mode of playing. 
 The policy of the liars was to quarrel with each 
 other, and cavil about straws, for the purpose of 
 masking the subterraneous wires of their fraudulent 
 concert. Liar No. 5, for instance, would observe 
 carelessly, in a Panama journal, that things were 
 looking up at Sacramento, for (by the latest returns 
 that could be depended on) the daily product of 
 gold had now reached a million of dollars. Upon 
 which No. 8, at Chagres, would quote the paragraph 
 into a local paper, and comment upon it thus, with 
 virtuous indignation : " Who or what this writer 
 tnay be, with his daily million of dollars, we know 
 jot, and do not desire to know. But we warn the 
 sditor of that paper that it is infamous to sport witb 
 Xhe credulity of European emigrants. A million
 
 CALIFORNIA. 309 
 
 indeed, daily ! We, on the contrary, assert that the 
 produce for the last three months, though steadily 
 increasing, has never exceeded an average of half a 
 million and even that not to be depended on for 
 more than nine days out of ten." To him succeeds 
 No. 10, who, after quoting No. 8, goes on thus : 
 " Some people are never content. To our thinking, 
 half a million of dollars daily, divided amongst about 
 fourteen hundred laborers, working only seven hours 
 a day, is a fair enough remuneration, considering 
 that no education is required, no training, and no 
 capital. Two ounces of tobacco and a spade, with 
 rather a large sack for bagging the gold, having a 
 chain and padlock such is the stock required for a 
 beginner. In a week he will require more sacks and 
 more padlocks ; and in two months, a roomy ware- 
 house, with suitable cellars, for storing the gold until 
 the fall, when the stoutest steamers sail. But, as 
 we observed, some people are never content. A 
 friend of ours, not twelve miles from San Francisco, 
 in digging for potatoes, stumbled upon a hamper of 
 gold that netted forty thousand dollars. And, behold, 
 the next comer to that locality went off in dudgeon 
 because, after two days' digging, he got nothing but 
 excellent potatoes ; whereas he ought to have re- 
 flected that our friend's golden discovery was a lucky 
 chance, such as does not happen to the most hard- 
 working man above once in three weeks." 
 
 Then came furious controversies about blocks or 
 old embedded in quartz, and left at " our office " for 
 'wenty-fnur hours, with liberty for the whole town to 
 weigh and measure them. One editor affirms that 
 Uie blocks weighed six quintals, and the quartz, if
 
 S10 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 pulverized, would hardly fill three snuff-boxes 
 " But," says a second editor, " the bore of GUI 
 friend's nostrils is preternaturally large ; his pinch, 
 oeing proportionable, averages three ounces ; and 
 three of his snuff-boxes make one horse-bucket. Six 
 tons, does he say ? I don'-t believe, at the outside, 
 it reaches seven hundred weight." Thereupon re- 
 joins editor No. 1 : " The blockhead has mistaken a 
 quintal for a ton ; and thus makes us talk nonsense. 
 Of course we shall always talk nonsense, when we 
 talk in Ms words and not in our own. His wish was 
 to undermine us ; but so far from doing that, the 
 knowing reader will perceive that he confirms our 
 report, and a little enlarges it." 
 
 Even in Scotland, as far north as Perth and Aber- 
 deen, the incorporation of liars thought it might 
 answer to suborn a youth, to all appearance an 
 ingenuous youth, as repeating signalist in the guise 
 of one writing home to his Scottish relations, with 
 flourishing accounts of his success at the " diggins." 
 Apparently he might have saved his postage, since 
 the body of his letter represented him as having 
 returned to Scotland, so that he might have reported 
 his adventures by word of mouth. This letter was 
 doctored so as to leave intentionally a very slight 
 impression that even in California the course of life 
 was checkered with good and evil. It had been 
 found, perhaps, that other letters, in more romantic 
 keys, had overleaped their own swindling purpose. 
 The vivacious youth admitted frankly that on some 
 days ho got nothing except, perhaps, a touch of 
 catarrh. Su:h things were actually possible, namely 
 the getting nothing except a soupyon of catarrh, evei
 
 CALIFORNIA 311 
 
 in California. Finally, however, with all his caudor, 
 the repeating signaJist left one great mystery un- 
 solved. He had been getting nothing on some days ; 
 but still, after all these cloudy seasons had been 
 allowed for, his gains had averaged from three to 
 tour guineas a day during the period of his stay. 
 That being the case, one could not well understand 
 what demon had led him ever to quit this garden of 
 the Hesperides for Perth or Aberdeen, where no such 
 golden apples grow either on the high-road^, or even 
 in gentlemen's " policies," beset with mastiff-dogs 
 and policemen. 
 
 But why, or for what ultimate purpose, do I direct 
 these satiric glances at the infant records of Califor- 
 nia, and the frauds by which she prospered ? No 
 doubt the period of her childhood, and of the battle 
 which she had to fight at starting with an insuffi- 
 cient population, was shortened exceedingly and 
 alleviated by unlimited lying. An altar she ought 
 to raise, dedicated to the goddess of insolent men- 
 dacity, as the tutelary power under which she 
 herself emerged into importance ; this altar should 
 be emblazoned upon the shield of her heraldic hon- 
 ors ; this altar should stand amongst the quarter- 
 ings on her coins. And it cannot be denied that 
 a preliminary or heralding generation has perished 
 in the process of clearing the way for that which is 
 now in possession. What by perils of the sea, and 
 the greater perils of the land route ; what by " plague, 
 pestilence, and famine ; by battle, and murder, and 
 sudden death " (to quote our English Litany), within 
 the precincts of the gold districts, probably not far 
 from a quarter of a million are now sleeping in ob-
 
 312 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 scurc graves that might have been saved by the 
 interference of surveyors, guides, monitors such as 
 a benign and Christian government in Europe would 
 assure^.j have authorized officially. But these things 
 are not disputed ; or, only as a question of extent. 
 The evil is confessed. But, small or great, it is now 
 over. War, it is true, and war of that ferocious 
 character which usually takes place with the vindic- 
 tive Indians, apparently is now imminent ; but this 
 will be transitory, possibly favorable to peace and 
 settlement, by absorbing the ruffianism of the state. 
 And, in the mean time, the iniquity 54 of the Lynch 
 law is giving way, and thawing, as a higher civiliza- 
 tion is mounting above the horizon. After a prelimi- 
 nary night of bloodshed and darkness, California will 
 begin to take her place amongst the prosperous 
 States of the American Union. And the early stage 
 of outrage and violence will, upon retrospect, rapidly 
 sink into a mere accident of surprise, due to the 
 embarrassments of vast distance, combined with the 
 suddenness and special temptations of so strange a 
 discoveiy. 
 
 But, all these extraordinary accidents allowed for, 
 it cannot surely be my intention (the reader will say) 
 to raise doubts upon the main inference from all that 
 we have heard, namely, the prospect of a new influx 
 into our supplies of gold, setting in with a force and 
 a promise of permanence that, five years ago, would 
 Lave read to the exchanges of Europe like a page 
 from the " Arabian Nights." 
 
 The first principle of change in our prospects 
 Erst in importance, and likely to be the first chrono- 
 ogically i r tempering our delusions, and taking the
 
 CALIFORNIA. 313 
 
 shine cut of our various El Dorados is one which 
 never seems to have occurred in the way cf a remote 
 scruple to the blockheads who report the different 
 local discoveries as they explode in California, one 
 after another, like the raps from a school-boy's 
 cracker. One and all, they are anxious only about 
 one solitary element of success, namely, the abun- 
 dance of the gold. They seem never to have heard 
 thai diamonds and emeralds are not scarce as they 
 are for want of known diamond and emerald mines, 
 nor pearls for want of vast unworked pearl fisheries. 
 Some of these have scarcely been opened for want 
 of even a delusive encouragement ; others, having 
 been worked for ages, are now closed without hcpe 
 of returning to them. Emeralds and sapphires are 
 lying at this moment in a place which I could indi- 
 cate, and no policeman is on duty in the whole 
 neighborhood to hinder me or the reader from pocket- 
 ing as many as we please. We are also at perfect 
 liberty to pocket the anchors of her majesty's ship 
 the Victoria (120 guns), and to sell them for old 
 iron. Pocket them by all means, and I engage that 
 the magistrate sitting at the Thames police-office will 
 have too much respect for your powers to think of 
 detaining you. If he does, your course is to pocket 
 the police-office, and all which it inherits. The man 
 lhat pockets an anchor may be a dangerous cus- 
 tomer, but not a customer to be sneezed at. What 
 need cf laws to intercept acts which are physically 
 unapproachable ? Many a mine and quarry have 
 Wen abandoned under ordinances of nature defying 
 you to work them ; many other under changes, mak- 
 ing it (thoiigh possible) useless to work them Both
 
 314 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 these little sets of objection have occurred (yes, have 
 already occurred) in California, and will occur more 
 and more. 
 
 I never heard of ar\vancient prince, wilful as he 
 might be, insisting upon hanging his- chief baker, 
 unless he baked him an apple-pie furnished from the 
 garden of the Ilesperides ; not but the apples might 
 have been " good bakers," but then the dragon was 
 to be taken into consideration. And over many a 
 mine in this world there is, in effect, a dragon of one 
 kind or other watching to preserve them from human 
 violation. And suppose the prohibition not to be 
 absolute, but that, with proper machinery for pump- 
 ing out water, etc., and with improved arts of work- 
 ing, you could raise the precious metal, still, if every 
 pound weight of gold (which, at modern prices, may 
 be valued roundly at fifty pounds sterling) cost you 
 in raising it seventy pounds sterling, it is presumable 
 that you would not long pursue that sort of game. 
 Both in England and Ireland we have fallen upon sil- 
 ver and gold many scores of times. We have had 
 boxes, and trinkets, and very large vases, wrought 
 out of this native metal ; but invariably we have 
 been obliged to say adieu to these tantalizing game 
 preserves. To work them was too costly. " One or 
 two more such victories," said Pyrrhus the Epirot, 
 " and I am a gone ; coon." And five discoveries of 
 gold mines in Ireland are supposed to be as ruinous 
 as two potato famines. In California there have be"en 
 evidences not to be misunderstood that, let the gold 
 be as plentiful as the periodical romances state it to- 
 be, nevertheless the exhaustibility of that gold which 
 could be worked profitably was indicated not only a
 
 CALIFORNIA 315 
 
 certain, but as very near This term, wheu ap- 
 proached too nearly, has again been thrown to a dis- 
 tance in several cases by fortunate and critical 
 discoveries of other gold more accessible (as recently 
 at Mariposa). But, whenever I read of men digging 
 down to depths of sixty or seventy feet, I know by 
 that one fact that the general reports, describing 
 gold as a thing to be picked up for stooping, must 
 be fraudulent fables, circulated on behalf of men and 
 on the instigation of men who have houses to let, 
 building-ground to sell, and "water privileges" to 
 mortgage. No man would patiently be digging to 
 vast depths who knew that others generally won 
 their gold as easily as a man digs up potatoes, unless 
 he also knew that such enviable prizes were sown as 
 thinly as twenty-thousand-pound prizes in our Eng- 
 lish lotteries of the last generation. 
 
 Here, then, is the first thing to pause upon, namely, 
 that, however " handy " this gold may lie in Califor- 
 nia or in Australia, however " sweetly " it may work 
 off for those meritorious vagabonds who first break 
 ground in the virgin fields, one thing is undeniable : 
 that the course of further advance wil-1 not be up- 
 wards from good to better, but downwards from 
 good, or very good, or charming, to decent, to rather 
 bad, and lastly to disgusting. This is a very ugly 
 fact ; and the cunning amongst the workers, or 
 rather amongst those who have something to sell 
 amongst workers, attempt to break the force of this 
 fact by urging that as yet the aids of science and 
 machinery have not oeeu applied to the case ; so 
 that any advantage which is now possessed by the 
 vagabonds must soon be greater. That is true ; past
 
 B16 CALIFORNIA 
 
 denying it is that concert, and combination, and tht 
 resources of capital, will tell upon the gold-fields, and 
 reduce the labor, which already is reduced by com- 
 parison with other gold-fields. Certainly, in tht 
 first stage of all, tlio progress will, by means of ma- 
 chinery, lie from good to better. But that moment- 
 ary period of success will not avail to alter or to hide 
 the ugly truth, that in all future stages that is, 
 in every stage subsequent to that in which the gold is 
 found upon the surface the inverse course must 
 take place ; that is, not from good to better, but from 
 good to something continually worse. What is it 
 that ultimately and irresistibly determines the value 
 of gold ? Why is it, for instance, that in modern 
 times gold has generally ranged at about fifteen times 
 the value, weight for weight, of silver ? Is it, as 
 ignorant people fancy, because there is fifteen times 
 us much silver in the market of the world as there 
 is of gold ? Not at all, my poor benighted friend. 
 It is because any given quantity of gold, say a hun- 
 dred weight, requires fifteen times as much labor 
 'or, more comprehensively, fifteen times as much 
 capital) to bring it to market than an equal quantity 
 of silver ; and nothing will permanently alter that 
 ratio but what alters the quantity of labor involved 
 in one or the other ; and nothing can permanently 
 reduce the value of gold but what reduces the cost 
 of bringing it to market. Now, I defy any vagabond 
 whatever, whether old vagabond of California, or 
 young vagabond of Australia, or younger vagabond 
 of Owhyec, or most young vagabond of South Amer- 
 ica, to deny that his labor is at the best (that is, 19 
 aost productive) when it is starting. His first crop
 
 CALIFORNIA 317 
 
 of gold is taken off the surface, as with us poor old 
 women and children are hired at sixpence a day to 
 pick stones off the land. Next comes the plough- 
 man. It begins to be hard work, my friend, that 
 ploughing for gold. And finally comes the sinking 
 of shafts, and going down for hours into mephitic 
 regions of carbonic acid gas, and after damp, etc. 
 Neither is there any dispensation from this necessity 
 of going downwards from bad to worse, except iu 
 the single case of crushing quartz. Machinery must 
 prodigiously facilitate that labor ; and so long as the 
 quartz holds out, that advantage will apparently 
 last. But this quartz must, I suspect, be one of the 
 rare prizes in the lottery ; and amongst quartz itself, 
 as amongst vagabonds, there will be a better and a 
 worse. And the signs of these differences will soon 
 become familiar, and the best will be taken first ; and 
 thus here again the motion forward will be from bad 
 to worse. 
 
 But now, as I can afford to be liberal, and leave 
 myself ample means, in Yankee phrase, to " whip " 
 the vagabonds, after all, let me practise the graceful 
 figure of concession. I will concede, therefore, what 
 most vehemently I doubt, that, for a few years, these 
 new gold-fields should work so kindly as seriously to 
 diminish the cost of producing marketable gold. In 
 that case, mark what will follow. You know the 
 modern doctrine of rent, reader? Of course you do, 
 and it would be presumption in me to doubt your 
 snowing it. But still, for the sake of a foolish 
 caprice that haunts me, suffer me to talk to you aa 
 if you did not know the doctrine of rent. 55 I will 
 state it in as brief a compass as perhaps is possible
 
 1 8 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 In a new colony, having a slender population, the 
 natural order in which the arable land is taken up 
 must be this : in the first stage of the process none 
 but the best land will be cultured ; which land let us 
 class as No. 1. In the second stage, when popula- 
 tion will have expanded, more wheat, and therefore 
 more land, being wanted, the second best will be 
 brought into culture; and this we will call No. 2. 
 In the third stage, No. 3 will be used. And so on 
 wards ; nor can there reasonably be any deviation 
 from this order, unless through casual error, or else 
 because occasionally an inferior soil may compensate 
 its intrinsic inferiority by the extrinsic advantage of 
 lying nearer to a town, or nearer to a good road, or 
 to a navigable river, etc. By way of expressing the 
 graduations of quality upon this scale, suppose we 
 interpret them by corresponding graduations of 
 price : No. 1, for the production of a given quantity 
 (no matter what), requires an outlay of twenty shil- 
 lings ; No. 2, for the same quantity, requires twenty- 
 five shillings ; and No. 3, which is very perverse 
 land indeed, requires thirty shillings. Now, because 
 twenty shillings paid the full cost of No. 1, then, 
 as soon as the twenty-five shillings land is called for 
 oy the growing population, since in the same market 
 all wheat of equal quality must bear the same price, 
 which price is here twenty-five shillings, it follows 
 that a surplus five shillings arises on No. 1 beyond 
 what the cost of culture required. For the same 
 reason, when No. 3 is called for, the price (regulated 
 of necessity by the most costly among the several 
 wheats) rises to thirty shillings. This is now the 
 price for the whole, and therefore for No. 1.
 
 CALIFORNIA. 319 
 
 icquently, upon this wheat there is now a svrplus 
 of ten shillings beyond what the culture required ; 
 and upon No. 2, for the same reason, there is a sur- 
 plus of five shillings. What becomes of this sur- 
 plus ? It constitutes RENT. And, amongst other 
 corollaries, these two follow : first, that the lowest 
 quality of land under culture, the last in the de- 
 scending scale, pays no rent ; and, secondly, that 
 this lowest quality determines the price for the 
 whole ; and the successive development of advan- 
 tages for the upper qualities, as the series continues 
 to expand, always expresses itself in successive in- 
 crements of rent. As here, if No. 4 were taken up 
 at thirty-five shillings, then rent would immediately 
 commence on No. 3, which would pay as rent the 
 difference between thirty and thirty-five shillings, 
 namely, five shillings. No. 2 would now pay ten 
 shillings, and No. 1 (I am happy, on its owner's ac- 
 count, to announce) would pay fifteen shillings. 
 
 Well, this is that famous doctrine of RENT, which 
 drew after it other changes, so as, in fact, to un- 
 settle nearly all the old foundations in political econ- 
 omy. And that science had in a manner to pass 
 through the Insolvent Court, and begin the world 
 again upon a very small remainder of its old capital. 
 What I wish to observe upon it in this place is, that 
 this doctrine takes effect, not merely upon arable 
 land, but also upon all mines, quarries, fisheries, etc 
 All these several organs of wealth involve within 
 themselves a graduation of advantages, some yielding 
 more, some less, some still less, on the same basis 
 of coat. Now, before California entered the gold- 
 market, to what quarter did Europe look for her
 
 320 CALIFORNIA 
 
 chief supply of gold? Ancient gold, melted down 
 some of it, no doubt, gold that had furnished toilet 
 equipages to Semiramis, and chains of decoration tc 
 Nimrod or the Pharaohs, entered largely into the 
 market. But for new gold, innocent gold, that had 
 never degraded itself by ministering to acts of 
 bribery and corruption, we looked chiefly to Russia. 
 I remember an excellent paper, some four years 
 back, on these Russian gold-mines in the chains of 
 the Ural Mountains. It was in a French journal of 
 great merit, namely, the Revue des Deux Mondes; 
 and, to the best of my remembrance, it reported the 
 product of these mines as being annually somewhere 
 about four millions sterling. But it would be a 
 great mistake to suppose that the whole of this 
 product rested on the same basis of cost. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the case which I have 
 just imagined as to wheat had its exemplification in 
 these gold-mines. No doubt there are many 
 numbers in the scale which are not worked at all, 
 nor could be profitably worked, unless science 
 should discover less costly modes of working them. 
 But, even as things now are, with many parts of the 
 scale as yet undeveloped, it is certain that a con- 
 siderable range of numbers, in respect of costliness, 
 is already under culture. Suppose these (as in the 
 wheat case) to be Nos. 1, 2, 3. Then, if California 
 ar Australia should succeed in seriously diminishing 
 the cost of producing gold, the first evidence of such 
 a revolution would show itself in knocking off No. 3 
 in tho Ural mines. Should the change continue, 
 and in the same direction, it would next knock off 
 Vo. 2 And, of the whole Ural machinery, onlj
 
 CALIFORNIA. 321 
 
 No. I would at length survive ; or, in other words, 
 only that particular mine, or particular chamber of 
 a mine, which worked under the highest natural ad- 
 vantages, producing a given weight of gold at a cost 
 lower than any other section of the works ; producing, 
 suppose, an ounce of gold at the cost of thirteen 
 ounces of silver, when elsewhere the same quantity 
 cost fourteen ounces, fourteen and a half, etc. 
 Always, therefore, any bond fide action of California 
 upon the cost of gold would show itself, first of all, 
 in a diminishing supply from Russia. 56 But, then, 
 for a considerable time, this increased supply from 
 California, having Russia to pull against, would so 
 far neutralize and counteract any sensible impression 
 that otherwise it might produce in Christendom. 
 This would happen even if the product of California 
 had really been ten millions sterling for the first 
 three years, and fifteen millions for 1850 ; that is, 
 forty-five millions in all. According to my own view, 
 as already explained, it is not likely that California 
 could reduce the cost of gold, except for the first 
 year or two ; after which the cost would travel the 
 other way, not by decrements, but by increments, 
 sure, if slow. No greatly-increased quantity of gold 
 could continue to flood the gold market, unless the 
 cost were seriously reduced. The market of Europe 
 would repel it ; and this discouragement would 
 react upon the motives of the productive body in 
 California. But, were it otherwise, and supposing 
 the cost reduced by eight per cent., or, in round 
 terms, from its present mint price in London, to 
 seventy shillings an ounce, a stimulus would be 
 thus applied to the consumption of gold for varioiiH 
 21
 
 322 CALIFORNIA 
 
 purposes, which, in defiance of the lowered natural 
 price, would quicken and inflame its market price. 
 It is clear, from what has already happened in the 
 United States and in France, that gold would enter 
 more largely into the currencies of nations. It is 
 probable, also, that a very large quantity, in the 
 troubled condition of the political atmosphere 
 throughout Europe for many years to come, will be 
 absorbed by the hoarders of Christendom. Certainly 
 I do not deny that unexpected, discoveries of gold- 
 fields, apparently inexhaustible, have been made, 
 and almost simultaneously made, in regions as re- 
 mote from each other as some of them are from our- 
 selves. In several quarters of the American con- 
 tinent, both north and south, in the Sandwich 
 Islands, in Africa, in New Zealand, and, more noto- 
 riously (as regards impressions on Europe), in 
 Australia (namely, in the island of Van Diemen, but 
 on a still larger scale in the continental regions of 
 Victoria and Port Philip), gold is now presenting 
 itself to the unarmed and uninstructed eye upon a 
 scale that confounds the computations of avarice. 
 "There is some trick in all this," is the natural 
 thought of every manlftrhen first hearing the news. 
 He wonders how it was that many people did not 
 read such broadcast indications twenty years ago. 
 That thought raises a shade of suspicion upon the 
 very facts ?n limine. And next as to the construction 
 of the facts, a misgiving comes over him that pos- 
 sibly there may be too much of a good thing. 
 Many people remember the anecdote connected with 
 the first importation of Brazilian emeralds into 
 Europe. This happened at an Italian port, namely
 
 CALIFORNIA. 323 
 
 Leghorn ; and the jeweller, in whose trade cone but 
 Oriental emeralds were as yet known, struck with 
 admiration at the superior size of one offered to him 
 by a stranger, bought it for a very high price, upon 
 which the stranger, exulting in his good fortune, 
 displayed a large trunk full of the same jewels. 
 But, on this evidence of their abundance in certain 
 regions of Brazil, the jeweller's price sank in the 
 ratio of seven shillings to twenty-five guineas. At 
 present, however, the public mania travels in an op- 
 posite direction. The multiplication of gold is to go 
 on at a rate accelerated beyond the dreams of ro- 
 mance ; and yet, concurrently with this enormous 
 diffusion of the article, its exchangeable value is in 
 some incomprehensible way to be steadily main- 
 tained. This delusion is doubtless but partially dif- 
 fused. But another, equally irreflective, seems to 
 prevail generally, namely, that, under any circum- 
 stances whatever, and travelling towards whatever 
 result, the discovery must prove a glorious one in 
 respect to the interests of the human race. And the 
 rumor of other and other similar discoveries, in far 
 distant regions, equally sudden, and equally promis- 
 ing to be inexhaustible, is hailed as if it laid open to 
 us some return of a Saturnian age. Jam redit et 
 Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. I, on the contrary, 
 view this discovery as in any event almost neutral 
 with respect to human prosperity, but in some pos- 
 sible events as likely to be detrimental. Fighting, 
 with Mr. Cobden's permission, will go on fcr mil- 
 lions of years yet tc come ; and, in pure sympathy 
 \vith the grander interests of human nature, every 
 person who reads what lies written a little below the
 
 324 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 surface will say (as /say), God forbid that it should 
 not. In that day when war should be prohibited, 
 or made nearly impossible, man will commence his 
 degeneration. But if we change not (as change we 
 never shall) in respect to our fighting instincts, we 
 shall change, if the gold fable prospers, a good deal 
 as to the fashion of our arms. Like Ashantees, not 
 a corporal nor a private sentinel but will have a 
 golden hilt to his sword, and a golden scabbard. 
 Still, as people to be plundered by marauders in the 
 nights succeeding to a great battle, we shall not rate 
 much higher. A pound of gold, more or less, will 
 make little difference. " I consider it no object," 
 will be said by the plunderer. And, even if buried 
 in a golden coffin, we shall not be more worth look- 
 ing after by the resurrection-man ; but on a morning 
 parade, under a bright sun, we shall be far prettier 
 to look at. Such would be the upshot if the gold 
 fable were realized. 
 
 Seriously, let us calculate the probable and the 
 possible in the series of changes. What I infer from 
 the whole review, taken in combination, is, that in 
 one half the anticipations in respect to the revolu- 
 tions at hand are vague and indeterminate, and in 
 the other half contradictory. One may gather, from 
 the arguments and the exultations taken together, 
 that some dim idea is entertained of the California 
 supplies uniting with the previous supplies (from 
 Russia and Borneo especially), and jointly terminat- 
 ing in the result of making gold in the first plentiful, 
 and then (as an imaginary consequence) cheap ic 
 relation to all other commodities. In this one readi 
 he usual gross superstition as to the interaction of
 
 CALIFORNIA. 32.5 
 
 supply and demand. The dilemma which arises is 
 this : California does, or does not, produce her gold 
 at a diminished cost. If she does not, no abundance 
 or redundance could be more than transitory in its 
 effect of cheapness : since the more she sold on the 
 terms of selling cheaper, and producing no cheaper 
 set all, which is the supposition, the more she 
 would be working for her own ruin. But, on the 
 other hand, if she does produce at a diminished cost, 
 which is the only ground of cheapness that can last, 
 then she drives Russia effectually out of the market 
 No. 3, 2, 1, in the inverse order illustrated above ; 
 and the effect of her extra supplies is simply to fill 
 up a vacuum which she herself has created. At 
 least that will be the final effect to the extent of five 
 millions sterling per annum. But if she and Aus- 
 tralia jointly should really supply more than this 
 sum, it does not follow that, because produced at a 
 lower cost, this extra supply will command an extra 
 market. The demand for gold is limited by the fixed 
 and traditional uses to which it is applied. Mr. Joe 
 Smith, the prophet of the Mormons, delivered it to 
 his flock, as his own private and prophetic crotchet, 
 that the true use of gold, its ultimate and providen- 
 tial function on this planet, would turn out to be the- 
 paving of streets and high-roads. But we poor non- 
 Mormonites are not so far advanced in philosophy as 
 all that ; and, unless we could simultaneously pave 
 our roads with good intentions, which (it is well 
 known) are all ordered for another place, we have 
 reason to fear that the trustees of every road, the 
 Contractors and the paviers upon it, would abscond 
 uightly with as much high-road as they laid down iu
 
 326 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 tho day. There are at this moment three openings, 
 and perhaps no more, for an enlarged use of gold, 
 in the event of its becoming materially cheaper. 
 Many nations would extend the use of gold in their 
 currencies. Secondly, the practice of hoarding 
 once so co-union, and in Oriental lands almost uni- 
 versal, but in Europe greatly narrowed by the use 
 jf paper currencies, and by the growing security of 
 property will for many years revive extensively 
 under the action of two causes : first, under the 
 general political agitation of Europe ; and, secondly, 
 under the special doctrines of communism, so avow- 
 edly friendly to spoliation and public robbery. La 
 proprietc c'est le vol, is a signal held aloft for all 
 Christendom to take care of their pockets. The fine 
 old miser, therefore, of ancient days, brooding night 
 and day over his buried gold, will again revolve 
 upon us, should gold really become cheap. Finally, 
 the embellishment of human persons by gold trinkets, 
 ornaments, and the more lavish use of gilding in the 
 decoration of houses, furniture, etc., would further 
 enlarge the new demand. But all this only in the 
 case of a real cheapness. And, even if fliat were 
 realized (whereas hitherto there are no signs of it), 
 this unfortunate check to the extended use of gold 
 would inevitably arise intermittingly : the diminished 
 cost of production, by the supposition, reduces the 
 price of gold ; that is, reduces the natural price. 
 But, in the mean time, every extra call for gold, on 
 the large scales supposed, would instantly inflame 
 the market price of gold, and virtually cancel much 
 of the new advantage. This counteraction would 
 ftgair. narrow the use of gold. That narrowing
 
 CALIFORNIA. 327 
 
 would again lower the market price of gold. Undei 
 Jial lowering, again, the extra use of gold would go 
 ahead. Again the extra cheapness would disappear, 
 and consequently the motive to an enlarged uso. 
 And we should live in the endless alternations, hot 
 fits and cold fits, of an intermitting fever. 
 
 But, on my view, there will arise that preliminary 
 Dar to such a state which I have already explained. 
 In the earliest stage of these new gold workings, one 
 and all, the result will be this : a tendency to lower 
 the producing cost of gold ; and this tendency will, 
 in the second stage, be stimulated by the aids of 
 science ; and thus, finally, if the tendency could act 
 long enough, the price would be lowered in the gold 
 markets of the world. But this is an impossibility, 
 because, before such an effect could be accomplished, 
 the third stage of the new diggings would reverse 
 the steps, tending continually to increase the cost 
 of gold, as the easy surface-gathering was exhausted. 
 The fourth stage would recede still further from the 
 early cheapness, as the mining descended, and had 
 to fight with the ordinary difficulties of mines ; and 
 the fifth stage would find the reader and myself giving 
 up all thoughts of sporting gold tables and chairs, 
 and contentedly leaving such visions to those people 
 who (according to the old saying) are " born with a 
 gold spoon in their mouths." 
 
 ON THE FINAL CATASTROPHE OF THE GOLD-DIGGING MANIA 
 
 So long as California, and California exclusively, 
 was concerned in this portentous craze, there wer
 
 328 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 two drawbacks, upon any eventual ruin to be antici 
 pated (come when it would), in so far as it could 
 affect ourselves. First, there was this drawback 
 that the bubble was not by two thirds 51 upon so large 
 a scale as it has been since Australia became a party 
 to the mania ; consequently, in that proportion the 
 ruin from the final explosion of the bubble promised 
 to be less. Secondly, the people concerned in the 
 Californian affair were not chiefly from Great Britain. 
 By a large majority, they were people from the 
 United States ; some being Yankees, that is to say, 
 Northern Americans, from the New England States 
 (namely, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 etc.) ; but more being from the central states of 
 Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, etc. Gene- 
 rally speaking, however, the Californian population 
 represents adequately the activities of the earth. It 
 is a cosmical population, drafted from every climate 
 and region, that, having within itself the stirring 
 impulses of progress and adventurous industry, hap- 
 pens also to have the advantage of easy access to 
 maritime districts, and the means of nautical emi- 
 gration. The final crash will, therefore, to us 
 English, be far ampler now than it could have been 
 under the original restriction to the stage of Cali- 
 fornia : not merely through the far larger develop- 
 ment of the evil, but also through the more immedi- 
 ate connection of the chief sufferers with ourselves. 
 What shape, then, will the crash assume ? Or, how 
 am I entitled to talk of any crash, or so fluently to 
 characterize this popular rush to the gold diggings 
 as a " craze," a " bubble," and a " mania" ? 
 The reasons are not far to seek. They are plait
 
 CALIFORNIA. 329 
 
 nd obvious. 1 will state them ; and if any reader 
 can reply to them without practising evasions, and 
 without forging 1 facts, let him do so. I confess that, 
 if mere authority of position and audacity of asser- 
 tion in the public journals ought to have any weight 
 against blank force of logic and inexorable facts of 
 experience, I myself should have consented U be 
 silenced oftentimes when I had not been convinced. 
 But in every one of these journals I read such mon- 
 strous oversights as to the permanent conditions of 
 the question, that I am not summoned to any defer- 
 ential treatment of the adverse views. If, in arguing 
 the merits of a particular course through a difficult 
 navigation, my antagonist begins by ignoring a vis- 
 ible rock lying right ahead, it is for him to explain 
 such an oversight ; and, until he does explain it, my 
 right it is to spend veiy little ceremony upon the cir- 
 cumstantialities of his arguments. 
 
 The public journals of this island, whether literary 
 or political, have almost monotonously welcomed 
 the large discoveries of gold, as if necessarily, 
 prima facie, and without further discussion, subjects 
 of universal congratulation to the human race. And 
 it is evident, from the language used in many in- 
 stances, that excess or superfluity is, in the judg- 
 ment of these journals, not an affection incident in 
 the case, not an element that can ever enter into 
 *he logic of the estimate. Whereas, on the contrary, 
 I assert that no product whatsoever of this earth, 
 bo it animal, mineral, or vegetable, but is liable to 
 most pernicious excess, excess embarrassing, or by 
 possibility ruinous, to the prosperity of human in- 
 dustry ; excess confounding to human foresight
 
 830 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Eveiything, without exception, is liable to this ruin- 
 ous reaction from excess ; and beyond almost any- 
 thing else gold is in. that predicament. 
 
 There are many things which, though otherwise 
 susceptible of such an excess, are able for a long 
 time to evade its inconveniences, by virtue of their 
 own variable flexibility in applying themselves to 
 human purposes. The scale of their application is 
 often so elastic, narrowing or expanding according 
 to circumstances, that the danger of excess is for 
 them permanently thrown to a distance. Iron, for 
 example, is interchangeable at this day for so many 
 purposes with wood, that, long after the ma/gin for 
 a large extra use had. been exhausted within the field 
 of its own regular applications, it would fin-l another 
 extra margin by trespassing within the field ordina- 
 rily occupied by wood, or by brick, or by marble. 
 A wooden house was sent out to St. llelena for 
 Napoleon ; but, at this day, the ready-made houses 
 sent out from New York and London to California 
 are chiefly of iron. So again of ships, of light 
 bridges, of gates, offences, of balconies, etc Wood 
 and iron will probably for generations relieve their 
 own superfluities by alternate encroachments on 
 each other, according to the alternate advantages 
 which each material, under shifting circumstances, 
 may happen to obtain in the market. Wheat, again, 
 ia seasons of extra cheapness, when oats have hap- 
 oened to be unusually dear, has usurped to a con- 
 siderable extent upon the ordinary oatmtdl diet of 
 a whole peasantry. It is not common, but it does 
 Bometimefe happen, that wheaten flour is substituted 
 for oatmeal ; similar substitutions are without eiid
 
 CALIFORNIA. 331 
 
 BO 1hat excess of production is a point not very easily 
 reached in the case of many articles. A very large 
 majority benefit, in the event of over-production, not 
 merely by their own independent capacities of expan- 
 sion, but also by the corresponding capacities of con- 
 traction in some other article which ordinarily has 
 been employed as a substitute. 58 
 
 But now, without further delay, let us come to the 
 possible expansions in the use of gold ; for, substan- 
 tially, that is the sole question at issue. Gold is so 
 enormously more costly, bulk for bulk, than all other 
 articles of luxury and ornament, excepting only 
 jewels and pearls, that it cannot possibly benefit by 
 the second mode of expansion here noticed, namely, 
 by some other article contracting or retiring in order 
 to make room for it, but solely by the alternate mode, 
 namely, by the extension of its own separate use, 
 according to the ordinary mode of using it. The 
 plain, flagrant, and undeniable fact meets us upon 
 every road that connects human calculations with 
 the subject, that the whole frenzy of gold-digging 
 will be suddenly pulled up in one month will be 
 frozen into abrupt extinction by mere failure 
 blank failure of demand. So far as its own proper 
 use can be enlarged, so far there is an opening for 
 an extension of the demand ; but as to any substitu- 
 tional use, tliat is inconceivable. 
 
 This mortal wound to the whole bestial scene of 
 sensuality and robbery (robbery, for such it is, con- 
 sequent upon the helplessness of the government) 
 has hidden itself, naturally enoagh, from the poor, 
 illiterate vagabonds that compose the plundering 
 army of diggers. And it is possible to excuse some
 
 332 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 blindness upon such a prospect, even in educated 
 people, under the misleading influence of such a case 
 as this A river, suppose at a mile distance, has 
 been swelling for many days, and at length is over- 
 flowing its banks. The flood, continually increasing, 
 travels hourly in the direction of your own house. 
 But, before it can touch that house in the slightest 
 degree, it must fill up to the very brim a deep valley 
 which is interposed between that river and the Louse. 
 So long, now, as this intervening valley wants one 
 hair's breadth of being full, there is not a vestige of 
 any warning given to you that an awful calamity is 
 at hand. At noon, suppose, exactly as the clock 
 strikes twelve, the overwhelming deluge is pouring 
 in at every window and door within its level. Sixty 
 seconds before the clock struck, you could have 
 sworn that every window-sill was dry as dust. Not 
 otherwise (what by accident and what by uncalcu- 
 latiug ignorance) the whole phenomena of the gold 
 case have darkened themselves to the unreflecting 
 observers. There were many valleys to be filled up 
 before the overflowing river could reach our own un- 
 alarmed house. There were, first of all, the hoarders, 
 a class most numerous under Oriental despotisms, 
 but, even in Christian Europe, not at all an insignifi- 
 cant class ; since, when the sovereign does not plun- 
 der, the lord paramount over vassals often does. The 
 year 1848 armed, as against the menaces of com- 
 .nruism, many millions of hoarders say thirty mil- 
 lions at ten pounds sterling a man. That would 
 account for the burial of three hundred millions ster- 
 ling. Then make a corresponding allowance foi 
 Asiatic hoarders But as all Asiatic populations
 
 CALIFORNIA. 333 
 
 (reserving only Japan, China, and Hindustan) are 
 miserably slender, and also, man for man, are poorer, 
 allow, perhaps, one hundred millions sterling for this 
 class. Thirdly, allow for the sovereign hoarders, 
 namely, the several governments in Europe, who, 
 und-;r some strange misconception of the case, have 
 taken occasion to build up a gold currency at the 
 very moment when ordinary foresight should have 
 proclaimed to eveiy nation the necessity of convert- 
 ing any gold articles in their possession into glass, 
 stone, marble, copper, anything, in short, that was 
 not under absolute judicial sentence of depreciation. 
 All these allowances may amount to five hundred 
 and fifty or six hundred millions. These millions 
 constitute the valley that had to be filled to the brim 
 before the surplus could enter ruinously into your 
 own house. IIow far off may be that consummation, 
 I do not pretend to say. Certainly not very far. 
 The Russian, the California!!, and the Australian, 
 added to some other more trivial contributions from 
 parts of Africa, from the island of Borneo, &c., can- 
 not now yield much under seventy-five millions ster- 
 ling per annum. About one hundred and fifty mil- 
 lions, therefore, are added biennially ; and four such 
 biennial contributions would produce the entire sum 
 wanted, as the vacuum to be filled up. But already, 
 some years ago, this filling up had commenced ; and 
 previously to (hat, the stock of gold locked up in 
 ornamental articles was already very large. Upon 
 any calculation, near indeed we must stand, fatally 
 icar, to the epoch at which, pretty suddenly, all 
 farther demand for gold must cease. 
 Upon you it is you the opposers of this view- -
 
 334 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 that the onus rests of showing- into what shape the 
 demand for gold will transmigrate, when once it shal. 
 have been thoroughly satisfied and gorged in al. 
 shapes which hitherto it has assumed. How ro- 
 mantically impossible any new shape must be, will 
 appear from this one consideration. At the time 
 when the Califomian mines were discovered, how 
 was it that the world got on as respected its gold 
 wants ? Tell me, you that dispose so lightly of the 
 whole threatening catastrophe, was or was not the 
 produce of the Russian Ural Mountains, added to 
 other more trivial sources, sufficient (when combined 
 with the vast accumulated stock long ago in the uni- 
 versal gold markets) for the total purposes of this 
 terraqueous globe ? Was it, or was it not ? No 
 evasions, if you please. If it was hearken to the 
 dilemma which besieges you then how are you 
 simple enough to suppose that the same planet which 
 found six or seven millions as much as its annual 
 necessities could absorb, should suddenly become 
 able to digest seventy-five millions ? If, on the other 
 hand, it was not sufficient, if you endeavor to ex 
 plain some small fraction of the marvel by alleging 
 that, in fact, the Ural product of gold was not 
 measured by the capacity of the earth to absorb, but 
 by the limited power of Russia to produce, then I 
 demand why it was that the Ural price of gold did 
 not steadily increase. Had more gold been wanted 
 by the earth, more could readily have been furnished 
 by Russia, upon a very small advance in the price. 
 Precisely because this advance of price was not forth- 
 coming, that is to say, precisely because the supply 
 W&B fully up to the demand, we obtain the clearest
 
 CALIFORNIA 31- 
 
 evidence that all the California!! and Australian gold 
 nas spent itself upon no necessity of ordinary annual 
 recurrence, upon no demand that can last, but 
 upon filling up extraordinary chasms that cannot re- 
 peat themselves, such, for instance, as replacing 
 silver or paper currencies with gold ; and, therefore, 
 that, when that service is fulfilled, which is the 
 only service of a large national nature that can still 
 be in any degree unsatisfied, thenceforward, of 
 mere necessity, we descend again into that condition 
 of limited demand which for years had been met suf- 
 ficiently by the Russian supply of five or six millions 
 sterling per annum. 
 
 For, now, if you question this, and fancy that the 
 Australian supply of gold is, by some unspeakable 
 process, to create a demand for itself, tell us how, 
 and illustrate the shape which this new demand will 
 take. Do not fence with the clouds, but come down 
 to earth. You cannot deny that, two years ago, 
 when we had no Australian gold, the goldsmiths of 
 this earth did very well without it. Say not a word, 
 therefore, of the Californian gold ; every ounce of Aus- 
 tralian gold, were there no other addition, should 
 logically be so much more than is wanted. How, 
 then, do you suppose that it is eventually to be dis- 
 posed of? Because, until we know this, we cannot 
 pretend to know whether it is a laughing matter or 
 a crying matter. As to fancying that Australian 
 gold will continue to force a market for itself, you 
 cannot seriously suppose that a man, who never 
 thought of buying a gold watch or other trinket when 
 uch articles were made of TTralian gold, will sud- 
 uenly conceive a fancy fo* B'ich an article, simply
 
 B36 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 because the gold is raised in an English colony, and, 
 though no cheaper, has, by its redundant production, 
 ceased to impress the imagination. If it wore really 
 true that gold, because it was dug up in extra quan- 
 tities, could therefore command an extra market, why 
 not apply the same theory to iron, to coals, or to 
 calico ? A comfortable doctrine it would be for the 
 English manufacturer, that, in proportion as be in- 
 creased his production, he could extend his market ; 
 that is, could extend his market precisely as he over- 
 stocked it. And yet, of all things, gold could least 
 benefit by such a forced increase. Calico might be 
 substituted for linen cloth, iron in many applications 
 for wood, coals for turf ; but gold can be substituted 
 for nothing. If a man resolves to substitute a gold 
 watch for a silver one, surely his motive for doing 
 BO is not because gold is produced in one latitude or 
 one longitude, having previously been produced in 
 another. It is very clear that, long before California 
 or Australia had been heard of, no man who wished 
 for a gold watch had any difficulty in obtaining it, 
 if only he could pay for it ; and that little part of 
 the ceremony, I presume, he must submit to even 
 now. 
 
 Why, yes certainly he must pay for it ; but here 
 dawns upon us the real and sincere fancy of the ad- 
 vantage worked by the new gold diggings, some 
 confused notion arises that he will pay less. But, 
 then, exactly in that proportion falls away the motive 
 for undergoing the preternatural labor of the diggings. 
 Even this, however, will not avail; for so costly it 
 gold, under any conceivable advantages for cheapen 
 ing it that, even at one half or one quarter of the
 
 CALIFORNIA. 337 
 
 price, gold trinkets would not come within tho reach 
 of any class so much more extended than the class 
 now purchasing such articles, as to meet within a 
 thousand degrees the increased produce of gold. In 
 articles of absolute homely use, it is clear that gold 
 never can be substituted for less costly metals. 
 Ornamental gold articles, on the other hand, are in 
 their total possible range (considering that they do 
 not perish from year to year) ludicrously below the 
 scale which could do anything for the relief of our 
 Australian gold. It is not, therefore, only that the 
 monstrous and hyperbolical excess of gold, as meas- 
 ured against any conceivable use or application of 
 gold, would terminate in forcing down the price of gold 
 to a point at which it would no longer furnish any en- 
 couragement whatever to the gold-digger ; but, even 
 at this abject price (or at any price whatever), gold 
 would cease to command a market. It is natural 
 enough that the poor simpletons who are at the dig- 
 gings, or are hurrying 1 thither like kites to carrion, 
 should be the dupes of the old fantastic superstition 
 which invests the precious metals with some essen- 
 tial and indefeasible divinity. But the conductors 
 of great national journals should have known better ; 
 and, if they do really entertain the conceit that gold 
 must always be gold (that is, must have some mys- 
 terious value apart and separate from any use which 
 it can realize), in that case they ought to have traced 
 the progress of a gold nugget, weighing, suppose, a 
 pound, through the markets of the world, under the 
 condition that all their markets are plethorically 
 overstocked. 
 
 Some such case has been pressed, apparently, on 
 22
 
 338 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 the attention of men lately, and the answer the 
 desperate answer which I understand to have been 
 extorted was this : it was contended that the mere 
 market for female ornaments throughout Hindostan 
 would suffice to provide a vent for the Australian 
 surplus through many years to come. Now, this 
 allegation might easily be disposed of in one sen- 
 tence, namely, thus : If the Hindoo women are able 
 and willing to pay the existing price for gold, 
 namely, from seventy to seventy-five shillings per 
 ounce, why did they not pay it long before Califor- 
 nian digging arose ? Russia would always have fur 
 riished them gold at that price. How is it, then, that 
 they are in want of gold ornaments ? Russia would 
 gladly have received an order for an annual excess 
 of two million ounces. The dilemma is apparently 
 not to be evaded ; either these Hindoo women cannot 
 afford the price of gold ornaments, or, on the other 
 ho".d, they have afforded it, and are already possessed 
 of such ornaments. However, that I may not be 
 said to have evaded any possible argument, let us 
 review the statistics of the case. First of all, it is 
 Hindoo women of whom we are speaking ; and prop- 
 erly, therefore, twenty millions of Mahometans 
 that is, ten millions of females should be subtracted 
 from the population of India. But waive this, and 
 call the total population one hundred millions. 1 
 distrust these random computations altogether ; but 
 lot that pass. The families, therefore, may count for 
 fifty millions. Now, more than one half of the human 
 race are under the age of fifteen. It is true that, in 
 a country where many a woman marries at twelve 
 the age for ornaments must be dated from a mueb
 
 CALIFORNIA. tf9 
 
 earlier period. Yet, again, as decay commences at 
 an age correspondingly even more premature, pos- 
 sibly it would not be unfair to deduct one half as the 
 sum of those who fall below or rise above the age for 
 personal ornaments. However, on this and other 
 distinct grounds, deduct only ten millions ; and sup- 
 pose fifteen millions of the remaining forty to be 
 already in possession of such ornaments. There 
 remain, therefore, twenty-five millions as the sup- 
 posed available market for gold. Now, according to 
 what I remember of Dr. Buchanan's very elaborate 
 statistics applied to the Mysore territory, and taking 
 this as the standard, I should hold one ounce of gold 
 to be a large allowance for each individual female ; 
 for, when alloyed into jeweller's gold, this would be 
 equal to four ounces' weight. On that basis, the 
 market of India would take off twenty-five million 
 ounces of gold. But, if we are to believe the current 
 reports, within the last twelve months the Australian 
 diggings produced about fifteen million ounces of 
 gold, reckoned locally at nearly seventy shillings an 
 ounce. Next year, naturally, the product will be 
 much larger ; and in one year, therefore, on the most 
 liberal allowance, all India would be adequately sup- 
 plied with gold by Australia alone ; and, as gold 
 does not perish, this would not be a recurrent demand. 
 Once satisfied, that call would be made no more ; 
 once filled, that chasm would not again be empty. 
 And what is to become of the Australian gold in the 
 year succeeding ? Are we to have spades and 
 ploughshares manufactured of gold, or how ? But 
 away with such trifling ! One might draw amuse- 
 ment from human folly in cases that were less uigent ;
 
 310 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 but, under circumstances as they really stand, and 
 hurrying, as we actually find ourselves, down a pre- 
 cipitous descent that allows no time for looking for- 
 ward nor escape in looking back, which of us could 
 be childish enough to dwell upon the comic aspects 
 of the calamity ? And these two results will very 
 soon unfold themselves : first this, namely, that with- 
 out reference to the depreciation of gold, not stop- 
 ping to ask upon what scale that would move, sup- 
 pose it little, or suppose it much, alike in any result 
 the possibility of finding new extension of market for 
 gold, under the exhaustion of all conceivable exten- 
 sions applied to its uses in the arts, must, by such 
 flying steps, approach its final limit, that in that way 
 separately a headlong depreciation must overtake us 
 without warning. 5 " 
 
 . Secondly, another depreciation, from another quar- 
 ter, will arise to complicate and to intensify this pri- 
 mary depreciation. The sudden cessation of the 
 demand, from mere defect of further uses and pur- 
 poses, will of itself establish a sudden lock in the 
 clockwork of the commercial movement. But of a 
 nature altogether different, and more gigantic in its 
 scale, will be the depreciation from inhuman and 
 maniacal excesses. 
 
 I add a few paragraphs as my closing retrarks ; 
 and, in order to mark their disconnection with each 
 other, T number them with figures. They all growoul 
 of the subject, but do not arise consecutively out oi 
 each other. 
 
 1. On this day (Thursday, Dec. 16, 1852), being 
 the day when I put a close to these remarks, hav 
 just received the Tines newspaper for Monday
 
 CALIFORNIA. 34] 
 
 December 13, 1852, and in that paper I observe two 
 things : 1st (on col. 1 of p. 5), that the San Fran- 
 oisco Herald reports the exportation of gold as 
 amounting probably to five and a half millions of dol- 
 lars for the month then current (November) ; and 
 that this is given as likely to be the representative 
 export, is plain from what precedes ; for, says the 
 Herald, " The* production, instead of falling off 
 (as croakers long ago predicted), seems to be steadily 
 on the increase." Ilere we find a yearly export of 
 more than fourteen millions sterling announced joy- 
 fully as something that may be depended upon. 
 And, in the midst of such insane exultation, of course 
 we need not be surprised that " a croaker" means 
 not the man that looks forward with horror to the 
 ruin contingent upon such a prophecy being realized 
 but upon him who doubts it. Secondly, I observe 
 (col. 2 of p. 3) that in a brief notice of the translation 
 published by Mr. Ilankey, jun., from M. Leon Fau- 
 cher's " Remarks on the Production of the Precious 
 Metals," there is extracted one paragraph, the first 
 which has ever met my eye, taking the same view 
 as myself of the dangers ahead, though in a tone far 
 below the urgency of the case. " I can hardly 
 agree," says Mr. Ilankey, " that there is so little 
 ground for alarm as to a depreciation in the value of 
 gold, in consequence of the late discoveries." He 
 then goes on to assign reasons for his own fears. 
 But, as he actually allows a considerable weight 
 amongst the grounds of his fears to the few hundred 
 thousands of sovereigns sent out to Australia, witn 
 the view of meeting the momentary deficiency in 
 coin, and which (as he rightly observes) will soon
 
 342 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 be returning upon us and aggravating the domestic 
 glut, anybody taking my view will naturally infer 
 the exceeding inadequacy of his fears to the real 
 danger. The sovereign will prove a mere drop in 
 the ocean. 60 On this same day, I have read letters 
 from Australia, announcing further vast discoveries 
 of gold, namely, at a distance of about twenty miles 
 from Adelaide. The same accounts 'confirm what I 
 cited earlier in this paper as the probable annual 
 amount from Australia previously to this last, dis- 
 covery as reaching fifty-one or fifty-two millions 
 sterling per annum, by showing that in eleven 
 months, namely, from October, 1851, to September, 
 1852, the export shipped from Victoria alone had 
 been ten millions sterling. Between California and 
 Australia, supposing the present rates of production 
 to continue, within three years the earth would be 
 deluged with gold. It is true that a sudden crash 
 will intercept the consummation, but in a way that 
 will work ruin to more nations than one. 
 
 2. Why is it that we speak with mixed astonish- 
 ment and disgust, horror and laughter struggling for 
 the mastery, of the mania which possessed the two 
 leaders of civilization (so by all the world they are 
 entitled), England and France, London and Paris, 
 about one hundred and thirty years back ? The 
 South Sea Bubble, amongst the English in 1718-19 
 the Mississippi Bubble amongst the French in 
 1720 wherefore is it that we marvel at them ? that 
 we write books about them ? that we expose them 
 in colors of pity and scorn to our children of this 
 generation ? In simple truth, we are as gross fools 
 M our ancestors ; and indeed grosser For, after
 
 CALIFORNIA. 343 
 
 all, the loss was local and partial at that time. Not 
 one family in ten thousand suffered materially ; but, 
 as things are now proceeding, none will escape, for 
 the ruin will steal upon us in a form not at first per- 
 ceived. It is already stealing upon us. But why, I 
 ask, would any prudent man, any reflecting man, 
 nave seen through the bubbles of our ancestors ? 
 My answer is this : Such a man would have scented 
 the fraud in the very names. The Mississippi ! 
 the South Sea 1 Why, the lies of Falstaff were not 
 more gross, or more overflowing with self-refutation. 
 The Mississippi was at this time a desert, requiring 
 a century, at least, and a vast impulse of coloniza- 
 tion, to make it capable of any produce at all. The 
 South Sea was a solitary wilderness, from which 
 (unless in blubber and spermaceti) not a hundred 
 pounds' worth of any valuable commodity could have 
 been exported. Both were mines of pure emptiness 
 not mines exhausted ; there never had been anything 
 to exhaust. And, in fact, I remember nothing in all 
 comedy, or universal farce, that can match these two 
 hoaxes upon London and Paris, unless it were a 
 scene which I remember in one of Took's afterpieces. 
 He introduces a political quidnunc, possessed by the 
 Athenian mania of hunting eternally after some new 
 thing. His name, if I recollect, is Gregory Gazette. 
 And, in one scene, where some pecuniary fraud k to 
 be executed, Sir Gregory is persuaded into believing 
 that the Pope has, by treaty, consented to turn 
 Protestant, upon being put into possession of Nova 
 Zembla, and selected sections of Greenland. Waa 
 there anything less monstrous than this in the French 
 rw the English craze of 1718-20 ? Or is there anything
 
 544 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 less monstrous in our present reliance on the Hindoo 
 women for keeping up the price of gold ? 
 
 3. I need not say, to any man who reflects, that 
 fifty such populations as that of Ilindostan, or even 
 of Europe (which means a very different thing), would 
 not interrupt the depreciation of gold, or retard it for 
 two years, under the assumption of an influx on its 
 present scale. M. Cavalier, a great authority in 
 France on all questions of this nature, has supposed 
 it possible that the depreciation might go down as 
 tar as fifty per cent, on its present price ; though, 
 why it should stop there, no man can guess. Even, 
 however, at that price, or, in round expressions, cost- 
 ing forty shillings an ounce, it will yet be eight times 
 the price of silver ; and one moment's consideration 
 will suggest to us the hopelessness of any material 
 retardation to this fall, by any extended use of gold 
 for decorations in dress, houses, etc., through the 
 simple recollection, that all the enormous advantages 
 of a price eight times lower have not availed to secure 
 any further extension to the ornamental use of silver. 
 Silver is much more beautiful than gold in combina- 
 tion with the other accompaniments of a table, such 
 as curple and golden and amber-colored wines, 
 light of candles, glass, etc. Silver is susceptible of 
 higher workmanship ; silver is worked much more 
 cheaply ; and yet, with five shillings an ounce to 
 start from, instead of forty, services of silver plate 
 air, even yet, in the most luxurious of cities, the 
 raicst of domestic ornaments. One cause of this 
 may be that silver, as a service for the dinner-table, 
 finds a severe rival in the exquisite beauty of porce- 
 lain ; but that rival it will continue to find ; and, in
 
 CALIFORNIA. 345 
 
 such a rivalship, gold would be beaten hollow by 
 any one of the competitors, even if it had the ad- 
 vantage of starting on the same original level as to 
 price. 
 
 4. .But finally, there occurs to you as a last rc- 
 source, when dinner-services and Hindoo women are 
 all out of the field, the currencies of the earth. Yes ; 
 there it is, you think, that the diggings will find their 
 asylum of steady support. Unhappily, my reader, 
 instead of support, through that channel it is that we 
 shall receive our ruin. Were it not for currencies, 
 nobody would be ruined but the diggers, and their 
 immediate agents. But, as most of these were ruined 
 at starting, they would at worst end as they began. 
 The misery is, that most nations, misconceiving the 
 result altogether, have already furnished themselves 
 with gold currencies. These, on the mistake being 
 discovered, will hurry back into the market. Then 
 the glut will be prodigiously aggravated ; but in that 
 way only can the evil be in part evaded. If gold 
 continued with ourselves to be a compulsory and 
 statutable payment, and our funded proprietors were 
 still paid in gold, every family would be ruined. For, 
 if nominally these proprietors are but about three 
 hundred thousand, we must remember that many a 
 single proprietor, appearing only as one name, virtu- 
 ally represents tens of thousands bankers, for in- 
 stance charitable institutions insurance offices, 
 etc. So wide a desolation could not by any device 
 of nan reach so vast a body )f helpless in a,- rests. 
 The first step to be taken would be to repeal the 
 statute which makes gold a lega* tender for suina 
 above forty shillings ; and, at the same time, to
 
 346 CALIFORNIA.. 
 
 rescind the mint regulations. The depreciation will 
 not express itself openly, so long as these laws are 
 tn force. At this moment, in Staffordshire and 
 Warwickshire, within the last six weeks, iron and 
 coal have risen cent per cent. Part of the cause lies 
 beyond a doubt in the depreciation of gold ; and this 
 would declare itself, were jpJd no longer current 
 under legal coercion. 
 
 P. S., written on January 27, 1853. More than a 
 calendar month has elapsed since the proof of this 
 article was sent to me. Two facts have transpired 
 in the interval, namely, the return o* the steamer 
 called the Australian, confirming the rmaantic esti- 
 mates previously received : the single colony of 
 Victoria yielding, according to the carofu' interpreta- 
 tion of the London " Standard," at the present rate, 
 twenty-five millions sterling per annum. Tbe other 
 noticeable fact is the general survey, on New-rear's- 
 day, by the " Times " city reporter, of the prospects 
 for the current year, 185-3. He pronounces that 
 there is " no cloud " to darken our anticipations ; or, 
 if any, only through political convulsions, contin- 
 gent, by possibility, on the crazy moneyed specula- 
 tions afloat in Paris. The superfluous gold he 
 supposes to be got rid of by various investments ; 
 though he himself notices the nugatoriness of any 
 investment that simply shifts the gold from one 
 bolder to another. The solitary hope is that the gold 
 juarries may soon he exhausted.
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 FEW people need to be toid that associations exist up 
 and down Christendom, having the ambitious object of 
 abolishing war. Some go so far as to believe that this 
 evil of war, so ubiquitous, so ancient, and apparently so 
 inalienable from man's position upon earth, is already 
 doomed ; that not the private associations only, but the 
 prevailing voice of races the most highly civilized, may 
 be looked on as tending to confederation against it ; 
 that sentence of extermination has virtually gone forth, 
 and that all which remains is gradually to execute that 
 sentence. Conscientiously I find myself unable to join 
 in these views. The project seems to me the most ro- 
 mantic of all romances in the course of publication. 
 Consequently, when asked to become a member in any 
 such association, I have always thought it most respect- 
 ful, because most sincere, to decline. Yet, as it is pain- 
 ful to refuse all marks of sympathy with persons whose 
 motives one honors, I design at my death to bequeath 
 half a crown to the chief association for extinguishing 
 war the said half crown to be improved in all time 
 coming for the benefit of the association, under the 
 trusteeship of Europe, Asia, and America, but net of 
 Africa. I really dare not trust Africa with money , 
 she is not able as yet to take care of herself. This
 
 548 
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 half crown, a fund that will overshadow the earth be- 
 fore it comes to be wanted under the provisions of my 
 will, is to be improved at any interest whatever, no 
 matter what ; for the vast period of the accumulations 
 will easily make good any tardiness of advance long 
 before the time comes for its commencing payment a 
 point which will be soon understood, from the following 
 explanation by any gentleman that Lopes to draw 
 upon it. 
 
 There is in Ceylon a granite cippus, or monumental 
 pillar, of immemorial antiquity ; and to this pillar a re- 
 markable legend is attached. The pillar measures six 
 feet by six, i. e., thirty-six square feet, on the flat tablet 
 of its horizontal surface, and in height several riyanas, 
 (which are Ceylonese cubits of eighteen inches each ;) 
 but of these cubits there are either eight or twelve ; 
 excuse me for having forgotten which. At first, per- 
 haps, you will be angry viz., when you hear that this 
 simple difference of four cubits, or six feet, measures a 
 difference for your expectations, whether you count 
 your expectations in kicks or halfpence, that absolutely 
 strikes horror into arithmetic. The singularity of the 
 case is, that the very solemnity of the legend and the 
 wealth of the human race in time depend upon the 
 cubical contents of the monument ; so that a loss of one 
 granite chip is a loss of a frightful infinity. Yet, again, 
 for that very reason, the loss of all but a chip leaves 
 behind riches so appallingly too rich that every body is 
 careless about the four cubits. Enough is as good 
 as a feast. Two bottomless abysses take as much time 
 for the diver as ten ; and five eternities are as frightfu. 
 o look down as four-and-twenty. In the Ceylon legend
 
 ON WAS 349 
 
 all turns upon the inexhaustible series of ages which 
 this pillar guaranties; but as one inexhaustible is quite 
 enough for one race of men, and you are sure of more 
 by ineffable excess than you can use in any private con- 
 sumption of your own, you become generous ; ' and 
 between friends," you say, in accepting my apologies 
 for the doubtful error as to the four cubits, " what sig- 
 nifies an infinity more or less ? " 
 
 For the Ceylonese legend is this : that once in every 
 hundred years an angel visits this granite pillar. He 
 is dressed in a robe of white muslin, muslin of that 
 kind which the Romans called aura textilis, woven, 
 as might seem, from zephyrs or from pulses of the air 
 such in its transparency, such in its gossamer light- 
 ness. Does the angel touch the pillar with his foot ? 
 0, no ! Even that would be something ; but even that 
 is not allowed. In his soundless flight across it he suf- 
 fers the hem of his impalpable robe to sweep the sur- 
 face as softly as a moonbeam. So much and no more 
 of pollution he endures from contact with earthly ob- 
 jects. The lowest extremity of his dress, but with the 
 delicacy of light, grazes the granite surface ; and that 
 is all the attrition which the sacred granite receives in 
 the course of any one century ; and this is all the prog- 
 ress which we, the poor children of earth, in any one 
 century make towards the exhaustion of our earthly 
 imprisonment. But, argues the subtle legend, even 
 that attrition, when weighed in metaphysical scales, 
 cannot be denied its value ; it has detached from the 
 oillar an atom (no matter that it is an invisible atom) 
 of granite dust, the ratio o:' which atom to a grain 
 R.voirdupois, if expressed as a fraction of unity, would
 
 550 ON WAR. 
 
 by its denominator stretch from the accountant gen 
 eral's office in London to the Milky Way. Now, the 
 total mass of the granite represents, on this scheme of 
 payment, the total funded debt of man's race to Father 
 Time and earthly corruption ; all this intolerable score 
 chalked up to our debit, we by ourselves and our rep- 
 resentatives have to rub off before the granite will be 
 rubbed away by the muslin robe of the proud flying 
 angel, (who, if he were a good fellow, might just as 
 well give a sly kick with his heel to the granite,) before 
 time will be at an end and the burden of flesh accom- 
 plished. But you hear it expressed in terms that will 
 astonish Baron Rothschild what is the progress in liqui- 
 dation which we make for each particular century. A 
 billion of centuries pays off a quantity equal to a pinch 
 of snuff. Despair seizes a man in contemplating a 
 single coupon, no bigger than a visiting card, of such a 
 stock as this ; and behold we have to keep on paying 
 away until the total granite is reduced to a level with 
 a grain of mustard seed. But when that is accom- 
 plished, thank Heaven, our last generation of descend- 
 ants will be entitled to leave at Master Time's door a 
 visiting card, which the meagre shadow cannot refuse 
 to take, though he will sicken at seeing it, viz., a 
 P. P. C. card, upon seeing which, the old thief is 
 bound to give receipt in full for all debts and pre- 
 tended arrears. 
 
 The reader perhaps knows of debts on both sides 
 the Atlantic that have no great prospect of being paid 
 off sooner than this in Ceylon. 
 
 And naturally, to match this order of debts moving 
 off so slowly, there are funds that accumulate as slow
 
 ON WAR 351 
 
 Iy. My own funded half crown is an illustration. The 
 half crown will travel in the inverse order of the gran- 
 ite pillar. The pillar and the half crown move upon 
 opposite tacks ; and there is a point of time (which it 
 is for algebra to investigate) when they will cross each 
 other in the exact moment of their several bisections, 
 ni) aspiring half crown tending gradually towards the 
 fixed stars ; so that perhaps it might be right to make 
 the man in the moon trustee for that part of the accu- 
 mulations which rises above the optics of sublunary 
 bankers ; whilst the Ceylon pillar is constantly un- 
 weaving its own granite texture and dwindling earth- 
 wards. It is probable that each of the parties will 
 have reached its consummation about the same time. 
 What is to be done with the mustard seed Ceylon has 
 forgotten to say ; but what is to be done with the half 
 crown and its surplus nobody can doubt after reading 
 my last will and testament. After reciting a few in- 
 considerable legacies to the three continents and to the 
 man in the moon for any trouble they may have had 
 in managing the hyperbolical accumulations, I go on to 
 observe that, when war is reported to have taken itself 
 off forever, u and no mistake," (because I foresee many 
 false alarms of a perpetual peace,) a variety of incon- 
 veniences will arise to all branches of the United Ser- 
 vice, including the Horse Marines. Clearly there can 
 be no more half pay ; and, even more clearly, there is 
 an end to full pay. Pensions are at an end for " good 
 service." Allowances for wounds cannot be thought 
 of when all wounds shall have ceased except those 
 from female eyes for which the Horse Guards is too 
 Jttle advanced in civilization to make any allowance at
 
 352 
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 nil. Bargains there will be no more amongst auctioni 
 of old government stores. Birmingham will be ruined 
 or so much of it as depended on rifles ; and the greaf 
 Scotch works on the River Carron will be hungering for 
 beef, so far as Carron depended for beef upon car- 
 ronades. Other arrears of evil will stretch after the 
 extinction of war. 
 
 Now, upon my half-crown fund (which will be equal 
 to any thing by the time it is wanted) I charge once 
 and forever the general relief of all these arrears of 
 the poverty, the loss, the bankruptcy arising by reason 
 of this quietus of final extinction applied to war. I 
 charge the fund with a perpetual allowance of half pay 
 to all the armies of earth ; or indeed, whilst my hand 
 is in, I charge it with full pay ; and I strictly enjoin 
 upon my trustees and executors, but especially upon 
 the man in the moon, if his unsocial lip has left him 
 one spark of gentlemanly feeling, that he and they 
 shall construe all claims liberally ; nay, with that riot, 
 ous liberality which is safe and becoming when applied 
 to a fund so inexhaustible. Yes, reader, my fund will 
 be inexhaustible, because the period of its growth will 
 be measured by the concurrent deposition of the Cey 
 Ion mustard seed from the everlasting pillar. 
 
 Yet why ? or on what principle ? It is because I see 
 or imagine that I see, a twofold necessity for war 
 necessity in two different senses: 1st. A physical 
 necessity arising out of man's nature when combined 
 with man's situation a necessity under which war may 
 Ae regarded, if you please, as a nuisance, but as a nui- 
 Bance inalienable from circumstances essential to human 
 frailty. 2dly. A moral necessity connected with benefits
 
 ON WAR. .?") 3 
 
 of compensation, such as continually lurk in evils ac- 
 knowledged to be such a necessity under which it 
 becomes lawful to say that war ought to exist as a bal- 
 ance to opposite tendencies of a still more evil charac- 
 ter. War is the mother of wrong and spoliation ; war 
 is a scourge of God. Granted ; but, like other scourges 
 in the divine economy, war purifies and redeems itself 
 MI its character of a counterforce to greater evils that 
 could not otherwise be intercepted or redressed. In two 
 different meanings we say that a thing is necessary 
 either in that case where it is inexorably forced on by 
 some sad overruling principle which it is vain to fight 
 against, though all good men mourn over its existence 
 and view it as an unconditional evil ; or, secondly, in 
 that case where an instrument of sorrowful conse- 
 quences to man is nevertheless invoked and postulated 
 by man's highest moral interests, is nevertheless clam- 
 orously indicated as a blessing when looked at in rela- 
 tion to some antagonist cause of evil for which it offers 
 the one only remedy or principle of palliation. The 
 very evil and woe of man's condition upon earth may 
 be oftentimes detected in the necessity of looking to 
 some other woe as the pledge of its purification ; so 
 that what separately would have been hateful for itself, 
 passes mysteriously into an object of toleration, of hope, 
 or even of prayer, as a counter-venom to the taint of 
 some more mortal poison. Poverty, for instance, is in 
 both senses necessary for man. It is necessary in the 
 game sense as thirst is necessary (i. e., inevitable) in a 
 fever necessary as one corollary amongst many otn- 
 *rs, from the eternal hollowness of all human efforts 
 lor organizing any perfect model of society a corol 
 23
 
 354 ON WAR. 
 
 ary which how gladly would all of us unite to cancel 
 but which our hearts suggest, which Scripture solemnly 
 proclaims, to be ineradicable from the land. In thia 
 sense poverty is a necessity over which we mourn, 
 as one of the dark phases that sadden the vision of hu- 
 man life. But far differently, and with a stem grat- 
 tude, we recognize another mode of necessity for this 
 gloomy distinction a call for poverty, when seen in 
 relation to the manifold agencies by which it develops 
 human energies, in relation to the trials by which it 
 searches the power of patience and religion, in relation 
 to the struggles by which it evokes the nobilities of 
 fortitude ; or, again, amongst those who are not sharert 
 in these trials and struggles, but sympathizing specta- 
 tors, in relation to the stimulation by which it quickens 
 wisdom that watches over the causes of this evil, or by 
 which it vivifies the spirit of love that labors for its 
 mitigation. War stands, or seems to stand, upon the 
 same double basis of necessity a primary necessity 
 that belongs to our human degradations, a secondary 
 one that towers by means of its moral relations into 
 the region of our impassioned exaltations. The two 
 propositions on which I take my stand are these. First. 
 That there are nowhere latent in society any powers by 
 wincn it can effectually operate on war for its exter- 
 mination. The machinery is not there ; ;he game is 
 not within the compass of the cards. Secondly. That 
 this defect of power is though sincerely I grieve in 
 avowing such a sentiment, and perhaps (if an infirm 
 reader had his eye upon me) I might seem, in sympa- 
 thy with his weakness, to blush not a curse ; no, no, 
 it all but on the whole a blessing from century to ccn>
 
 OH WAR. 355 
 
 ury, if it k ^a inconvenience from year to year. The 
 abolition committees, it is to be feared, will be very 
 angry at both propositions. Yet, gentlemen, hear me 
 strike, but hear me. I believe that's a sort of pla- 
 giarism from Themistocles. But never mind. 1 have 
 as good a right to the words, until translated back imo 
 Greek, as that most classical of yellow admirals. "Pe- 
 reant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt I " 
 
 The first proposition is, that war cannot be abolished ; 
 the second, and more offensive, that war ought not 
 *o be abolished. First, therefore, concerning the first. 
 One at a time. Sufficient for the page is the evil there- 
 of. How came it into any man's heart, first of all, to 
 ronceive so audacious an idea as that of a conspiracy 
 against war r Whence could he draw any vapor of 
 hope to sustain his preliminary steps ? And, in framing 
 his plot, which way did he set his face to look out for 
 accomplices ? Revolving this question in times past, I 
 came to the conclusion that perhaps this colossal 
 project of a war against war had been first put in mo- 
 tion under a misconception (natural enough, and coun- 
 tenanced by innumerable books) as to the true historical 
 origin of wars in many notorious instances. If these 
 had arisen on trivial impulses, a trivial resistance might 
 have intercepted them. If a man has once persuaded 
 himself that long, costly, and bloody wars had arisen 
 upon a point of ceremony, upon a personal pique, upon 
 a hasty word, upon some explosion of momentary ca- 
 orice, it is a natural inference that strength of national 
 will and public combinations for resistance, supposing 
 such forces to have been trained, organized, and, from 
 the circumstances r f '.he particular nation, to be per
 
 356 
 
 manently disposable for action, might prove redundant- 
 ly effective when pointed against a few personal authors 
 of war, so presumably weak and so flexible to any 
 stern counter-volition as those must be supposed whose 
 wars argued so much of vicious levity. The inference 
 is unexceptionable ; it is the premises that are unsound. 
 Anecdotes of war as having emanated from a lady's 
 tea table or toilet would authorize such inference as 
 to the facilities of controlling them ; but the anecdotes 
 themselves are false, or false substantially. All anec- 
 dotes, I fear, are false. I am sorry to say so ; but my 
 duty to the reader extorts from me the disagreeable 
 confession, as upon a matter specially investigated by 
 myself, that all dealers in anecdotes are tainted with 
 mendacity. Where is the Scotchman, said Dr. Johnson, 
 who does not prefer Scotland to truth ? But, however 
 this may be, rarer than such a Scotchman, rarer than 
 the phoenix, is that virtuous man, a monster he is, nay, 
 he is an impossible n..*n, who will consent to lose a 
 prosperous anecdote on the consideration that it h#o- 
 pens to be a lie. All history, therefore, being built, 
 partly, and some of it altogether, uponanecdotage, must 
 be a tissue of lies. Such, for the most part, is the his- 
 tory of Suetonius, who may be esteemed the father 
 of anecdotage ; and, being such, he (and not Herodo- 
 tus) should have been honored with the title Father of 
 Lies. Such is the Augustan history, which is all that 
 remains of the Roman empire : such is the vast series 
 of French memoirs, now stretching through more than 
 three entire centuries. Are these works, then, to be 
 held cheap because their truths to their falsehoods are in 
 the ratio of one to five hundred ? Chi the contrary, thej
 
 ON WAR. 007 
 
 are better and more to be esteemed on that account, 
 because now they are admirable reading on a winter's 
 night ; whereas, written on the principle of sticking to 
 the truth, they would have been as dull as ditch water. 
 Generally, therefore, the dealers in anecdotage are to 
 be viewed with admiration, as patriotic citizens, willing 
 to sacrifice their own characters, lest their countrymen 
 should find themselves short of amusement. I esteem 
 them as equal to Codrus, Timoleon, William Tell, or to 
 Milton, as regards the liberty of unlicensed printing ; 
 and I object to them only in the exceptional case of 
 their being cited as authorities for an inference or as 
 vouchers for a fact. Universally it may be received 
 as a rule of unlimited application, that when an an- 
 ecdote involves a stinging repartee or collision of ideas, 
 fancifully and brilliantly related to each other by resem- 
 blance or contrast, then you may challenge it as false 
 to a certainty one illustration of which is, that pretty 
 nearly every memorable propos^ or pointed repartee, 
 or striking mot circulating at this moment in Paris 01 
 London as the undoubted property of Talleyrand, (that 
 eminent knave,) was ascribed at Vienna ninety years 
 ago to the Prince de Ligne, and thirty years previously 
 to Voltaire, and so on, regressively, to many other wits, 
 (knaves or not;) until at length, if you persist in back- 
 aig far enough, you find yourself amongst pagans, 
 with the very same repartee, &c., doing duty in pretty 
 good Greek; 61 sometimes, for instance, in Hierocles, 
 sometimes in Diogenes Laertius, in Plutarch, or in 
 \ihenaeus. Now, the thing you know claimed by so 
 many people could not belong to all of them ; all of 
 them tould not be the inventors. Logic and common
 
 $58 
 
 OX WAR. 
 
 sense unite in shewing us that it must have belonged to 
 the moderns, who had cleariy been hustled and robbed by 
 the ancients so much more likely to commit a rob- 
 bery than Christians, they being all Gentiles, pagans, 
 heathen dogs. What do I infer from this ? Why, that 
 upon any solution of the case hardly one worthy say- 
 ing can be mentioned, hardly one jest, pun, or sarcasm, 
 which has not been the occasion and subject of many 
 falsehoods, as having been au- (and men) -daciously 
 transferred from generation to generation, sworn to in 
 every age as this man's property or that man's by peo- 
 ple that must have known they were lying, until you 
 retire from the investigation with a conviction that, un- 
 der any system of chronology, the science of lying is 
 the only one that has never drooped. Date from Anno 
 Domini or from the Julian era, patronize Olympiads, 
 or patronize (as / do, from misanthropy, because no- 
 body else will) the era of Nabonassar ; no matter, 
 upon every road, thicker than milestones, you see rec- 
 ords of human mendacity, or (which is much worse, in 
 my opinion,) of human sympathy with other people's 
 mendacity. 
 
 This digression, now, on anecdotes 62 is what the 
 
 earned call an excursus, and I am afraid too long by 
 L*lf not strictly in proportion. But don't mind that. 
 I'll make it all right by being too short upon something 
 else at the next opportunity; and then nobody can 
 complain. Meantime I argue that as all brilliant or 
 epigrammatic anecdotes are probably false, (a thing 
 that hereafter I shall have much pleasure in making out 
 to the angry reader's satisfaction,) but to a dead cer 
 
 minty those anecdotes in particular which bear marks
 
 ON WAR. 359 
 
 in their construction that a rhetorical effect of art had 
 been contemplated by the narrator v imy take 
 for granted that the current stories ascribing modern 
 wars (French and English) to accidents the most incon- 
 siderable are false even in a literal sense ; but at all 
 events they are so when valued philosophically and 
 brought out into their circumstantial relations. For in- 
 stance, we have a French anecdote, from the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century, which ascribes one 
 bloody war to the accident of a little " miff," arising 
 between the king and his minister upon some such trifle 
 as the situation of a palace window. Again, from the 
 early part of the eighteenth century, we have an Eng- 
 lish anecdote ascribing consequences no less bloody to 
 a sudden feud between two ladies, and that feud (if 
 I remember) tracing itself up to a pair of gloves ; 
 so that, in effect, the war and the gloves form the two 
 poles of the transaction. Harlequin throws a pair of 
 Limerick gloves into a cornmill ; and the spectator is 
 astonished to see the gloves immediately issuing from 
 the hopper, well ground into seven armies of one hun- 
 dred thousand men each, and with parks of artillery to 
 correspond. In these two anecdotes we recognize 
 it once the able and industrious artist arranging his 
 naterials with a pious regard to theatrical effect. This 
 man knows how to group his figures ; well he under- 
 stands where to plant his masses of light and shade , 
 and what impertinence it would be in us spectators 
 the reader, suppose, and myself to go behind the 
 cenes for critical inquiry into daylight realities ! All 
 reasonable men see that, the less of such realities our 
 irtist had to work with, the more was his merit. I am
 
 360 
 
 ON WAR 
 
 one of those that detest all insidious attempts to rob 
 men s tuated as this artist of their fair fame by going 
 about and whispering that perhaps the thing is true. 
 Far fiom it. I sympathize with the poor trembling 
 artist, and agree most cordially that the whole story is 
 a lie ; and he may rely upon my support at all times 
 to the extent of denying that any vestige of truth prob- 
 ably lay at the foundations of his ingenious apologue. 
 And what I say of the English fable I am willing to 
 say of the French one. Both, I dare say, were the 
 rankest fictions. But next, what, after all, if they were 
 not 1 For in the rear of all discussion upon anecdotes, 
 considered simply as true or not true, comes finally a 
 valuation of those anecdotes in their moral relation 
 and as to the inferences which they will sustain. The 
 story, for example, of the French minister Luvois, and 
 the adroitness with which he fastened upon great for- 
 eign potentates, in the shape of war, that irritability of 
 temper in his royal master which threatened to con- 
 sume himself; the diplomatic address with which he 
 transmuted suddenly a task so delicate as that of skir- 
 mishing daily in a council chamber with his own 
 sovereign into that far jollier mode of disputation where 
 one replies to all objections of the very keenest logi- 
 cian either with round shot or with grape ; here is an 
 inecdote which (for my own part) I am inclined to 
 view as pure gasconade. But suppose the story true , 
 still it may happen that a better valuation of it may 
 iisturb the whole edifice of logical inferences by which 
 t seemed to favor the speculations of the war abo- 
 itionists. Let us see. What was the logic through 
 *hich such a tale as this could lend any countenance
 
 ON WAR. 361 
 
 to the schemes of these abolitionists ? That logic trav 
 elled in the following channel. Such a tale, or the 
 English tale of the gloves, being supposed true, it 
 would seem to follow that war and the purposes of 
 war were phenomena of chance growth, not attached 
 to any instinct so ancient, and apparently so grooved 
 into the dark necessities of our nature, as we had all 
 taken for granted. Usually we rank war with hunger 
 with cold, with sorrow, with death afflictions of our 
 human state that spring up as inevitably without sepa- 
 rate culture, and in defiance of all hostile culture, as 
 verdure, as weeds, and as flowers that overspread ir. 
 spring time a fertile soil without needing to be sown or 
 watered. Awful is the necessity, as it seems, of all 
 such afflictions. Yet, again, if (as these anecdotes 
 imply) war could by possibility depend frequently on 
 accidents of personal temperament, irritability in a 
 sensual king, wounded sensibilities of pride between 
 two sensitive ladies, there in a moment shone forth a 
 light of hope upon the crusade against war. 
 
 If personal accidents could, to any serious extent, be 
 amongst the causes of war, then it would become a 
 hopeful duty to combine personal influences that should 
 take an opposite direction. If casual causes could be 
 supposed chiefly to have promoted war, how easy for 
 a nation to arrange permanent and determinate causes 
 against it ! The logic- of these anecdotes seemed to 
 argue that the whole fountains of war were left to the 
 government of chance and the windiest of levities ; 
 that war was not in reality roused into activity by the 
 evil that resides in the human will, but, on the contrary, 
 y the simple defect of any will energetic enough 01
 
 362 ON WAH. 
 
 steady enough to merit that name. Multitudes of evils 
 exist in our social system simply because no steadi- 
 ness of attention nor action of combined will has been 
 converged upon them. War, by the silent evidence of 
 these anecdotes, seemed to lie amongst that class of 
 evils, A new era might be expected to commence in 
 new views upon war ; and the evil would be half 
 conquered from the moment that it should be traced to 
 a trivial or a personal origin. 
 
 All this was plausible, but false. The anecdotes, 
 and all similar anecdotes, might be true, but were 
 delusive. The logical vice in them was, that they 
 substituted an occasion for a cause. The king's ill 
 temper, for instance, acting through the levity and im- 
 patience of the minister, might be the causa occasio- 
 nails of the war, but not its true causa efficiens. What 
 was ? Where do the true permanent causes of war, 
 as distinguished from its proximate excitements, find 
 their lodgment and abiding ground ? They lie in the 
 system of national competitions ; in the common politi- 
 cal system to which all individual nations are unavoid- 
 ably parties ; in the system of public forces distributed 
 amongst a number of adjacent nations, with no internal 
 principle for adjusting the equilibrium of these forces, 
 and no supreme Areopagus^ or court of appeal, for 
 deciding disputes. Here lies the matrix of war ; be- 
 cause an eternal matrix of disputes lies in a system of 
 interests that are continually the same, and therefore 
 the parents of rivalships too close, that are continually 
 different, and so far the parents of alienation too wide. 
 All war is an instinctive nisus for redressing the errors 
 of equilibrium in the relative position of nations amongsf
 
 ON WAR. 363 
 
 nations. Every nation's duty, first, midst, and last, is 
 to itself. No nation can be safe from continual (be 
 cause insensible) losses of ground but by continual 
 jealousies, watchings, and ambitious strivings to mend 
 its own position. Civilities and highbred courtesies 
 pass, and ought to pass, between nations ; that is the 
 graceful drapery which shrouds their natural, fierce, 
 ar.d tiger-like relations to each other. But the glaring 
 eyes which express this deep and inalienable ferocity 
 look out at intervals from below these gorgeous dra- 
 peries ; and sad it is to think that at intervals the acts 
 and the temper suitable to those glaring eyes must 
 come forward. Mr. Carter was on terms of the most 
 exquisite dissimulation with his lions and tigers ; but 
 as often as he trusted his person amongst them, if, in 
 the midst of infinite politeness exchanged on all sides, 
 he saw a certain portentous expression of mutiny 
 kindling in the eyeball of any discontented tiger, all 
 was lost, unless he came down instantly upon that 
 tiger's skull with a blow from an iron bar that sug- 
 gested something like apoplexy. On such terms do 
 nations meet in diplomacy. High consideration for each 
 other does not conceal the basis of enmity on which 
 they rest not an enmity that belongs to their feelings, 
 but to the necessities of their position. Every nation, 
 in negotiating, has its right hand upon the hilt of its 
 sword, and at intervals playfully unsheathes a little of 
 its gleaming blade. As things stand at present, war 
 and peace are boui.d together like the vicissitudes of 
 day and night, of Castor and Pollux. It matters little 
 'vhich bucket of the two is going up at the moment, 
 . which going down. Both are steadfastly tied by a
 
 364 ON WAR. 
 
 system of alternations to a revolving wheel ; and a new 
 war as certainly becomes due during the evolutions of 
 a tedious peace as a new peace may be relied on 
 during the throes of a bloody war to tranquillize its 
 wounds. Consequently, when the arrogant Louvois 
 carried a war to the credit of his own little account on 
 the national leger of France, this coxcomb well knew 
 that a war was at any rate due about that time. Real- 
 ly, says he, I must find out some little war to exhaust 
 the surplus irritability of this person, or he'll be the 
 death of me. But irritable or not irritable, with a puppy 
 for his minister or not, the French king would naturally 
 have been carried headlong into war by the mere sys 
 tern of Europe within a very few months so much 
 had the causes of complaint reciprocally accumulated. 
 The account must be cleansed ; the court roll of griev- 
 ances must be purged. With respect to the two Eng- 
 lish ladies again, it is still more evident that they could 
 not have caused a war by pulling caps with each other ; 
 since the ground of every war, what had caused it 
 and prolonged it, was sure to be angrily reviewed by 
 Parliament at each annual exposition of the finance 
 minister's budget. These ladies and the French cox- 
 comb could at the utmost have claimed a distinction 
 such as that which belonged to a particular Turkish gun- 
 ner, the captain of a gun at Navarino viz., that he, 
 by firing the first shot without orders, did (as a matter 
 of fact) let loose and unmuzzle the whole of that dread- 
 ful iron hurricane from four nations which instantly 
 followed, but which (be it known to the gunner) could 
 not have been delayed for fifty minutes longer, whether 
 he had fired the unauthorized gun or not.
 
 ON WAR. 365 
 
 But now let me speak to the second proposition of 
 my two-headed thesis viz., that war ought not to be 
 abolished, if such an abolition were even possible. 
 Prima facie, it seems a dreadful doctrine to claim a 
 place for war as amongst the evils that are salutary to 
 man ; but conscientiously I hold it to be such. I hold 
 with Wordsworth, but for reasons which may or may 
 not be the same, since he has not stated his, 
 
 " That God's most dreaded instrument, 
 In working out a pure intent, 
 Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter : 
 Yea, Carnage is his daughter." 
 
 I am obliged to hold that, supposing so romantic a 
 condition realized as the cessation of war, this change, 
 unless other evils were previously abolished, or neu- 
 tralized in a way still more romantic to suppose, 
 would not be for the welfare of human nature, but 
 would tend to its rapid degradation. 
 
 One, in fact, of the earliest aspects undei which this 
 moral necessity for war forces itself upon our notice is 
 its physical necessity. I mean to say that one of the 
 earliest reasons why war ought to exist is, because, 
 under any mode of suppressing war, virtually it will 
 exist. Banish war as now administered, and it will re- 
 volve upon us in a worse shape, that is, in a shape of 
 predatory and ruffian war, more and more licentious, 
 is it enjoys no privilege or sufferance, by the supposi- 
 .ion, under the national laws. Will the causes of war 
 die away because war is forbidden ? Certainly not ; 
 and the only result of the prohibition would be to throw 
 back thn exercise of war from national into private and
 
 366 ON WAR. 
 
 mercenary hands ; and that is precisely the retrograde 
 or inverse course of civilization ; for, in the natural 
 order of civilization, war passes from the hands of 
 knights, barons, insulated cities, into those of the uni- 
 versal community. If, again, it is attempted to put 
 down this lawless guerilla state by national forces, then 
 the result will be to have established an interminable 
 warfare of a mixed character, private and public, civil 
 and foreign, infesting the frontiers of all states like a 
 fever, and in substitution for the occasional and inter- 
 mitting wars of high national police, administered with 
 the dignified responsibility that belongs to supreme 
 rank, with the humanity that belongs to conscious 
 power, and with the diminishing havoc that belongs 
 to increasing skill in the arts of destruction. Even 
 as to this last feature in warfare, which in the war 
 of brigands and condottieri would for many reasons 
 instantly decay, no reader can fail to be aware of the 
 marvels effected by the forces of inventive science that 
 run along side by side with the advances of civiliza- 
 tion. Look back even to the grandest period of the 
 humane Roman warfare ; listen to the noblest and most 
 merciful of all Roman captains, saying, on the day of 
 Pharsalia, (and saying of necessity,) " Strike at their 
 faces, cavalry ! " yes, absolutely directing his own 
 troopers to plough up with their sabres the blooming 
 laces of the young Roman nobility ; and then pass tc 
 i modern field of battle, where all is finished by mus 
 ketry and artillery amidst clouds of smoke, no soldier 
 recognizing his own desolations or the ghastly ruin of 
 nis own right arm ; so that war, by losing al' iu bru 
 tality, is losing half of its demoralization.
 
 ON WAR. 307 
 
 War, so far from ending because war was forbidden 
 and nationally renounced, on the contrary would trans- 
 migrate into a more fearful shape. As things are at 
 present, (and, observe, they are always growing bet- 
 ter,) what numbers of noble-minded men, in the persons 
 of our officers, (yes, and often of non-commissioned of- 
 ficers,) do we British, for example, disperse over battle 
 fields, that could not dishonor their glorious uniform by 
 any countenance to an act of cruelty ! They are eyet 
 delegated from the charities of our domestic life to 
 overlook and curb the license of war. I remember in 
 Xenophon some passage where he describes a class of 
 Persian gentlemen, who were called the (xfdaKfioi^ or 
 eyes of the king, but for a very different purpose. 
 These British officers may be called the ophthalmoi, or 
 eyes of our sovereign lady, that into every corner of 
 the battle carry their scrutiny, lest any cruelty should 
 be committed on the helpless or any advantage taken 
 of a dying enemy. But mark ; such officers would be 
 rare in the irregular troops succeeding to the official 
 armies ; and through this channel, amongst others, 
 war, when cried down by act of Parliament, and pre- 
 cisely because it was cried down, would become more 
 perilously effective for the degradation of human na- 
 ture. Being itself dishonored, war would become the 
 more effective as an instrument for the dishonoring of 
 *s agents. However, at length, we will suppose the 
 impossible problem solved ; war, we will assume, is at 
 ast put down. 
 
 At length there is no more war ; though, by the way, 
 tet me whisper in your ear, (supposing you to be a 
 Christian,) this would be a prelibation drawn prema-
 
 3G8 
 
 OX WAK. 
 
 Mirely from the cup of millennial happiness ; and, strict- 
 ly speaking, there is no great homage to religion, even 
 thus far, in figuring that to be the purchase of man for 
 himself, and through his own efforts, which is viewed 
 by Scripture as a glory removed to the infinite and 
 Btarry distance of a millennium, and as the Tslsvratov 
 inifvvr l ^a t the last crowning attainment of Christian 
 truth, no longer militant on earth. Christianity it is 
 but Christianity when triumphant, and no longer in con 
 flict with adverse, or thwarting, or limiting influences 
 which only can be equal to a revolution so mighty 
 But all this, for the sake of pursuing the assumption, 
 let us agree to waive. In reality, there are two sepa- 
 rate stations taken up by the war denouncers. One class 
 hold that an influence derived from political economy 
 is quite equal to the flying leap by which man is to clear 
 this unfathomable gulf of war and to land his race 
 forever on the opposite shore of a self-sustaining peace. 
 Simply the contemplation of national debts, (as a bur- 
 den which never would have existed without war,) and 
 a computation of the waste, havoc, unproductive labor, 
 &c., attached to any single campaign, these, they 
 imagine, might suffice, per se, for the extinction of war. 
 But the other class cannot go along with a speculation 
 so infirm. Reasons there are in the opposite scale, 
 tempting man into war, which are far mightier than 
 any motives addressed to his self-interest. Even strain- 
 ing her energies to the utmost, they regard all policy 
 of the purse as adequate : any thing short of religion 
 ihey are satisfied, must be incommensurate to a resub 
 PO vast. 
 1 myself certainly agree with this last class ; but upon
 
 ON WAR. 369 
 
 this arises a delusion, which I shall have some trouble 
 in making the reader understand : and of this I am 
 confident, that a majority, perhaps, in every given 
 amount of readers will share in the delusion, will part 
 from me in the persuasion that the error I attempt to 
 expose is no error at all, but that it is myself who am 
 in the wrong. The delusion which I challenge as such 
 respects the very meaning and value of a sacrifice made 
 to Christianity. What is it ? What do we properly mean 
 by a concession or a sacrifice made to a spiritual power 
 such as Christianity ? If a king and his people, im- 
 pressed by the unchristian character of war, were to 
 say, in some solemn act, " We, the parties undersigned, 
 for the reasons stated in the body of this document, pro- 
 claim to all nations, that from and after Midsummer 
 eve of the year 1850, this being the eve of St. John 
 the Baptist, (who was the herald of Christ,) we will no 
 more prosecute any interest of ours, unless the one 
 sole interest of national defence, by means of war ; 
 and this sacrifice we make as a concession and act of 
 homage to Christianity," would that vow, I ask, sin- 
 cerely offered and steadily observed, really be a sacri- 
 fice made to Christianity ? Not at all. A sacrifice 
 ,hat was truly such, to a spiritual religion, must be a 
 sacrifice, not verbally (though sincerely) dedicating it- 
 self to the religion, but a sacrifice wrought and accom- 
 plished by that religion, through and by its own spirit. 
 Midsummer eve of 1850 could clearly make no spi:*it- 
 ual change in the king or his people ; such they would 
 be on the morning after St. John's day as on the morn- 
 ing before it i.e., filled with all elements (though 
 
 24
 
 370 ON WAR. 
 
 possibly undeveloped) of strife, feud, pernicious ambi- 
 tion. 
 
 The delusion, therefore, which I charge upon this re- 
 ligious class of war denouncers is, that, whilst they see 
 and recognize this infinite imperfection of any influence 
 which Christianity yet exercises upon the world, they 
 nevertheless rely upon that acknowledged shadow for 
 the accomplishment of what would, in such circum- 
 stances, be a real miracle ; they rely upon that shadow 
 as truly and entirely as if it were already that substance 
 which, in a vast revolution of ages, it will finally be- 
 come. And they rely upon this mockery in two senses : 
 first, for the endurance of the frail human resolution 
 that would thaw in an hour before a great outrage or 
 provocation suited to the nobler infirmities of man ; 
 secondly, which is the point I mainly aim at, assuming 
 for a moment that the resolution could endure amongst 
 all mankind, we are all equally convinced that an evil so 
 vast is not likely to be checked or controlled except by 
 some very extraordinary power. Well, where is it ? 
 Show me that power. I know of none but Christianity. 
 T/iere, undoubtedly, is hope. But, in order that the 
 hope may become rational, the power must become 
 oractical. And practical it is not, in the extent required, 
 until this Christianity, from being dimly appreciated by 
 a section 63 of this world, shall have been the law that 
 overrides the whole. That consummation is not im- 
 measurably distant. Even now, from considerations 
 feOimected with China, with New Zealand, Borneo, Aus 
 traha, we may say that already the fields are white for 
 But alas ! the interval is brief between Chris
 
 ON WAR. 37\ 
 
 .ianity small and Christianity great, as regards space 01 
 terraqueous importance, compared with that interval 
 which separates Christianity formally professed from 
 Christianity thankfully acknowledged by universal man 
 in heauty and power. 
 
 Here, therefore, is one spoke in the wheel for so vast 
 a change as war dethroned viz., that you see no cause, 
 though you should travel round the whole horizon, ade- 
 quate to so prodigious an effect. What could do it? 
 Why, Christianity could do it. Ay, true ; but man 
 disarms Christianity ; and no mock Christianity, no 
 lip homage to Christianity, will answer. 
 
 But is war, then, to go on forever ? Are we never 
 to improve ? Are nations to conduct their intercourse 
 eternally under the secret understanding that an un- 
 christian solution of all irreconcilable feuds stands in 
 the rear as the ultimate appeal ? I answer that war, 
 going on even forever, may still be forever amending 
 its modes and its results upon human happiness ; sec- 
 ondly, that we not only are under no fatal arrest in our 
 process of improvement, but that, as regards war, his- 
 tory shows how steadily we have been improving ; and 
 thirdly, that, although war may be irreversible as the 
 last resource, this last resource may constantly be re- 
 tiring farther into 4 he rear. Let us speak to this last 
 point. War is the last resource only because other and 
 more intellectual resources for solving disputes are not 
 available. And why are they not ? Simply because 
 the knowledge and the logic which ultimately will gov- 
 ern the case, and the very circumstances of the case 
 itself in its derails, as the basis on which this knowledge 
 uid logic are to operate, happen not to have been suf-
 
 K72 
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 ficiently developed. A code of law is not a spasmodic 
 effort of gigantic talent in any one man or any one gen 
 eration ; it is a slow growth of accidents and occasions 
 expanding with civilization, dependent upon time as a 
 multiform element in its development, and presuppos- 
 ing often a concurrent growth of analogous cases to- 
 wards the completion of its system. For instance, the 
 law which regulates the rights of shipping, seafaring 
 men, and maritime commerce, how slow was its de- 
 velopment ! Before such works as the Consolato del 
 Mare had been matured, how wide must have been the 
 experience and how slow its accumulation ! During 
 that long period of infancy for law, how many must 
 have been *he openings for ignorant and unintentional 
 injustice ! How differently, again, will the several 
 parties to any transaction construe the rights of the 
 case ! D.'icussion, without rules for guiding it, will but 
 imbitter the dispute. And in the absence of all gui- 
 dance from the intellect, gradually weaving a common 
 standard of international appeal, it is clear that nations 
 must fight and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it 
 is base to pretend that you are convinced ; and, failing 
 to be convinced by your neighbor's arguments, you con- 
 fess yourself a poltroon (and moreover you invite in- 
 juries from every neighbor) if you pocket your wrcngs 
 The only course in such a case is to thump your neigh- 
 bor, and to thump him soundly, for the present. This 
 treatment is very serviceable to your neighbor's optics 
 he sees things in a new light after a sufficient course of 
 BO distressing a regimen. But mark; even in this case 
 var has no tendency to propagate war, but tends to the 
 very opposite result. To thump is as costly, and in
 
 ON WAR. 373 
 
 other ways as painful, as to be thumped. The evil to 
 Doth sides arises in an undeveloped state of law. If 
 rights were defined by a well-considered code growing 
 out of long experience, each party sees that this scourge 
 of war would continually tend to limit itself. Conse- 
 quently the very necessity of war becomes the strongest 
 invitation to that system of judicial logic which forms 
 its sole limitation. But all war whatsoever stands in 
 these circumstances, [t follows that all war whatever, 
 unless on the brutal principle of a Spartan warfare, 64 
 that made war its own sufficient object and self-justifi- 
 cation, operates as a perpetual bounty offered to men 
 upon the investigation and final adjudication of those 
 disputed cases through which war prospers. 
 
 Hence it is viz., because the true boundaries of re- 
 ciprocal rights are forever ascertaining themselves more 
 clearly that war is growing less frequent. The fields 
 vttpen to injustice (which originally from pure ignorance 
 are so vast) continually (through deeper and more ex- 
 pansive surveys by man's intellect, searching, re- 
 flecting, comparing) are narrowing themselves ; nar- 
 rowing themselves in this sense that all nations under 
 a common centre of religious civilization, as Christen- 
 dom, suppose, or Islamism, would not fight no, and 
 would not (by the national sense of wrong and right) 
 be permitted to fight in a cause confessedly con- 
 demned by equity as now developed. The causes of 
 war that still remain are causes on which international 
 law is silent that large arrear of cases as yet unset- 
 tled ; or else they are cases in which, though law speaks 
 tfith an authentic voice, it speaks in vain, because the 
 lircumstances are doubtful ; so that, if the law is fixed
 
 374 
 
 ON WAH. 
 
 as a lamp nailed to a wall, yet the incidence of the la* 
 on the particular circumstances becomes as doubtfu 
 as the light of the lamp upon objects that are capricious- 
 ly moving. We see all this illustrated in a class of 
 cases that powerfully illustrate the good and the bad in 
 war, the why and the wherefore, as likewise the why 
 noJ, and therefore I presume the wherefore not ; and 
 this class of cases belongs to the lex vicinitatis. In the 
 Roman law this section makes a great figure ; and, 
 speaking accurately, it makes a greater in our own. 
 But the reason why this law of neighborhood seems to 
 fill so much smaller a section in ours is because in 
 English law, being positively a longer section, nega- 
 tively to the whole compass of our law it is less. The 
 Roman law would have paved a road to the moon. 
 And what is that expressed in time ? Let us see. A 
 railway train, worked at the speed of the Great Western 
 Express, accomplishes easily a thousand miles in twen- 
 ty-four hours ; consequently in two hundred and forty 
 days, or eight months, it would run into the moon with 
 its buffers, and break up the quarters of that Robinson 
 Crusoe who (and without any Friday) is the only police- 
 man that parades that little pensive appendage or tender 
 to our fuming engine of an earth. But the English 
 law, O frightful reader, don't even think of such a 
 question as its relation in space and time to the Roman 
 law. That it would stretch to the fixed stars is plain' 
 but to which of them, .don't now, dear persecuting 
 reader, unsettle our brains by asking. Enough it is 
 that both in Roman and English law the rights of neigh 
 oornood are past measuring. Has a man a right tc 
 play the German flute, where the partitions are slender
 
 ON WAR. 375 
 
 ill day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or 
 supposing a beneficent jury (oeneficent to him) finds 
 this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it 
 ill ? Or because juries, when tipsy, will wink at any 
 thing, does the privilege extend to the jewsharpp-to 
 the poker and tongs ? to the marrow bones and cleav- 
 ers ? Or, without ranging through the whole of the 
 Spectator's culinary music, will the bagpipes be found 
 tvithin benefit of jury law ? War to the knife, I say, 
 before we'll submit to that. And if the law won't pro- 
 tect us against it, then we'll turn rebels. 
 
 Now, this law of neighborhood, this lex vicinitatis, 
 amongst the Romans, righted itself and settled itself, as 
 amongst ourselves it continues to do, by means of 
 actions or legal suits. If a man poisons us with smoke, 
 we compel him by an action to eat his own smoke, or 
 (if he chooses) to make his chimneys eat it. Here, 
 you see, is a transmuted war. In a barbarous state, fire 
 and sword would have avenged this invasion of smoke ; 
 but, amongst civilized men, paper bullets, in the form of 
 qui tarn and scire facias, beat off the enemy ; and on 
 the same principle, exactly as the law of international 
 rights clears up its dark places, war gradually narrows 
 its grounds, and the jus gentium defines itself through 
 national attorneys i. e., diplomatists. 
 
 For instance, now : I have myself seen a case where 
 a man cultivating a flower garden, and distressed for 
 some deliverance from his rubbish of dead leaves, 
 litter, straw, stones, took the desperate resolution of 
 projecting the whole upon his neighbor's flower gar- 
 den. I, a chance spectator of the outrage, knew toe 
 aii'^n of this world to lodge any protest against it on
 
 1576 
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 the principle of mere abstract justice ; so it would have 
 passed unnoticed but for the accident that his injured 
 neighbor unexpectedly raised up his head above the 
 dividing wall and reproached the aggressor with his 
 unprincipled conduct. This aggressor, adding evil to 
 evil, suggested, as the natural remedy for his own 
 wrong, that the sufferer should pass the nuisance on- 
 wards to the garden next beyond him, from which it 
 might be posted forward on the same principle. The 
 aggrieved man, however, preferred passing it back, 
 without any discount to the original proprietor. Here, 
 now, is a ripe case, a causa teterrima, for war between 
 the parties, and for a national war had the parties been 
 nations. In fact, the very same injury, in a more 
 aggravated shape, is perpetrated from time to time by 
 Jersey upon ourselves, and would, upon a larger scale, 
 right itself by war. Convicts are costly to maintain ; 
 and Jersey, whose national revenue is limited, being 
 too well aware of this, does us the favor to land upon 
 the coasts of Hampshire, Dorset, &c., all the criminals 
 whom she cannot summarily send back to self-support 
 at each iail delivery. " What are we to do in Eng- 
 land ? " is the natural question propounded by the 
 injured scoundrels when taking leave of their Jersey 
 escort. " Any thing you please," is the answer. " Rise, 
 if you can, to be dukes : only never come back hither ; 
 since, dukes or no dukes, to the rest of Christendom 
 to us of the Channel Islands, you will always be trans- 
 ported felons." There is, therefore, a good right of 
 action i. e., a good ground of war against Jersey 
 on the part of Great Britain ; since, besides the atrocious 
 jijury inflicted, this unprincipled little island has the
 
 ON WAR. 377 
 
 audacity to regard our England (all Europe looking 
 on) as existing only for the purposes of a sewer, or 
 cesspool, to receive her impurities. Some time back 1 
 remember a Scottish newspaper holding up the case aa 
 a newly-discovered horror in the social system. But, 
 in a quiet way Jersey has always been engaged in this 
 branch of exportation, and rarely fails to " run " a 
 cargo of rogues upon our shore once or so in the 
 season. What amuses one besides, in this Scottish 
 denunciation of the villany, is, that Scotland, 65 of old, 
 pursued the very same mode of jail delivery as to 
 knaves that were not thought ripe enough for hanging : 
 she carted them to the English border, unchained them, 
 and hurried them adrift into the wilderness, saying, 
 Now, boys, shift for yourselves, and henceforth plunder 
 none but Englishmen. 
 
 What I deduce from all this is, that, as the feuds 
 arising between individuals under the relation of neigh- 
 bors are so far from tending to a hostile result, on 
 the contrary, as coming under a rule of law already 
 ascertained, or furnishing the basis for a new rule, 
 they gradually tighten the cords which exclude all 
 opening for quarrel. Not otherwise is the result, and 
 therefore the usefulness, of war amongst nations. All 
 the causes of war, the occasions upon which it is likely 
 to arise, the true and the ostensible motives, are 
 gradually evolved, are examined, searched, valued, 
 by publicists ; and by such means, in the further prog- 
 ress of men, a comprehensive law of nations will 
 finally be accumulated, not such as now passes for 
 international law, (a worth'ess code, that has no weight 
 n the practice of nations, nor deserves any,) but one
 
 378 ON WAR. 
 
 which will exhaust the great body of cases under which 
 wars have arisen under the Christian era, and gradu- 
 ally collect a public opinion of Christendom upon the 
 nature of each particular case. The causes that have 
 existed for war are the causes that vrill exist ; or, at 
 least, they are the same under modifications that will 
 imply vary the rule, as our law cases in the courts 
 are every day circumstantiating the particular statute 
 concerned. At this stage of advance, and when a true 
 European opinion has been created, a " sensus com- 
 munis," or community of feeling, on the main classifi- 
 cations of wars, it will become possible to erect a real 
 Areopagus, or central congress, for all Christendom, 
 not with any commission to suppress wars, a policy 
 which would neutralize itself by reacting as a fresh 
 cause of war, since high-spirited nations would arm for 
 the purpose of resisting such decrees, but with the 
 purpose and the effect of oftentimes healing local or 
 momentary animosities, and also by publishing the 
 opinion of Europe, assembled in council, with the effect 
 of taking away the shadow of dishonor from the act of 
 retiring from war; not to mention that the mere de- 
 lay, involved in the waiting for the solemn opinion of 
 congress, would always be friendly to pacific councils. 
 But would the belligerents wait ? That concession 
 might be secured by general exchange of treaties, in 
 the same way that the cooperation of so many nations 
 has been secured to the suppression of the trade in 
 slaves. And one thing is clear, that when all the 
 causes of war, involving manifest injustice, are banished 
 by the force of European opinion focally converged 
 upon the subject, the range of war will be prodigiously
 
 ON WAR. 379 
 
 ircumscribed. The costliness of war, which, for va- 
 rious reasons, has been continually increasing since the 
 feudal period, will operate as another limitation upon 
 its field, concurring powerfully with the public declara- 
 tion from a council of collective Christendom. 
 
 There is, besides, a distinct and separate cause of 
 war, more fatal to the possibilities of peace in Europe 
 than open injustice ; and this cause being certainly in 
 the hands of nations to deal with as they please, there 
 is a tolerable certainty that a congress sincerely pacific 
 would cut it up by the roots. It is a cause noticed by 
 Kant in his Essay on Perpetual Peace, and with great 
 sagacity, though otherwise that little work is not free 
 from visionary self-delusions ; and this cause lies in 
 the diplomacy of Europe. Treaties of peace are so 
 constructed as almost always to sow the seeds of 
 future wars. This seems to the inexperienced reader 
 a matter of carelessness or laxity in the choice of 
 expression ; and sometimes it may have been so ; but 
 more often it has been done under the secret dictation 
 of powerful courts making peaces only as truces, 
 anxious only for time to nurse their energies and to 
 keep open some plausible call for war. This is not 
 only amongst the most extensive causes of war, but 
 the very worst ; because it gives a colorable air of 
 justice, and almost of necessity, to a war, which is, in 
 fact, the most outrageously unjust, as being derived 
 from a pretext silently prepared in former years with 
 mere subtlety of malice : it is a war growing out of 
 pccasions, forged beforehand, lest no occasions should 
 spontaneous^ arise. N;w, this cause of war could
 
 380 
 
 ON WAS. 
 
 and would be healed by a congress, and through an 
 easy reform in European diplomacy. 68 
 
 It is the strongest confirmation of the power inherent 
 in growing civilization to amend war and to narrow 
 the field of war, if we look back for the records of the 
 changes in this direction which have already arisen in 
 generations before our own. 
 
 The most careless reviewer of history can hardly 
 fail to read a rude outline of progress made by men 
 in the rights, and consequently in the duties, of war 
 through the last twenty-five centuries. It is a happy 
 circumstance for man that oftentimes he is led by pure 
 selfishness into reforms the very same as high princi- 
 ple would have prompted ; and in the next stage of his 
 advance, when once habituated to an improved code 
 of usages, he begins to find a gratification to his sensi- 
 bilities (partly luxurious sensibilities, but partly moral) 
 in what originally had been a mere movement of self- 
 interest. Then comes a third stage, in which, having 
 thoroughly reconciled himself to a better order of 
 things, and made it even necessary to his own com- 
 fort, at length he begins in his reflecting moments to 
 perceive a moral beauty and a fitness in arrangements 
 that had emanated from accidents of convenience ; so 
 that finally he generates a sublime pleasure of consci- 
 entiousness out of that which originally commenced in 
 the meanest forms of mercenary convenience. A Ro- 
 man lady of rank, out of mere voluptuous regard to her 
 own comfort, revolted from the harsh clamors of eter- 
 nal chastisements inflicted on her numerous slaves 
 Bhe forbade them; the grateful slaves showed thei
 
 ON WAR. 381 
 
 love for her ; gradually and unintentionally she trained 
 her feelings, when thus liberated from a continual 
 temptation to the sympathies with cruelty, into a de- 
 mand for gentler and purer excitement. Her purpose 
 had been one of luxury ; but, by the benignity of na- 
 ture still watching for ennobling opportunities, the 
 actual result was a development given to the higher 
 capacities of her heart. In the same way, when the 
 brutal right (and in many circumstances the brutal 
 duty) of inflicting death upon prisoners taken in battle 
 had exchanged itself for the profits of ransom or sla- 
 very, this relaxation of ferocity (though commencing 
 in selfishness) gradually exalted itself into a habit of 
 mildness and some dim perception of a sanctity in hu- 
 man life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the 
 purification of barbarism ; and the very evil of slavery 
 in its earliest form was applied to the mitigation of 
 another evil war conducted in the spirit of piratical 
 outrage. The commercial instincts of men having 
 worked one set of changes in war, a second set of 
 changes was prompted by instincts derived from the 
 arts of ornament and pomp. Splendor of arms, of 
 banners, of equipages, of ceremonies, and the elab- 
 orate forms of intercourse with enemies through con- 
 ferences, armistices, treaties of peace, &c., having 
 tamed the savagery of war into connection with modes 
 of intellectual grandeur and with the endless restraints 
 of superstition or scrupulous religion, a permanent 
 light of civilization began to steal over the bloody 
 shambles of buccaneering warfare. Other modes of 
 harmonizing influences arose more directly from th
 
 382 OH WAR. 
 
 bosom of war itself. Gradually the mere practice of 
 war, and the culture of war, though merely viewed as 
 a rude trade of bloodshed, ripened into an intellectual 
 art. Were it merely with a view to more effectua. 
 carnage, this art (however simple and gross at first) 
 opened at length into wide scientific arts, into strat- 
 egies, into tactics, into castrametation, into poliorcetics, 
 and all the processes through which the first rude ef- 
 forts of martial cunning finally connect themselves 
 with the exquisite resources of science. War, bein& 
 a game in which each side forces the other into the 
 instant adoption of all improvements through the mere 
 necessities of self-preservation, became continually 
 more intellectual. 
 
 It is interesting to observe the steps by which 
 were it only through impulses of self-conservation, and 
 when searching with a view to more effectual destruc- 
 tiveness war did and must refine itself from a horrid 
 trade of butchery into a magnificent and enlightened 
 science. Starting from no higher impulse or question 
 than how to cut throats most rapidly, most safely, and 
 on the largest scale, it has issued even at our own 
 stage of advance into a science magnificent, often- 
 times ennobling, and cleansed from all horrors except 
 those which (not being within man's power utterly to 
 divorce from it) no longer stand out as reproaches to 
 his humanity. 07 
 
 What opening is there for complaint? If the objec/ 
 is, to diminish the frequency of war, this is, at any rate 
 secured by the enormous and growing costliness of war 
 In these days of accountability on the part of govern
 
 ON WAR. 
 
 383 
 
 ments, and of jealous vigilance on the part of tax- 
 payers, we may safely leave it to the main interests of 
 almost every European population not to allow of 
 idle or frivolous wars. Merely the public debts of 
 Christendom form a pledge, were there no other, that 
 superfluous wars will.no longer be tolerated by those 
 who pay for them, and whose children inherit their 
 consequences. The same cause, which makes war con- 
 tinually rarer, will tend to make each separate war 
 shorter. There will, therefore, in the coming gener- 
 ations, be less of war ; and what there is will, by ex- 
 panding civilization, and, indirectly, through science 
 continually more exquisite * applied to its administra- 
 tion, be indefinitely humanized and refined. 
 
 It is sufficient, therefore, as an apology for war, that 
 it is 1st, systematically improving in temper (priva- 
 teering, for instance, at sea, sacking of cities by land, 
 are in a course of abolition) ; 2dly, that it is under a 
 necessity of becoming less frequent ; 3dly, that on any 
 attempt to abolish it, the result would be something 
 very much worse. 
 
 Thus far, meantime, war has been palliated merely 
 by its relation to something else viz., to its own elder 
 stages as trespassing much more upon human happinesa 
 and progress ; and, secondly, by its relation to any con- 
 ceivable state that could take place on the assumption 
 that war were abolished by a Pan-Christian compact. 
 But is this all that can be pleaded on behalf of war? 
 Is it good only in so far as it stands opposed to some- 
 thing worse? No. Under circumstances that may 
 exist, and have existed, war a a positive good ; not rel- 
 ative mereh or negative, but positive. A great truth
 
 384 ON WAR. 
 
 it was which Wordsworth uttered, whatever might be 
 the expansion which he allowed to it, when he said, 
 
 " But Man is thy most awful instrument, 
 111 working out a pure intent." 
 
 There is a mystery in approaching this aspect of the 
 case, which no man has read fully. War has a deeper 
 and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man, 
 than has yet been deciphered. To execute judgments 
 of retribution upon outrages offered to human rights 
 or to human dignity, to vindicate the sanctities of the 
 altar and the sanctities of the hearth these are func- 
 tions of human greatness which war has many times 
 assumed, and many times faithfully discharged. But, 
 behind all these, there towers dimly a greater. The 
 great phenomenon of war it is, this and this only, which 
 keeps open in man a spiracle an organ of respiration 
 for breathing a transcendent atmosphere, and dealing 
 with an idea that else would perish viz., the idea of 
 mixed crusade and martyrdom, doing and suffering, that 
 finds its realization in a battle such as that of Water- 
 loo viz., a battle fought for interests of the human 
 race, felt even where they are not understood ; so that 
 l he tutelary angel of man, when he traverses such a 
 dreadful field, when he reads the distorted features, 
 counts the ghastly ruins, sums the hidden anguish, and 
 the harvests 
 
 " Of horror breathing from the silent ground," 
 
 nevertheless, speaking as God's messenger, " blesses ; t 
 and calls it very good."
 
 NATIONAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 THE most remarkable instance of a combined move- 
 ment in society which history, perhaps, will be sum- 
 moned to notice, is that which in our own days has ap- 
 pliod itself to the abatement of intemperance. Natu- 
 rally, or by any direct process, the machinery set in 
 motion would seem irrelevant to the object. If one 
 hundred men unite to elevate the standard of temper- 
 ance, they can do this with effect only by improvements 
 in their own separate cases : each individual, for such 
 an effort of self-conquest, can draw upon no resources 
 but his own. One member in a combination of one 
 hundred, when running a race, can hope for no coop- 
 eration from his ninety-nine associates ; and yet, by a 
 secondary action, such combinations are found emi- 
 nently successful. Having obtained from every con- 
 federate a pledge, in some shape or other, that he will 
 give them his support, thenceforwards they bring the 
 passions of shame and self-esteem to bear upon each 
 member's personal perseverance. Not only they keep 
 alive and continually refresh in his thoughts the general 
 purpose, which else might fade, but they also point the 
 action of public contempt and of self-contempt at any 
 defaulter much more potently, and with more acknowl 
 edged right to do so, when they use this influence under 
 25
 
 386 
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 a license, volunteered, and signed, and sealed by the 
 man's own hand. They first conciliate his countenance 
 through his intellectual perceptions of what is right; 
 and next they sustain it through his conscience, (the 
 strongest of his internal forces,) and even through the 
 weakest of his human sensibilities. That revolution 
 therefore, which no combination of men can further by 
 abating the original impulse of temptations, they oftei 
 accomplish happily by maturing the secondary energies 
 of resistance. 
 
 Already in their earliest stage these temperance 
 movements had obtained, both at home and abroad, a 
 national range of grandeur. More than ten years ago,* 
 when M. de Tocqueville was resident in the United 
 States, the principal American society counted twc 
 hundred and seventy thousand members ; and in one 
 single state (Pennsylvania) the annual diminution in the 
 use of spirits had very soon reached half a million of 
 gallons. Now, a machinery must be so far good which 
 accomplishes its end ; the means are meritorious for so 
 much as they effect. Even to strengthen a feeble reso- 
 lution by the aid of other infirmities, such as shame or 
 the very servility and cowardice of deference to public 
 opinion, becomes prudent and laudable in the service 
 of so great a cause. Nay, sometimes to make public 
 profession of self-distrust, by assuming the coercion of 
 public pledges, may become an expression of frank 
 courage, or even of noble principle, not fearing the 
 shame of confession when it can aid the powers of 
 victorious resistance. Yet still, so far as it is possible, 
 everj' man sighs for a still higher victory over himself 
 a victory not tainted bv bribes, and won from no irr> 
 * Written in 1845.
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 387 
 
 pulses but those inspired by his own higher nature and 
 liis own mysterious force of will powers that in no 
 man are fully developed. 
 
 This being so, it is well that from time to time every 
 man should throw out any hints that have occurred to 
 his experience suggesting such as may be new, re- 
 newing such as may be old, towards the encouragement 
 or the information of persons engaged in so great a 
 struggle. My own experience had never travelled in 
 that course which could much instruct me in the mise- 
 ries from wine or in the resources for struggling with 
 it. I had repeatedly been obliged, indeed, to lay it 
 aside altogether ; but in this I never found room for 
 more than seven or ten days' struggle : excesses I had 
 never practised in the use of wine ; simply the habit 
 of using it, and the collateral habits formed by exces 
 sive use of opium, had produced any difficulty at all in 
 resigning it even on an hour's notice. From opium I 
 derive my right of offering hints at all upon the subjects 
 of abstinence in other forms. But the modes of suffer- 
 ing from the evil, and the separate modes of suffering 
 from the effort of self-conquest, together with errors 
 of judgment incident to such states of transitional tor- 
 ment, are all nearly allied, practically analogous as re- 
 gards the remedies, even if characteristically distin- 
 guished to the inner consciousness. I make no scruple, 
 therefore, of speaking as from a station of high expe- 
 rience and of most watchful attention, which never re- 
 mitted even under sufferings that were at times abso- 
 lutely frantic. 
 
 I. The first hint is one that has been often offered ; 
 riz., the diminution of the particular liquor used by the
 
 S.ss 
 
 TKMPKRAXCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 introduction into each glass of some inert substance 
 ascertained in hulk, and equally increasing in amount 
 from day to day. But this plan has often been inter- 
 cepted by an accident : shot, or sometimes bullets, were 
 the substances nearest at hand : an objection arose 
 from too scrupulous a caution of chemistry as to the 
 action upon lead of the vinous acid. Yet all objection 
 of this kind might be removed at once by using beads 
 in a case where small decrements were wanted, and 
 marbles, if it were thought advisable to use larger. 
 Once for all, however, in cases deeply rooted, no ad- 
 vances ought ever to be made but by small stages ; for 
 the effect, which is insensible at first, by the tenth, 
 twelfth, or fifteenth day, generally accumulates unen- 
 durably under any bolder deductions. I must not stop 
 to illustrate this point ; but certain it is that by an error 
 of this nature at the outset, most natural to human im- 
 patience under exquisite suffering, too generally the 
 trial is abruptly brought to an end through the crisis 
 of fi passionate relapse. 
 
 II. Another object, and one to which the gladiator 
 matched in single duel with intemperance must direct 
 a religious vigilance, is the digestibility of his food : 
 it must be digestible, not only by its original qualities, 
 but also by its culinary preparation. In this last point 
 we are all of us Manicheans ; all of us yield a cordial 
 assent to that Manichean proverb which refers the 
 meats and the cooks of this world to two opposite 
 fountains of light and of darkness. Oromasdes it is 
 or the good principle, that sends the food ; Ahrimanes, 
 or the evil principle, that every where sends the cooks, 
 Man has been repeatedly described, or even defined, at
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 389 
 
 y differential privilege of his nature, " a cooking 
 mimal." Brutes, it is said, have faces ; man only haa 
 a countenance : brutes are as well able to eat as man ; 
 man only is able to cook what he eats. Cuch are the 
 romances of self-flattery. I, on the contrary, main- 
 tain that six thousand years have not availei, in this 
 point, to raise our race generally to the level of ingen- 
 ious savages. The natives of the Society and the 
 Friendly Isles, or of New Zealand, and other favored 
 spots, had, and still have, an art of cookery, though 
 very limited in its range ; the French 69 have an art, 
 and more extensive ; but we English are about upon a 
 level (as regards this science) with the ape, to whom 
 an instinct whispers that chestnuts may be roasted ; or 
 with the aboriginal Chinese of Charles Lamb's story, to 
 whom the experience of many centuries had revealed 
 thus much viz., that a dish very much beyond the raw 
 flesh of their ancestors might be had by burning dowc 
 the family mansion, and thus roasting the pigsty. 
 Rudest of barbarous devices is English cookery, and 
 not much in advance of this primitive Chinese step 
 a fact which it would not be worth while to lament 
 were it not for the sake of the poor trembling deserter 
 from the banners of intoxication, who is thus, and by 
 no other cause, so often thrown back beneath the yoke 
 which he had abjured. Past counting are the victims 
 of alcohol that, having by vast efforts emancipated 
 themselves for a season, are violently forced into re- 
 lapsing by the nervous irritations of demoniac cookery, 
 Unhappily for them, the horrors of indigestion are re- 
 lieved for the moment, however ultimately strength- 
 Hied, by strong liquors ; the relief is immediate, and
 
 300 
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 cannot fail to be perceived ; but the aggravation, being 
 removed to a distance, is not always referred to its 
 proper cause. This is the capital rock and stumbling 
 block in the path of him who is hurrying back to the 
 camps of temperance ; and many a reader is likely to 
 misapprehend the case through the habit he has ac- 
 quired of supposing indigestion to lurk chiefly amongst 
 luxurious dishes ; but, on the contrary, it is amongst 
 the plainest, simplest, and commonest dishes that such 
 misery lurks in England. Let us glance at three arti- 
 cles of diet, beyond all comparison of most ordinary 
 occurrence viz., potatoes, bread, and butchers' meat. 
 The art of preparing potatoes for human use is utterly 
 unknown, except in certain provinces of our empire 
 and amongst certain sections of the laboring class. In 
 our great cities, London, Edinburgh, &c., the sort 
 of things which you see offered at table under the 
 name and reputation of potatoes are such that, if you 
 could suppose the company to be composed of Centaurs 
 and Lapithse, or any other quarrelsome people, it would 
 become necessary for the police to interfere. The po- 
 tato of cities is a very dangerous missile, and, if thrown 
 with an accurate aim by an angry hand, will fracture 
 any known skull. In volume and consistency it is very 
 like a paving stone ; only that, I should say, the paving 
 stone had the advantage in point of tenderness ; and 
 qpon this horrid basis, which youthful ostriches would 
 repent of swallowing, the trembling, palpitating invalid, 
 fresh from the scourging of alcohol, is requested to 
 ouild the superstructure of his dinner. The proverb 
 lays that three flittings are as bad as a fire ; and on tha 
 model I conceive that three potatoes, as they are founo
 
 TEMPERAXCH MOVEMENTS. 391 
 
 it many British dinner tables, would be equal, IL prin- 
 siple of ruin, to two glasses of vitriol. The same sav- 
 age ignorance appears, and only not so often, in the 
 bread of this island. Myriads of families eat it in that 
 early state of sponge which bread assumes during the 
 process of baking ; but less than sixty hours will no 
 fit this dangerous article of human diet to be eaten ; 
 and those who are acquainted with the works of Par- 
 mentier, or other learned investigators of bread and of 
 the baker's art, must be aware that this quality of 
 sponginess (though quite equal to the ruin of the di- 
 gestive organs) is but one in a legion of vices to which 
 the article is liable. A German of much research wrote 
 a book on the conceivable faults in a pair of shoes, 
 which he found to be about six hundred and sixty-six 
 many of them, as he observed, requiring a very del- 
 icate process of study to find out ; whereas the possible 
 faults in bread, which are not less in number, require 
 no study at all for the detection ; they publish them- 
 selves through all varieties of misery ; but the perfec- 
 tion of barbarism, as regards our island cookery, is 
 reserved for animal food ; and the two poles of Oro- 
 masdes and Ahrimanes are nowhere so conspicuously 
 exhibited. Our insular sheep, for instance, are so far 
 superior to any which the continent produces that the 
 present Prussian minister at our court is in the habit 
 of questioning a man's right to talk of mutton as any 
 thing beyond a great idea, unless he can prove a res- 
 idence in Great Britain. One sole case he cites of a 
 dinner on the Elbe when a particular leg r>f mutton 
 really struck him as rivalling any which he had known 
 in England. The mystery seemed inexplicable ; but,
 
 392 TKMPKHANCE MOVKMENTS. 
 
 jpon inquiry, it turned out to be an importation froo, 
 Leith. Yet this incomparable article, to produce which 
 the skill of the feeder must cooperate with the peculiar 
 bounty of Nature, calls forth the most dangerous refine- 
 ments of barbarism in its cookery. A Frenchman re- 
 quires, as the primary qualification of flesh meat, that 
 it should be tender. We English universally, but 
 especially the Scots, treat that quality with indifference 
 or with bare toleration. What we require is, that it 
 should be fresh, that is, recently killed, (in which state 
 it cannot be digestible except by a crocodile ;) and we 
 present it at table in a transition state of leather, de- 
 manding the teeth of a tiger to rend it in pieces and 
 the stomach of a tiger to digest it. 
 
 With these habits amongst our countrymen, exem- 
 plified daily in the articles of widest use, it is evident 
 that the sufferer from intemperance has a harder 
 quarantine in this island to support during the effort 
 of restoration than he could have any where else in 
 Christendom. In Persia, and perhaps there only on 
 this terraqueous planet, matters might be even worse ; 
 for whilst we English neglect the machinery of diges- 
 tion, as a matter entitled to little consideration, the 
 people of Teheran seem unaware that there is any 
 such machinery. So, at least, one might presume, 
 from cases on record, and especially from the reckless 
 f olly, under severe iPjiess, from indigestion, of the 
 three Persian princes who visited this country, as stated 
 by their official mehmander, Mr. Fraser. With us the ex- 
 Jess of ignorance upon this subject betrays itself oftenest 
 in that vainglorious answer made by the people who 
 at any time are admonished of the sufferings whicb
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 393 
 
 (hey are preparing for themselves by these outrages 
 upon the most delicate of human organs. They, for 
 their parts, " know not if they have a stomach ; they 
 know not what it is that dyspepsy means ^ " forgetting 
 that, in thus vaunting their strength of stomach, they 
 are at the same time proclaiming its coarseness, and 
 showing themselves unaware that precisely those whom 
 such coarseness of organization reprieves from imme- 
 diate and seasonable reaction of suffering are the fa- 
 vorite subjects of that heavier reaction which takes the 
 shape of delirium tremens, of palsy, and of lunacy. 
 It is but a fanciful advantage which they enjoy for 
 whom the immediate impunity avails only to hide the 
 final horrors which are gathering upon them from the 
 gloomy rear. Better by far that more of immediate 
 discomfort had guarantied to them less of reversionary 
 anguish. It may be safely asserted that few indeed 
 are the suicides amongst us to which the miseries of 
 indigestion have not been a large concurring cause ; 
 and, even where nothing so dreadful as that occurs, 
 always these miseries are the chief hinderance of the 
 self-reforming drunkard and the commonest cause of 
 his relapse. It is certain, also, that misanthropic gloom 
 and bad temper besiege that class, by preference, to 
 whom peculiar coarseness or obtuse sensibility of or- 
 ganization has denied the salutary warnings and early 
 prelibations of punishment which, happily for r^ost 
 nen, besiege the more direct and obvious frailties of 
 the digestive apparatus. 
 
 The whole process and elaborate machinery of di- 
 gestion are felt to be mean and humiliating when 
 tiewed in relation to our mere animal economy ; but
 
 394 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 they rise into dignity and assert their own supreme im- 
 portance when they are studied from another station 
 viz., in relation to the intellect and temper ; no man 
 dares then to despise them. It is then seen that these 
 functions of the human system form the essential basis 
 upon which the strength and health of our higher na- 
 ture repose, and that upon these functions, chiefly, the 
 general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules 
 of prudence or gifts of experience that life can accu- 
 mulate will never do as much for human comfort and 
 welfare as would be done by a stricter attention and 
 a wiser science directed to the digestive system. In 
 this attention lies the key to any perfect restoration 
 for the victims of intemperance ; and, considering the 
 peculiar hostility to the digestive health which exists 
 in the dietetic habits of our own country, it may be 
 feared that nowhere upon earth has the reclaimed mar- 
 tyr to intemperance so difficult a combat to sustain ; 
 nowhere, therefore, is it so important to direct the at- 
 tention upon an artificial culture of those resources 
 which naturally, and by the established habits of the 
 land, are surest to be neglected. The sheet anchor for 
 the stormbeaten sufferer who is laboring to recover a 
 haven of rest from the agonies of intemperance, and 
 who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison which 
 ruined, but which also for brief intervals offered him 
 his only consolation, lies, beyond all doubt, in a most 
 anxious regard to every thing connected with this 
 supreme function of our animal economy. And, as 
 few men that are not regularly trained to medical 
 studies can have the complex knowledge requisite for 
 luch a duty, some printed guide should be sought of
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 395 
 
 a regular professional order. Twenty years ago,* Dr 
 Wilson Philip published a valuable book of this class, 
 which united a wide range of practical directions as 
 
 o the choice of diet and as to the qualities and ten- 
 dencies of all esculent articles likely to be found at 
 British tables, with some ingenious speculations upon 
 the still mysterious theory of digestion. These were 
 derived from experiments made upon rabbits, and had 
 originally been communicated by him to the Royal 
 Society of London, who judged them worthy of publi- 
 cation in their Transactions. I notice them chiefly 
 for the sake of remarking that the rationale of 
 digestion, as here suggested, explains the reason of 
 a fact which, merely as a fact, had not been known 
 until modern times viz., the injuriousness to enfeebled 
 stomachs of all fluid. Fifty years ago and still 
 lingering inveterately amongst nurses and other igno- 
 rant persons there prevailed a notion that " slops " 
 must be the proper resource of the valetudinarian ; and 
 the same erroneous notion appears in the common 
 expression of ignorant wonder at the sort of breakfasts 
 usual amongst women of rank in the times of Queen 
 Elizabeth. " What robust stomachs they must have 
 had, to support such solid meals ! " As to the ques- 
 tion of fact, whether the stomachs were more or less 
 robust in those days than at the present, there is no 
 need to offer an opinion ; but the question of principle 
 concerned in scientific dietetics points in the very op- 
 posite direction. By how much the organs of digestion 
 wre feebler, by so .nuch is it the more indispensable 
 .hat solid food and anima! food should be adopted. A 
 
 obust stomach may be equal to the trying task of 
 
 * [i. e. about 1820.]
 
 396 TKMI'KBANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 supporting a fluid, such as tea for breakfast ; but for a 
 feeble stomach, and still more for a stomach enfeebled 
 by bad habits, broiled beef, or something equally solid 
 and animal, but not too much subjected to the action 
 of fire, is the only tolerable diet. This, indeed, is the 
 one capital rule for a sufferer from habitual intoxication, 
 who must inevitably labor under an impaired digestion, 
 that as little as possible he should use of any liquid 
 diet, and as little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef 
 and a little bread (at the least sixty hours old) com- 
 pose the privileged bill of fare for his breakfast. But 
 precisely it is, by the way, in relation to this earliest 
 meal, that human folly has in one or two instances 
 shown itself most ruinously inventive. The less variety 
 there is at that meal, the more is the danger from any 
 single luxury ; and there is one, known by the name 
 of " muffins," which has repeatedly manifested itself 
 to be a plain and direct bounty upon suicide. Darwin, 
 in his Zoonomia, reports a case where an office^ 
 holding the rank of lieutenant colonel, could not toler- 
 ate a breakfast in which this odious article was want- 
 ing ; but, as a savage retribution invariably supervened 
 within an hour or two upon this act of insane sensuality, 
 he came to a resolution that life was intolerable vnth 
 muffins, but still more intolerable without muffins. He 
 would stand the nuisance no longer ; but yet, being a 
 just man, he would give Nature one final chance of 
 reforming her dyspeptic atrocities. Muffins, therefore, 
 being laid at one angle of the breakfast table, and 
 loaded pistols at another, with rigid equity the colonel 
 waited the result. This was naturally pretty much a 
 usual ; and then the poor man, incapable of retreaf >g
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. OVI 
 
 from his word of honor, committed suicide having 
 previously left a line for posterity to the effect (though 
 I forget the expression) " that a muffinless world was 
 no world for him : better no life at all than a life dis- 
 mantled of muffins." Dr. Darwin was a showy phi- 
 losopher, and fond of producing effect ; so that some 
 allowance must be made in construing the affair. 
 Strictly speaking, it is probable that not the especial 
 want of muffins, but the general torment of indigestion, 
 was the curse from which the unhappy sufferer sought 
 relief by suicide. And the colonel was not the first by 
 many a million that has fled from the very same form 
 of wretchedness, or from its effects upon the genial 
 spirits, to the same gloomy refuge. It should never 
 be forgotten that, although some other more overt 
 vexation is generally assigned as the proximate cause 
 of suicide, and often may be so as regards the imme- 
 diate occasion, too generally this vexation borrowed 
 its whole power to annoy from the habitual atmos- 
 phere of irritation in which the system had been kept 
 by indigestion ; so that indirectly, and virtually per- 
 haps, all suicides may be traced to mismanaged diges- 
 tion. Meantime, in alluding at all to so dreadful a 
 subject as suicide, I do so only by way of giving 
 deeper effect to the opinion expressed above upon the 
 vhief cause of relapse into habits of intemperance 
 amongst those who have once accomplished their de- 
 .iverance. Errors of digestion, either from impaired 
 powers or from powers not so much enfeebled as 
 deranged, is the one immeasurable source both of 
 Jisease and of secret wretchedness to the human race 
 Life is laid waste by the eternal fretting of the vital
 
 JO TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 forces, emanating from this one cause. And it may 
 well be conceived, that if cases so endless, even of 
 suicide, in every generation, are virtually traceable to 
 this main root, much more must it be able to shake 
 and undermine the yet palpitating frame of the poor 
 fugitive from intemperance ; since indigestion in every 
 mode and variety of its changes irresistibly upholds the 
 temptation to that form of excitement which, though 
 one foremost cause of indigestion, is yet unhappily its 
 sole immediate palliation. 
 
 III. Next, after the most vigorous attention, and a 
 scientific attention, to the digestive system, in power 
 of operation, stands exercise. Here, however, most 
 people have their own separate habits, with respect to 
 the time of exercise, the duration, and the particular 
 mode, on which a stranger cannot venture to intrude 
 with his advice. Some will not endure the steady 
 patience required for walking exercise ; many benefit 
 most by riding on horseback ; and, in days when roads 
 were more rugged and the springs of carriages less 
 improved, I have known people who found most ad- 
 vantage in the vibrations communicated to the frame 
 by a heavy, rumbling carriage. For myself, under the 
 ravages of opium, I have found walking the most bene- 
 ficial exercise ; besides that, it requires no previous 
 notice or preparation of any kind ; and this is a capital 
 advantage in a state of drooping energies or of im- 
 patient and unresting agitation. I may mention, as 
 possibly an accident of my individual temperament, 
 but possibly, also, no accident at all, that the reliel 
 potained by walking was always most sensibly brought 
 lome to my consciousness when some part of it (ai 

 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 least a mile and a half) had been performed before 
 breakfast. In this there soon ceased to be any difficul- 
 ty ; for, whilst under the full oppression of opium, it 
 was impossible for me to rise at any hour that could, 
 by the most indulgent courtesy, be described as within 
 the pale of morning. No sooner had there been es- 
 tablished any considerable relief from this oppression 
 than the tendency was in the opposite direction ; the 
 difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even 
 to a reasonable hour. Having once accomplished 
 the feat of walking at nine A. M., I backed, in a space 
 of seven or eight months, to eight o'clock, to seven, to 
 six, five, four, three ; until at this point a metaphys- 
 ical fear fell upon me that I was actually backing into 
 " yesterday," and should soon have no sleep at all. 
 Below three, however, I did not descend ; and, for a 
 couple of years, three and a half hours' sleep was all 
 that I could obtain in the twenty-four hours. From 
 this no particular suffering arose except the nervous 
 impatience of lying in bed for one moment after 
 awaking. Consequently the habit of walking before 
 breakfast became at length troublesome no longer as a 
 most odious duty, but, on the contrary, as a temptation 
 that could hardly be resisted on the wettest mornings. 
 As to the quantity of the exercise, I found that six 
 miles a day formed the minimum which would support 
 permanently a particular standard of animal spirits, 
 evidenced to myself by certain apparent symptoms. 
 E averaged about nine and a half miles a day, but 
 ascended on particular days to fifteen or sixteen, and 
 more rarely to twenty-three or twenty-four a quantity 
 which did not produce fatigue; on the contrary, it
 
 400 
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 spread a sense of improvement through almost the 
 whole week that followed. But usually, in the night 
 immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost 
 much of my sleep a privation that, under the circum- 
 stances explained, deterred me from trying the experi- 
 ment too often. For one or two years I accomplished 
 more than I have here claimed viz., from six to seven 
 thousand miles in the twelve months. Let me add to 
 this slight abstract of my own experience, in a point 
 where it is really difficult to offer any useful advice, 
 (the tastes and habits of men varying so much in this 
 chapter of exercise,) that one caution seems applicable 
 to the case of all persons suffering from nervous irrita 
 bility viz., that a secluded space should be measured 
 off accurately, la *ome private grounds not liable to the 
 interruption or r otice of chance intruders ; for these 
 annoyances are > mendurable to the restless invalid. To 
 be questioned uj on trivial things is death to him ; and 
 the perpetual anticipation of such annoyances is little 
 less distressing. Some plan must also be adopted for 
 registering the number of rounds performed. I once 
 walked for eighteen months in a circuit so confined that 
 forty revolutions were needed to complete a mile. 
 These I counted at one time by a rosary of beads 
 every tenth round being marked by drawing a blue 
 bead, the other nine by drawing white beads. But this 
 plan I found in practice more troublesome and inac- 
 curate than that of using ten detached counters, stones, 
 or any thing teise that was large enough and solid. 
 These were yjplied to the separate bars of a garden 
 chair the f/rt bar indicating of itself the first decade, 
 the second bv t the second decade, and so on. In fac 1
 
 TEMPKRANCK MOVEMENTS. 401 
 
 t used the chair in some measure as a Roman abacus 
 but on a still simpler plan; and as the chair offered 
 sixteen bars, it followed that, on covering the last bar 
 of the series with the ten markers, I perceived, without 
 any trouble of calculation, the accomplishment of my 
 fourth mile. 
 
 A necessity, more painful to me by far than that of 
 taking continued exercise, arose out of a cause which 
 applies, perhaps, with the same intensity only to opium 
 cases, but must also apply in some degree to all cases 
 of debilitation from morbid stimulation of the nerves, 
 whether by means of wine, or opium, or distilled 
 liquors. In travelling on the outside of mails during 
 my youthful days, for I could not endure the inside, 
 occasionally, during the nighttime, I suffered naturally 
 from cold ; no cloaks, &c., were always sufficient to 
 relieve this ; and I then made the discovery that opium, 
 after an hour or so, diffuses a warmth deeper and far 
 more permanent than could be had from any other 
 known source. I mention this to explain, in some 
 measure, the awful passion of cold which for some 
 years haunted the inverse process of laying aside the 
 opium. It was a perfect frenzy of misery ; cold was 
 a sensation which then first, as a mode of torment, 
 seemed to have been revealed. In the months of July 
 and August, and not at all the less during the very mid- 
 dle watch of the day, I sat in the closest proximity to 
 a blazing fire ; cloaks, blankets, counterpanes, hearth 
 rugs, horse cloths were piled upon my shoulders, but 
 with hardly a glimmering of reaef. At night, and after 
 "Aking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could some- 
 jmes afford to smile at the resemblance of my own 
 26
 
 402 
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 ease to that of Harry Gill. 70 But, secretly, 1 was stnick 
 with awe at the revelation of powers so unsearchably 
 new lurking within old affections so familiarly known 
 as cold. Upon the analogy of this case it might be 
 thought that nothing whatever had yet been truly and 
 seriously felt by man ; nothing searched or probed by 
 human sensibilities to a depth below the surface. If 
 cold could give out mysteries of suffering so novel, all 
 things in the world might be yet unvisited by the truth 
 of human sensations. All experience worthy of the 
 name was yet to begin. Meantime the external phe- 
 nomenon by which the cold expressed itself was a 
 sense (but with little reality) of eternal freezing per- 
 spiration. From this I was never free ; and at length, 
 from finding one general ablution sufficient for one 
 day, I was thrown upon the irritating necessity of re- 
 peating it more frequently than would seem credible if 
 stated. At this time I used always hot water ; and a 
 thought occurred to me very seriously that it would be 
 best to live constantly and perhaps to sleep in a bath. 
 What caused me to renounce this plan was an acci- 
 dent that compelled me for one day to use cold water. 
 This first of all communicated any lasting warmth ; so 
 that ever afterwards I used none but cold water. Now, 
 to live in a cold bath in our climate, and in my own 
 tate of preternatural sensibility to cold, was not an 
 .dea to dally with. I wish to mention, however, for the 
 information of other sufferers in the same way, one 
 change in the mode of applying the water, which led to 
 E considerable and a sudden improvement in the con- 
 dition of my feelings. I had endeavored to procuie a 
 child's battledoor, as an easv means (when clothed
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 40> 
 
 ponge) of reaching the interspace between the shoul- 
 ders which interspace, by the way, is a sort of Bok- 
 hara, so provokingly situated that it will neither suffei 
 itself to be reached from the north, in which direc- 
 tion even the czar, with his long arms, has only singed 
 his own fingers and lost six thousand camels, nor at 
 all better from the south, upon which line of approach 
 the greatest potentate in Southern Asia, viz. No. ia 
 Leadenhall Street, has found it the best policy to pocket 
 the little khan's murderous defiances and persevering 
 insults. 71 There is no battledoor long enough to reach 
 him in either way. In my own difficulty I felt almost 
 as perplexed as the Honorable East India Company 
 when I found that no battledoor was to be had ; for no 
 town was near at hand. In default of a battledoor, 
 therefore, my necessity threw my experiment upon a 
 long hair brush ; and this eventually proved of much 
 greater service than any sponge or any battledoor ; for 
 the friction of the brush caused an irritation on the 
 surface of the skin which, more than any thing else, 
 has gradually diminished the once continual misery of 
 unrelenting frost ; although even yet it renews itself 
 most distressingly at uncertain intervals. 
 
 IV. I counsel the patient not to make the mistake of 
 supposing that his amendment will necessarily proceed 
 continuously or by equal increments; because this, 
 which is a common notion, will certainly lead to dan- 
 gerous disappointments. How frequently I have heard 
 people encouraging a self-reformer by such language 
 us this : " When you have got over the fourth day of 
 abstinence, which suppose to be Sunday, then Monday 
 nrill find you a trifle better; Tuesday better stiM t -
 
 404 TEMPKBANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 fliough still it should be only by a trifle, and so on. 
 You may at least rely on never going back ; you may 
 assure yourself of having seen the worst ; and the pos- 
 itive improvements, if trifles separately, must soon 
 gather into a sensible magnitude." This may be true 
 in a case of short standing ; but as a general rule it is 
 perilously delusive. On the contrary, the line of prog- 
 ress, if exhibited in a geometrical construction, would 
 describe an ascending path upon the whole, but with 
 frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, 
 compared with the point of ascent that had been pre- 
 viously gained and so vexatiously interrupted, would 
 sometimes seem deeper than the original point of 
 starting. This mortifying tendency I can report from 
 experience many times repeated with regard to opium ; 
 and so unaccountably, as regarded all the previous 
 grounds of expectation, that I am compelled to sup- 
 pose it a tendency inherent in the very nature of all 
 self-restorations for animal systems. They move per- 
 haps necessarily per saltum, by intermitting spasms 
 and pulsations of unequal energy. 
 
 V. I counsel the patient frequently to call back be- 
 fore his thoughts when suffering sorrowful collapses 
 that seem unmerited by any thing done or neglected 
 that such, and far worse perhaps, must have been his 
 experience, and with no reversion of hope behind, had 
 Be persisted in his intemperate indulgences ; these also 
 suffer their own collapses, and (so far as things not co- 
 present can be compared) by many degrees more 
 shocking to the genial instincts. 
 
 VI. I exhort him to believe that no movement on hi* 
 fwn part, not the smallest conceivable, towards the
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 405 
 
 restoration of his healthy state, can by possibility 
 perish. Nothing in this direction is finally lost ; but 
 often it disappears end hides itself; suddenly, however, 
 to reappear, and in unexpected strength, and much 
 more hopefully ; because such minute elements of 
 improvement, by reappearing at a remoter stage, show 
 themselves to have combined with other elements of 
 the same kind ; so that, equally by their gathering 
 tendency and their duration through intervals of ap- 
 parent, darkness and below the current of what seemed 
 absolute interruption, they argue themselves to be 
 settled in the system. There is no good gift that does 
 not come from God ; almost his greatest is health, with 
 the peace which it inherits ; and man must reap this 
 on the same terms as he was told to reap God's earliest 
 gift, the fruits of the earth viz., " in the sweat of his 
 brow," through labor, often through soriow, through 
 disappointment, but still through imperishable persever- 
 ance, and hoping under clouds when all hope seems 
 darkened. 
 
 VII. It is difficult, in selecting from many memo- 
 randa of warning and encouragement, to know which 
 to prefer when the space disposable is limited. But it 
 seems to me important not to omit this particular 
 caution : The patient will be naturally anxious, as he 
 goes on, frequently to test the amount of his advance, 
 and its rate, if that were possible. But this he will 
 see no mode of doing, except through tentative bal- 
 ancings of his feelings, and generally of the moral 
 atmosphere around him, as to pleasure and hope, 
 against the corresponding states so far as he can 
 jecall them from his pe-iods of intemperance. Bui
 
 i06 TEMPKRAXCK MOVEMENTS. 
 
 Ihese comparisons, I warn him, are fallacious, when 
 made in this way ; the two states are incommensurable 
 on any plan of direct comparison. Some common 
 measure must be found, and out of himself; some 
 positive fact, that will not bend to his own delusive 
 feeling at the moment ; as, for instance, in what de- 
 gree he finds tolerable what heretofore was not so- 
 me effort of writing letters, or transacting business, or 
 undertaking a journey, or overtaking the arrears of 
 labor that had been once thrown off to a distance. If 
 in these things he finds himself improved, by tests 
 that cannot be disputed, he may safely disregard any 
 sceptical whispers from a wayward sensibility which 
 cannot yet perhaps have recovered its normal health, 
 however much improved. His inner feelings may not 
 yet point steadily to the truth, though they may vibrate 
 in that direction. Besides, it is certain that sometimes 
 very manifest advances, such as any medical man 
 would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages 
 of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition 
 might happen to be less agitated, and so far more 
 bearable. Now, when a man is positively suffering 
 discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable 
 feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, 
 which he neither will nor can appreciate. Toothache 
 extorts more groans than dropsy. 
 
 VHI. Another important caution is, not to confound 
 with the effects of intemperance any other natural 
 effects of debility from advanced years. Many a 
 man, having begun to be intemperate at thirty, enters 
 at sixty or upwards upon a career of self-restoration 
 and by self- restoration he understands a renewal o*
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS, 407 
 
 !hat state m which he was when first swerving from 
 temperance. But that state, for his memory, is co- 
 incident with his state of youth. The two states are 
 coadunated. In his recollections they are intertwisted 
 too closely. But life, without any intemperance at all, 
 would soon have untwisted them. Charles Lamb, for 
 instance, at forty-five, and Coleridge at sixty, measured 
 their several conditions by such tests as the loss of all 
 disposition to involuntary murmuring of musical airs 
 or fragments when rising from bed. Once they had 
 sung when rising in the morning light ; now they sang 
 no more. The vocal utterance of joy, for them, was 
 silenced forever. But these are amongst the changes 
 that life, stern power ! inflicts at any rate ; these would 
 have happened, and, above all, to men worn by the 
 unequal irritations of too much thinking, and by those 
 modes of care 
 
 " That kill the bloom before its time, 
 And blanch without the owner's crime 
 The most resplendent hair," 
 
 not at all the less had the one drunk no brandy nor 
 the other any laudanum. A man must submit to the 
 conditions of humanity, and not quarrel with a cure 
 as incomplete because in his climacteric year of sixty- 
 three he cannot recover entirely the vivacities of 
 thirty-five. If, by dipping seven times in Jordan, he 
 .aad cleansed his whole leprosy of intemperance, if, 
 by going down into Bethesda, he were able to mount 
 igain upon the pinions of his youth, even then he 
 might querulously say, " But, after all these marvels 
 n my favor, I suppose that one of these fine mornings
 
 108 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 [, like other people, shall have to bespeak a coffin 
 Why, yes, undoubtedly he will, or somebody for him 
 But privileges so especial were not promised even bv 
 the mysterious waters of Palestine. Die he must ; and 
 counsels tendered to the intemperate do not hope to ac- 
 complish what might have been beyond the baths of 
 Jordan or Bethesda. They do enough if, being ex- 
 ecuted by efforts in the spirit of earnest sincerity, they 
 make a life of growing misery moderately happy for 
 the patient, artd, through that great change, perhaps 
 more than moderately useful for others. 
 
 IX. One final remark I will make pointed to the 
 case, not of the yet struggling patient, but of him who 
 is fully reestablished ; and the more so, because I 
 (who am no hypocrite, but rather frank to an infirm- 
 ity) acknowledge in myself the trembling tendency 
 at intervals, which would, if permitted, sweep round 
 into currents that might be hard to overrule. After 
 the absolute restoration to health, a man is very apt to 
 say, "Now, then, how shall I use my health? To 
 what delightful purpose shall I apply it ? Surely it is 
 idle to carry a fine jewel in one's watch pocket and 
 never to astonish the weak minds of this world by 
 wearing it and flashing it in their eyes." u But how ? " 
 retorts his philosophic friend. " My good fellow, are 
 you not using it at this moment ? Breathing, for 
 instance, talking to me, (though rather absurdly,) and 
 airing your legs at a glowing fire ? " *' Why, yes," the 
 other confesses, " that is all true ; but I am dull, and 
 If you will pardon my rudeness, even in spite of your 
 too philosophic presence. It is painful to say so ; but 
 wncorely, if I had the power at this moment to turn
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 409 
 
 y MI by magic into a bottle of old Port wine, so cor- 
 rupt is my nature, that really I fear lest the exchange 
 might for the moment strike me as agreeable." Such 
 a mood, I apprehend, is apt to revolve upon many of 
 us at intervals, however firmly married to temperance ; 
 and the propensity to it has a root in certain analogies 
 running through our nature. If the reader will permit 
 me for a moment the use of what, without such an 
 apology might seem pedantic, I would call it the in- 
 stinct of focalizing which prompts such random de- 
 sires. Feeling is diffused over the whole surface of 
 the body ; but light is focalized in the eye, sound in 
 the ear. The organization of a sense or a pleasure 
 seems diluted and imperfect unless it is gathered by 
 some machinery into one focus, or local centre. And 
 thus it is that a general state of pleasurable feeling 
 sometimes seems too superficially diffused, and one 
 has a craving to intensify or brighten it by concentra- 
 tion through some sufficient stimulant. I, for my part, 
 have tried every thing in this world except " T)ang" 
 which I believe is obtained from hemp. There are 
 other preparations of hemp which have been found to 
 give great relief from ennui ; not ropes, but something 
 lately introduced, which acts upon the system as the 
 laughing gas (nitrous oxide) acts at times. One farmer 
 in Mid-Lothian was mentioned to me eight months 
 ngo as having taken it, and ever since annoyed his 
 neighbors by immoderate fits of laughter; so that 
 in January it was agreed to present him to the 
 sherifF as a nuisance. But, for some reason, the plan 
 was laid aside . and now, eight months later, I hear 
 tnat the farmer is ia'ighing more rapturously than ever
 
 110 TEMPKKANCE MOVEMENTS. 
 
 continues in the happiest frame of mind, the kindes 
 of creatures, and the general torment of his neighbor- 
 hood. Now, I confess to having had a lurking interes 
 in this extract of hemp when first I heard of it ; and 
 at intervals a desire will continue to make itself felt 
 for some deeper compression or centralization of the 
 genial feelings than ordinary life affords. But old 
 things will not avail ; and new things I am now able to 
 resist. Still, as the occasional craving does really arise 
 in most men, it is well to notice it, and chiefly for the 
 purpose of saying that this dangerous feeling wears 
 off by degrees, and oftentimes for long periods it in- 
 termits so entirely as to be even displaced by a pro- 
 found disgust to all modes of artificial stimulation. At 
 those times I have remarked that the pleasurable condi- 
 tion of health does not seem weakened by its want of 
 centralization. It seems to form a thousand centres 
 This it is well to know, because there are many who 
 would resist effectually if they were aware of any 
 natural change going on silently in favor of their own 
 efforts such as would finally ratify the success. To- 
 wards such a result they would gladly contribute by 
 waiting and forbearing ; whilst, under despondency as 
 to this result, they might more easily yield to some 
 chance temptation. 
 
 Finally, there is something to interest us in the time 
 at which this temperance movement has begun to stir. 
 Let me close with a slight notice of what chiefly im- 
 presses myself in the relation between this time and 
 the other circumstances of the case. In reviewing his 
 tory, we may see something more than mere conven- 
 ience in distributing it into three chambers ; ancien
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENTS. 411 
 
 history, ending in the space between the Western Em 
 pire falling and Mahomet arising ; modern history, from 
 that time to this ; and a new modern history arising at 
 present, or from the French revolution. Two great 
 races of men, our own in a two-headed form, British 
 and American, and, secondly, the Russian, are those 
 which, like rising deluges, already reveal '.heir mission 
 to overflow the earth. Both these races, partly through 
 climate or through derivation of blood, and partly 
 through the contagion of habits inevitable to brothers 
 of the same nation, are tainted carnally with the appe- 
 tite for brandy, for slings, for juleps; and no fire ra- 
 cing through the forests of Nova Scotia for three hun- 
 dred miles in the direction of some doomed city ever 
 moved so fiercely as the infection of habits amongst 
 the dense and fiery populations of republican North 
 America. 
 
 But it is remarkable that the whole ancient system 
 of civilization, all the miracles of Greece and Rome, 
 Persia and Egypt, moved by the machinery of races 
 that were not tainted with any such popular marasmus. 
 The taste was slightly sowed, as an artificial taste, 
 amongst luxurious individuals, but never ran through 
 the laboring classes, through armies, through cities. 
 The blood and the climate forbade it. In this earliest 
 era of history, all the great races, consequently all 
 the great empires, threw themselves, by accumulation, 
 upon the genial climates of the south having, in 
 fact, the magnificent lake of the Mediterranean for 
 their general centre of evolutions. Round this lake, 
 in a zone of varying depth Cowered the whole gran- 
 deurs of the pagan earth. But in such climates
 
 112 
 
 TEMPF.RANCK MOVEMENTS. 
 
 man is naturally temperate. He is so by physical 
 coercion and for the necessities of rest and coolness. 
 The Spaniard, the Moor, or the Arab has no merit in 
 his temperance. The effort, for /um, would be to 
 form the taste for alcohol. He has a vast foreground 
 of disgust to traverse before he can reach a taste so 
 remote and alien. No need for resistance in his will 
 where Nature resists on his behalf. Sherbet, shaddocks, 
 grapes, these were innocent applications to thirst; 
 and the great republic of antiquity said to her legion- 
 ary sons, "Soldier, if you thirst, there is the river 
 Nile, suppose, or Ebro. Better drink there cannot be. 
 Of this you may take ' at discretion.' Or, if you 
 wait till the impedimenta come up, you may draw your 
 ration of posca." What was posca 7 It was, in fact, 
 acidulated water three parts of superfine water to one 
 part of the very best vinegar. Nothing stronger did 
 Rome, that awful mother, allow to her dearest children, 
 i. e., her legions truest of blessings, that, veiling 
 itself in seeming sternness, drove away the wicked 
 phantoms that haunt the couches of yet greater nations. 
 " The blessings of the evil genii," says an Eastern 
 proverb, " these are curses." And the stern refusals 
 of wisely-loving mothers, these are the mightiest of 
 giAs. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, our northern climates have 
 universally the taste, latent if not developed, for pow- 
 rful liquors ; and through their blood, as also through 
 ..ne natural tendency of the imitative principle amongst 
 :-ompatriots, from these high latitudes the greatest of 
 yur modern nations propagate the contagion to their 
 brothers, though colonizing warm climates. And it it
 
 TEMPERANCE MOVEMFNT8. 
 
 413 
 
 remarkable that our modern preparations of liquors, 
 even when harmless in their earliest stages, are fitted, 
 like stepping stones, for making the transition v higher 
 stages that are not harmless. The weakest prepara- 
 tions from malt lead, by graduated steps, to the strong- 
 est, until we arrive at the intoxicating porter of Lon- 
 don, which, under its local name (so insidiously delu- 
 sive) of " beer," diffuses the most extensive ravages. 
 
 Under these marked circumstances of difference be- 
 tween the ruling races of antiquity and of our modern 
 times, it now happens that the greatest era by far of 
 human expansion is opening upon us. Two vast move- 
 ments are hurrying into action by velocities continually 
 accelerated the great revolutionary movement from 
 political causes concurring with the great physical 
 movement in locomotion and social intercourse, from 
 the gigantic (though still infant) powers of steam. No 
 such Titan resources for modifying each other were 
 ever before dreamed of by nations ; and the next hun- 
 dred years will have changed the face of the world. 
 At the opening of such a crisis, had no third movement 
 arisen of resistance to intemperate habits, there would 
 have been ground for despondency as to the ameliora- 
 tion of the human race ; but, as the case stands, the 
 aew principle of resistance nationally to bad habits has 
 irisen almost concurrently with the new powers of na- 
 aonal intercourse ; and henceforward, by a change 
 equally sudden and unlookea for, that new machinery, 
 which would else most sure.y have multiplied the ruins 
 of intoxication, has become the strongest agency foi 
 hastening its extiroati >n.
 
 FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 I AM myself, and always have been, a member of 
 jhe Church of England, and am grieved to hear the 
 many attacks against the Church [frequently mosl 
 illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as politi- 
 cal rancor gives birth to in every third journal that I 
 take up. This I say to acquit myself of all dishonor- 
 able feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate with, 
 in bringing a very heavy charge against that great 
 body in its literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected 
 on the history of the English constitution must be 
 aware that the most important stage of its develop- 
 ment lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that 
 the judicial execution of that prince has been allowed 
 by many persons to vitiate all that was done by the 
 heroic parliament of November, 1640: and the ordi- 
 nary histories of England assume as a matter of course 
 that the whole period of parliamentary history through 
 those times is to be regarded as a period of confusion. 
 Our constitution, say they, was formed in 1688-9. 
 Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that thf 
 revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed 
 in the strife between the two great parties which had 
 irisen in the reign of Jamos I., and had ripened and
 
 416 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 come to issue with each other in the reign of his son, 
 Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as 
 they would represent it, but a gradual growth and 
 development through a long tract of time. In par- 
 ticular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsi- 
 bility in the person of his ministers, which first gave 
 a sane and salutary meaning to the doctrine of the 
 king's personal irresponsibility [' The king can do no 
 wrong'], arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648. 
 This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution, and 
 perhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in the 
 theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine that the 
 King can do no wrong had been used not to protect 
 the indispensable sanctity of the king's constitutional 
 character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way, 
 it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for 
 a nation where law had no empire. Many of the 
 illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this ; 
 and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to 
 the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell 
 into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition 
 could be effected only by the direct negation of it; 
 their maxim accordingly was 'The king can do 
 wrong,' i. e. is responsible in his own person. In this 
 great error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchin- 
 son participated; 72 and accordingly she taxes those of 
 her own party who scrupled to accede to the new 
 maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with uncon- 
 Bcientious dealing. But she misapprehended their 
 meaning, and failed to see where they laid the em- 
 phasis : the emphasis was not laid, as it was by the 
 royal party, on the words ' can do no wrong ' but 
 on 'The king:' that is, wrong may be done; and ui
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 417 
 
 the king's name ; but it cannot be the king who did il 
 [the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the per- 
 Bon who did it]. By this exquisite political refinement 
 the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed of its sting; 
 and the entire redress of all wrong, so indispensan.e to 
 the popular liberty, was brought into perfect recon- 
 ciliation with the entire inviolability of the sovereign, 
 which is no less indispensable to the popular liberty. 
 There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense ; 
 for not only is one object [the redress of wrong] 
 secured in conjunction with another object [the king's 
 inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable, but even 
 with a view to the first object alone a much more 
 effectual means is applied, because one which leads to 
 no schism in the state, than could have been applied 
 by the blank negation of the maxim ; i. e. by lodging 
 the responsibility exactly where the executive powe: 
 [ergo the power of resisting this responsibility] was 
 lodged. Here then is one example in illustration of 
 my thesis that the English constitution was in a 
 great measure gradually evolved in the contest be- 
 tween the different parties in the reign of Charles I. 
 Now, if this be so, it follows that for constitutional 
 history no period is so important as that : and indeed, 
 though it is true that the Revolution is the great era 
 for the constitutional historian, because he there first 
 finds the constitution fully developed as the ' bright 
 consummate flower? and what is equally important he 
 there first finds the principles of our constitution 
 "alijicd by a competent authority, yet, to trace the 
 root and growth of the constitution, the three reigns 
 mmediately preceding are still more properly the 
 objects of his study. In proportion then as tb* 
 27
 
 i!8 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 of Charles I. is important to the history of our con- 
 stitution, in that proportion are those to be taxed with 
 the most dangerous of all possible falsifications of our 
 history, who have misrepresented either the facts or 
 the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the 
 clergy of the Church of England have been in a per- 
 petual conspiracy since the era of the restoration to 
 misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean 
 I refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. 
 Grey : for the proof I might refer to some thousands 
 of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case : for he 
 swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, 
 the most extravagant that the malice of those times 
 could invent against either the Presbyterians or the 
 Independents : and for this I suppose amongst othei 
 deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by 
 Warburton. But, amongst hundreds of illustrations 
 more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the 
 reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical 
 Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] 
 edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he 
 is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious 
 and as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a 
 high churchman to be. Yet so it is that there ia 
 scarcely one of the notes having any political reference 
 to the period of 1640 - 1660, which is not disfigured 
 by unjust prejudices : and the amount of the moral 
 which the learned editor grounds upon the documents 
 before him is this that the young student is to 
 cherish the deepest abhorrence and contempt of all 
 who had any share on the parliamentary side in the 
 'confusions' of the period from 1640 to 1660: that i>
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 419 
 
 to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was 
 owing that the very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W 
 will be the first to applaud, found us with any sucl 
 stock of political principles or feelings as could make a 
 beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask 
 would have been the willingness of some Tories .to 
 construe the flight of James II. into a virtual act of ab- 
 dication, or to consider even the most formal act of 
 abdication binding against the king, had not the great 
 struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the 
 minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's 
 office for the old superstition in behah of the king's 
 person, which would have protected him from the 
 effects of any acts however solemnly performed which 
 affected injuriously either his own interests or the 
 liberties of his people. Tempora mutantur : nos et 
 mutamur in illis. Those whom we find in fierce op- 
 position to the popular party about 1640 we find still 
 in the same personal opposition fifty years after, but 
 an opposition resting on far different principles : in- 
 sensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached 
 even them : and a courtier of 1689 was willing to con- 
 cede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured 
 to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that true 
 patriotism is at all more shown in supporting the rights 
 of the people than those of the king : as soon as both 
 are defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to 
 the integrity of the constitution as the first : and 
 popular freedom itself would suffer as much, though 
 indirectly, from an invasion of Caesar's rights as by 
 a more direct attack on itself. But in the 17th century 
 the rights of the people were as yet not defined 
 (hroughoul that century they were gradually defining
 
 420 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 themselves and, as happiness to all great practical 
 interests, defining themselves through a course of 
 fierce and bloody contests. For the kingly rights 
 are almost inevitably carried too high in ages of im- 
 perfect civilization : and the well-known laws of Henry 
 the Seventh, by which he either broke or gradually 
 sapped the power of the aristocracy, had still more 
 extravagantly exalted them. On this account it is just 
 to look upon democratic or popular politics as identical 
 in the 17th century with patriotic politics. In later 
 periods, the democrat and the patriot have sometimes 
 been in direct opposition to each other : at that period 
 they were inevitably in conjunction. All this, how- 
 ever, is in general overlooked by those who either 
 write English history or comment upon it. Most 
 writers of or upon English history proceed either upon 
 servile principles, or upon no principles : and a good 
 Spirit of English History, that is, a history which 
 should abstract the tendencies and main results [as 
 to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age 
 ot English history, is a work which I hardly hope 
 to see executed. For it would require the con- 
 currence of some philosophy, with a great deal of 
 impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the 
 events of our own time which affect our party feel- 
 ings, ' We stand too near to these events for an 
 impartial estimate: we must leave them to the judg- 
 ment of posterity ! ' For it is a fact that of the many 
 books of memoirs written by persons who were not 
 merely contemporary with the great civu war, but 
 actors and even leaders in its principal scenes there 
 is hardly one which does not exhibit a more impartial 
 picture of that great drama than the histories written at
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 421 
 
 Jus day. The historian of Popery does not display 
 half so much zealotry and passionate prejudice in 
 speaking of the many events which have affected the 
 power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirty 
 years, and under his own eyes, as he does when 
 
 peaking of a reformer who lived three centuries 
 ago of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular 
 tongue who lived nearly five centuries ago of ab 
 Anti-pope of a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Great 
 still further removed from himself. The recent events 
 he looks upon as accidental and unessential : but in 
 the great enemies, or great founders of the Romish 
 temporal power, and in the history of .their actions and 
 their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the 
 Romish cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty 
 much under the same feeling have modern writers 
 written with a rancorous party spirit of the political 
 struggles in the 17th century : here they fancy that 
 they can detect the incunabula of the revolutionary 
 spirit : here some have been so sharpsighted as to read 
 the features of pure jacobinism : and others 73 have 
 gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the 
 French revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts 
 done or countenanced by the virtuous and august 
 Senate of England in 1640 ! Strange distortion of the 
 understanding which can thus find a brotherly resem- 
 blance between two great historical events, which of 
 ail that ever were put on record stand ofF from each 
 other in most irreconcilable enmity : the one originat- 
 ing, as Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of prin- 
 ciple ; the other in the utter defect of all moral principle 
 whatever ; and the progress of each being answerable 
 
 o its origin ! Yet so it is. And not a memoir- write!
 
 422 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 of that age is reprinted in this, but we have a preface 
 from some red-hot Anti-jacobin warning us with much 
 vapid common-place from the mischiefs and eventual 
 anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in 
 the French revolution not by the example of that 
 French revolution, but by that of our own in the age 
 of Charles I. The following passage from the Intro- 
 duction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published 
 in 1793, may serve as a fair instance : ' He ' (Sir W. 
 Waller) ' was, indeed, at length sensible of the misery 
 which he had contributed to bring on his country ; ' 
 (by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance that Sii 
 William 74 first became sensible that his country was 
 miserable, when he became sensible that he himself 
 was not likely to be again employed ; and became 
 fully convinced of it, when his party lost their as- 
 cendancy :) ' he was convinced, by fatal experience, 
 that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect govern- 
 ment; that the subversion of every establishment was 
 no safe foundation for a permanent and regular consti- 
 tution : he found that pretences of reform were held 
 up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of the unwary, 
 JEC. ; he found in short that reformation, by popular 
 insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot 
 tend to the formation of a regular Government.' After 
 a good deal more of this well-meaning cant, the Intro- 
 duction concludes with the following sentence: the 
 writer is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongsl 
 whom ' both leaders and followers,' he says, ' may 
 together reflect that, upon speculative and visionary 
 reformers,' (t. e. those or icftO) ' the severest punish- 
 ment which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted 
 wras to curse them with the complete gratification of
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 423 
 
 iheir own inordinate desires.' I quote this passage 
 not as containing any thing singular, but for the very 
 reason that it is not singular : it expresses in fact the 
 universal opinion : notwithstanding which I am happy 
 to say that it is false. What ' complete gratification 
 of their own desires ' was ever granted to the * re- 
 formers ' in question ? On the contrary, it is well 
 known (and no book illustrates that particular fact so 
 well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 
 the army had too effectually subverted the just rela- 
 tions between itself and parliament not to have 
 suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning patriots 
 of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their 
 prospects. And, when I speak of an ' unhappy issue,' 
 I would be understood only of the immediate issue : 
 for the remote issue was the revolution of 1688, as 
 I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even 
 the immediate issue was ' unhappy ' to any extent 
 which can justify the ordinary language in which it is 
 described. Here again is a world of delusions. We 
 hear of ' anarchy,' of ' confusions,' of ' proscriptions/ 
 of ' bloody and ferocious tyranny.' All is romance ; 
 there was no anarchy ; no confusions ; no proscrip- 
 tions ; no tyranny in the sense designed. The se- 
 questrations, forfeitures, and punishments cf all sorts 
 which were inflicted by the conquering party on their 
 antagonists went on by due course of law ; and the 
 summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to 
 in England : except for the short term of the two 
 wars, and the brief intermediate campaign of 1648, 
 the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was 
 punished without an open trial and all trials pro- 
 ceeded in the regular course, according to the ancient
 
 424 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 forms, and in the regular courts of justice. And as tfl 
 1 tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of Crom 
 well's government, it should be remembered that the 
 Protectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in 
 question (1640-1660); a fact which is constantly 
 forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as 
 though Cromwell had drawn his sword in January, 
 1649 cut ofF the king's head instantly mounted 
 his throne and continued to play the tyrant for the 
 whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). 
 Secondly, as to the kind of tyranny which Cromwell 
 exercised, the misconception is ludicrous : continental 
 writers have a notion, well justified by the language 
 of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious 
 savage who built his palace of human skulls and deso- 
 lated his country. Meantime, he was simply a strong- 
 minded rough-built Englishman, with a character 
 thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. 
 Gray valued himself upon his critical knowledge of 
 English history : yet how thoughtlessly does he ex- 
 press the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the 
 village Cromwell 'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his 
 .country's blood ! ' How was Cromwell guilty of his 
 country's blood ? What blood did he cause to be shed ? 
 A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, 
 by the way, than is imagined) : but in those Cromwell 
 was but a servant of the parliament : and no one will 
 allege that he had any hand in causing a single war. 
 After he attained the sovereign power, no more do- 
 mestic wars arose : and as to a few persons who were 
 executed for plots and conspiracies against his person, 
 they were condemned upon evidence openly given and 
 \y due course of law. With respect to the genera
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 425 
 
 sharacter of his government, it is evident thai in tho 
 unsettled and revolutionary state of things which fol- 
 lows a civil war some critical cases will arise to de- 
 mand an occasional ' vigor beyond the law ' such as 
 the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorial 
 power. But in general, Cromwell's government was 
 limited by law : and no reign in that century, prior to 
 the revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to 
 tamper with the laws to overrule them to twist 
 them to private interpretations or to dispense with 
 them. As to his major-generals of counties, who 
 figure in most histories of England as so many AH 
 Pachas that impaled a few prisoners every morning 
 before breakfast or rather as so many ogres that ate 
 up good Christian men, women and children alive, 
 they were disagreeable people who were disliked much 
 in the same way as our commissioners of the income- 
 tax were disliked in the memory of us all ; and heartily 
 they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody 
 masquerade in which they are made to figure in the 
 English histories. What then was the ' tyranny ' of 
 Cromwell's government, which is confessedly com- 
 plained of even in those days ? The word ' tyranny * 
 was then applied not so much to the mode in which 
 \iis power was administered (except by the pre- 
 judiced) as to its origin. However mercifully a 
 man may reign, yet, if he have no right to reign at 
 all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant ; his power 
 not being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful 
 .^i. e. a military) basis. As a usurper, and one who 
 had diverted the current of a grand national movement 
 o seifish and personal objects, Cromwell was and will 
 be called a tyrant ; but not in the more obvious sense
 
 i26 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 of the word. Such are the misleading statements 
 which disfigure the History of England in its most im- 
 portant chapter. They mislead by more than a simple 
 error of fact : those, which I have noticed last, involve 
 a moral anachronism ; for they convey images of 
 cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist with 
 the national civilization at that time ; and whosoevei 
 has not corrected this false picture by an acquaintance 
 with the English literature of that age. must neces- 
 sarily image to himself a state of society as rude and 
 uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of 
 York and Lancaster i. e. about two centuries earlier. 
 But those, with which I introduced this article, are 
 Btill worse ; because they involve an erroneous view 
 of constitutional history, and a most comprehensive 
 act of ingratitude : the great men of the Long Parlia- 
 ment paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase 
 for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power 
 and security from the anarchy of undefined regal pre- 
 rogative : in these efforts most of them made ship- 
 wreck of their own tranquillity and peace ; that such 
 sacrifices were made unavailingly (as it must have 
 seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to 
 see the * good old cause ' finally triumphant, does not 
 Cancel their claims upon our gratitude but rather 
 strengthen them by the degree in which it aggravated 
 the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. 
 But whence come these falsifications of history ? 1 
 believe, from two causes ; first (as I have already said) 
 from the erroneous tone impressed upon the national 
 history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the 
 established church : to the religious zealotry of thos 
 tunes the church was the object of especial attack
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 427 
 
 and its members were naturally exposed to heavy suf- 
 ferings : hence their successors are indisposed to find 
 any good in a cause which could lead to such a result. 
 It is their manifest right to sympathize with their own 
 order in that day ; and in such a case it is almost their 
 duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Mean- 
 time they have carried this much too far : the literature 
 of England must always be in a considerable pro- 
 portion lodged in their hands ; and the extensive 
 means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously 
 coloring that important part of history they have used 
 with no modesty or forbearance. There is not a page 
 of the national history even in its local subdivisions 
 which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue 
 of their wounded remembrances : hardly a town in 
 England, which stood a siege for the king or the par- 
 liament, but has some printed memorial of its con- 
 stancy and its sufferings ; and in nine cases out of ten 
 the editor is a clergyman of the established church, 
 who has contrived to deepen * the sorrow of the time ' 
 by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is 
 high time that the wounds of the 17th century should 
 close ; that history should take a more commanding 
 and philosophic station ; and that brotherly charity 
 should now lead us to a saner view of constitutional 
 politics ; or a saner view of politics to a more compre- 
 hensive charity. The other cause of this falsification 
 prings out of a selfishness which has less claim to 
 uly indulgence viz. the timidity with which the 
 English Whigs of former days and the party to whom 
 ihey 75 succeeded, constantly shrank from acknowledg- 
 ug any alliance with the great men of the Long Par- 
 lament under the nervous horror of being co ifounded
 
 428 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgent 
 importance to them, for any command over the public 
 support, that they should acquit themselves of any 
 sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which 
 their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode 
 of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them : 
 hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest 
 of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to ofiei 
 u puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow : 
 hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have 
 insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless 
 irreverence as the Whigs ; though it is true that some 
 few Whigs, more however in their literary than in 
 their political character, have stepped forward in his 
 vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in 
 the writings of a modern Whig bishop* in which, for 
 the sake of creating a charge of falsehood against 
 Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage 
 in the Defensio pro Pop. Anglica.no : and, if that 
 bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty 
 of rapping his knuckles were it only for breaking 
 Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud 
 against the Long Parliament, it was a passage in 
 a very pleasing work of this day (Ecclesiastical Bi- 
 ography) which suggested to me the whole of what I 
 have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable 
 of uncandid feelings except in what concerns the in- 
 terests of his order, has adopted the usual tone in 
 regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise 
 aluable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the 
 Life of Hammond, according to my remembrance) he 
 las made a statement to this effect That the custom 
 prevalent among children in that age of asking their 
 * Watson, Bishop of Llandaff.
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 429 
 
 parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse 
 by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity 
 of prejudice more unreasonable ? The unamiable side 
 of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century 
 was unquestionably its religious bigotry ; which, how- 
 ever, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling 
 and a real strength of religious principle somewhat 
 exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century, 
 But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be de- 
 nied ; it was often offensive from its excess ; and 
 ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless customs, 
 many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive 
 value, their frantic intolerance quarrelled with : and 
 for my part I heartily join in the sentiment of Charles 
 II. applying it as he did, but a good deal more ex- 
 tensively, that their religion ' was not a religion for a 
 gentleman : ' indeed all sectarianism, but especially 
 that which has a modern origin arising and growing 
 up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand 
 traditional history of persecutions conflicts and 
 martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, 
 corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and 
 mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the 
 grand classic forms of the Church of England or the 
 Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the 
 Puritans was excessive and revolting, is that a reason 
 for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission 
 or commission for which no distinct fathers can be 
 "bund ? The learned editor does not pretend that 
 Jhere is any positive evidence, or presumption even, 
 lor imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom in 
 question : but, because he thinks it a good custom, hia 
 inference is that nobody could bive abolished it but
 
 43' FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 the Puritans. Now who does not see that, if tlu's had 
 been amongst the usages discountenanced by the Pu 
 ritans, it would on that account have been the more 
 pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in church 
 and state ? Or, even if this usage were of a nature to 
 be prohibited by authority, as the public use of the 
 liturgy organs surplices, &c., who does not see 
 that with regard to that as well as to other Puritanical 
 innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal at 
 the restoration of the king which would have estab- 
 lished them in more strength than ever? But it ;s 
 evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in question 
 gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit 
 of the times. It was one feature of a general system 
 of manners, fitted by its piety and simplicity for a 
 pious and simple age, and which therefore even the 
 17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be 
 inferred that filial affection and reverence have de- 
 cayed amongst us, because they no longer express 
 themselves in the same way. In an age of imperfect 
 culture, all passions and emotions are in a more ele- 
 mentary state 4 speak a plainer language ' and 
 express themselves externally: in such an age the 
 frame and constitution of society is more picturesque ; 
 the modes of life rest more undisguisedly upon the 
 basis of the absolute and original relation of things : 
 the son is considered in his sonship, the father in his 
 fatherhood : and the manners take an appropriate 
 coloring. Up to the middle of the 17th century there 
 were many families in which the children never pre- 
 umed to sit down in their parents' presence. But with 
 as, in an age of more complete intellectual culture, a 
 chick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 431 
 
 human life; and the instincts of good taste banish 
 from good company the expression of all the pro- 
 founder emotions. A son therefore, who should kneel 
 down in this age to ask his papa's blessing on leaving 
 town for Brighton or Bath would be felt by himself 
 to be making a theatrical display of filial duty, such 
 as would be painful to him in proportion as his feel- 
 ings were sincere. All this would have been evident 
 to the learned editor in any case but one which re- 
 garded the Puritans : they were at any rate to be 
 molested : in default of any graver matter, a mere 
 fanciful grievance is searched out. Still, however, 
 nothing was effected ; fanciful or real, the grievance 
 must be connected with the Puritans : here lies the 
 offence, there lies the Puritans : it would be very 
 agreeable to find some means of connecting the one 
 with the other : but how shall this be done ? Why, in 
 default of all other means, the learned editor assumes 
 the connection. He leaves the reader with an im- 
 pression that the Puritans are chargeable with a serious 
 wound to the manners of the nation in a point affecting 
 the most awful of the household charities : and he fails 
 to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground 
 s that it would be very agreeable to him if he had 
 a ground. Such is the power of the esprit de corps to 
 palliate and recommend as colorable the very weakest 
 logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent ! 
 In conclusion I must again disclaim any want of 
 veneration and entire affection for the Established 
 Ohurch : the very prejudices and injustice, with which 
 tax the English clergy, have a generous origin : but 
 ft is right to point the attention of historical students t? 
 Aieir strength and the effect which they have had
 
 132 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 They have been indulged to excess; they have dis- 
 figured the grandest page in English history ; they 
 have hid the true descent and tradition of our constitu- 
 tional history ; and, by impressing upon the literature 
 of the country a false conception of the patriotic party 
 in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way 
 of a great work, a work which, according to my 
 ideal of it, would be the most useful that could just 
 now be dedicated to the English public viz. a philo- 
 sophic record of the revolutions of English History. 
 The English Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified 
 in 1688 - 9, is in its kind, the noblest work of the 
 human mind working in conjunction with Time, and 
 what in such a case we may allowably call Provi- 
 dence. Of this chefd'ceuvre of human wisdom it were 
 desirable that we should have a proportionable his- 
 tory : for such a history the great positive qualification 
 would be a philosophic mind : the great negative 
 qualification would be this [which to the established 
 clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for 
 their magnanimity] ; viz. complete conquest over those 
 prejudices which have hitherto discolored the greatest 
 era of patriotic virtue by contemplating the great men 
 of that era under their least happy aspect namely, in 
 relation to the Established Church. 
 
 Now that I am on the subject of English History, I 
 will notice one of the thousand mis-statements of 
 Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the 
 stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner 
 and situation in which he has introduced it. Standing 
 in the current of a narrative, it would have merited a 
 silent correction in an unpretending note : but it occu 
 a much more assuming station ; for it is intro
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 433 
 
 rtuced m a philosophical essay ; and being relied on 
 for a particular purpose with the most unqualified 
 confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very 
 highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent 
 person contemporary with the fact] it must Le looked 
 on as involving a peremptory defiance to all succeed- 
 ing critics who might hesitate between the authority 
 of Mr. Hume at the distance of a century from the 
 facts and Sir William Temple speaking to them as a 
 matter within his personal recollections. Sir William 
 Temple had represented himself as urging in a con- 
 versation with Charles II., the hopelessness of any 
 attempt on the part of an English king to make him- 
 self a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed 
 through the affections of his people. 76 This general 
 thesis he had supported by a variety of arguments , 
 and, amongst the rest, he had described himself as 
 urging this that even Cromwell had been unable to 
 establish himself in unlimited power, though supported 
 by a military force of eighty thousand men. Upon 
 this Hume calls the reader's attention to the extreme 
 improbability which there must beforehand appear to 
 be in supposing that Sir W. Temple, speaking of do 
 recent a case, with so much official knowledge of that 
 case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by the 
 king whose side in the argument gave him an interest 
 in contradicting Sir William's statement, and whose 
 means of information were paramount to those of all 
 others, could under these circumstances be mis 
 taken. Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr. Hume 
 ihe improbability is extreme and scarcely to be in 
 ralidated by any possible authority which, at best 
 oust terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing 
 28
 
 434 FALSIFICATION OF 
 
 evidence. And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was 
 unquestionably wrong, and grossly wrong: Cromwell 
 never had an army at all approaching to the number 
 of eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof 
 that Hume had never read Lord Clarendon's account 
 of his own life : this book is not so common as his 
 ' History of the Rebellion ; ' and Hume had either not 
 met with it, or had neglected it. For, in the early 
 part of this work, Lord Clarendon, speaking of the 
 army which was assembled on Blackheath to welcome 
 the return of Charles II., says that it amounted to fifty 
 thousand men : and, when it is remembered that this 
 army was exclusive of the troops in garrison of the 
 forces left by Monk in the North and above all of 
 the entire army in Ireland, it cannot be doubted that 
 the whole would amount to the number stated by Sir 
 William Temple. Indeed Charles II. himself, in the 
 year 1678 [i. e. about four years after this conversa- 
 tion] as Sir W. Temple elsewhere tells us, * in six 
 weeks' time raised an army of twenty thousand men, 
 the completest and in all appearance the bravest 
 troops that could be any where seen, and might have 
 raised many more ; and it was confessed by all the 
 Foreign Ministers that no king in Christendom could 
 have made and completed such a levy as this ap- 
 peared in such a time.' William III. again, about 
 eleven years afterwards, raised twenty-three regiments 
 with the same ease and in the same space of six 
 weeks. It may be objected indeed to such cases, as 
 in fact it was objected to the case of William III. by 
 Howlett in his sensible Examination of Dr. Price's 
 Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age 
 *rhen manufactures were so little extended, it could
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 435 
 
 never have been difficult to make such a levy of men 
 provided there were funds for paying and equipping 
 them. But, considering the extraordinary funds which 
 were disposable for this purpose in Ireland, &c. during 
 the period of Cromwell's Protectorate, we may very 
 safely allow the combined authority of Sir William 
 Temple of the king and of that very prime 
 minister who disbanded Croniweii s army, to outweigh 
 the single authority of Hume at the distance of a cen- 
 tury from the facts. Upon any question of fact, indoed, 
 Hume's authority is none at all.
 
 CEYLON. 
 
 THERE is in the science and process of colonization; 
 as in every complex act of man, a secret philosophy 
 
 which is first suspected through results, and first 
 expounded by experience. Here, almost more than 
 anywhere else, nature works in fellowship with man. 
 Yet all nature is not alike suited to the purposes of 
 the early colonist : and all men are not alike qualified 
 for giving effect to the hidden capacities of nature. 
 One system of natural advantages is designed to 
 have a long precedency of others ; and one race of 
 men is selected and sealed for an eternal preference 
 in this function of colonizing to the very noblest 
 of their brethren. As colonization advances, that 
 ground becomes eligible for culture that nature 
 becomes full of promise which in earlier stages of 
 the science was not so ; because the dreadful solitude 
 becomes continually narrower under the accelerated 
 diffusion of men, which shortens the space of distance 
 
 under the strides of nautical science, which short- 
 ens the time of distance and under the eternal 
 discoveries of civilization, which combat with el<v 
 
 Ceylon and it* Capabilities. By J. W. Bennett.
 
 CEYLON. 4.37 
 
 tnentary nature. Again, in the other element of 
 colonization, races of men become known for what 
 they are ; the furnace has tried them all ; the truth 
 has justified itself; and if, as at some great memorial 
 review of armies, some solemn armilustrum, the 
 colonizing nations, since 1500, were now by name 
 called up, France would answer not at all ; Portu- 
 gal and Holland would stand apart with dejected 
 eyes dimly revealing the legend of Fuit Ilium ; 
 Spain would be seen sitting in the distance, and, 
 like Judaea on the Roman coins, weeping under her 
 palm-tree in the vast regions of the Orellana ; whilst 
 the British race would be heard upon every wind, 
 coming on with mighty hurras, full of power and 
 tumult, as some "hail-stone chorus,"* and crying 
 aloud to the five hundred millions of Burmah, China, 
 Japan, and the infinite islands, to make ready their 
 paths before them. Already a ground-plan, or ichno- 
 graphy, has been laid down of the future colonial 
 empire. In three centuries, already some outline has 
 been sketched, rudely adumbrating the future settle- 
 ment destined for the planet, some infant castrame- 
 tation has been marked out for the future encamp- 
 ment of nations. Enough has been already done to 
 show the course by which the tide is to flow ; to 
 prefigure for languages their proportions, and for 
 uations to trace their distribution. 
 
 In this movement, so far as it regards man, in this 
 machinery for sifting and winnowing the merits of 
 races, there is a system of marvellous means, which 
 by its very simplicity masks and hides from us th 
 
 * " Hail-stone Chorus." Handel's Israel in Egypt.
 
 138 CEYLOW. 
 
 wise profundity of its purpose. Oftentimes, in wan- 
 dering amongst the inanimate world, the philosopher 
 is disposed to say this plant, this mineral, this 
 fruit, is met with so often, not because it is better 
 than others of the same family, perhaps it is worse, 
 but because its resources for spreading and natural- 
 izing itself are, by accident, greater than theirs. 
 That same analogy he finds repeated in the great 
 drama of colonization. It is not, says he pensively 
 to himself, the success which measures the merit. 
 It is not that nature or that providence has any final 
 cause at work in disseminating these British children 
 over every zone and climate of the earth. 0, no ! 
 far from it! But it is the unfair advantages of 
 these islanders, which carry them thus potently 
 ahead. Is it so indeed ? Philosopher, you are 
 wrong. Philosopher, you are envious. You speak 
 Spanish, philosopher, or even French. Those advan- 
 tages which you suppose to disturb the equities of 
 the case were they not products of British energy ? 
 Those twenty-five thousands of ships, whose graceful 
 shadows darken the blue waters in every climate 
 did they build themselves ? That myriad of acres, 
 laid out in the watery cities of docks were they 
 sown by the rain, as the fungus or the daisy ? Britain 
 has advantages at this stage of the race, which make 
 the competition no longer equal henceforwards it 
 has become gloriously "unfair," but at starting 
 we were all equal. Take this truth from us, philoso- 
 pher : that in such contests the power constitutes 
 the title ; the man that has the ability to go ahead 
 Is the man entitled to go ahead ; and the nation that
 
 CE5TLON. 439 
 
 yan win the place of leader is the nation that ought 
 to do so. 
 
 This colonizing genius of the British people ap- 
 pears upon a grand scale in Australia, Canada, and, 
 as we may remind the else forgetful world, in the 
 United States of America ; which States are our 
 children, prosper by our blood, and have ascended 
 to an overshadowing altitude from an infancy tended 
 by ourselves. But on the fields of India it is that 
 our aptitudes for colonization have displayed them- 
 selves most illustriously, because they were strength- 
 ened by violent resistance. We found many king- 
 doms established, and to these we have given unity ; 
 and in process of doing so, by the necessities of the 
 general welfare, or the mere instincts of self-preser- 
 vation, we have transformed them to an empire, rising 
 like an exhalation, of our own a mighty monument 
 of our own superior civilization. 
 
 Ceylon, as a virtual dependency of India, ranks in 
 the same category. There also we have prospered 
 by resistance ; there also we have succeeded memor- 
 ably where other nations memorably failed. Of Cey- 
 lon, therefore, now rising annually into importance, 
 let us now (on occasion of this splendid book, the 
 work of one officially connected with the island, 
 bound to it also by affectionate ties of services ren- 
 dered, not less than of unmerited persecutions suf- 
 fered) offer a brief, but remerabe^able, account of 
 Ceylon in itself, and of Ceylon in its relations, his- 
 torial or economic, to ourselves. 
 
 Mr. Bennett says of it, with more or less of doubt, 
 three things of which any one would be sufficient 
 o detain a reader's attention, namely, 1. That it is
 
 440 CEYLON. 
 
 the Taprobane of the Romans ; 2. That it was, or haa 
 been thought to be, the Paradise of Scripture ; 3. 
 That it is " the most magnificent of the British insu- 
 lar possessions," or, in yet wider language, that it 
 is an " incomparable colony." This last count in 
 the pretensions of Ceylon is quite indisputable ; Cey- 
 lon is in fact already, Ceylon is at this moment, a 
 gorgeous jewel in the imperial crown ; and yet, com- 
 pared with what it may be, with what it will be, 
 with what it ought to be, Ceylon is but that grain of 
 mustard-seed which hereafter is destined to become 
 the stately tree,* where the fowls of heaven will 
 lodge for generations. Great are the promises of 
 Ceylon, great already her performances. Great are 
 the possessions of Ceylon, far greater her reversions. 
 Rich she is by her developments, richer by her en- 
 dowments. She combines the luxury of the tropics 
 with the sterner gifts of our -own climate. She is 
 hot, she is cold. She is civilized, she is barbarous. 
 She has the resources of the rich, and she has the 
 energies of the poor. 
 
 But for Taprobane, but for paradise, we have a 
 word of dissent. Mr. Bennett is well aware that 
 many men in many ages have protested against the 
 possibility that Ceylon could realize all the condi- 
 tions involved in the ancient Taprobane. Milton, it 
 is true, with other excellent scholars, has insinuated 
 his belief that probably Taprobane is Ceylon ; when 
 our Saviour in the wilderness sees the great vision 
 of Roman power, expressed, inter alia, by high offi 
 cere of the Republic flocking to or from the gates o* 
 
 St Mark 4 : 81, 82.
 
 CEYLON. 441 
 
 Rome, and " embassies from regions far remote," 
 crowding the Appiari or the Emilian roads, some 
 
 " From the Asian kings, and Parthian amongst these; 
 From India and the golden Chersonese, 
 And utmost Indian isle Taprobane ; 
 ***** 
 
 Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed ; " 
 
 it is probable, from the mention of this island Tapro- 
 bane following so closely after that of the Malabar 
 peninsula, that Milton held it to be the island of 
 Ceylon, and not of Sumatra. In this he does but 
 follow the stream of geographical critics ; and, upon 
 the whole, if any one island exclusively is to be 
 received for the Roman Taprobane, doubt there can 
 be none that Ceylon has the superior title. But, as 
 we know that, in regions less remote from Rome, 
 Mona did not always mean the Isle of Man, nor 
 Ultima Thule uniformly the Isle of Skye or of St. 
 Kilda, so it is pretty evident that features belong- 
 ing to Sumatra, and probably to other Oriental 
 islands, blended (through mutual misconceptions of 
 the parties, questioned and questioning) into one 
 semi-fabulous object not entirely realized in any 
 locality whatever. The case is precisely as if Cos- 
 .nas Indicopleustes, visiting Scotland in the sixth 
 century, should have placed the scene of any adven- 
 ture in a town distant six miles from Glasgow and 
 eight miles from Edinburgh. These we know to b 
 irreconcilable conditions, such as cannot meet in any 
 town whatever, past or present. But in such a case 
 many circumstances might, notwithstanding, corn- 
 Dine to throw a current of very strong suspicion upon
 
 442 CETLON. 
 
 Hamilton as the town concerned. On the same 
 principle, it is easy to see that most of those Romans 
 who spoke of Taprobane had Ceylon in their eye 
 But that all had not, and, of those who really had, 
 that some indicated by their facts very different 
 islands, whilst designing to indicate Ceylon, is unde- 
 niable ; since, amongst other imaginary character- 
 istics of Taprobane, they make it extend considerably 
 to the south of the line. Now, with respect to Cey- 
 lon, this is notoriously false ; that island lies entirely 
 in the northern tropic, and does not come within five 
 (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. 
 Plain it is, therefore, tha* Taprobane, if construed 
 very strictly, is an ens rationis made up by fanciful 
 composition from various sources, and much like our 
 own mediaeval conceit of Prester John's country, or 
 the fancies (which have but recently vanished) of 
 the African river Niger, and the golden city Tom- 
 buctoo. These were lies ; and yet, also, in a limited 
 sense, they were truths. They were expansions 
 often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some 
 basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or sub- 
 sequently by misconception of the scholar. For in- 
 stance, as to Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus had author- 
 ized men to believe in some vast African city, central 
 to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty 
 system of civilization. Others, improving on that 
 chimera, asserted that this glorious city represented 
 an inheritance derived from ancient Carthage ; here, 
 it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured 
 state ; hither across Bilidulgerid had the children of 
 Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome ; and the 
 mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had
 
 CEYLON. 443 
 
 pointed its path to the carnage of Cannae was stil 1 
 the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity 
 worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies ; 
 yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous 
 fascice, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. 
 Mungo Park came, and the city of Tombuctoo was 
 shown to be a real existence. Seeing was believing. 
 And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed 
 a belief in Tombuctoo, you would have made your- 
 self an indorser of that huge forgery which had so 
 long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in 
 fact, a party to the total fraud. 
 
 We have thought it right to direct the reader's 
 eye upon this correction of the common problem as 
 to this or that place Ceylon for example answer- 
 ing to this or that classical name, because, in fact, 
 the problem is more subtle than it appears to be. If 
 you are asked whether you believe in the unicorn, 
 undoubtedly you are within the letter of the truth in 
 replying that you do, for there are several varieties 
 of large animals which carry a single horn in the 
 forehead.* But, virtually, by such an answer you 
 would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend, 
 since you are well aware that, in the idea of an uni- 
 corn, your questioner included the whole traditionary 
 character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emu- 
 lator of the lion, &c. ; under which fanciful descrip- 
 tion, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, 
 
 * Unicorn : and strange it is that, in ancient dilapidated 
 monuments of the Ceylonese, religious sculptures, &O M ihe unicorn 
 of Scotland frequently appears according to its true heraldic (that 
 
 B, fabulous) type.
 
 444 CEYLON 
 
 the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon, and sometimes 
 discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current 
 zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal 
 natural history. When asked, therefore, whether 
 Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by 
 affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by 
 both at once ; it is, and it is not. Taprobane 
 includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also 
 more, and also less. And this case is a type of 
 many others standing in the same logical circum- 
 stances. 
 
 But, secondly, as to Ceylon being the local repre- 
 sentative of Paradise, we may say, as the courteous 
 Frenchman did to Dr. Moore upon the Doctor's 
 apologetically remarking of a word, which he had 
 used, that he feared it was not good French " Non, 
 Monsieur, il n'est pas ; mais il me*rite bien 1'Stre." 
 Certainly, if Ceylon was not, at least it ought to 
 have been, Paradise ; for at this day there is no place 
 on earth which better supports the paradisiacal char- 
 acter (always excepting Lapland, as an Upsal pro- 
 fessor observes, and Wapping, as an old seaman 
 reminds us) than this Pandora of islands, which the 
 Hindoos call Lanka, and Europe calls Ceylon. We 
 style it the " Pandora " of islands, because, as all the 
 gods of the heathen clubbed their powers in creating 
 that ideal woman, clothing her with perfections, 
 and each separate deity subscribing to her dowry 
 some separate gift, not less conspicuous, and not 
 less comprehensive, has been the bounty of Provi- 
 dence, running through the whole diapason of possi- 
 bilities, to this all-gorgeous island. Whatsoever it 
 IB that God has given by separate allotment and par
 
 CEYLON. 445 
 
 tition to other sections of the planet, all this he has 
 given cumulatively and redundantly to Ceylon. Was 
 she therefore happy, was Ceylon happier than other 
 regions, through this hyper-tropical munificence of 
 h<vr Creator ? No, she was not ; and the reason was, 
 because idolatrous darkness had planted curses where 
 Heaven had planted blessings ; because the insanity 
 of man had defeated the graciousness of God. But 
 another era is dawning for Ceylon ; God will now 
 countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possi- 
 bilities into great harvests of realization, by super- 
 adding the one blessing of a dovelike religion ; light 
 is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are 
 growing dim ; woman will no more consent to forego 
 her birthright as the daughter of God ; man will 
 cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber 
 of Ceylon, he has ever been ; and with the new hopes 
 that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of 
 this lovely island, Ceylon will but too deeply fulfil 
 the functions of a paradise. Too subtly she will lay 
 fascinations upon man ; and it will need all the 
 anguish of disease, and the stings of death, to unloose 
 the ties which, in coming ages, must bind the hearts 
 of her children to this Eden of the terraqueous globe 
 Yet if, apart from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr. 
 Bennett seriously presses the question regarding 
 Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry 
 that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason 
 that heretofore we nave pledged ourselves in print 
 to vote in favor of Cashmeer ; which beautiful vale, 
 by the way, is omitted in Mr. Bennett's list of the 
 candidates for that distinction already entered upon 
 Jie roll. Supposing the Paradise of Scripture to have
 
 4ifi CEYLON. 
 
 had a local settlement upon our earth, and not IE 
 some extra-terreue orb, even in that case we cannot 
 imagine that anything could now survive, even so 
 much as an angle or a curve of its original outline. 
 All rivers have altered their channels ; many are 
 altering them forever.* Longitude and latitude might 
 oe assigned, at the most, if even those are not sub- 
 stantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing as- 
 kance " of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. 
 But, finally, we remark that whereas human nature 
 has ever been prone to the superstition of local con- 
 secrations and personal idolatries, by means of me- 
 morial relics, apparently it is the usage of God to 
 hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, 
 and confounding, all traces of their punctual identi- 
 ties. That raises them to shadowy powers. By that 
 process such remembrances pass from the state of 
 base sensual signs, ministering only to a sensual 
 servitude, into the state of great ideas mysterious 
 as spirituality is mysterious, and permanent as truth 
 is permanent. Thus it is, and therefore it is, that 
 Paradise has vanished ; Luz is gone ; Jacob's ladder 
 is found only as an apparition in the clouds ; the true 
 cross survives no more among the Koman Catholics 
 than the true ark is mouldering upon Ararat ; no 
 scholar can lay his hand upon Gethsemane ; and for 
 the grave of Moses the son of Amram, mightiest of 
 law-givers, though it is somewhere near Mount Nebo, 
 nd in a valley of Moab, yet eye has not been su 
 tered to behold it, and "no man knoweth of his 
 sepulchre unto this day. ""I" 
 
 See Dr. Robiaon on River* t Dent 84 : 6
 
 CEYLON. 447 
 
 If, however, as to Paradise in connection with 
 Ceylon we are forced to say " No," if as to Tapro- 
 bane in connection with Ceylon we say both " Yes " 
 and " No," not the less we come back with a re- 
 iterated " Yes, yes, yes," upon Ceylon as the crest 
 and eagle's plume of the Indies, as the priceless 
 peail, the ruby without a flaw, and (once again wo 
 say it) as the Pandora of Oriental islands. 
 
 Yet ends so glorious imply means of correspond- 
 ing power ; and advantages so comprehensive can- 
 not be sustained unless by a machinery proportion- 
 ately elaborate. Part of this machinery lies in the 
 miraculous climate of Ceylon. Climate ? She has 
 all climates. Like some rare human favorite of na- 
 ture, scattered at intervals along the line of a thou- 
 sand years, who has been gifted so variously as to 
 seem 
 
 " Not one, but all mankind's epitome," 
 
 Ceylon, in order that she might become capable of 
 products without end, has been made an abstract of 
 , the whole earth, and fitted up as a panorganon for 
 modulating through the whole diatonic scale of cli- 
 mates. This is accomplished in part by her moun- 
 tains. No island has mountains so high. It was 
 the hideous oversight of a famous infidel in the last 
 century, that, in supposing an Eastern prince of 
 lecessity to deny frost and ice as things impossible 
 to his experience, he betrayed too palpably his own 
 non-acquaintance with the grand economies of na- 
 ture. To make acquaintance with cold, and the 
 products of cold, obviously he fancied ; t requisite to 
 travel northwards ; to taste of polar power, he sup-
 
 448 CEYLON. 
 
 posed it indispensable to have advanced towards the 
 pole. Narrow was the knowledge in those days, 
 when a master in Israel might have leave to err thus 
 grossly. Whereas, at present, few are the people 
 amongst those not openly making profession of 
 illiteracy, who do not know that a sultan of the 
 tropics ay, though his throne were screwed down 
 by exquisite geometry to the very centre of the equ 
 tor might as surely become familiar with winter 
 by ascending three miles in altitude, as by travelling 
 three thousand horizontally. In that way of ascent 
 it is that Ceylon has her regions of winter and her 
 Arctic districts. She has her Alps, and she has her 
 alpine tracts for supporting human life and useful 
 vegetation. Adam's Peak, which of itself is more 
 than seven thousand feet high (and by repute the 
 highest range within her shores), has been found to 
 rank only fifth in the mountain scale. The highest 
 is a thousand feet higher. The maritime district, 
 which runs round the island for a course of nine hun- 
 dred miles, fanned by the sea-breezes, makes, with 
 these varying elevations, a vast cycle of secondary 
 oombinations for altering the temperature and for 
 idapling the weather. The central region has a 
 separate climate of its own. And an inner belt of 
 country, neither central nor maritime, which from the 
 sea belt is regarded as inland, but from the centre is 
 regarded as maritime, composes another chamber of 
 climates ; whilst these again, each individually with- 
 in its class, are modified into minor varieties by local 
 circumstances as to wind, by local accidents of posi- 
 tion, and by shifting stages of altitude. 
 With all this compass of power, however (obtained
 
 CEYLON 449 
 
 from its hills and its varying scale of hills), Ceylon 
 has not much of waste ground, in the sense of being 
 irreclaimable for of waste ground, in the sense of 
 being unoccupied, she has an infinity. What are the 
 dimensions of Ceylon ? Of all islands in this world 
 which we know, in respect of size it most resembles 
 Ireland, being about one sixth part less. But, for a 
 particular reason, we choose to compare it with Scot- 
 land, which is very little different in dimensions from 
 Ireland, having (by some hundred or two of square 
 miles) a trifling advantage in extent. Now, say 
 that Scotland contains a trifle more than thirty thou- 
 sand square miles, the relation of Ceylon to Scotland 
 will become apparent when we mention that this 
 Indian island contains about twenty-four thousand 
 five hundred of similar square miles. Twenty-four 
 and a half to thirty or forty-nine to sixty there 
 lies the ratio of Ceylon to Scotland. The ratio in 
 population is not less easily remembered : Scotland 
 has now (October, 1843) hard upon three millions of 
 people ; Ceylon, by a late census, has just three half- 
 millions. But strange indeed, where everything 
 seems strange, is the arrangement of the Ceylonese 
 territory and people. Take a peach : what you call 
 the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, 
 is massed orbicularly around a central stone often 
 as larg-e as a pretty large strawberry. Now, in Cey- 
 lon, the central district, answering to this peach- 
 stone, constitutes a fierce little Liliputian kingdom, 
 ignite independent, through many centuries, of the 
 lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds 
 it, and perfectly distinct by the character, and origin 
 t>f its population. The peach-stone is called Kandy, 
 29
 
 450 CEYLON. 
 
 and the people Kandyans. These a^e a desperate 
 variety of the tiger-man, agile and fierce as he is, 
 though smooth, insinuating, and full of subtlety as a 
 snake, even to the moment of crouching for their last 
 fatal spring. On the other hand, the people of the 
 engirdling zone are called the Cinghalese, spelled ac- 
 cording to the fancy of us authors and compositors, 
 who legislate for the spelling of the British empire, 
 with an S or a C. As to moral virtue, in tue sense 
 of integrity or fixed principle, there is not much lost 
 *pon either race : in that point they are " much of a 
 muchness." They are also both respectable for their 
 attainments in cowardice ; but with this difference, 
 that the Cinghalese are soft, inert, passive cowards ; 
 but your Kandyan is a ferocious little bloody coward, 
 full of mischief as a monkey, grinning with despera- 
 tion, laughing like a hyena, or chattering if you vex 
 him, and never to be trusted for a moment. The 
 reader now understands why we described the Cey- 
 lonese man as a tiger-cat in his noblest division : for, 
 after all, these dangerous gentlemen in the peach- 
 stone are a more promising race than the silky and 
 nerveless population surrounding them. You can 
 strike no fire out of the Cinghalese : but the Kandy- 
 ans show fight continually, and would even persist 
 in fighting, if there were in this world no gunpowder 
 (which exceedingly they dislike), and if their allow- 
 ance of arrack were greater. 
 
 Surely this is the very strangest spectacle exhib- 
 ited on earth : a kingdom within a kingdom, an im- 
 oerium in imperio, settled and maintaining itself for 
 Centuries in .defiance of all that Pagan, that Mahom 
 etan, that Jew, or that Christian, could do. Th
 
 CEYLON. 451 
 
 reader will remember the case of the British envoy 
 to Geneva, who being ordered in great wrath to 
 " quit the territories of the republic in twenty-four 
 hours," replied, " By all means : in ten minutes." 
 And here was a little bantam kingdom, not much 
 bigger than the irate republic, having its separate 
 sultan, with full-mounted establishment of peacock's 
 feathers, white elephants, Moorish eunuchs, aimies, 
 cymbals, dulcimers, and all kinds of music, torment- 
 ors, and executioners ; whilst his majesty crowed 
 defiance across the ocean to all other kings, rajahs, 
 soldans, kesars, "flowery" emperors, and "golden- 
 feet " east or west, be the same more or less ; and 
 really with some reason. For though it certainly is 
 amusing to hear of a kingdom, no bigger than Ster- 
 lingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect 
 and maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of 
 Scotland, a little nucleus of pugnacity, sixty miles 
 by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the lazy 
 lubber nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its 
 arms, yet as the trick was done, we cease to find it 
 ridiculous. 
 
 For the trick was done : and that reminds us to 
 give the history of Ceylon in its two sections, which 
 will not prove much longer than the history of Tom 
 Thumb. Precisely three centuries before Waterloo, 
 namely, Anno Domini 1515, a Portuguese admiral 
 hoisted his sovereign's flag and formed a durable 
 settlement at Columbo, which was, and is, considered 
 the maritime capital of the island. Very nearly half 
 way on the interval of time between this event and 
 Waterloo, namely, in 1656 (anti-penultimate year 
 of Cr-mwell), the Portuguese nation made over, by
 
 452 OKYUOH. 
 
 treaty, this settlement to the Dutch ; which, of itself, 
 seems to mark that the sun of the former people was 
 now declining to the west. In 1796, now forty-seven 
 years ago, it arose out of the French revolutionary 
 war so disastrous for Holland that the Dutch 
 surrendered it perforce to the British, who are not 
 very likely to surrender it in their turn on any terms, 
 or at any gentleman's request. Up to this time, 
 when Ceylon passed under our flag, it is to be ob- 
 served that no progress whatever, not the least, had 
 been made in mastering the peach-stone, that old 
 central nuisance of the island. The little monster 
 still crowed and flapped his wings on his dunghill, 
 as had been his custom always in the afternoon for 
 certain centuries. But nothing on earth is immortal ; 
 even mighty bantams must have their decline and 
 fall ; and omens began to show out that soon there 
 would be a dust with the new master at Columbo, 
 Seven years after our debut on that stage, the dust 
 began. By the way, it is perhaps an impertinence 
 to remark it, but there certainly is a sympathy be- 
 tween the motions of the Kandyan potentate and our 
 European enemy Napoleon. Both pitched into us in 
 1803, and we pitched into both in 1815. That we 
 call a coincidence. How the row began was thus : 
 some incomprehensible intrigues had been proceed- 
 ing for a time between the British governor or com- 
 mandant, or whatever he might be, and the Kandyan 
 prime minister. This minister, who was a noticeable 
 man with large gray eyes, was called Pilame Tilawe. 
 We write his name after Mr. Bennett : but it is quite 
 useless to study the pronunciation of it, seeing that he 
 was hanged in 1812 (the year of Moscow) a fac\
 
 CEYLON. 453 
 
 tar which we are thankful as often as we think of it. 
 Pil. (surely Tilawe cannot be pronounced Garlic ?) 
 managed to get the king's head into chancery, and 
 then fibbed him. Why Major-general M'Dowall 
 (then commanding our forces) should collude with 
 Pil. Garlic, is past our understanding. But so it 
 was. Pil. said that a certain prince, collaterally con- 
 nected with the royal house, by name Mootto Sawme, 
 who had fled to our protection, was, or might be 
 thought to be, the lawful king. Upon which the 
 British general proclaimed him. What followed is 
 too shocking to dwell upon. Scarcely had Mootto, 
 apparently a good creature, been inaugurated, when 
 Pil. proposed his deposition, to which General 
 M'Dowall consented, and his own (Pil.'s) elevation 
 to the throne. It is like a dream to say that this 
 also was agreed to. King Pil. the First, and, God 
 be thanked, the last, was raised to the musnud, we 
 suppose, or whatsoever they call it in Pil. 's jargon. 
 So far there was little but farce ; now comes the trag- 
 edy. A certain Major Davie was placed with a very 
 inconsiderable garrison in the capital of the Kandyan 
 empire, called by name Kandy. This officer, whom 
 Mr. Bennett somewhere calls the " gallant," capitu- 
 lated upon terms, and had the inconceivable folly to 
 imagine that a base Kandyan chief would think him 
 self bound by these terms. One of them was, that 
 he (Major Davie) and his troops should be allowed 
 to retreat unmolested upon Columbo. Accordingly, 
 fully armed and accoutred, the British troops began 
 Mieir march. At Wattepolowa a proposal was made 
 to Major Davie that Mootto Sawme* (our protege and 
 instrument) should be delivered up to the Kandyan
 
 454 CEYLON. 
 
 Hger. 0, sorrow for the British name ! he was de- 
 livered. Soon after, a second proposal came, that 
 the British soldiers should deliver up their arms, and 
 should march back to Kandy. It makes an English- 
 man shiver with indignation to hear that even this 
 demand was complied with. Let us pause for one 
 moment. Wherefore is it that in all similar cases, 
 in this Ceylonese case, in Major Baillie's Mysore 
 case, in the Cabool case, uniformly the privates are 
 wiser than their officers ? In a case of delicacy or 
 doubtful policy, certainly the officers would have 
 been the party best able to solve the difficulties ; but 
 in a case of elementary danger, where manners dis- 
 appear, and great passions come upon the stage, 
 strange it is that poor men, laboring men, men with- 
 out education, always judge more truly of the crisis 
 than men of high refinement. But this was seen by 
 Wordsworth ; thus spoke he, thirty-six years ago, 
 of Germany, contrasted with the Tyrol : 
 
 " Her haughty schools 
 
 Shall blush ; and may not we with sorrow say 
 A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules, 
 Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
 More for mankind, at this unhappy day, 
 Than all the pride of intellect and thought ! " 
 
 The regiment chiefly concerned was the 19th (for 
 which regiment the word Waltepolowa, the scene of 
 their martyrdom, became afterwards a memorial war- 
 sry). Still, to this hour, it forces tears of wrath into 
 our eyes when we read the recital of the case. A 
 dozen years ago we first read it in a very interesting 
 book, published by the late Mr. Blackwood, the
 
 CEYLON. 455 
 
 Life of Alexander Alexander. This Alexandet was 
 not personally present at the bloody catastrophe ; 
 but he was in Ceylon at the time, and knew the one 
 eole fugitive * from that fatal day. The soldiers of 
 the 19th, not even in that hour of horror, forgot 
 their discipline, or their duty, or their respectful 
 attachment to their officers. When they were or- 
 dered to ground their arms (0, base idiot that could 
 issue such an order ! ) they remonstrated most ear- 
 nestly, but most respectfully. Major Davie, agitated 
 and distracted by the scene, himself recalled the 
 order. The men resumed their arms. Alas ! again 
 the fatal order was issued ; again it was recalled ; 
 but finally it was issued peremptorily. The men 
 sorrowfully obeyed. We hurry to the odious con- 
 clusion. In parties of twos and of threes, our brave 
 countrymen were called out by the horrid Kandyan 
 tiger-cats. Disarmed by the frenzy of their moon- 
 struck commander, what resistance could they make ? 
 One after one the parties called out to suffer were 
 decapitated by the executioner. The officers, who 
 had refused to give up their pistols, finding what 
 was going on, blew out their brains with their own 
 hands, now too bitterly feeling how much wiser had 
 been the poor privates than themselves. At length 
 there was stillness on the field. Night had come on. 
 A.11 were gone, 
 
 " And darkness was the burier o* the dead." 
 The reader may recollect a most picturesque mur- 
 
 Fugitive, observe. There were some others, and amongst 
 ihem Major Davie, who, for private reasons, were suffered to aur- 
 ive as prisoners.
 
 i56 CEYLON. 
 
 der near Manchester, about thirteen or fourteen years 
 ago, perpetrated by two brothers named M'Kean, 
 where a servant-woman, whose throat had been 
 effectually cut, rose up, after an interval, from the 
 ground at a most critical moment (so critical that, 
 by that act, and at that second of time, she drew off 
 the murderer's hand from the throat of a second vic- 
 tim), staggerel in her delirium to the door of a room 
 where sometimes a club had been held, doubtless 
 under some idea of obtaining aid, and at the door, 
 after walking some fifty feet, dropped down dead. 
 Not less astonishing was the resurrection, as it might 
 be called, of an English corporal, cut, mangled, re- 
 mangled, and left without sign of life. Suddenly he 
 rose up, stiff and gory. Dying and delirious, as he 
 felt himself, with misery from exhaustion and wounds, 
 he swam rivers, threaded enemies, and, moving day 
 and night, came suddenly upon an army of Kandy- 
 ans ; here he prepared himself with pleasure for the 
 death that now seemed inevitable, when, by a for- 
 tunate accident, for want of a fitter man, he was 
 selected as an ambassador to the English officer com- 
 manding a Kandyan garrison, and thus once more 
 escaped miraculously. 
 
 Sometimes, when we are thinking over the great 
 scenes of tragedy through which Europe passed from 
 1805 to 1815, suddenly, from the bosom of utter 
 darkness, a blaze of light arises ; a curtain is drawn 
 up; a saloon is revealed. We see a man sitting 
 there alone, in an attitude of alarm and expectation 
 What does he expect ? What is it that he fears ? 
 lie is listening for the chariot-wheels of a fugitive 
 %rmy. At intervals he raises his head, and we know
 
 CEYLON. 457 
 
 him now for the Abbe de Pradt ; the place, Warsaw ; 
 the time, early in December, 1812. All at once the 
 rushing of cavalry is heard ; the door is thrown 
 open ; a stranger enters We see, as in Cornelius 
 Agrippa's mirror, his haggard features ; it is a mo- 
 mentary king, having the sign of a felon's death 
 written secretly on his brow ; it is Murat ; he raises 
 his hands with a gesture of horror as he advances to 
 M. 1'Abbe. We hear his words, " L'Abbe, all is 
 lost!" 
 
 Even so, when the English soldier, reeling from his 
 anguish and weariness, was admitted into the belea- 
 guered fortress, his first words, more homely in ex- 
 pression than Murat's, were to the same dreadful 
 purpose : " Your honor," he said, " all is dished ; " 
 and, this being uttered by way of prologue, he then 
 delivered himself of the message with which he had 
 been charged, and that was a challenge from the 
 Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid 
 from his artillery. The dismal report was just in 
 time ; darkness was then coming on. The English 
 officer spiked his guns, and, with his garrison, fled 
 by night from a fort in which else he would have 
 perished by starvation or by storm, had Kandyan 
 forces been equal to such an effort. This corporal 
 was, strictly speaking, the only man who escaped, 
 one or two other survivors having been reserved as 
 captives for some special reasons. Of this captive 
 party was Major Davie, the commander, whom Mr. 
 Bennett salutes by the title of " gallant," and regrets 
 that " the strong arm of death " had intercepted hia 
 apology. 
 
 He could have made no apology. Plea or pallia-
 
 158 CEYLON. 
 
 tion he had none. To have polluted the Britisn 
 honor in treacherously yielding up to murder (and 
 absolutely for nothing in return) a prince whom we 
 ourselves had seduced into rebellion to have forced 
 his men and officers into laying down their arms, and 
 suing for the mercy of wretches the most perfidious 
 on earth these were acts as to which atonement or 
 explanation was hopeless for him, forgiveness impos- 
 sible for England. So this man is to be called " the 
 gallant " is he ? We will thank Mr. Bennett to 
 tell us who was that officer subsequently seen walk- 
 ing about in Ceylon, no matter whether in Western 
 Columbo or in Eastern Trincomale, long enough for 
 reaping his dishonor, though, by accident, not for a 
 court-martial. Behold, what a curse rests in this 
 British island upon those men, who, when the clock 
 of honor has sounded the hour for their departure, 
 cannot turn their dying eyes nobly to the land of 
 their nativity, stretch out their hands to the glorious 
 island in farewell homage, and say, with military 
 pride, as even the poor gladiators (who were but 
 slaves) said to Caesar, when they passed his chair to 
 their death, " Morituri te salutamus ! " This man 
 (and Mr. Bennett knows it), because he was in- 
 crusted with the leprosy of cowardice, and because 
 upon him lay the blood of those to whom he should 
 .lave been in loco parenlis, made a solitude wherever 
 he appeared ; men ran from him as from an incarna- 
 tion of pestilence ; and between him and free inter- 
 course with his countrymen, from the hour of hia 
 dishonor in the field to the hour of his death, there 
 flowed a river of separation, there were stretched 
 lines of interdict heavier than ever Pope ordained,
 
 CEYLON. 453 
 
 there brooded a schism like that of death, a silence 
 like that of the grave, making known foi'ever the 
 deep damnation of the infamy which on this earth 
 settles upon the troubled resting-place of him who, 
 through cowardice, has shrunk away from his duty, 
 and, on the day of trial, has broken the bond which 
 bound him to his country. 
 
 Surely there needed no arrear of sorrow to con- 
 summate this disaster. Yet two aggravations there 
 were, which afterwards transpired, irritating the 
 British soldiers to madness. One was soon reported, 
 namely, that one hundred and twenty sick or 
 wounded men, lying in a hospital, had been massa- 
 cred without a motive by the children of hell with 
 whom we were contending. The other was not dis- 
 covered until 1815. Then first it became known 
 that, in the whole stores of the Kandyan government 
 (a fortiori then in the particular section of the Kan- 
 dyan forces which we faced), there had not been 
 more gunpowder remaining at the hour of Major 
 Davie's infamous capitulation than seven hundred 
 and fifty pounds avoirdupois ; other munitions of war 
 having been in the same state of bankruptcy. Five 
 minutes more of resistance, one inspiration of Eng- 
 lish pluck, would have placed the Kandyan army in 
 our power, would have saved the honor of the 
 country, would have redeemed our noble soldiers, 
 and to Major Davie would have made the total 
 difference between lying in a traitor's grave and lying 
 in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Was there no vengeance, no retribution, for these 
 things ? Vengeance there was, but by accident. 
 Retribution there was, but partial and remote. In-
 
 460 CEYLON 
 
 famous it was for the English government at Columbo, 
 as Mr. Bennett insinuates, that, having a large fund 
 disposable annually for secret service, between 1796 
 and 1803, such a rupture could have happened and 
 have found us unprepared. Equally infamous it was 
 that summary chastisement was not inflicted upon the 
 perfidious court of Kandy. What real power it had, 
 when unaided by villany amongst themselves, was 
 shown in 1804, in the course of which year one brave 
 officer, Lieutenant Johnstone of the 19th, with no 
 more than one hundred and fifty men, including offi- 
 cers, marched right through the country, in the teeth 
 of all opposition from the king, and resolutely took * 
 Kandy in his route. However, for the present, with- 
 out a shadow of a reason (since all reasons ran in the 
 other direction), we ate our leek in silence ; once 
 again, but now for the last time, the bloody little 
 bantam crowed defiance from his dunghill, and tore 
 the British flag with his spurs. What caused his 
 ruin at hist was literally the profundity of our own 
 British humiliation ; had that been less, had it not 
 been for the natural reaction of that spectacle, 
 equally hateful and incredible, upon a barbarian 
 chief, as ignorant as he was fiendish, he would have 
 returned a civil answer to our subsequent remon- 
 strances. In that case, our government would have 
 been conciliated, and the monster's son, who yet 
 lives in Malabar, would now be reigning in his stead. 
 Hut Diis aliter visum est earth was weary of this 
 
 " Twk Kandy in his route." This phrase is equivocal ; it 
 bears two senses the traveller's sense and the soldier's. But wt 
 rarely make such errors in the use of words ; the error is origins* 
 m the government documents themselves
 
 CEYLON. 461 
 
 (vandyan nuisance, and the infatuation which precip- 
 itated its doom took the following shape. In 1814, 
 certain traders, ten in number, not British but Cin- 
 ghalese, and therefore British subjects, entitled to 
 British protection, were wantonly molested in their 
 peaceable occupations by this Kandyan king. Three 
 of these traders one day returned to our frontier, 
 weaiing upon necklaces, inextricably attached to 
 tht' . throats, their own ears, noses, and other parts 
 of their own persons, torn away by the pincers of 
 the Kandyan executioners. The seven others had 
 sunk under their sufferings. Observe that there had 
 been no charge or imputation against these men, 
 more or less : stet pro ratione voluntas. This was too 
 much even for our all-suffering* English administra- 
 tion. They sent off a kind of expostulation, which 
 amounted to this : " How now, my good sir ? What 
 are you up to ? " Fortunately for his miserable sub- 
 jects (and, as this case showed, by possibility, for 
 many who were not such), the vain-glorious animal 
 returned no answer ; not because he found any diplo- 
 matic difficulty to surmount, but in mere self-glorifi- 
 cation and in pure disdain of us. What a commentary 
 was that upon our unspeakable folly, to that hour I 
 
 We are anxious that the reader should go along 
 with the short remainder of this story, because it 
 
 * Why were they " all-suffering"' ? will be the demand of the 
 reader ; and he will doubt the fact simply because he will not 
 npprehend any sufficient motive. That motive we believe to have 
 teen this : war, even just or necessary war, is costly ; now, the 
 governor and his council knew that their own individual chances 
 of promotion were in the exact ratio of the economy which they 
 could exhibit.
 
 462 CEYLON. 
 
 bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern 
 policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold 
 the casuistry in a way that will be little agreeable tc 
 the calumniators of Olive and Hastings. We do not 
 intend that these men snail have it all their own way 
 in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred 
 always, and erred deeply, by doing too little rather 
 than too much. They have been too long-suffering ; 
 and have tolerated many nuisances, and many mis- 
 creants, when their duty was when their power 
 was to have destroyed them forever. And the 
 capital fault of the East India Company that great- 
 est benefactor for the East that ever yet has arisen 
 has been in not publishing to the world the grounds 
 and details of their policy. Let this one chapter in 
 that policy, this Kandyan chapter, proclaim how 
 great must have been the evils from which our 
 "usurpations" (as they are called) have liberated 
 the earth. For let no man dwell on the rarity, or on 
 the limited sphere, of such atrocities, even in Eastern 
 despotisms. If the act be rare, is not the anxiety 
 eternal ? If the personal suffering be transitory, is 
 not the outrage upon human sensibilities, upon the 
 majesty of human nature, upon the possibilities of 
 light, order, commerce, civilization, of a duration and 
 a compass to make the total difference between man 
 viler than the brutes and man a little lower than the 
 angels ? 
 
 It happened that the first noble, or " Adikar," of 
 the Kandyan king, being charged with treason at 
 this time, had fled to our protection. That was 
 enough. Vengeance on him, in his proper person, 
 bad become impossible ; and the following was the
 
 CEYLON. 463 
 
 vicarious vengeance adopted b} God's vicegerent 
 upon earth, whose pastime it had long been to study 
 the ingenuities of malice, and the possible refine- 
 ments in the arts of tormenting Here follows the 
 published report on this one case : " The ferocious 
 miscreant determined to be fully revenged, and im 
 mediately sentenced the Adikar's wife and children, 
 together with his brother and the brother's wife, to 
 death after the following fashion. The children were 
 ordered to be decapitated before their mother's face, 
 and their heads to be pounded in a rice-mortar by 
 their mother's hands ; which, to save herself from a 
 diabolical torture and exposure" (concealments are 
 here properly practised in the report, for the sake of 
 mere human decency), " she submitted to attempt. 
 The eldest boy shrunk (shrank) from the dread or- 
 deal, and clung to his agonized parent for safety ; 
 but his younger brother stepped forward, and encour- 
 aged him to submit to his fate, placing himself before 
 the executioner by way of setting an example. The 
 last of the children to be beheaded was an infant at 
 the breast, from which it was forcibly torn away, and 
 its mother's milk was dripping from its innocent 
 mouth as it was put into the hands of the grim exe- 
 cutioner." Finally, the Adikar's brother was exe- 
 cuted, having no connection (so much as alleged) 
 with his brother's flight ; and then the two sisters-in- 
 law, having stones attached to their feet, were 
 thrown into a tank. These be thy gods, Egypt ! 
 such are the processes of Kandyan law, such is its 
 horrid religion, and such the morality which it gene 
 rates I And let it not be said, these were the excesses 
 )f a tyrant. Man does not brutalize, by possibility,
 
 464 CEYLON 
 
 in pure insulation. He gives, and he receives. It is 
 by sympathy, by the contagion of example, by re- 
 verberation of feelings, that every man's heart is 
 moulded. A prince, to have been such as this mon- 
 ster, must have been bred amongst a cruel people ; 
 a cruel people, as by other experience we know 
 them to be, naturally produce an inhuman prince ; 
 and such a prince reproduces his own corrupters. 
 
 Vengeance, however, was now at hand ; a better 
 and more martial governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, 
 was in the field since 1812. On finding that no 
 answer was forthcoming, he marched with all his 
 forces. But again these were inadequate to the 
 service ; and once again, as in 1803, we were on the 
 brink of being sacrificed to the very lunacies of re- 
 trenchment. By a mere god-send, more troops hap- 
 pened to arrive from the Indian continent. We 
 marched in triumphal ease to the capital city of 
 Kandy. The wicked prince fled ; Major Kelley pur- 
 sued him to pursue was to overtake to overtake 
 was to conquer. Thirty-seven ladies of his zenana 
 and his mother were captured elsewhere ; and finally 
 the whole kingdom capitulated by a solemn act, in 
 which we secured to it what we had no true liberty 
 to secure, namely, the inviolability of their horrid 
 idolatries. Render unto Caesar the things which are 
 Caesar's but this was not Caasar's. Whether in 
 soine other concessions, whether in volunteering 
 certain civil privileges of which the conquered had 
 never dreamed, and which, for many a long year, 
 they will not understand, our policy were right or 
 wrong, may admit of much debate. Oftentimes, 
 but not always, it is wise and long-sighted policy U
 
 JEYLON. 4G5 
 
 presume in nations nigher qualities than they have, 
 and developments beyond what really exist. But as 
 to religion, there can be no doubt and no debate at 
 all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody abomina- 
 tions of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step 
 to any serious improvement of the Kandyan people ; it 
 is the conditio sine qua non of all regeneration for this 
 demoralized race. And what we ought to have prom- 
 ised; all that in mere civil equity we had the right 
 to promise, was, that we would tolerate such follies, 
 would make no war upon such superstitions as should 
 not be openly immoral. One word more than this 
 covenant was equally beyond the powers of one 
 party to that covenant, and the highest interests of 
 all parties. 
 
 Philosophically speaking, this great revolution may 
 not close perhaps for centuries ; historically, it closed 
 about the opening of the Hundred Days in the annus 
 mirabilis of Waterloo. On the 13th of February, 
 1815, Kandy, the town, was occupied by the British 
 troops, never again to be resigned. In March fol- 
 lowed the solemn treaty by which all parties assumed 
 their constitutional stations. In April occurred the 
 ceremonial part of the revolution ; its public notifica- 
 tion and celebration, by means of a grand proces- 
 sional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards 
 of a mile : and in January, 1816, the late king, now 
 formally deposed, " a stout, good-looking Malabar, 
 with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a restless- 
 ness of manner, marking unbridled passions," was 
 conveyed in the governor's carriage to the jetty at 
 Trincomalee, from which port H. M. S. Mexico con- 
 reyed him to the Indian continent ; he was there 
 30
 
 466 CEYLON. 
 
 confined in the fortress of Velore, famous for the 
 bloody mutiny amongst the Company's sepoy troops, 
 BO bloodily suppressed. In Vellore, this cruel prince, 
 whose name was Sree Wickrem^ Eajah Singha, died 
 Borne years after ; and one son whom he left behind 
 him, born during his father's captivity, may still be 
 living. But his ambitious instincts, if any such are 
 working within him, are likely to be seriously baffled in 
 the very outset by the precautions of our diplomacy ; 
 for one article of the treaty proscribes the descend- 
 ants of this prince as enemies of Ceylon, if found 
 within its precincts. In this exclusion, pointed 
 against a single family, we are reminded of the 
 Stuart dynasty in England, and the Bonaparte dy- 
 nasty in France. We cannot, however, agree with 
 Mr. Bennett's view of this parallelism either in so 
 far as it points our pity towards Napoleon, or in so 
 far as it points the regrets of disappointed vengeance 
 to the similar transportation of Sree. 
 
 Pity is misplaced upon Napoleon, and anger is 
 wasted upon Sree. He ought to have been hanged, 
 said Mr. Bennett ; and so said many of Napoleon. 
 But it was not our mission to punish either. The 
 Malabar prince had broken no faith with its ; he 
 acted under the cursed usages of a cruel people and 
 a bloody religion. These influences had trained a 
 bad heart to corresponding atrocities. Courtesy we 
 did right to pay him, for our own sakes as a high and 
 noble nation. What we could not punish judicially 
 it did not become us to revile. And, finally, we 
 much doubt whether hanging upon a tree, either in 
 Napoleon's case or Sree's, would not practically 
 Have been found by both a happy liberation from
 
 CEYLON. 467 
 
 that bitter cup of mortification which both drank 
 off in their latter years. 
 
 At length, then, the entire island of Ceylon, about 
 a hundred days before Waterloo, had become ours 
 forever. Hereafter Ceylon must inseparably attend 
 the fortunes of India. Whosoever in the East com- 
 mands the sea must command the southern empires 
 of Asia ; and he who commands those empires must 
 foVever command the Oriental islands. One thing 
 only remains to be explained ; and the explanation, 
 we fear, will be harder to understand than the prob- 
 lem : it is how the Portuguese and Dutch failed, 
 through nearly three centuries, to master this little 
 obstinate nucleus of the peach. It seems like a fairy 
 tale to hear the answer : Sinbad has nothing wilder. 
 " They were," says Mr. Bennett, " repeatedly mas- 
 ters of the capital." What was it, then, that 
 stopped them from going on ? " At one period, the 
 former (that is, the Portuguese) had conquered all 
 but the impregnable position called Kandi Udda." 
 And what was it, then, that lived at Kandi Udda ? 
 The dragon of Wantley ? or the dun cow of War- 
 wick ? or the classical Hydra ? No ; it was thus : 
 Kandi was " in the centre of the mountainous region, 
 surrounded by impervious jungles, with secret ap- 
 proaches for only one man at a time." Such tricks 
 might have answered in the time of Ali Baba and 
 the Forty Thieves ; but we suspect that, even then, 
 an "open sesame" would have been found for this 
 pestilent defile. Smoking a cigar through it, and 
 dropping the sparks, might have done the business 
 in the dry season. But, in very truth, we imagine 
 that poutical arrangements were answerable for this
 
 468 CEYLON. 
 
 long failure in checkmating the king, and not at ail 
 the cunning passage which carried only one inside 
 passenger. The Portuguese permitted the Kandyan 
 natives to enter their army ; and that one fact gives 
 us a short solution of the case. For, as Mr. Bennett 
 observes, the principal features of these Kandyans 
 are merely " human imitations of their own indigo- 
 nous leopards treachery and ferocity," as the 
 circumstances may allow them to profit by one or 
 the other. Sugar candy, however, appears to have 
 given very little trouble to us ; and, at all events, it 
 is ours now, together with all that is within its gates. 
 It is proper, however, to add, that since the conquest 
 of this country, in 1815, there have been three rebel- 
 lions, namely : in 1817-18, in 1834, and finally in 
 1842. This last comes pretty well home to our own 
 times and concerns ; so that we naturally become 
 curious as to the causes of such troubles. The two 
 last are said to have been inconsiderable in their 
 extent. But the earlier of the three, which broke out 
 so soon after the conquest as 1811, must, we con- 
 ceive, have owed something to intrigues promoted on 
 behalf of the exiled king. His direct lineal descend- 
 ants are excluded, as we have said, from the island 
 forever ; but his relatives, by whom we presume to 
 be meant his cognati or kinspeople in the female line, 
 not his agnali, are allowed to live in Kandy, suffering 
 only the slight restriction of confinement to one 
 street out of five, which compose this ancient metrop. 
 olis. Meantime, it is most instructive to hear the 
 secret account of those causes which set in motion 
 this unprincipled rebellion. For it will thus be seen 
 oow hopeless it is, under the present idolatrous
 
 CEVLON. 46^ 
 
 Buperslitiou of Ceylon, to think of any attachment in 
 the people, by means of good government, just laws, 
 agriculture promoted, or commerce created. More 
 stress will be laid, by the Ceylonese, on our worship- 
 ping a curious tooth two inches long, ascribed to 
 the god Buddha (but by some to an orang-outang), 
 than to every mode of equity, good faith, or kind- 
 ness. It seems that the Candyans and we recipro- 
 cally misunderstood the ranks, orders, precedences, 
 titular distinctions, and external honors, attached to 
 them in our several nations. But none are so deaf 
 as those that have no mind to hear. And we suspect 
 that our honest fellows of the 19th regiment, whose 
 comrades had been murdered in their beds by the 
 cursed Kandyan "nobles," neither did nor would 
 understand the claim of such assassins to military 
 salutes, to the presenting of arms, or to the turning 
 out of the guard. Here, it is said, began the ill- 
 blood, and also on the claim of the Buddhist priests 
 to similar honors. To say the simple truth, these 
 soldiers ought not to have been expected to show 
 respect towards the murderers of their brethren. 
 The priests, with their shaven crowns and yellow 
 robes, were objects of mere mockery to the British 
 soldier. " Not to have been kicked," it should have 
 been said, " is gain ; not to have been cudgelled, is 
 for you a ground of endless gratitude. Look not for 
 salutes; dream not of honors." For our own part 
 again we say it let the government look ahead for 
 endless insurrections. We tax not the rulers of 
 Ceylon with having caused the insurrections. We 
 bold them blameless on that head ; for a people so 
 fickle and so unprincipled will never want such mat-
 
 470 CEYLON 
 
 ter for rebellion as would be suspected, least of all, 
 by a wise and benevolent man. But we do tax the 
 local government with having ministered to the pos- 
 sibility of rebellion. We British have not sowed 
 the ends and objects of conspiracies ; but undoubt- 
 edly, by our lax administration, we have sowed the 
 means of conspiracies. We must not transfer to a 
 Pagan island our own mild code of penal laws ; the 
 subtle savage will first become capable of these, when 
 he becomes capable of Christianity. And to this we 
 must now bend our attention. Government must 
 make no more offerings of musical clocks to the 
 Pagan temples ; for such propitiations are understood 
 by the people to mean that we admit their god to 
 be naturally stronger than ours. Any mode or 
 measure of excellence but that of power, they under- 
 stand not, as applying to a deity. Neither must our 
 government any longer wink at such monstrous 
 practices as that of children ejecting their dying 
 parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of 
 their own roofs, on the plea that death would pollute 
 their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism 
 make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the 
 professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more 
 than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, 
 was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, 
 obtained secure possession of the entire island, with 
 no reversionary fear over our heads (as, up to Water- 
 loo, we always had), that possibly at a general peace 
 we might find it diplomatically prudent to let it re- 
 turn under Dutch possession, we have no excuse for 
 any longer neglecting the jewel in our power. We 
 (ave up to Holland, through unwise generosity
 
 CEYLON. 471 
 
 already one splendid island, namely, Java. Let one 
 such folly suffice for one century. 
 
 For the same reason namely, the absolute and 
 undivided possession which we now hold of the island 
 it is at length time that our home government 
 should more distinctly invite colonists, and make 
 known the unrivalled capabilities of this region. So 
 vast are our colonial territories, that for every class 
 in our huge framework of society we have separate 
 and characteristic attractions. In some it is chiefly 
 labor that is wanted, capital being in excess. In 
 others these proportions are reversed. In some it is 
 great capitalists that are wanted for the present ; in 
 others, almost exclusively small ones. Now, in 
 Ceylon, either class will be welcome. It ought also 
 to be published everywhere that, immediately after 
 the conquest of Kandy, the government entered 
 upon the Roman career of civilization, and upon that 
 also which may be considered peculiarly British. 
 Military roads were so carried as to pierce and trav- 
 erse all the guilty fastnesses of disease, and of 
 rebellion by means of disease. Bridges, firmly built 
 of satin-wood, were planted over every important 
 stream. The Kirim^ canal was completed in the 
 most eligible situation. The English institution of 
 mail-coaches was perfected in all parts of the island. 
 At this moment there are three separate modes of 
 itinerating through the island, namely, by mail-coach, 
 by buggy, or by palanquin ; to say nothing of the 
 opportunities offered at intervals, along the maritime 
 provinces, for coasting by ships or boats. To the 
 botanist, the mineralogist, the naturalist, the sports- 
 man, Ceylon oifers almost a virgin Eldcrado. To a
 
 472 CEYLON. 
 
 man wishing to combine the lucrative pursuits of the 
 colonist with the elegances of life and with the com 
 forts of compatriot society, not (as in Australia, or 
 in American back settlements) to weather the hard 
 ships of Robinson Crusoe, the invitations from the 
 infinite resources of Ceylon are past all count or 
 estimate. "For my own part," says Mr. Bennett, 
 who is now a party absolutely disinterested, " having 
 visited all but the northern regions of the globe, I 
 have seen nothing to equal this incomparable coun- 
 try." Here a man may purchase land, with secure 
 title and of a good tenure, at five shillings the acre ; 
 this, at least, is the upset price, though in some 
 privileged situations it is known to have reached 
 seventeen shillings. A house may be furnished in 
 the Morotto style, and with luxurious contrivances 
 for moderating the heat in the hotter levels of the 
 island, at fifty pounds sterling. The native furniture 
 is both cheap and excellent in quality ; every way 
 superior, intrinsically, to that which, at five times the 
 cost, is imported from abroad. Labor is pretty uni- 
 formly at the rate of sixpence English for twelve 
 hours. Provisions of every sort and variety are 
 poured out in Ceylon from an American cornucopia 
 of some Saturnian age. Wheat, potatoes, and many 
 esculent plants or fruits, were introduced by the 
 British in the great year (and for this island, in the 
 most literal sense, the era of a new earth and new 
 heavens) the year of Waterloo. From that year 
 dates, for the Ceylonese, the day of equal laws for 
 rich and poor, the day of development out of in- 
 fant and yet unimproved advantages ; finally if we 
 are wise, and they are docile the day of a heavenly
 
 CEYLON 473 
 
 religion displacing the avowed worship of devils, and 
 giving to the people a new nature, a new heart, and 
 hopes as yet not dawning upon their dreams. How 
 often has it been said, by the vile domestic calumni- 
 ators of British policy, by our own anti-national 
 deceivers, that if to-morrow we should leave India 
 no memorial would attest that ever we had been 
 there ! Infamous falsehood ! damnable slander ! 
 Speak, Ceylon, to that. True it is that the best of 
 our gifts, peace, freedom, security, and a new 
 standard of public morality, these blessings are 
 like sleep, like health, like innocence, like the eternal 
 revolutions of day and night, which sink inaudibly 
 into human hearts, leaving behind (as sweet verna* 
 rains) no flaunting records of ostentation and parade ; 
 we are not the nation of triumphal arches and memo 
 rial obelisks ; but the sleep, the health, the inno- 
 cence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce 
 themselves in fruits and products, enduring for gen- 
 erations, and overlooked by the slanderer only be- 
 cause they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraor 
 dinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast 
 simply because our own beneficence has swept away 
 the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished 
 that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can reply victori- 
 ously to such falsehoods. Not yet fifty years have 
 we held this island ; not yet thirty have we had the 
 entire possession of the island ; and (what is more 
 important to a point of this nature) not yet thirty 
 have we had that secure possession which results 
 from the consciousness that our government is not 
 meditating to resign it. Previously to Waterloo, our 
 terure of Ceylon was a provisional tenure. With
 
 474 CEYLON. 
 
 the era of our Kandyan conquest coincides the era 
 of our absolute appropriation, signed and counter- 
 signed forever. The arrangements of that day at 
 Paris, and by a few subsequent congresses of revi- 
 sion, are like the arrangements of Westphalia in 1648 
 valid until Christendom shall be again convulsed 
 to her foundations. From that date is, therefore, 
 justly to be inaugurated our English career of im- 
 provement. Of the roads laid open through the 
 island we have spoken. The attempts at improve- 
 ment of the agriculture and horticulture furnish mat- 
 ter already for a romance, if told of any other than 
 this wonderful labyrinth of climates. The openings 
 for commercial improvement are not less splendid 
 It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese that an island, 
 which might easily support twenty millions of people, 
 has been liable to famine, not unfrequently, with a 
 population of fifteen hundred thousand. This has 
 already ceased to be a possibility ; is ffiat a blessing 
 of British rule ? Not only many new varieties of 
 rice have been introduced, and are now being intro- 
 duced, adapted to opposite extremes of weather and 
 soil, some to the low grounds, warm and abun- 
 dantly irrigated ; some to the dry grounds, demand- 
 ing far less of moisture, but also other and various 
 substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, 
 maize, the potato, the turnip, have all been culti- 
 vated. Mr. Bennett himself would, in ancient Greece, 
 have had many statues raised to his honor for his 
 exemplary bounties of innovation. The food of the 
 people is now secure. And, as regards their clotL 
 ing or their exports, there is absolutely no end tc 
 the new prospects opened before them by the Eng
 
 CEYLON. 475 
 
 lish. Is cotton a British gift ? Is sugar ? Is coffee f 
 We are not the men lazily and avariciously to anchor 
 our hopes on a pearl fishery ; we rouse the natives 
 to cultivate their salt fish and shark fisheries. Tea 
 will soon be cultivated more hopefully than in Assam. 
 Sugar, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, are all cultivated 
 already. Silk-worms and mulberry-trees were tried 
 with success, and opium with virtual success (though 
 in that instance defeated by an accident), under the 
 auspices of Mr. Bennett. Hemp (and surely it is 
 wanted!) will be introduced abundantly; indigo is 
 not only grown in plenty, but it appears that a beau- 
 tiful variety of indigo, a violet-colored indigo, exists 
 as a weed in Ceylon. Finally, in the running over 
 hastily the summa genera of products by which Cey- 
 lon will soon make her name known to the ends of 
 the earth, we may add that salt provisions of every 
 kind, of which hitherto Ceylon did not furnish an 
 ounce, will now be supplied redundantly ; the great 
 mart for this will be in the vast bosom of the Indian 
 ocean ; and at the same time we shall see the scan- 
 dal wiped away, that Ceylon, the head-quarters of 
 the British navy in the East, could not supply a 
 cock-boat in distress with a week's salt provisions, 
 from her own myriads of cattle, zebus, buffaloes, or 
 cows. 
 
 Ceylon has this one disadvantage for purposes of 
 theatrical effect : she is like a star rising heliacally, 
 and hidden in the blaze of the sun. Any island, 
 however magnificent, becomes lost in the blaze of 
 India. But that does not affect the realities of 
 the case. She has that within which passes show. 
 Her one calamity is in the laziness of her native
 
 476 CEYLON. 
 
 population ; though in this respect the Kandyans are 
 a more hopeful race than the Cinghalese. But the 
 evil for both is that they want the motives to exertion. 
 These will be created by a new and higher civiliza- 
 tion. Foreign laborers will also be called for ; a 
 mixed race will succeed in the following generations ; 
 and a mixed breed in man is always an improved 
 breed. Witness everywhere the people of color 
 contrasted with the blacks. Then will come the 
 great race between man indefinitely exalted, and a 
 glorious tropical nature indefinitely developed. Cey- 
 lon will be born again ; in our hands she will first 
 answer to the great summons of nature, and will 
 become, in fact, what, by providential destiny, she 
 is, the queen lotus of the Indian seas, and the Pan- 
 dora of islands.
 
 TORY'S ACCOUNT OF TORYISM, WHIGGISM, 
 AND RADICALISM, 
 
 IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND IN BENGAL. 
 
 NEVER yet did a great country more plainly stand in 
 the circumstances of a crisis vast, rapid, and decisive 
 than the England of 1835. So much is evident to 
 you in India, as to us on the spot. 
 
 " England," you say, in one of your last letters, 
 " stands, or seems to stand, on the threshold of great 
 changes; nay were it not that such a word is full of 
 sorrow, and is, in a Roman sense, abominable of great 
 revolutions." And you ask, " Are the people of Eng- 
 land aware of this ? " Imperfectly, I believe, they 
 are. In a spirit of hope, or of fear, according to their 
 reveral positions, all men are now looking with intense 
 interest upon the great political forces which are gath- 
 ering and getting into motion amongst us ; and with a 
 certain anticipation of some portentous births in which 
 they are to issue. There is no slackness of interest 
 amongst us ; but to some of us it seems that this interest 
 .s not of the right quality, that it is too much an in- 
 teiest of curiosity, and as if attached to mere scenical 
 changes. You remember the case of that Frenchman 
 who, at an early stage of the French Revolution, wished
 
 478 A TOUT'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 earnestly for a prolongation of his life, on no higher in- 
 terest than that of a novel reader, in order, viz., to 
 know "how it would end" The novel had then ad- 
 vanced no farther than the second or third chapter : even 
 the hero was doubtful : or, perhaps, he had not yet been 
 introduced. We who live now are aware that, in fact, 
 he had not. We have read the novel to its denouement; 
 and we know that the true hero of the French Revolu- 
 tion did not, in a proper sense, come forward until the 
 year 1796. We have seen his rising, his culmination, 
 and his setting ; and the singular effect to us, from the 
 utter abolition of the whole system which he created, 
 and the perfect obliteration of its whole personal me- 
 morials, is a sense of unreality, of phantom life, as if 
 all had been no more than a gay pageantry in the 
 clouds. This by the way. But, returning to the 
 Frenchman, his feeling was a natural one yet surely 
 unworthy of a patriotic heart, and below the dignity 
 of the occasion. Ours is somewhat more mixed. We 
 do not all look upon our prospects from this station 
 of neutral curiosity : some of us have an interest of fear 
 the profoundest ; but it is the fear of fascination. The 
 rattlesnake has his eye upon us, and has mastered our 
 volitions. The times to us seem already pregnant with 
 great events, which must, by a natural necessity, travel 
 onward to the birth, whether the throes of labor be 
 severe or light, and spite of all that we can offer of hin- 
 drances from without. Hence it is that we are all pas- 
 sive and acquiescent, not in a spirit of sympathy or 
 toleration ; but of utter despondency and of hopeless 
 abhorrence. There is but one powerful will amongst us 
 one indomitable will Mr. O'Connell, only, represents the
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 479 
 
 absolute and the unconditional ; all others are tempo- 
 rizers, waiters upon occasion and opportunity, compro 
 misers, oscillators. And, according to all human appear- 
 ances, this one quality of demoniac energy, and a Titan 
 strength of purpose, imperturbable and remorseless, will 
 prevail, will triumph finally over all opposition from 
 mere talents, though they should be a thousand times 
 superior; and over all interests, the plainest and the 
 largest, that are not equally cemented into unity. In 
 saying this, I judge upon a large basis of observation ; 
 and, more especially, I think myself entitled to draw an 
 indication of the future from the sort of support lately 
 given to Sir Robert Peel. Do I subscribe, then, to the 
 partisan statements, that the addresses to that min- 
 ister were hole-and-corner addresses ? Far from it. 
 Seven or eight hundred addresses, bearing on an aver- 
 age twelve hundred signatures (which I have reason to 
 think a moderate assumption), will represent the feel- 
 ings of nearly a million male adults, or perhaps of eight 
 hundred thousand families ; deducting, therefore, four 
 millions of the British population from the opponents 
 of Sir Robert Peel's policy, whilst, on the scale of re- 
 spectability, whether tried by property or education, 
 these four millions may stand over against all the rest 
 of the nation, as an adequate and countervailing bal- 
 ance. But be that as it may, whether less or more 
 numerically, whether less or more in significance and 
 value, the support was not what it should have been. 
 The earthly is ill-matched against the demoniac; 
 neither can the blows of fanaticism be parried by weap- 
 ons tempered in the armories of fear or of prudential 
 tantion. Therefore if the past were at all to be re-
 
 480 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 lied upon as representative of the future therefore, 3 
 Bhould say, Despair ! to all who partake my views. 
 Hope there is none under such tactics, opposed to such 
 an enemy. 
 
 But I come now to the business of my letter. Yo 11 
 demand of me that I shouli give an account of m^ 
 creed and profession as a Tory ; that I should explain, 
 as fully as possible, what is Toryism ; what it has been 
 generally understood to mean in past times, and what 
 it means now ; what are its relations to Whiggism ; 
 what are their joint relations to the creed of Radical- 
 ism ; and what are the several powers, pretensions, and 
 prospects of all three, as governing principles of action 
 amongst the people of England, and in the national 
 councils. 
 
 The questions you have here proposed teem with 
 confusions ; many more have been artificially nursed or 
 propagated by the press. On that subject, one word 
 beforehand. 
 
 The newspapers, and other political journals of this 
 country, are conducted with extraordinary talent, 
 with more, in fact, than was ever before applied in any 
 nation to the same function of public teaching. In- 
 deed, without talent of a high order, and without a va- 
 riety of talent, it would be a mere impossibility that 
 an English journal should sustain its existence. Per- 
 haps it would be impossible to show any exception to 
 the rule ; unless in the rare case where a provincial 
 newspaper has inherited, from a past generation, a 
 =ort of monopoly, or privilege of precedency, as a de- 
 positary of advertisements. Advertisers go where they 
 have been used to go, on a certain knowledge tha
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 481 
 
 readers interested in advertisements will, by a recip* 
 rocal necessity, go where advertisements are most sure 
 to be found ; and therefore, a monopoly of this nature 
 is most secure where it is most intense. But, allow- 
 ing for this single exception, the political press of Eng- 
 land has so much more than its fair proportion of nat- 
 ural talent that, for thirty years and upwards, it has 
 even acted injuriously upon the literature of the coun- 
 try, by impressing too exclusive direction upon the 
 marketable talent of the young and the aspiring 
 Other modes of intellectual exercise have been starved 
 or impoverished, that this might flourish exorbitantly ; 
 and the result is, that never amongst men has there 
 been an exhibition of so much energy, vigilance, sa- 
 gacity, perseverance, as we of this day behold in our po- 
 litical press. This is our Briareus, this is our sole 
 Briareus. But their qualities of honor and good feel- 
 ing do not keep pace with their ability. An American 
 spirit of violence and brutality is gaining ground in 
 our public press ; and that is a spirit which soon dif- 
 fuses itself. Even in private disputes, where one party 
 is violent, personal, overbearing, rapid, and visibly on 
 the fret to interrupt at every moment, the wisest and 
 the coolest feel it difficult to resist the contagion of the 
 case. My party, therefore, if it does not already, very 
 soon will adopt the tone of its antagonists. At present 
 it seems to me that the violence which I complain of, 
 the rancorous hatred, and the utter abolition of can- 
 dor, are chiefly conspicuous amongst our opponents ; 
 and not without adequate motives. The Tories are 
 exposed to the combined attacks uf Whigs and Rad 
 leak ; whereas either of these parties has but a single 
 
 3J
 
 482 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 enemy to face. Moreover, the Tories are the sole ob- 
 stacle in the path of the Radicals. The Whigs are the 
 objects of their contempt ; the Whigs are in their grasp 
 that party cannot move a step, neither win nor retain 
 office, nor carry any one great public measure, with- 
 out the support of the Radicals, or, in. many cases 
 without the forbearance of the Tories. This is known 
 on both sides : the tone of mortification and internal 
 despondency is visible in every act of the Whigs, the 
 drooping tone of men trading confessedly upon other 
 people's funds and other people's credit: whilst the 
 Radicals wear the erect and cheerful air of men confi- 
 dent in their own resources ; borrowing nothing, ow- 
 ing nothing ; having no exposures to fear, no ultimate 
 defeats to face ; the sole question for them being, as to 
 the particular point at which their victories will stop. 
 Meantime, the Whigs wreak their embittered feelings 
 upon us. For it cannot be denied that the Tories 
 were they, who, by excluding the Whigs from office for 
 half a century, drove them into the necessity of an alli- 
 ance with the Radicals. The price paid down was the 
 Reform Bill ; and there the Whigs hoped to have 
 stopped. But the Radicals have made them sensible 
 that this is no more than a means ; and, as a means, 
 even not yet effectual without further amendments and 
 collateral aids. These, and the whole train of ends to 
 which the improved means will be applied, now open 
 upon the gaze of the Whig party like the never-ending 
 .ine of Banquo. Their cooperation will be exacted in 
 the warfare at hand, upon these great questions, down 
 to the final battle. The Radicals know their allies 
 inspect them they do not ; for the treachery, which
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. '183 
 
 in their hearts, has been put on record by many overt 
 acts in and out of Parliament, and is, besides, involved 
 in their very circumstances as a part of the aristocracy. 
 But, if they venture to act upon their secret wishes, to 
 falter, or hang back, then the Radicals know their 
 power, and the instaritaueousness of that absolute redress 
 which they can apply. This existence for a party so 
 properly precarious, hanging upon entreaty and suffer- 
 ance, is humiliating. It is natural that this humiliation 
 should revenge itself upon those who were indirectly 
 the authors of it. As against the Whigs, thereA>re, I 
 see no reason that the Tories should much complain of 
 the scurrilities pointed at their name and party. But 
 in the Radicals this Jx>ne has surprised me. Take, for 
 instance, " The Examiner " newspaper. Two things I 
 used to admire in that journal, its extraordinary tal- 
 ent, and its integrity. This latter quality I am now 
 compelled to doubt, or, at least, I see that it is capa- 
 ble of descending to political tricks, and to what is com- 
 monly felt to be a mode of intriguing, when I find 
 him affecting a confidence in Whigs, and an exultation 
 in their restoration to power, which his whole public 
 existence proves that he cannot really entertain. It 
 is convenient to dissemble at this moment; and he does 
 so. But, formerly, I gave himself and his party credit 
 for as little choosing as, in fact, they needed to dissemble. 
 To him, I know that the difference between Whigs and 
 Tories is as the difference between aristocratic anti-re- 
 formers, who disguise their principles, and who do not 
 disguise them. And, besides this general charge against 
 44 The Examiner," as irreconcilable with that high- 
 minded candor and frankness which conscious stiengtb
 
 *84 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 enables his party to maintain, I complain of two other 
 offences against that spirit of honor which he might 
 profess : 1st, The adoption of that practice so common 
 and excusable in lower journals, of ascribing to the 
 Tory party, as principles, many rules of action which 
 they would themselves universally disavow; 2d, The 
 habit of stating great public questions as lying between 
 a party and the nation, when it is notorious that they 
 lie between the nation and itself, as divided upon differ- 
 ent principles, and in proportions which no man of sense 
 would undertake to compute. 
 
 Now, addressing myself to this large question you 
 have proposed, of Toryism, its nature and grounds, its 
 several aspects, and its future fortunes, according to all 
 present and apparent probabilities, I shall begin by 
 affirming that Toryism, in its widest sense, stands in 
 three capital relations, perfectly distinct and independ- 
 ent : one permanent, which dates from its orgin, and 
 is coessential with itself; one accidental, dating from 
 the French Revolution ; and one of recent birth, not 
 accidental, but derivative, and arising in the way of in- 
 ference from its own distinguishing principles. The 
 first relation is that which Toryism bears to the British 
 constitution, and which is otherwise expressed by its 
 relation to Whiggism considered as a body of political 
 principles. The second is that which Toryism bears to 
 Whiggism, as a mode of partisanship or party policy, 
 the modern aspects of which point chiefly to the French 
 Revolution, and to the great foreign questions arising 
 out of that event. The third relation of Toryism is that 
 which it bears to the new doctrines of Radical Reform- 
 ers, or of that section amongst political men denomi-
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 485 
 
 Dated the Movement party ; and this relation is in no 
 respect capricious, or matter of accident, inasmuch as 
 it grows inevitably, and by way of logical deduction, 
 from the differential principles of its own peculiar 
 creed. 
 
 Great confusion, the very greatest, has arisen from 
 eglecting to draw the line sharply between these sev- 
 eral aspects of Toryism ; and, were it only for the sake 
 of accurate thinking, I might be excused for dwelling a 
 little on these primary distinctions, and pointing your 
 attention to the consequences which attend them in our 
 practical judgments, whether upon things or persons. 
 But, for the particular task which I have undertaken, 
 the task of unfolding, and also of valuing, the true 
 meaning and tendencies of Toryism, this preliminary 
 attempt to clear the ground is a conditio sine qua non 
 towards any possible success. Many things are true 
 of Toryism or have a meaning, at least, when said of 
 Toryism in one phasis, which are false or inconsistent, 
 or without a plausible sense, when said of it in another. 
 Political rancor, indeed, and the blindness of partisan- 
 ship in moments of strong excitement, are daily betray- 
 ing men into a use of the term Tory, which defeats itself 
 by the very enormity of its latitude. Nothing in human 
 thought or action that happens to be odious to the writer 
 of the moment, but is described as being traditionally 
 " Tory," " Tory " by its essence, " Tory " by ten- 
 dency or by prescription. And this license of use, 
 which at length leaves the word without any distinct 
 meaning at all, is carried into such ludicrous extremi- 
 ries, that I have lately read in a London newspaper some 
 Uleged preoccupation of horses and carriages by the
 
 486 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 party opposed to Lord John Russell in South Devon 
 (baseless in all probability even as a fact), described as 
 M an old Tory trick." The ingenious writer, it is very 
 possible, looks upon ale and brandy, together with the 
 suspicious art of drinking, as originally among the de- 
 vices of Tory corruption. But graver abuses are prac- 
 tised upon this party term, and by more thoughtful writ- 
 ers. And the same sort of abuses, though not perhaps to 
 the same extent, is practised upon the correlatives, Whig 
 and Radical: all which abuses are chiefly facilitated 
 by the shifting relations in which they stand ; and best 
 evaded by a chronological deduction of the words Whig 
 and Tory from their earliest origin. Tt has been re- 
 marked, by a profound scholar, that the investigation 
 of religious controversies is best pursued through a reg- 
 ular study of ecclesiastical history ; and the same thing 
 holds good of this political investigation. Its clearest 
 historical deduction is the best logical account of its true 
 genesis and its philosophic interpretation. 
 
 The British constitution, which had been unfolding 
 and maturing itself for centuries, obtained its final ex- 
 pansion and its settlement in the seventeenth century. 
 People are apt to forget that a constitution by which 
 I mean the equilibrium of forces in a political system, 
 as recognized and fixed by distinct public acts cannot 
 Advance faster than civilization : each is bound to the 
 motions of the other; for the political forces cannot be 
 adjusted to each other until those forces are finally de- 
 veloped. Now, what great change was silently going 
 on in this country throughout the Tudor reigns ? What 
 civil forces were then gradually evolving ? These in 
 particular : a new distribution of landed wealth, and a
 
 TORYISM, WIIIGGISM, AXD RADICALISM. 487 
 
 gentry. Upon the basis of two great changes 1st, 
 The breaking down of the feudal aristocracy by Henry 
 VII. ; 2d, The breaking down of the church aristocracy 
 by his son that mighty revolution 77 was effected for 
 England in particular, which Harrington has pro- 
 pounded in his " Oceana " as universally the determin- 
 ing ground of power. Civil power and its equilibrium, 
 eays Harrington, is determined solely by the distribu- 
 tion of the lauded balance ; where that is placed, there 
 is placed the power. Gradually, therefore, the power, 
 because gradually the land, had been slipping down 
 from the hands of the high nobility and the church, 
 where originally it was concentrated, into those of a new 
 order, having new political relations, viz., a gentry. 
 This class was chiefly a growth of the Tudor days : in 
 deed, for three parts in four, of Queen Elizabeth's days. 
 Strange it is to contemplate the gentry of her reign 
 as represented by its elite in the House of Commons. 
 The honest burgesses of that House still entitled to 
 wages, and timid, even to servility, in the presence of 
 the Upper House before the throne, crouched with 
 almost Oriental prostration. The Queen rated them as 
 she would have done her menial servants. Every at- 
 tempt at dealing with the foreign policy of the Govern- 
 ment was harshly stifled as an intrusion into privileged 
 mysteries ; and, strangely enough, the House was re- 
 pelled from such liberties, not as beyond their juris- 
 diction merely, but as beyond their intellectual faculties. 
 Barely indeed, did the House, in its collective capacity, 
 venture to raise its eyes beyond the latchet of the 
 Queen's slipper, except only in the two cases of religion 
 r of money. These were transcendant cases ; for the
 
 488 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 direct service of God, or the immediate money interests 
 of the whole nation, seemed to raise a case of duty on a 
 level with that which they owed to the crown. But no 
 indirect interest, either of the altar or the hearth, was 
 held to constitute a privileged or even excusable case 
 for remonstrance. Such was the abject condition of 
 the Commons' House through the long reign of the last 
 Tudor. The gentry were then in the process of growth ; 
 but, as yet, their strength was neither matured nor con- 
 sciously made known. Now, leap over the entire reign 
 of her successor, the first Stuart, during which things 
 were in struggle ; and pass, by a rapid transition, to the 
 Parliaments convoked about the middle of the first 
 Charles' reign. The effect is like that of a pantomime. 
 From a House of Commons as homely and as humble 
 as a Storthing of Norway, composed of farmers, village 
 leaders of vestries, and illiterate attorneys, or procura- 
 tors for the narrowest local interests, time and political 
 growth have brought us to a brilliant and enlightened 
 assembly, renewing the image of a Roman senate, and 
 claiming a jurisdiction coextensive with the affairs of 
 Christendom. What was it that had worked the change ? 
 The growth of a new order. A gentry had been grad- 
 ually reared. Taking advantage of the opportunities 
 which had first arisen in the jealousy directed to the 
 great baronial land-holders by Henry VII., which had 
 since been favored by the spirit of the law courts, and 
 by tke legal fictions in subversion of entails, and which 
 bad subsequently been greatly promoted by the distri- 
 bution of the church lands a new class had silently 
 developed itself in the course of about one century 
 Mid the great political value of that revolution lay it
 
 1ORYISM, WHN3GI8M, AND RADICALISM. 489 
 
 this, that the new class was essentially a middle class, 
 having relations downwards as well as upwards, and 
 common interest connecting them with the order below 
 them as well as that above them. Hitherto the only 
 phantom of a middle class had been confined to towns; 
 and it was a class most imperfectly adapted to the func- 
 tions of a middle order, being in violent repulsion to 
 the landed interest, and narrow in its powers. But this 
 new order of landed gentry was diffused over the face 
 of the country ; and, for the first time, effected a real 
 cohesion between all the forces of the state, by filling 
 up the gulf which had divided hitherto the aristocracy 
 from the commonalty, and the interests of real from 
 those of movable property. 
 
 Such was the great, though silent revolution which 
 had been travelling forwards through the sixteenth cen- 
 tury ; and which, in the early part of the seventeenth 
 (from 1625 to 1640), might be said to have reached its 
 consummation. And this revolution it was which pro 
 duced (as I will for ever affirm) the great civil war, prop- 
 erly called the Parliamentary war. A new and most 
 powerful order in the land instinctively called for new 
 powers, and for a new position amongst the ruling forces 
 of the State. The House of Commons was then ripe 
 for assuming that place as a legislative body, and also 
 as , controlling body over the acts of the executive, 
 vhich it possesses at this day. But Charles and his 
 counsellors imperfectly aware of the great revolution 
 effected in the equilibrium of the political forces, simply 
 because it had been effected gradually and not violently, 
 and reading history in a superstition? spirit insisted 
 upon adhering to the old usages of his predecessors.
 
 i9C A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 when many capital resemblances of the cases had van- 
 lished. except for the external forms. Charles was con- 
 scientious in his obstinacy, for he did no more than tread 
 in the very footsteps of the most popular and glorious 
 amongst his immediate predecessors, and, where all the 
 names continued the same, it was hard to perceive that 
 the things had essentially altered. It is also to be added 
 that, even if Charles had been persuaded into con- 
 ceding to the House of Commons those extended powers 
 which they claimed, this concession would not have 
 reached the necessity of the case ; for his policy was 
 to adjourn the Parliament after the shortest possible 
 session, so that no improved powers would have been 
 available without a violent invasion of the royal prerog- 
 ative. And, in fact, we know that this violence was 
 one of the earliest acts of the great Parliament which 
 met in November, 1 640. They were obliged to exact 
 of the king a promise that he would not dissolve them. 
 A twofold defect oppressed the House defect of power 
 arid defect of duration. 
 
 From this review of the political changes between 
 Henry VII. and the Parliamentary war, a theory arises 
 with respect to that great event different from any which 
 has been adopted hitherto. Hume, and all other 
 writers, have argued the case as though one of the two 
 parties were necessarily in the wrong ; and in the 
 wrong upon the whole question at issue. They say, 
 therefore, continually, " This is unlawful ;" and, " That 
 was unconstitutional." But, in fact, neither party was 
 in the wrong, essentially. The forms of the constitu- 
 tion, so far as any constitution had then been developed, 
 were generally with the King ; and as to the spirit ol
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGI8M, AND RADICALISM. 491 
 
 the constitution, a difficult point to ascertain at any 
 time, it would be too much to expect that it sho aid be 
 philosophically abstracted, and valued, and applied, be- 
 tween two interested and impassioned disputants. But 
 I affirm that, in fact, the constitution did not as yet 
 exist as a whole. It existed by parts, and in tendencies 
 then bursting into life ; it was, and had been for a cen- 
 tury back, in progress in a progress continually ac- 
 celerated ; but it was not until the latter half of the 
 seventeenth century that it was matured. 
 
 In reality, it is manifest, that, until all the parts of 
 a machine exist, the law or principle of that machine 
 cannot be stated. And, whilst as yet the different orders 
 of English society were not perfectly developed, it 
 must be impossible to talk of a constitution which ex- 
 presses their mutual relations. Now, I have been in- 
 sisting that the English gentry, the order which fur- 
 nishes its materiel to the House of Commons, did not 
 complete its development until the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century ; and that, even after this event 
 might be viewed as accomplished, it had yet to get it- 
 self recognized for what it was in the State. The 
 House of Commons, which was its sole organ, was a 
 most inadequate organ,- suited to the old functions of 
 that body which filled it, but not to the functions of a 
 regenerated order, which had gradually moulded itself 
 out of the ruins projected from the explosion of two 
 great territorial bodies. The new creation could not 
 incarnate itself (so to speak) in the old and imperfect 
 organization. This seemed to be rebellion and wilful 
 revolution ; whilst, in fact, k was the mere instincts of 
 growth. No provision had been made [how should it,
 
 192 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 unless prophetically ?] for the due action of the new 
 order, by the existing constitution ; because the consti- 
 tution itself was a growing thing, and waiting for its ex- 
 pansion ; whereas, Charles viewed it as a perfect whole, 
 long since matured. Hence arose a war ; and almost, 
 for wise men, we might say, a necessity for a war. 
 
 Out of that war arose two great results. And it is 
 the more necessary to direct the attention to them, be- 
 cause a common notion has prevailed that the whole 
 acts of the Long Parliament, and all that was gained 
 by the Parliamentary War, were cancelled and annulled 
 by certain illegal acts into which some part of the Par- 
 liament was afterwards betrayed, and also by the defect 
 of some constitutional forms. This defect could not 
 but exist in a struggle between the different powers in 
 the state ; and it has been too pedantically urged by 
 Hume, and short-sightedly, for it existed on both sides. 
 I say, then, that two great results were obtained by 
 that war, and never again lost. The House of Com- 
 mons assumed, in Charles the Second's reign, that 
 place for which it fought : even in that reign, and un- 
 der the reaction of a senseless enthusiasm for the King's 
 person, the House assumed, and steadily maintained, 
 that place of authority and influence which had been 
 refused by Charles I. Nor has it ever lost the ground 
 then won. It has continued to have regular sessions, 
 and to be the great court for transacting the national 
 business, a function which Charles I. would have se- 
 questered almost entirely into the hands of a Privy 
 Council, or other parts of the executive government 
 This is one great result : the place and functions of the 
 Commons' House have been ascertained, and accord
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. i93 
 
 ing to their own claim and not the constitution, as a 
 previous existence, was suffered to prescribe its place 
 and functions to the Commons' House ; but, on the 
 contrary, the struggle of the Commons has prescribed 
 its outline to the constitution. The other great result 
 was, that the King's place in the constitution has been 
 equally ascertained. Charles the First, it is well known, 
 would not hear of a responsibility attached to the ex- 
 ecutive, no matter where it might be lodged. He per- 
 emptorily forbade his ministers to render any account 
 of their actions, except privately to himself least of 
 all, to Parliament. And, of course, he did not mean 
 by that act to acknowledge any personal responsibility 
 That he viewed as the last consummation of insolent 
 treason. Neither must you say that this was the idea 
 of a despot ; for even the patriots of those days had 
 very unsteady notions on the extent and true locus of 
 the executive responsibility. In particular, the excel 
 lent and truly noble-minded wife of Colonel Hutchinson 
 complains of it as a mere courtly adulation, that peo- 
 ple said " the King could do no wrong." But her de- 
 scendant and editor reproves her for this, justly ob- 
 serving, that we are deeply indebted to those who first 
 raised up that refined doctrine ; which is, in fact, put 
 another form for saying, that we cannot accept of a 
 responsibility lodged in a quarter where delicacy and 
 reverence might often seduce us from enforcing it ; but 
 that we must have a real, obvious, available responsi- 
 bility, liable to no scruples in its exercises, and there- 
 fore lodged in a subject. Hence it followed also that 
 the King cannot act by himself that he must act by 
 ministerial agents, a doctrine which, by itself alone*
 
 U4 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OP 
 
 has since that day saved the nation, at rnauv a crisis, 
 from civil tumults the most ruinous. 
 
 Here, then, are two great features of the British con- 
 stitution which could not have pronounced themselves 
 before the seventeenth century. A Commons' House, 
 in adequation to a lauded body (not noble, i. ., not hav- 
 ing an organ in the Upper house), could not be con- 
 stitutionally defined until the landed body itself had 
 arisen. Neither could the sanctity and inviolability of 
 the sovereign be safely recognized, until other princi- 
 ples of ministerial responsibility had been established, 
 which never would have been established unless through 
 the struggles of the Commons. In fact, the King, in 
 our constitution, is a great idea and a somewhat 
 mysterious idea ; and, universally, it is true, that, where 
 two ideas are correlates and antagonist forces, they 
 explain themselves and define themselves at the same 
 time ; for the one is a rebound from the other. 
 
 Hence, I arrive at one object of this historical de- 
 duction, viz., that the distinction of Whig and Tory, 
 or any distinction which could be fitted for us of this 
 day, in our advanced state of political refinement, could 
 not have arisen sooner than the seventeenth century. 
 It was in reference to the great movements which I have 
 been tracing movements which smouldered through 
 the sixteenth century, but did not break into flame until 
 the seventeenth that these party distinctions first 
 arose. They refer to everything most essential in the 
 changes and the settlements that I have been unfold- 
 ing. There was a prodigious ferment in the first half 
 of the seventeenth century; in the earlier bisection 
 f the second half, there was a general settling ordepo-
 
 TORYISM, WH1GGISM, AND RADICALISM. 495 
 
 eition from this ferment. And, as we see now, with 
 respect to the Bonaparte system, that things remain, 
 whilst persons have vanished ; the destruction of the 
 German Empire is ratified, the Legion of Honor still 
 survives, whilst the fleeting agents are almost forgot- 
 ten ; so, of the English political settlements, we may 
 affirm, that, generally, they are to be traced up to 
 struggles which the generations who have benefited by 
 them would willingly disown. It is true, nevertheless 
 and in despite of all disowners and protesters 
 that the English Revolution of 1 688-9 did little more 
 than reaffirm, with greater precision, the principles la- 
 tent in the Parliamentary war. And to those princi- 
 ples it is, that the distinctions of Whig and Tory have 
 reference. Indeed, here again is a proof that the Rev- 
 olution of 1688-9 was only a reaffirmation of princi- 
 ples previously put into action ; that the terms Whig 
 and Tory arose before that Revolution, and yet were 
 found so sufficient that they continued to be the sole 
 terms in use after the Revolution. 
 
 What, then, was the original application of these 
 terms? Let us first inquire into the mere verbal mean- 
 ing. You are aware that, very often indeed, denomi- 
 nations are not derived from essential differences, but 
 from accidents. Thus, the Roundheads were so named, 
 not from their distinguishing principles, but from the ex- 
 ternal accident of wearing the haircut close ; that fash- 
 ion distinguished them at first sight from the Cavaliers, 
 who wore the hair long. The Jacobins, again, of our 
 days, derived their name from their place of rendezvous. 
 Now, with respect to Whiq and Tory, it might be ex- 
 pected that two hostile names, pointing to each other,
 
 406 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 should have arisen at the same moment, and also under 
 the same common aspect; that is, that some common 
 idea should have been chosen, from which each name 
 should have been struck off under an opposite relation. 
 But the true history of the case was different: each 
 name arose separately for itself, and possibly in a differ- 
 ent place. The word Tory, had, from the first, a politi- 
 cal application. Originally, it designated a particular 
 class of Irish freebooters, and was probably first used 
 in Ireland to express, in a calumnious form, that class 
 of politicians who attributed to the King a right of levy- 
 ing taxes, without consent of the subject appearing by 
 his proxy in Parliament. Whig, on the other hand, 
 was doubtless first used in Scotland, and applied to the 
 supposed sourness and ascetic temper of the religious 
 dissenters. To whiff, in the northern counties of Eng- 
 land as well as in Scotland, means to turn a thing acid ; 
 thus, if you pour milk upon rum, and do it so slowly or 
 so unskilfully as to coagulate the mixture, you are said 
 " to whig it." And, by the way, I must here observe, 
 that a derivation given by Sir Walter Scott (" Military 
 Memoirs of the Great Civil War," p. 90, published in 
 1822) from the word, " Whig, to make haste," is mere 
 nonsense. Nonconformists and Puritans of every class 
 were taxed with scowling on the common social enjoy- 
 ments of the world : that was expressed by calling them 
 the sours, or Whigs, as it were, in the cup of life. It is 
 well known, that most of our civil rights were contended 
 for in the seventeenth century, under the mask or 
 under the advantage of religious claims : the Dissenters 
 of every class were connected uniformly with the oppo- 
 nents of the existing Government ; and by this name
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 497 
 
 expressive of a churlish, unsocial temperament, it seems 
 that they were disparaged. The Duke of Lauderdale, 
 it is probable, transferred the word from Scotland about 
 1 670-1 675. It there met with the word Tory, previ- 
 ously transferred from Ireland ; and both were grad- 
 ually extended and amplified into larger applications ; 
 and now, having once come into collision, began recip- 
 rocally to receive determinations from each other. 
 
 This is my account of the early history of the words 
 before they had been moulded, by repeated use and re- 
 verberation from each other, into direct antagonist terms. 
 Such at length they became ; and so much modified they 
 were by long usage, that at last they settled into a 
 direct philosophic contraposition, agreeably to their 
 constant acceptation ever since. 
 
 This acceptation it is that I am now to explain ; and 
 I request your attention to it, as a matter curious in 
 itself, and as one doubly curious, from the perpetual 
 blunder which has been made in all attempts at unfold- 
 ing its latent meaning and relations. Let me sharpen 
 your attention by saying, that even Edmund Burke, 
 subtle politician as he is, fell into the common error on 
 this point A word will explain the case, and rectify 
 all its positions. If I say of two parties, that they were 
 Trinitarians and Anti-Trinitarians, you understand at 
 once that both could not be right : one party must be 
 in the wrong. But, with respect to Whig and Tory. 
 .his does not hold. There is no necessity that either 
 should be in error. On the contrary, there is a high 
 necessity that both should be in the right. For it is 
 not as in a dispute between two contradictory views, 
 where both cannot coexist, and where either, taken 
 32
 
 498 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OP 
 
 singly, presents a complete and adequate theory of the 
 subject : here the two ideas are so far from excluding 
 each other, that both are coessential to the entire con- 
 struction of the principle. The meaning of Whig and 
 Tory was finally settled, practically, in the long debates 
 at the Revolution of 1688-9 ; and, abstracting from the 
 use then and there made of the terms, I am entitled to 
 say, that a Whig is he who, in the practical administra- 
 tion of affairs, takes charge of the popular influence, 
 guides it, and supports it ; a Tory, on the contrary, is 
 he who takes charge of the antagonist or non-popular 
 influence, guides it, and supports it. There are two 
 great forces at work in the British constitution ; and 
 the constitution is sustained in its integrity by their 
 equilibrium jnst as the compound power which main- 
 tains a planet in its orbit, is made up of the centripetal 
 force balancing the centrifugal ; and as reasonable 
 would it be to insist on the superior efficacy of the cen- 
 tripetal force to the centrifugal, or vice versa, as to as- 
 cribe any superiority to the Whig or the Tory, consid- 
 ered in their abstract relation to the constitution, or to 
 charge any demerit upon either. Essentially, they rep- 
 resent the total sphere of the constitution, each repre- 
 senting one hemisphere. And, in this view, neither is 
 wrong, nor can be wrong : both are right. And so far 
 from being hostile to each other, each is right, only by 
 means of and through his antagonist: for, if the Tory 
 were not, then the Whig would be in the wrong ; and 
 BO of the Tory, in the absence of the Whig. Taken 
 jointly, they make up the total truth. In this relation, 
 therefore, which is the only permanent relation of Whig 
 nd Tory, it is evident that mere misunderstanding o>
 
 TORYISM, AV1IIGG1SM, AND RADICALISM. 
 
 49$ 
 
 the case has ever countenanced the attacks on either 
 side ; and Sir F. Burdett's declaration, that a Tory 
 would soon be as scarce as a phoenix, is answered at 
 once, by saying that, change the name as much as you 
 please, both Tories and Whigs must coexist with the 
 British constitution. Whilst that lasts, these parties 
 must last, because they are the mere abstractions, or 
 representative names, of the two antagonist forces, bal- 
 anced against each other in that political scheme. 
 
 Let us next say a word or two upon the second rela- 
 tion of Tories, that relation which they have occupied, 
 and do now occupy, to the Whigs, as a political body of 
 partisans ; not as they are concerned with the British 
 constitution, or as representing any interest of that con- 
 stitution, but as they are concerned with the conduct of 
 public affairs ; with peace, with war, with alliances, with 
 commerce, with taxes, with public debts, with police, 
 and the other great chapters of national economy. 
 
 To this point the relation of Whigs and Tories, not 
 to the constitution, or to any principles bearing on the 
 constitution or arising out of it, but simply to the cur- 
 rent business of the nation I must exact a severe 
 attention ; for there is really no end of argument, no 
 purpose to be answered higher than that of two brawl- 
 .ng housewives, if the monstrous confusion is to be tol- 
 e.-ated, of urging, as against the creed of Whig and 
 Tory, objections which apply only to their partisan pol- 
 icy, their tactics of defence or offence, and their conduct 
 in reference to Continental wars. Many a man means, 
 by a Tory, him who supported Mr Pitt in his anti- 
 Gallican wars. Those wars, it happened that the Tories 
 supported, and the Whigs opposed. What then? The
 
 500 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 Tories did not support them as Tories, nor the Whigs 
 oppose them as Whigs. In neither instance did tho 
 party policy flow out of their distinguishing creeds, nor 
 had that policy any relation to those creeds. It is of 
 no importance, therefore, towards the valuation of Tory 
 and Whig principles, that the wars of the Revolution 
 should be justified, as we Tories justify them, or should 
 be denounced, as the Whigs have always denounced 
 them. It is no reflection upon a Tory, as a Tory, 
 whether he were wrong for twenty-five years in this 
 anti-Gallican policy utterly and ruinously wrong 
 or, in the most exemplary sense, right. Wrong or 
 right, that foreign policy leaves the question still entire 
 and untouched, which respects the appraisement of Tory 
 principles ; for those principles were not concerned 
 no, not by the finest constructive casuistry, nor by the 
 subtlest implication in any one chapter or article of 
 that policy. The severest Whig purist might, for any- 
 thing to the contrary in his Whig creed, have coalesced, 
 to this extent, with the Tory. That he did not coalesce, 
 but placed himself in an attitude of fierce hostility, did 
 not arise out of Whiggism not at a 1 ! but out of his 
 party position, in the first place ; the tact that his party 
 were out of office, and thus under the usual obligation 
 of partisanship to say No, when the King's minister 
 *aid Tes ; out of this, in the first place, and, secondly, 
 out of a weaker sensibility to the dangers of an alliance 
 with Jacobinism, to the contagion of its passions, or to 
 the efficacy of its example. The facts I believe to have 
 rit.ood thus : Mr. Pitt, it is now known, upon many argu- 
 ments and indications, some derived from private tes- 
 timony, but many of a public nature, and recorded ii
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 501 
 
 our annals, both diplomatic and parliamentary, was 
 pacifically disposed towards France, and upon very 
 strong considerations, during the period from 1788 t<_ 
 the summer of 1792. Whatever may have been his 
 unfriendliness to the first aspects of the Revolution and 
 to its democratic tendencies, it is certain that this feeling 
 would not have been allowed any practical weight in his 
 plans, as being more than compensated, and the bal- 
 ance, as respected the question of war, more than re- 
 stored, by his general reasons for maintaining a friendly 
 intercourse with France. His reasons, I say, were gen- 
 eral ; but amongst them were some of a special nature, 
 financial as well as commercial, which, at all times, per- 
 haps, had more than their due weight in his mind. I 
 do not admit, as a notion in any degree true, with re- 
 gard to him, still less with regard to the Tories in gen- 
 eral, that any displeasure, or reserve even, had arisen 
 towards the French Revolution in its earlier stage, 
 either as arguing for its cause, or as promising for its 
 effect, a large infusion of democracy into the future 
 government of France. I deny that this great event 
 was frowned upon, or could have been frowned upon, 
 by any English Tory, in so far as it taught the French 
 nation to look for a new birth of their civil polity, and 
 for happier days ; in so far as it bade the people, the 
 un titled and unprivileged people, to assume their true 
 piace in the State, the place assigned to them in an- 
 oient days, and even yet recorded in many old tradi- 
 tional forms (see Hotomann, Boulainvilliers, and scores 
 beside), and in various institutions not yet antiquated 
 in 1788. I deny that the Revolution was unpopular 
 with the Tories, in so far as it claimed for the people
 
 502 
 
 A TORY 3 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 II strong hand in making their own laws ; and in so far 
 as it opened the path for a purification of the executive 
 government, with its old prescriptive abuses ; for a bet- 
 ter and more open administration of judicial justice ; 
 and, above all, for the instant abolition of the French 
 fiscal system, with its vast train of ruinous frauds on 
 the one hand, and of odious immunities on the other. 
 In so far as the French Revolution did, or promised to 
 do, any of these things, it neither was, nor to a con- 
 sistent Tory could have been, other than a favored 
 object, and welcomed as a birth of our own example. 
 Not for these things, any or all, were the worst among 
 the French democrats, or the most violent explosions 
 of democracy, objects to us of jealousy or fear. And 
 therefore it was, that, even up to the summer of 1792, 
 Mr. Pitt continued to think of war with France as 
 utterly impolitic, as an event that ought to be 
 averted, and that yet could be averted. In that sum- 
 mer even, nay, I believe, even after the fatal 10th of 
 August, when the regathering of old constitutional 
 elements was finally abandoned, as it were by national 
 proclamation, Mr. Pitt still continued to answer 
 most gloomily and doubtfully to all warlike overtures 
 from the Continent, and, in particular, to a private 
 question from the Court of Versailles, Whether it were 
 his purpose to abandon the French monarchy, and to 
 look on as a passive or acquiescing spectator, whilst the 
 ruin was consummated which had already travelled so 
 far? This question was renewed, and even more pri- 
 vately and earnestly, from the Queen of France, as a 
 person more alive, by the activity of her understand- 
 ing, to the perils which surrounded the throne and the
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 
 
 503 
 
 royal family. Mr. Pitt's answer was again vague and 
 Indecisive ; and so much so, that the Queen, who had 
 never heard of any policy not bottomed in principles 
 of selfishness or of vain-glorious rivalship, went to her 
 death under the firm persuasion that Pitt had sacrificed 
 the royal cause in France to a sentiment of national 
 jealousy; that his wishes went, perhaps, no further 
 than the humbling of France, and (as she fully be- 
 lieved) to the exacting a personal vengeance from the 
 unhappy Louis for his aid (secret before it was avowed) 
 to the cause of American independence ; but that, un- 
 happily, he had found it impossible to arrest, at the 
 point which would have satisfied his own narrow pur- 
 pose, that frenzy which she presumed the English min- 
 ister to have originally encouraged. The Queen's im- 
 pression did Mr. Pitt great injustice ; but I mention it 
 because it is one proof, amongst many, how strong 
 must have been those pacific dispositions towards 
 France, which led that acute princess to interpret them 
 as proofs of a secret and selfish friendship to all the 
 enemies of the Crown, and to the worst of the Jacobin 
 incendiaries. Pitt, the original Pitt, as self-determined 
 and formed upon his own favorite views of policy, 
 was so far from being hostile to the French Revolution 
 in its first movements, nay, in any of its movements, 
 up to the judicial murder of the King, that, in order* 
 ..o become hostile, as a first step towards placing him- 
 self in opposition, he was obliged to sacrifice his own 
 early and favorite scheme of continental policy. He 
 could no otherwise become an enemy .o revolutionary 
 France, than by abjuring his own peculiar plans. His 
 jase in relation to the French Revolution was that of
 
 504 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 all Tories. Not, therefore, I say, for what there wa 
 of hope in the French Revolution, did we Tories scowl 
 upon that event, but for what we saw even then of ill 
 omen in the rear; not for what it promised, but for 
 what we feared too probably of defeated promise in the 
 national weakness of character ; for what we witnessed 
 of blight in the very moment of birth ; and for what 
 we anticipated of treachery in the character of those 
 who were then rising into power. Things good and 
 things bad, good (though oftentimes aerial) in hy- 
 pothesis, bad and ruinous in the practical realiza- 
 tion, were too inextricably interwoven in the first 
 stages of the French Revolution ; and one reason for 
 this mixed growth of poisonous weeds and medicinal 
 herbs was a fact first pointed out by Burke, that 
 whereas with us every man is trained in some sphere 
 or other, narrow or wide, to public business, and to 
 the necessity of those forms which practice suggests 
 for its own guidance and restraint; in France, the 
 army of regular official agents in every department of 
 the national service had completely disqualified the 
 body of the people for public affairs, by denying them 
 the preparatory discipline. Good and evil arose in 
 their births, until that time came when the evil arose 
 without the good. And the vicious interpretation of 
 our Tory conduct is, that we hated the blossom, be- 
 cause we hated the blighted fruit; that we scowled 
 upon the early glories of the dawn, because we could 
 not smile upon the heavens when lowering with storms 
 and surcharged with thunder clouds. But in what did 
 we differ from the Whigs ? For what it promised, foi 
 resemblances it offered to our own Revolution o*
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 505 
 
 1 688, we, no less than the Whigs, hailed the French 
 Revolution of ] 788. And how could we do otherwise ? 
 Were we not equal contributors to the British Revolu- 
 tion? Did we not equally participate in expelling irre- 
 sponsible tyranny from the throne ? Did we not equally 
 cooperate to the Act of Settlement, by which the suc- 
 cession to the throne was forever limited? The dif- 
 ference between us in 1788-1790 was simply this, that 
 one party gave a confiding love to the promises of the 
 new-born liberty, whilst the other gave an equal love, 
 but coupled with a large reserve of doubt and suspi- 
 cion. This was a difference which did not concern or 
 implicate the quality of our love for what was genuine, 
 but the mere prudential validity of our doubts in re- 
 gard to what might be spurious. Time, and the suc- 
 cession of tumultuous years, have left the saddest of 
 testimonies to our accuracy. But, had it been other- 
 wise, the result would not have impeached our love for 
 what was good in the French Revolution, but only our 
 sagacity in deciphering the future, and the needless 
 alarm with which we had troubled the serene prospects 
 in reversion. 
 
 Some people who have been accustomed to regard the 
 Tories as identified with the enemies of the French Rev- 
 olution, and generally of every manifestation of popular 
 feeling, will be apt to feel as though mystified by this 
 representation ; and, groping about in the dark for some 
 argument, they will say, perhaps, " But, after all, you 
 Tories, by your very name and classification, are under- 
 tood to be unfriendly to popular or democratic influ- 
 ences : so much is notorious; for this is the very ground 
 of distinction between yourselves and the Whigs."
 
 506 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 Here comes in availably and triumphantly the logicol 
 my statement under the first head. The Tories and the 
 Whigs equally concur to the two influences, the demo- 
 cratic and the antagonist influence in the English con- 
 stitution. The Tories, it is true, are charged with the 
 keeping or administration of the anti-democratic forces ; 
 the Whigs with the keeping or administration of the 
 pure democratic forces. But this regards only the 
 practical management of the service : it has no relation 
 to the theory of the forces ; since each party must have 
 equally concurred to each several function of the consti- 
 tution. As well might it be said that, because a man 
 attends exclusively to one wheel in a system of force, 
 he is justified in attributing to this wheel an exclusive 
 importance. He knows his wheel produces its ultimate 
 action only through the manifold aids, and, perhaps, 
 resistances of other forces. The Tory is able or will- 
 ing to tend the anti-democratic powers of our consti 
 tution, only because he knows that another and suffi- 
 cient party is charged with the exclusive management 
 of the opposing powers. Hence I infer that, though 
 professionally, as it were, attached to the superintend- 
 ence of one set of influences, by preference to another, 
 and though, in times of trouble, he may have seen 
 occasion to signalize his attachment to one set preemi- 
 nently, the true and philosophic Tory cannot be sup- 
 posed to wish for any preponderance to either, or to 
 regard the one principle as being at all more indispen- 
 lable than its antagonist. Either in the political system, 
 therefore, of England, or under analogous circumstances 
 in the system of any foreign land, a Tory must ill un 
 derstiuid his own creed who does not wish well to th$
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 
 
 ;>07 
 
 democratic influences as much as to those which are 
 peculiarly consigned to his own guardianship. His duty 
 iii a practical sense, is confined to the aristocratic force 
 as the Whigs, in the same practical sense, to the dem- 
 ocratic force. But, in a philosophic sense, the affection 
 of each should settle upon both ; for the total constitu- 
 tion, which they have both cooperated to frame, is not 
 democracy, is not aristocracy, but is made up of a wise 
 temperament from each. 
 
 Mr. Pitt, therefore, and the Tories, welcomed what 
 was good or of fair promise in the French Revolution ; 
 but distrusted the men of the Revolution, and distrusted 
 the growing necessities of their position. Mr. Fox 
 and the AVhigs, not loving the good more, distrusted 
 the men and their position less. With equal love, ex- 
 cept where they differed as to the interpretation of the 
 signs, the two parties had a very unequal measure of 
 hope and confidence. Power and office happened to 
 be lodged with those who saw reason to distrust, and 
 thus the war arose. Upon that war, or its manage- 
 ment, I am not going to say one word. But, having 
 made the above explanation on the Tory way of view- 
 ing the French Revolution, I shall now go on to say 
 that wrong or right in its orgin, well or ill conducted, 
 Buccessful or not successful in its termination the war 
 of the Revolution had no reference whatsoever to either 
 Whig principles or Tory principles. The war had no 
 relation to the cause or interests of royalty. It was 
 not a war for restoring a particular family to the throne, 
 tir for asserting the general rights of thrones. Had it 
 been so, we should have set up the Bourbons on ao 
 sminence of wealth and splendor, and surrounded them
 
 508 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 with a court ; all which we forbore to do. A locus pent- 
 tentice was wisely provided for from the first, and a re- 
 treat left open to either belligerent according to the 
 circumstances. For, if Mr. Pitt had fettered himself by 
 an improvident resolution that he would not treat with 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, that was merely a personal act, 
 the English Government was no party to it. No 
 object, therefore, was pursued in that war which can 
 be connected with Tory principles. We assumed arms 
 as men who would else have been compelled to assume 
 them under circumstances of heavy disadvantage, 
 that is to say, after some allies had been weakened or 
 destroyed, and much of the mischief accomplished which 
 we sought to avert. Our main object was security for 
 our own interests, and a timely repulsion from our own 
 shores of those disorganizing principles which had al- 
 ready produced so much bloodshed and tyranny in 
 France. Now, these are objects of an universal nature, 
 having no relation whatsoever to any party, or to any 
 set of political principles. All nations defend them- 
 selves, whether they have Tories amongst them or not. 
 And if the Tories happened to lead in this resistance 
 to France, that was because the Tory party was at that 
 time in office. But a vast majority of the nation, nei- 
 ther Whigs nor Tories, followed and supported their 
 leading. What was the behavior of the Whigs ? His- 
 tory will call it traitorous ; for the word unpatriotic is 
 too feeble for the case. To have disapproved the war 
 was open to them ; but not to exult in the difficulties 
 of their countrymen, to sympathize with the enemy, or 
 jo proclaim all resistance to him hopeless and irrational 
 This the Whigs did. But do I charge their conduct
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM 509 
 
 pon Whig principles? Far from it! To many cases 
 which arose in that war, Whig principles had little or 
 no application. With respect to others, as the Spanish 
 resistance to a foreign tyrant, Whig principles were so 
 far from being chargeable with the Whig discountenance 
 of that struggle, that, on the contrary, those very prin- 
 ciples furnish the very strongest reproach to the Whig 
 policy on that occasion. Just a century before, the 
 Tories, I am sorry to say, were playing the same trai- 
 torous part. During the last years of Queen Anne, 
 Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke were applying them- 
 selves to the task of obliterating the brilliant services 
 of the Whigs from 1704 to 1710. And (monstrous 
 as such a statement may appear) there is too much rea- 
 son to believe that they tolerated a treaty which else 
 they would not have tolerated, because it was fitted to 
 furnish a sort of presumption that the war had not been 
 so glorious or decisive which could admit of such a ter- 
 mination. The treaty of Utrecht was to be used, they 
 hoped, as an exponent of the true value attached to the 
 services of Marlborough. In this the Tories (that is, 
 the leaders of the Tories) acted perfidiously. In other 
 instances during those years, we know that they were 
 perfidious according to a legal sense, and had incurred 
 the penalties of high treason. But then, they acted as 
 Jacobites, and in effect renounced their Toryism ; nor, 
 in the other and more public cases, did they at all rely 
 upon Tory principles, or make any appeal to them. 
 They had been in desperate opposition to the Whigs, 
 iiot upon any question of principles, but for power and 
 i,tfice. Gaining both unexpectedly, they were tied by 
 fheir previous opposition to a certain line of conduct ;
 
 510 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 that conduct arose, not out of any principles whatever, 
 but out of partisanship, intrigue, and accidents of posi- 
 tion. In the same cause originated the Whig conduct 
 with reference to the wars of the French Revolution. 
 The case of Queen Anne in 1710 was exactly reversed 
 from 1807 to 1815. Each party in succession had car- 
 ried the frenzy of opposition to their rivals up to the 
 very brink of public treachery ; in neither case, how- 
 ever, with any view to their distinguishing principles, 
 but solely on grounds of party violence, of party inter- 
 est, and of mortified ambition. 
 
 Let the logic of this important distinction be no- 
 longer lost sight of; and, if we are to hear continually 
 of " Tory misrule," &c., let it be remembered that for 
 innumerable public measures applied to questions of 
 taxation, of funding, of Irish administration, of war, 
 and many others, no charge lies, or can lie against 
 Tory principles, as being, by their very essence, 
 inapplicable to most questions of this nature. When 
 the Tory party are made responsible for political acts, 
 let it be remembered that this party, considered as 
 a body of Parliamentary leaders, stand in two rela- 
 tions, to their immediate opponents for the time, a 
 body of rivals, who may or may not happen to be 
 Whigs, fiercely contesting with them the enjoyment 
 of power and place ; and, secondly, to a permanent 
 body, the depositaries and conservators of a particular 
 influence in the constitutional system. Acts done by 
 some Tory minister or clique in the first relation, sup- 
 posing them bad, are utterly impertinent as charges 
 against a national party who stand in the second rela 
 Son. The very men have vanished, or are contin-
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 511 
 
 nally vanishing, from the public scene who are con- 
 cerned in the first relation ; nor had they, at any time, 
 a national existence. But the other relation is immor- 
 tal, national, and coeval with the constitution. 
 
 This distinction settled, which has been the parent 
 (whilst neglected, or not sharply pressed) of infinite 
 misapprehensions, let us now come to a more urgent 
 question, a question, or rather the question, of this 
 day, the relation of Tories to the revolutionary 
 party, the party known by the name of Radicals. 
 
 In a question of relation between any two objects, 
 it is necessary that something should be known of 
 both. Toryism I understand, and Whiggism I under- 
 stand ; but what is Radicalism ? I am now going to 
 value the pretensions of Toryism in relation to the 
 new faith of Radical Reform. To do so with effect, I 
 ought, first of all, to know the main articles of that faith. 
 But is there such a faith ? Has the new church any 
 peculiar or novel creed ? Or is it only a new mode 
 of administering old principles, better adapted to the 
 times, and resting, perhaps, upon new political influ- 
 ences. These questions ought not to have been left 
 for my answering; or rather, for my investigation; as 
 to an answer which would be valid for all who are in- 
 terested in the case, that is impossible. You, in Ben- 
 gal, who have had Mr, Buckingham amongst you, may 
 fancy it easy enough to give the analysis of Radical- 
 ism. For the very thing which made the politics of 
 Mr. Buckingham perilous, the very thing which 
 excused (nothing else could have excused) the harsh- 
 ness and the summary despotism applied to himself 
 and to his newspaper establishment, was, as we all
 
 512 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 know, the too palpable existence of political evil and 
 reformable matter in a country situated as our Indian 
 empire is, and, under the wisest management, most 
 be for generations to come. Reform principles were 
 dangerous, precisely because they were but too intelli- 
 gible. I do not mean to say that such principles were 
 therefore of easy application : it did not facilitate the 
 administration of reform, that the objects were evident 
 which allowed of reform. In a state of society af- 
 fected by so many remarkable circumstances of posi- 
 tion, of conquest imperfectly cemented, of religion, of 
 caste, of military tenure, of language, it may be a mat- 
 ter of infinite delicacy, and also of time, to apply a re- 
 form either safe or effectual, though all the world should 
 be agreed upon the actual, and palpable, and omnipres- 
 ent existence of the abuse ; and therefore there is no 
 inconsistency in my speaking of Mr. Buckingham's sys- 
 tem of agitation as perilous, whilst, at the same time, 
 I describe it as full of practical meaning and applica- 
 bility. It was so ; it spoke a language but too readily 
 interpreted by the passions, and the situation of those 
 whom it addressed. But if you judge of reform or of 
 agitation, as applied to English affairs, by what you 
 saw of either in Bengal, you err grievously. The re- 
 forming principle with you stood upon a vast and solid 
 basis ; with us it stands upon one so narrow that it 
 will ne^er justify the agitation which must be kept up 
 in order to keep itself alive ; for an artifichil agitation 
 becomes necessary in exact proportion to the non- 
 reality of the evils which it parades. Here I make 
 my stand ; and it would give me pleasure to hear any 
 philosophic reformer meeting my view of the case.
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGI8M, AND RADICALISM. 
 
 513 
 
 may be expressed in two propositions : 1st, 
 That, large as is the whole body of Reformers, it is 
 not large, but shrinks into sectarian limits, any one 
 object of reform being given. Given, the general 
 necessity of reform as a universal thesis, Reformers 
 seem to compose the mass of society. Given, any par- 
 ticular case of reform, the affirmative party come for- 
 ward as a narrow sect. 2dly, I say that, if all the 
 known objects for which any section of Reformers has 
 ever contended were thrown into a common fund, and 
 credit allowed to the Reform party collectively upon 
 these disjointed symbola or separate contingents, as 
 upon a joint-stock property, even thus, there will not 
 be realized a sufficient interest to justify, or so much aa 
 to explain, the impassioned vehemence of the Reform- 
 ers. What would I infer from that? I would infer 
 that the real objects which govern the leaders of the 
 movement are not those which they avow, but such 
 as for the present they find it prudent to dissemble. 
 Let me speak to each point separately. 
 
 First, with respect to the schisms amongst the Re- 
 formers, I affirm peremptorily, that the term Radical is 
 used with as large a license, and as little care for pre- 
 cision, or for any one practical use of language, as the 
 term " middle class," which, in the fraudulent accepta- 
 tion of modern incendiaries, confounds all the unnum- 
 bered gradations of English society which lie between 
 the very highest and the very lowest. The common 
 term Radical would entitle us to presume some unity 
 of purpose. Will the present Reformers arrogate such 
 a unity to their party, and tell us in what capital ob- 
 ject it is seated ? For my part I know of only one 
 
 33
 
 514 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 point in which they all agree, and that is negative, 
 they all dissent, or believe that they dissent, from the 
 Tories. But that tells us, at the most, what it is which 
 they do not profess. Yet not even that ; for the Tory 
 Bupposed in their opposition is a Tory of their own fic- 
 tion. As to the positive articles in their creed, the fol- 
 lowing statement exhibits the case according to my 
 view ; and I do not think that any temperate Reform- 
 ers will call it in question : Suppose the alphabet to 
 represent the total number of subdivisions already ex- 
 isting amongst the Reformers. A is a patron of some 
 one proposed change in our institutions, of this one 
 and of none beside ; B is a patron of this and of one 
 other ; C of this and two others ; and so on, until we 
 come to the formidable Z, who patronizes two round 
 dozens of such changes ; all of which changes, so long 
 as they are yet untried, enjoy, by anticipation, the flat- 
 tering name of reforms. And hence, by a parity oi 
 right, the whole twenty-four orders of these Reformers 
 are all equally relied on, in argument, for drawing to- 
 gether as in a common cause. But try it in action, pro- 
 pose the practical test of some special object, and the 
 nominal union of the Reformers instantly breaks up 
 into schisms and internal feuds ; some professing even 
 downright hostility to the object in question, and the 
 major part indifference. Z, for example, the zealot Z, 
 who declares himself beforehand for everything wear- 
 ing the aspect of change, Z counts backwards as far 
 as A for a cheerful support on some single question. 
 Upon a second question equally dear to himself, he is 
 aware that he can count back only to B ; upon a third, 
 only to C ; and so on. The sections represented bj
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 515 
 
 A, by B, by C, &c., will forsake him in succession ; 
 until at length he will be reduced to the feeble support 
 of X, Y, Z ; and, finally, for his twenty-fourth object, 
 in his eyes, perhaps, ranking not at all below any of the 
 others, he will have to depend upon himself alone, to 
 speak, by a scholastic abstraction, upon his own Zedeity. 
 For what purpose, you will ask, do I insist upon this 
 artifice, which may seem a common party stratagem? 
 I do so, because it is used not only to throw dust in the 
 eyes of us, their opponents, but because it dupes them- 
 selves. Here and there a question is found which does 
 really engage the active affections of so large a majority 
 among us, suppose the question of the Reform Bill, 
 
 that, without much violence to the truth, it may be 
 called a national object. Hereupon the Reformers, who, 
 as to this one question, count back from omnivorous Z 
 to fastidious A, assume the title of the national party, 
 
 or, perhaps, tout court, of " the nation ; " and with 
 some show of reason, as regards this one great popular 
 question. It is true that we Tories have still the old 
 right of appeal from the nation ill-informed to the na 
 tion well-informed, and from the nation guessing at re 
 suits to the nation dealing with absolute experience ; 
 but still, for the mere matter of fact, the Reformers 
 were in that instance a national party. Once having 
 established that title, these same Reformers are deter- 
 mined to plead it beneficially upon all other questions 
 whatsoever, and very often it makes the strongest 
 nerve of their argument, as though the title of na- 
 tional, which inhered in the particular question, inhered 
 in the persons of the Reformers, and could hencefor- 
 wards be urged indefinitely on behalf of any object pat-
 
 516 A TORY'S ACCOUNT oy 
 
 ronized by the same party. On the memorable question 
 of the Reform Bill, the Reformers were certainly identi- 
 Bed for the time, and for that particular service, with a 
 very large majority of the British people. They proved 
 their identification by practical tests ; they arrayed 
 ' 4 Unions," technically so called, upon a scale of immen- 
 sity that resounded throughout Europe, and must have 
 appalled even you in Bengal. Those Unions counted 
 themselves by tens of thousands ; one in the centre of 
 England mustered above a hundred thousand ; and 
 their relations to the existing government were far 
 more those of jealousy and mutual suspicion, as be- 
 tween a body overawing and overawed, than of confi- 
 dence and reciprocal gratitude. The terror of these 
 Unions, I can assure you, sat more heavily upon the 
 hearts of their nominal friends, Lord Grey's adminis- 
 tration, than upon any of us, their formal antagonists. 
 Now, these terrific federations were evoked by the Re- 
 formers. The same Reformers evoked through every 
 city of this great empire vast triumphal arrays of the 
 population, in celebration of their victory. Whether 
 for achieving the victory, or for commemorating it, 
 they were able to put forth a power greater than that 
 of kings the most despotic. And, thus far, they were 
 entitled to style themselves " national" or even, in a 
 popular sense, "ike nation." But their power ceased 
 with that question. Nay, for that very question, *hey 
 would not again be able to receive the same support. 
 It is a fact that the people have been deeply disappointed 
 m the vague expectations which too generally they 
 built upon the Reform Bill. For, what has it accom- 
 plished ? The main change, as respects the electors
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGI8M, AND RADICALISiM. 517 
 
 is, that what was once valued as a distinction has ceased 
 to be such. To have an eight-thousandth or a ten- 
 thousandth share, in the manufacturing one or two leg- 
 islators, is too trivial an honor to be valued ; and, in 
 reality, is so little valued that, except where angry pas- 
 sions have been roused, there is a general torpor in 
 qualifying for the exercise of this franchise. Registra- 
 tion, the test of political zeal, languishes. But, after 
 all, the value of the Reform Bill must lie in the result. 
 Not how, or by what sort of means the end is attained, 
 but what is the end attained, there lies the question. 
 Not the changes in the electors, but in the quality of 
 the elected, that is the point for us. Now, what sort 
 of a House of Commons have we had since the great 
 Reform ? Of course, I say nothing of the House now 
 sitting, that is notoriously a heaven-descended senate, 
 perfect and immaculate. But, limiting my remarks 
 to the previous Houses under the Reform Bill, the 
 changes perceptible to the public eye have been chiefly 
 two : First, The absolute disqualification of the House 
 for carrying on the King's government ; without any 
 one advantage as yet gained to the public service, such 
 is now the restiveness and the self-contradictiveness, 
 the pertinacity in one direction, and yet the unsteadi- 
 ness in another, of the Commons' House, that the in- 
 dispensable machinery of an executive administration 
 will not work smoothly for any continuance, no matter 
 who is minister. The French Government is annually 
 advancing upon the same path of perplexity. The pub- 
 Uc business in each country is destined apparently to 
 endless stagnations for the feifure, endless ruptures of 
 Administrations, and endless dissolutions of Parliamei**
 
 *18 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OP 
 
 And the final tendencies of these changes are such that 
 I will not lower their importance by treating them in 
 cidentally. The other change, and it is a change al 
 ready perceptible to the public eye, lies in the altered 
 tone of manners prevalent through the whole course of 
 debate for the last two years. Formerly, the House 
 of Commons was a school of gentlemanly manners, 
 the most dignified in the annals of man ; more so than 
 that "assembly of kings," the Roman senate, in this 
 important feature, that personalities, not only ob- 
 lique personalities and such as were said of a member, 
 but direct apostrophes to a member, were tolerated 
 by the Roman manners, and treated as mere figures of 
 rhetoric; whereas, by the English Parliament, they 
 were checked and stifled in the birth. Since the Re- 
 form Bill, partly from the effects of that Bill and the 
 invitation which it holds out to the spirit of popular 
 license, and partly, it may be, from the uncontrolled 
 temper of particular members, a mixed tone has pre- 
 vailed, of puerile levity, of histrionic buffoonery, and 
 of street ruffianism. This latter feature has been some- 
 times explained out of the Irish infusion into our na- 
 tional councils, which, since the Emancipation Bill, has 
 been, for two reasons, of a more democratic quality : 
 First, Because the Irish representation having been 
 more Popish, has really settled into lower grades of 
 rank and property ; and, secondly, Because the Irish 
 representation has fallen too generally under one in- 
 eolent domination, which adopts the policy of personal 
 abuse as one of the weapons most effective in party war- 
 fare. But no matter how explained, for the reasoni 
 alleged, or for whatever reasons, Parliament, in iu
 
 TOKYISM, W11IGG1SM, AND RADICALISM. 519 
 
 general temper and tone of manners, has been in some 
 degree ruffianized ; and what remains of good breeding, 
 or decorum, or gentlemanly restraint, may bo set down 
 to the account of those regulations inherited from au 
 un reformed House, which a reformed one will perhaps 
 be ashamed to abrogate, but which it never would have 
 spontaneously enacted. It will be odd, indeed, as a 
 spectacle, yet apparently it is one not very improbable, 
 if our senate should invert the natural relations to the 
 nation which it represents, and should gradually ripen 
 amongst us a model of Kentucky violence ; whilst the 
 people, in its lowest classes, have been, for many years 
 back, outgrowing their insular roughness. Yet such 
 things have been. The Athenian people, at that same 
 era when they had attained their utmost expansion in 
 general civility and in the arts of refinement, and re- 
 puted themselves not so much the patrons as the sole 
 depositaries of Trapprjmu, or the right of free speaking, 
 yet carried their illiberal hostilities to such excess in 
 their debating assemblies, that, amongst all the political 
 harangues still surviving, and those delivered by the 
 boldest of their orators, not one but teems with earnest 
 passages deprecating interruption or personal violence, 
 BO often as the conscientious speaker approached a topic 
 which he knew to be unpopular. Whether we are 
 tending to a state of Athenian license and scurrility, I 
 will not presume to say. But, if some further changes 
 were made in the same direction. were a five-pound 
 qualification substituted for the present, I cannot 
 doubt that we should reach that consummation per 
 \altum. Meantime, the whole upshot o' the Bill, ac- 
 tording to its working hitherto, has been what I say:
 
 520 A TORY'S ACCOUNT or 
 
 no valuable change as respects the electoral body ; aa 
 respects the body elected, a change of temper and man- 
 ners altogether for the worse ; and, in the same body, 
 as a machinery for cooperating with the executive, pre- 
 cisely that change and no more, which, whilst hanging 
 a drag on the smoothness and velocity of its motion, 
 has done nothing to improve its purity. The move- 
 ment and play of public business is sujflaminated, and 
 not in a way which looks like accident ; and all this 
 with no tittle of countervailing benefit to any one na- 
 tional interest. 
 
 Now, if these are the weightiest results from the Re- 
 form of Parliament, it is with some reason that the 
 people are disappointed. With reason, or without rea- 
 son, it is certain that they are so. And vainly indeed 
 would the Reformers appeal again to those tremendous 
 agencies, now sleeping, which once they invoked with 
 so much effect. The poor mechanics and day-laborers 
 who walked in those triumphs, and sacrificed their 
 daily bread to one day's joyous parade, did so because 
 .hey looked for some golden age which was thence to 
 date its bright unfolding of happier years. What a 
 mockery, how hollow a pageantry of political juggling, 
 would they have held it, could they have believed that 
 all this drama was to terminate in securing office and 
 retiring salaries to some score and a half of Whig lords 
 and gentlemen ! As yet, the people have seen no 
 other result from this all-celebrated Reform ; nor is it 
 likely they will. And the issue as respects them 
 i. e., the people of the lower orders is, that hence- 
 forth they will err by defect rather than by excess, in 
 estimating the value of any promises connected with 
 changes in the constitution of Parliament.
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 521 
 
 Yet, because it is undeniable that, three years ago, 
 ,'n behalf of a scheme yet untried, the Reformers did 
 possess power in a terrific extent, they have ever since 
 continued to assume that, in opposing them, we oppose 
 the nation. That is their main reliance. As a party 
 opposed to a party, they would lie under the common 
 presumptions of error; but, as the nation opposed to a 
 party, they have a dispensation from argument, and an 
 immunity from error. If they can prevail by logic, it 
 is well ; but if not, that also is well ; for a nation is 
 entitled to be made happy on its own terms, even if 
 those terms should happen to involve a multitude of 
 errors. It is the case, in their representation, of a 
 party interested, and absolute master in the last resort, 
 arguing against a mere speculative dialectician, who 
 has no stake in the question litigated. Such is the use 
 which they make of a single victory on a single chap- 
 ter of their creed. But I, in answer to these preten- 
 sions, maintain that, from a single coincidence with the 
 people, they unwarrantably infer a general identifica- 
 tion with the popular wishes or interest. I affirm that, 
 on many points, the Reformers are not only a party, a 
 section, but also a very narrow party, a very slender 
 section ; and that this is hidden from their own as it is 
 from general observation, by the accident that the same 
 men who compose this narrow party, this slender sec- 
 tion, are those who once were conspicuous in leading 
 a really national movement, and leading it by pretty 
 nearly the same organs of the press as they now em- 
 ploy. So much in explanation of my first proposition, 
 > that the Reformers, if large as a collective body, 
 are not large when thrown into those subdivisions
 
 522 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 which would arise instantly upon putting to the vote 
 any one separately of those several objects which they 
 patronize. 
 
 But I rest more upon the second proposition, that if 
 all these several objects, each resting on the support of 
 an insulated section amongst the Reformers, were, by 
 a monstrous concession, assumed to be common objects, 
 objects pursued with the common forces of the whole 
 party, even thus there would not result a cumulative 
 interest sufficient to sustain a national movement, or 
 even a national sympathy. The Reformers, if they are 
 not national, are nothing. As a party, we Tories, we 
 Whigs, are older than they : we have the rights of 
 primogeniture ; and, moreover, we grew out of the 
 constitution itself, whereas they have grown out of the 
 wantonness of peace, and the defect of excitement suc- 
 ceeding to a season of adventurous war, and out of the 
 political agitation which attempted to supply that de- 
 fect. Besides that, we Tories and we Whigs, though, 
 doubtless, one of us was a rascally party as respects 
 the mere conduct of affairs since the French Revolu- 
 tion, yet, as respects the constitution, as respects po- 
 litical principles, we cannot but be right, since we ex- 
 haust the whole possibilities of political principle. The 
 ground, the whole arena, is preoccupied; there is no 
 standing-room for a new party, under any conceivable 
 description or designation, except upon the allegation 
 that we the Tories and Whigs have neglected our 
 constitutional functions ; that, being speculatively right, 
 we have, in practice, suffered our own principles to lie 
 dormant The Reformers, therefore, are bound, in 
 itrict logic, to follow the precedent of Edmund Burke
 
 TORYISM, WH1661SM, AND RADICALISM. 523 
 
 in relation to the "Whigs. He had professed himself 
 & Whig in all parts of his life. But, suddenly, the 
 Whigs, or some of them, announced such opinions with 
 regard to the French Jacobinism as were shocking to 
 his views of the English constitution. In this dilemma^,, 
 how did he proceed ? Did he abjure Whiggism ? DLi 
 he set up a new party, a new creed, a new doctrine 
 of Radical Burkeism? By no means. He contended 
 that Whiggism, as interpreted by Mr. Fox and the 
 Duke of Norfolk, was not the Whiggism of their com- 
 mon constitutional ancestors, not the Whiggism 
 which they had inherited from 1688-9. And upon 
 that logic, he composed his famous appeal from the 
 nev (or spurious) to the old (or genuine) Whigs ; and 
 many persons of great intellectual power and experi- 
 ence such as Mr. Wyndham, the Duke of Portland, 
 &c. saw reason to accompany his secession in that 
 instance. Why the Reformers should not have fol- 
 lowed this example, I can only explain by supposing 
 that the accidental part supported by Whigs and Tories 
 in relation to office and current affairs, all transitory 
 and fugitive vspects of Toryism or Whiggism, had 
 blinded them to the permanent and fixed relations 
 which the two parties occupy in regard to the consti- 
 tution ; which relations, if any new men usurp, they, in 
 effect, become Whigs and Tories under a mere change 
 of name. Either the Reformers have committed the 
 error here indicated, or else they mean to say this : 
 "We assume no permanent functions of control in re- 
 gard to the constitution, ours is an occasional office : 
 we see or fancy certain great abuses, we confederate 
 f or the purpose of abating them, and, whenever that
 
 524 A TOBY'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 service shall be accomplished, our confederation is, ipso 
 facto, dissolved ; we are an occasional Fehm- Gericht, 
 an occasional array against an occasional mass of evil." 
 This way of representing their position as a party, and 
 this way only, clears them of the impertinence (to use 
 the word in its proper Latin sense) which belongs to 
 all intrusions upon other men's provinces. They have 
 interfered only for a specific service, for the abate- 
 ment of abuses to which, it seems, the Whigs and To- 
 ries were pretty equally blind. Let us now, there- 
 fore, inquire closely what are the abuses which the Re- 
 formers have denounced ; what are the reforms which 
 they propose to introduce ? By that we shall learn 
 how far the Reformers stand, as a party, upon any suf- 
 ficient basis, and shall have an answer to the question 
 I have raised : Whether the whole amount of objects 
 for which they contend (that is, openly contend), can be 
 held sufficient even treated as a common fund, and 
 not as a series of separate interests belonging to sep- 
 arate sections of the reforming body to warrant the 
 name of a national interest, or to warrant the wish, as 
 well as the expectation, of promoting them by a na- 
 tonal movement. 
 
 Now, then, counting over the different objects for 
 which at any time, the Reformers have openly con- 
 >ended, we shall be astonished to find them so few. 1. 
 Household Suffrage, or the substitution of a five-pound 
 for a ten-pound qualification, or, generally, any means 
 whatever for enlarging the electoral basis, some Re- 
 formers treat as a sine qua non ; but others speak of it 
 with doubt, or with indifference, or with positive disap- 
 probation. 2. A measure which at present wins mor*
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 525 
 
 general favor is, the Disfranchisement of the Spiritucu 
 Peers in the Upper House. 3. The Ballot, a favorite 
 scheme amongst very earnest and energetic Reform- 
 ers, is still discountenanced by numbers of those who, 
 at one time or other, have been looked up to as lead- 
 ers of the movement, by Lord Brougham in par- 
 ticular, and, so recently as the 19th of May 1835, by 
 Lord John Russell, even while yet smarting from the 
 uncicatrized mortification of his Devonshire campaign, 
 and openly ascribing his defeat to intimidation. Now, 
 where a personal interest so keen as this will not over- 
 rule a man's objections, the case, as in relation to him, 
 may be thought hopeless ; and yet I question myself 
 whether some, who have hitherto opposed the ballet, 
 are not covertly preparing a case of alleged extremity 
 to justify its adoption, which case would, of course, 
 derive the strength of a rebound from the fact and the 
 notoriety of their previous opposition. The talk is more 
 and more of " intimidation ;" every species and variety 
 of influence, however laudable and salutary, by which 
 the upper ranks are connected with the lower, being 
 denounced under that name. Rejected candidates have 
 a natural license for complaining : we all construe their 
 jomplaints indulgently. But another class, the class 
 of timid voters, have reasons still more urgent for 
 pleading intimidation, where nothing of the kind ex- 
 ists. Shopkeepers of a petty order, who cannot afford 
 to make enemies either amongst Reformers or anti- 
 Uefoiuiers, especially where their natural temper con- 
 urs with their position in producing a timid love of 
 quietness, men hating strife, constitutionally, perhaps, 
 as much as they fear it in policy, and very often hav-
 
 526 
 
 A TORYS ACCOUNT OF 
 
 ing no decided views on the party questions at issue, 
 are apt enough to plead a vague necessity of com- 
 plying with some overruling influence in some imag- 
 inary background, where no such influence has been, in 
 fact, put forward or insinuated, and where the alleged 
 necessity of their situation has existed only in pre- 
 tence, or, at most, in suspicion. These cases of merely 
 presumptive intimidation will multiply exceedingly, as 
 the cases multiply of electioneering contests. Intimi- 
 dation, and obscure insinuations of intimidation, will 
 be offered as the best general way of shaping an eva- 
 sion from the persecutions of canvassers, until it will 
 be said that a case of necessity has arisen for the Bal- 
 lot. That measure will therefore triumph ; but at 
 present, the Reformers are greatly divided upon its 
 merits. 
 
 These three measures one for enlarging the con- 
 stituency ; one for giving effect to that enlarged con- 
 stituency, by liberating them from alien influence ; and 
 a third for altering the present constitution of the 
 Upper House are so evidently parts of the same sys- 
 tem, all having the same obvious purpose to throw a 
 vast infusion of democracy into the legislative forces of 
 che land, that he who objects to any one of them stands 
 declared, in that act, an enemy, or at the least a hollow 
 friend of the reform principle. Sir William Moles- 
 worth, during the late struggle in South Devon, talked 
 with zealotry for the Ballot : why ? because he is a 
 sincere Reformer, and knows that the whole purposes 
 jf his party can be obtained but slowly and imper- 
 fectly without the Ballot. Lord John Russell opposes 
 the Ballot : why ? because he, by interest and by con.
 
 TORYISM, WHIGGISM, AND RADICALISM. 527 
 
 nections, is, and must be, an aristocrat ; and if he avails 
 himself of aid from the reform party, it is because the 
 part of the Reformers coincides, for a certain part of 
 the way (or may, by skilful management, be made to 
 coincide), with the path of his own political clique. 
 But though he has gone into this dangerous alliance 
 for momentary considerations of benefit to his party 
 [in reality, it is evident that Lord John's private party 
 must have gone to wreck in 1830 but for this alliance, 
 and equally evident that, on many subsequent occa 
 sions, that party has been violently held above water 
 by this artificial connection], yet it is impossible to 
 suppose that any relations merely personal can absorb 
 those permanent relations to the aristocratic interest 
 in which he is placed by his rank, his numerous and 
 illustrious connections, and the vast possessions of his 
 family. It happens, also, that Lord John, before he 
 came into a situation that required him to practise any 
 arts of dissimulation, had written for many years as a 
 regular author, had written very respectably, and 
 ,ipon themes connected with political and constitutional 
 questions : by a rare misfortune for himself, he, more 
 than any other of his party, was committed in the dip- 
 lomatic sense ; and thus it happens that we have a key 
 to his native opinions, and can appreciate the basis of 
 his views, before they had received any disturbing im- 
 pulse from the difficult circumstances of his position. 
 Lord John, therefore, in common with other aristo- 
 cratic Reformers, keeps his eye for ever fixed upon 
 that parting point at which his road is to diverge from 
 that of the Refoimers. He has a quarrel in reversion 
 whenever it shall seem that the hour has struck for
 
 528 A TORY'S ACCOUNT OF TORYISM, ETC. 
 
 this parting ; and not impossibly this very quest! or 
 of Ballot is destined to furnish the matter of quarrel. 
 Far am I from supposing it at all shocking to our his- 
 torical experience, that Lord John Russell, like the 
 too famous father to the reigning King of the French, 
 might go on to the very catastrophe of the great drama, 
 with the avowed enemies and destined destroyers of his 
 order. The case is common enough. But, in this in- 
 stance, drawing my auguries from the known respec- 
 tability of the man, I believe that Lord John will ef- 
 fectually cooperate with those who meditate ruin to the 
 aristocracy of England, and too probably will accom- 
 plish it, not by going along with them to the end, 
 and glorying in his own shame, I believe him too 
 good a man and too discerning a man, for that, but 
 by lending them a hesitating sanction, and, with many 
 misgivings, yielding to their demands an unsteady as- 
 sistance, until, at last, growing alarmed, and halting 
 with an air of defiance, he finds out that his sanction 
 and his assistance are become alike indifferent to the 
 Reformers. He will first see cause to resist, when all 
 the powers have been surrendered by which resistance 
 can be made effectual.
 
 THE POLITICAL PARTIES OF MODEM 
 ENGLAND, 
 
 WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1837. 
 
 AFTER an interval of a year and something more, 1 
 resume my letter on the political parties of modern 
 England. An interruption of that duration was likely 
 to have acted disadvantageous^ on the interest. For 
 upon what was that interest founded ? It was an in- 
 terest founded upon the danger which threatened an 
 ancient state in the very heart of her civil polity ; upon 
 the grandeur of that state, and upon the imminence of 
 that clanger. Now, in the course of this interval, such 
 has been the quality of our experience, that no one of 
 the clangers apprehended at its commencement has 
 taken a less lowering aspect, and new ones have arisen. 
 In fact, great advances have been made by the Radical 
 party : not, indeed, in things won and accomplished, 
 but in the pretensions put forward ; in the haughtiness 
 and gross plainness of tneir language, no less than in 
 the audacious character of extremity which marks their 
 tendency. At present it may be truly said, that with 
 the wind setting strong upon a most perilous shore, we 
 ride at single anchor ; that anchor is the House of 
 Lords ; and if that gives way, all is lost. Thencefor- 
 34
 
 530 ON TIIE POLITICAL PARTIKS 
 
 wards, for people like you or me, England will be no 
 habitable land. 
 
 There cannot, in fact, be a belter illustration of the 
 treasonable audacity which has begun to characterize 
 the schemes and the language of the Radicals, than 
 this very assault, according to its variety of plans, upon 
 the House of Lords. Were things called by their right 
 names, it is as much and as decidedly treason, by all 
 its bearings and instant tendencies, as any direct act 
 against the king's crown, and in its consequences a 
 thousand times worse than to have compassed the death 
 of any the best prince that ever lived. So little does 
 any reverence dwell in Radical minds for the existing 
 restraints of law and the constitution, that in most of 
 the schemes which have come under my notice, not one 
 word is said on that point which is the most perplexing 
 of all, viz., by what power known to the laws of 
 this land any revolution in the Upper House is to be 
 undertaken. Perfectly overlooking the fact that this 
 legislative body owes no obedience to any other power 
 in the State, but is on a footing of absolute equality 
 with all, and as much entitled to abolish or to remodel 
 the Lower House as that House to attempt either one 
 or the other process upon the Upper, the Radicals 
 confine their whole discussions to the particular mode 
 and the extent of change which will meet their ulterior 
 purposes. Not who and by what arms is to be the 
 reformer, but how large and destructive is to be the 
 eformation, that is the Radical point of mooting. 
 Here, however, nt least, Radicalism will find itself at 
 fault. 77ie Howe of Lords vritt not be reformed on 
 this side of a civil war, which war, on the part o/
 
 OF MODEKN ENGLAND. 531 
 
 the reforming faction, will be a rebellion, and liable to 
 the pains of a rebellion. The nation, in its better and 
 more powerful sections, is well aware of these two cap- 
 ital facts: 1st, That even if the Lords' House were not 
 fas it is) the sole bulwark of our liberties, yet that tc 
 tamper with its present constitution, as known to the 
 laws and usages of the land, would not merely infer a 
 revolution as its immediate consequence, but would in 
 itself, formally as well as virtually, be a revolution, anr* 
 as complete a one as ever was effected in modern days 
 2dly, That were this otherwise, and supposing that 
 without any gross violation of the constitution, some 
 remodelling of the House might be devised suppos- 
 ing, even, that good results might be anticipated from 
 such a measure (always, however, allowing for the un- 
 certainty of political anticipations) supposing, in 
 short, all the circumstances exactly what they are not, 
 even in that case the change could not be encour- 
 aged, no, nor so much as entertained for one moment's 
 speculation, by any good patriot, because there are no 
 known forces, reconcilable with elementary law, which 
 are competent to the task of working the least change 
 in a body which is itself a fountain of all lawful change. 
 There are no known functions of any public body or 
 corporation recognized by the law of England which 
 point to any such task, or are applicable to such a task, 
 as that of reforming either House of Parliament. And 
 changes, even good and salutary in themselves, which 
 cannot be accomplished witnout a preliminary breach 
 of law or contempt of sacred rights, are not the changes 
 which the people of Great Britain are accustomed to 
 countenance. Therefore, I undertake to predict, for
 
 532 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 the private rumination of Radicalism, that no such re- 
 form of the Lords' House, as has been so freely de- 
 nounced since the Parliamentary session of 1836, will 
 or can be undertaken ; and that, not only because the 
 nation would be roused to a sense of the impending 
 ruin, and to a sense of the real principles at work, by a 
 revolutionary proposal so definite in its character, but 
 also because no public body durst so far overstep its 
 powers, or commit so palpable an absurdity, as to take 
 the first step towards any such object. Let any man 
 figure to himself the outrage upon common sense which 
 would be involved in a member of the Commons' 
 House seriously making a motion and a speech, and 
 the House itself dividing upon a question of changes 
 to be wrought in the tenure of power, or in the admin- 
 istration of power belonging to a body, or in the very 
 composition <<? a body, which stands on the most per- 
 fect equality of title and legislative authority with the 
 pretended h >use of reformers, over and above the ad- 
 vantage of feeing the highest court of jurisprudence in 
 the kingdom, and the court of final appeal, whilst the 
 other House is no court at all. The House of Com- 
 mons has no more power to take one step towards such 
 a pretended reformation, than it has to debate upon the 
 partition of Persia; and arrogant as that House has 
 sometimes shown itself (and needlessly arrogant, as in 
 Uie arrest of Sir F. Burdett amenable to the com- 
 mon course of law by the Speaker's warrant), I am 
 well persuaded that it will never seriously lend itself 
 to a malice so entirely impotent. For into what shape 
 could the House throw the expression of its will ? A 
 law, or anything resembling a law, it could not pasi
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 533 
 
 n the supposed case of hostility to the other House. 
 A resolution then, at the uttermost, would be the high- 
 est shape iu which they could give expression to their 
 revolutionary frenzy. To this brutum fulmen the 
 Lords would not need to pay any the least attention ; 
 nor is there, indeed, any known channel, or any rational 
 form of business, by which either House could commu- 
 nicate with the other on such a subject. However, as 
 new cases introduce new forms and new resources, sup- 
 pose Mr. Roebuck to march up to the bar of the Lords, 
 armed with a message conveying the fact of such a 
 motion and resolution, and declaratory of a wish on 
 the part of certain Commons that their Lordships 
 would forthwith surrender their power and privileges 
 to a reform committee of the Lower House. What 
 follows ? First, a committal to Newgate of the indi- 
 vidual messenger, and a message to the Commons no- 
 tifying that fact. And the winding up of the affair 
 would be the bringing of the offender to the bar a little 
 before the session closed, a reprimand severely ex- 
 pressed from the Chancellor, and finally, his liberation, 
 upon payment of his fees. Or, imagine the House of 
 Commons sufficiently extravagant to pursue the matter, 
 with what color of right could they support their ab- 
 Burd message ? They would find it impossible to deny 
 the fact of their own original aggression ; with what- 
 ever intention, they must concede that they had been 
 in error as regarded known and settled rights ; useful 
 or not useful, they must concede that they had enter- 
 tained a question, a debate, and a vote, upon the rights 
 of others equally sacred with any of their own. And 
 Vhe charge against the House of Lords would then re-
 
 504 
 
 OX THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 duce itself to this, that they had " disobeyed a resolu- 
 tion of a House of Commons," a new species of 
 crime, and as much known to our jurisprudence as it 
 svould be to charge a bishop, dean, and chapter, with 
 disobeying the orders of the Admiralty. The House 
 of Lords laughs at schemes for reforming it, unless, 
 indeed, such as arise within its own body. It is doubt- 
 ful whether the Lords themselves possess any consid- 
 erable powers in that direction ; most certainly they 
 have none which go to the extent of a complete alter- 
 ation in the composition of their body, or in the title 
 (viz., hereditary succession and immediate summons of 
 the Crown) by which they hold their seats. These 
 titles to their legislative office it is as little in the power 
 of the Lords to alter as in that of the Commons. For 
 any alteration here, as it affects the Lords immediately, 
 finally affects the Crown and the rights of the Crown. 
 Banish the peers by inheritance, and the aristocracy is 
 destroyed (politically speaking) ; banish the new peers 
 summoned by the Crown, and the king is destroyed 
 pro tanto ; banish the spiritual peers, and the church 
 is destroyed; make the House elective, and the whole 
 government and polity of these kingdoms are destroyed, 
 and will be instantly converted into a new thing, an 
 anomalous monster, having no relation to the ancient 
 constitution, and (upon many considerations peculiar to 
 this country and to the arrangement of its property) 
 BO utterly unlike any known precedent, that it must 
 leave the deepest anxiety and uncertainty for the prac- 
 tical working of such a system, and no one certainty 
 but this that not a relic would survive of the o)<* 
 British constitution.
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 535 
 
 Now, resuming the business of my letter, I have first 
 to complain of some oversights committed by my cen- 
 sor. The first is an unwise one : unwise, for it is not 
 wholly without choice, a choice influenced by his daily 
 reading. The very ablest men (and my censor I havo 
 reason to think one who is certainly of that number) 
 are and must be emasculated by the constant quality of 
 what they read, whenever that reading lies amongst the 
 unpremeditated polemics of daily newspapers. News- 
 papers, it is true, have their points of preeminence ; 
 and it is even an advantage nay, a very great one 
 for the eloquent expression of what a man feels, that 
 he should be driven to express himself rapidly. There 
 is the same advantage as in conversation. And what 
 is that ? Simply this : that when thoughts chase each 
 other as rapidly as words can overtake them, each sev- 
 eral thought comes to modify that which succeeds so 
 intensely as to carry amongst the whole series a far 
 more burning logic, a perfect life of cohesion, which is 
 liable to be lost or frozen in the slow progress of care- 
 ful composition. The case approaches that of personal 
 passion, whether of rage, grief, or revenge. When was 
 it ever found that a man in passionate anger did or 
 could wander from his theme ? Incoherence there 
 might be apparently in his words, or his transitions 
 might be too rapid to be intelligible to an unsympathiz- 
 ing hearer; but the essential thoughts could not be 
 otherwise than closely knit together. Rapid and ex- 
 tempore composition, therefore, has its own special ad- 
 vantages ; but they are advantages which appeal to the 
 sensibilities. But to balance this potent advantage as 
 regards the instant sensibilities, there are evils more
 
 536 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 than compensatory as regards the understanding. 
 There can in such rapidity be no looking back, so as 
 to adjust the latter sweep of the curve to the former ; 
 there can be no looking forward, so as to lay a slow 
 foundation for remote superstructures. There can be 
 no painful evolution of principles ; there can be no 
 elaborate analysis ; there can be no subtle pursuit of 
 distinction. Passion, indeed (and I have been saying 
 so), has a logic of its own ; and a logic as intense as 
 a process of crystallization : but it is a crystallization 
 among the separate parts, ab intra : for between the 
 parts ab extra the transitions are naturally more than 
 lyrically abrupt. 
 
 In politics, of necessity, persons mix with things : 
 cases of the moment mix with principles. And the 
 temptations of personality, concurring with the una- 
 voidable application to the topic of (he hour, all com- 
 bine to force a man into capricious and desultory tran- 
 sitions, however intensely fused may be each separate 
 fragment of his disquisitions. Hence for all readers, 
 or at least for all students of the daily press, there 
 arises a sad necessity of weaning their minds from the 
 severities of logic. And a man who descends from 
 long habits of philosophic speculation to a casual in- 
 tercourse with fugitive and personal politics, finds even 
 in the very ablest minds [an infirmity of step which 
 retards his pace, .... at first surprises him].* 
 
 Precisely from this habituation to the hasty thinking 
 of the daily press, and not otherwise, can I explain the 
 first oversight of my censor, which must have grown 
 
 * The words in brackets are erased in the MS., where th 
 sentence ia incomplete.
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 537 
 
 out of hurry and inattention. I will point out this 
 error by referring to a letter from another person, prac- 
 tised in politics, which errs in the very same way. 
 After taxing my paper with other faults, the writer 
 goes on to say : " You have neglected to pursue the 
 history of the Whigs and Tories ; you have given us 
 no running commentary on their conduct at different 
 eras ; you have not illustrated their principles as ap- 
 plied to the main critical cases which have arisen since 
 the Revolution of 1688-9." Now, on my part, in an- 
 swer to this objection, I demand to know, What concern 
 have I with the " conduct " of the Whigs and Tories ? 
 My object from the first was, not to give a history of 
 our political parties, but an account of their principles, 
 of their creed, of their doctrinal code. And this, I 
 contend, with my purposes, was the only useful way of 
 treating the subject. I will explain. The capital ob- 
 ject of my paper was to facilitate a valuation of the 
 Whig and Tory principles, as contrasted with the Rad* 
 ical, and therefore to bring them into a close compari- 
 son. Now, principles and creeds may be compared ; 
 but as to the course of action pursued by the old con- 
 stitutional parties, as compared with the modern re- 
 forming parties, there are as yet no materials: the 
 muse of History, as regards the Radicals, sits yet in 
 silence '' waiting for a theme." The Radicals have not 
 yet come forward on the stage as actors. For a few 
 years they have prompted and suggested to the Whigs . 
 but no Radical administration has yet existed : and 
 until then there is no field of comparison. Secondly 
 as respects the Whigs and Tories, not one in five hun- 
 ired cases of political experience have had any relation
 
 538 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 to Whig or Tory principles, which fact shows the use- 
 lessness of pursuing their conduct through the details 
 of our history : the two parties have acted as any other 
 confederations of men in ancient history, or in modern 
 continental history; that is, they have opposed each 
 other as Ins and Outs, as men having power against 
 men in quest of power, parties which would havo 
 existed no less had Whig and Tory never been heard 
 of. This or that war, for instance, bearing no possible 
 relation to Whiggism or Toryism, has been supported 
 on the one side as useful to some interest of commerce ? 
 or of a supposed balance amongst the States of Chris- 
 tendom ; it has been opposed on the other side as too 
 rashly undertaken, as too carelessly planned, or as too 
 feebly conducted: all of which arguments furnished 
 colorable views of policy, true or not true for that oc- 
 casion, but in any case perfectly remote from consider- 
 ations of Whig or Tory doctrine. Such a tax, again, 
 was bad on general grounds of economy, or it violated 
 some pledge which had been given, or it was ill gradu- 
 ated, or it was collected at a disproportionate expense. 
 But still, right or wrong, these grounds of opposition 
 involve no appeal to the characteristic principles of 
 Whig and Tory. Even the Regency question one 
 of those most entitled to be held a constitutional ques- 
 tion of al 1 which occurred throughout the last century 
 was debated on arguments aloof from Whiggism or 
 Toryism. And Mr. Fox was influenced to the course 
 be took, of maintaining a right in the heir-apparent, 
 upon any incompetence in the sovereign, to assume the 
 regency as a trust which had devolved to him by legal 
 iuccession, not assuredly by any reliance on Whig prin
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 539 
 
 siples (on the contrary, Mr. Pitt's doctrine that any 
 regency, and the personal shares in any regency, must 
 be a mere creation of Parliament, wore a much more 
 popular air, and so far would have had the better right 
 to be called the Whig doctrine) ; not, therefore, on Whig 
 principles was Mr. Fox moved to take this unpopular 
 course, but entirely upon personal motives of friendship 
 for the Prince of Wales. The American war is another 
 of the rare cases for which Whig and Tory principles 
 have been thought available, but upon no reasons which 
 argue any clear acquaintance with Whig and Tory 
 distinctions. The case of colonies had not been spe- 
 cially reserved at the great era of settling our constitu- 
 tion, and was therefore not specially provided for. And 
 as to the general case of taxation imposed upon bodies 
 not directly represented, that was surely virtually 
 discountenanced as much by the Tories as by the Whigs, 
 the settlement of the Revolution having been the 
 joint work of both. Hence I argue, that to have pur- 
 sued the Whigs and Tories through a course of his- 
 torical cases, which rarely belonged to their creed as 
 Whig or Tory, but almost universally to their position 
 as ministerial or anti-ministerial, could have answered 
 no useful purpose. Finally, over and above the two 
 arguments already stated against the reasonableness of 
 Buch an historical deduction (the first against its possi- 
 bility, the second against its use and relevance), I con- 
 tend that, even were it possible, and were it relevant, 
 still the public interest and the particular question I had 
 undertaken, of appraising the three chief denominations 
 vf party amongst us, must be far more deeply affected 
 by an account of their separate principles than of their
 
 540 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 separate conduct. " We" says my censor, " care com- 
 paratively nothing for your dormant creed" A more 
 unwise saying it would be difficult to devise. Creeds 
 are eternal : if dormant, they may be recalled to life ; 
 if betrayed, they are open to revindication. Men are 
 transient as transient as their passions ; past conduct 
 is no pledge for future conduct, even in the same men 
 coming into new positions and contradictory interests ; 
 but in a profession of faith you have at least an appeal 
 to the conscience of the individual, and you have the 
 authority which belongs to the standards of ancient 
 wisdom, owned for such through many generations. 
 If at this present moment it were desirable for any 
 purpose to bring under the eyes of a Spaniard (stand- 
 ing, suppose, in the circumstances of doubt and inquiry 
 which Mr. Blanco White has described as belonging to 
 his own case) a comparison of the Church of England 
 with that of Papal Rome, in which direction would you 
 turn your appeal ? to the pretensions and character of 
 the English clergy, or to the Thirty-nine Articles as 
 interpreted and explained by the learning of three cen- 
 turies ? To the variable fact of the clerical conduct 
 at different eras, and to an estimate of their social value 
 and consideration at these eras ; or to the eternal mon- 
 uments of the creed professed by the Church of Eng- 
 land, and the secondary but still important settlements 
 of her discipline and ecclesiastical government ? Most 
 assurely to these last. For the Spaniard would him- 
 self say, " I am occupied with an interest transcending 
 personal regards ; towards an attempt to estimate the 
 truth and value of the English Confession. Possibly 
 if all other means of judging were denied me, som<
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 541 
 
 very imperfect aid might be drawn from the prevailing 
 character (or reputed character) of the English priest- 
 hood ; conjecturally, the Church might be measured by 
 her ministerial agents ; but surely this indirect appraise- 
 ment would be preposterous for one who enjoys the 
 most absolute access to all the direct means of mak- 
 ing up his judgment in the Anglican Church, and can 
 apply his mind to the very words and professions of 
 the Anglican Church, by way of ascertaining for him- 
 self what is her title to be held a depositary of divine 
 truth. Besides, any well-informed Englishman would 
 
 n such a case be disposed to tell the Spaniard that a 
 judgment of the Anglican Church, built upon the very 
 fairest appreciation of her clergy, must be conflicting 
 or contradictory in its final result : the clergy have 
 varied with the circumstances. In the age of martyr- 
 dom, viz., the middle of the sixteenth century, when 
 the reformed churches were everywhere in the agony 
 of conflict with the established corruptions of Chris- 
 tianity, no church had been so zealous or so memo- 
 rably lavish of her blood as the English. During a 
 second stage of her history, when she was placed so 
 far in a station of security as to find herself militant no 
 longer by secular forces but those of intellect and eru- 
 dition, she had become the most learned and the most 
 intellectual of all churches ; 78 and indeed she might be 
 called not so much the most learned, as the only 
 .earned church, since even the Papal Church, which 
 ranks nearest to her, hai attained to distinction as a 
 body only through one or two of her many orders, 
 viz., the Jesuits and the Benedictines. At length, in a 
 
 bird stage, unfortunately for bar own dignity and use-
 
 512 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 fulness, the Anglican Church reached a position of ab- 
 solute repose ; the unsettled relations between herself 
 and the Papists were now terminated by the final ex- 
 clusion of Popish families from the throne ; and even 
 the Protestant Dissenters were placed by various acts 
 of toleration in a condition which left them thence- 
 forwards liable to no irritation, active or passive : they 
 could neither irritate effectually, nor be irritated. 
 Under the torpor of this situation, concurring with the 
 taint to our national morals sustained in various ways 
 at the era of the Restoration (which did not purge it- 
 self off in less than a century), the English clergy sank 
 to the lowest point of depression in the interval between 
 the English and the French revolutions. They were 
 still the most learned and accomplished clergy by far 
 in the world ; in fact, the Popish clergy were, generally 
 speaking, illiterate, all their learning being confined to 
 the monastic orders. They were also a body of gen- 
 tlemen, and useful by their moral examples, their at- 
 tainments, and their beneficence, as so many centres 
 of civilization dispersed over all the parishes of Eng- 
 land. But, at the same time, it must be granted that 
 gradually, from the absolute annihilation of their mili- 
 tant condition in a political sense, and the general tone 
 of ease and comfort in their finances, they had become 
 the least of a spiritual-minded clergy known perhaps 
 in Christendom. The pastoral duties to their flocks 
 were all crowded and depressed into a few periodical 
 formalities and freezing ceremonies : even these were 
 sustained only by custom, by the necessities of canonical 
 obedience, and by official jealousy of intrusion upon their 
 jrivileged ground by unqualified persons. And thif
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 543 
 
 Jtate of things arose, unfortunately, not so much from 
 conscious negligence, as from systematic depression of 
 the pastoral office, and alienation from all vigilant re- 
 ligious sensibility, under the general name of enthu- 
 siasm. The delineations, accordingly, which we find 
 of the clerical character in the novels of the first half 
 of the eighteenth century, are such as could not (with 
 every allowance for exaggeration) have been offered 
 as representative pictures at any other period of the 
 church history. At length, however, the evil had 
 reached its height, and a reaction commenced. The 
 Methodists had been originally projected from the 
 Church herself. For one generation, probably, they 
 produced little impression that was externally visible 
 upon the Church. But at length men of family and 
 social consideration, as well as scholars in the two uni- 
 versities, began to join them : the soil was prepared ; 
 a vast machinery of religious societies began to get 
 into motion ; and a fourth stage was entered of church 
 history, as applied to the character of the clergy. 
 Within the last forty or fifty years, the English clergy 
 in every rank (perhaps even more in the highest than 
 lowest) have passed through a process of silent refor- 
 mation. A very large infusion of what is called tech- 
 nically " evangelical" principles has been poured into 
 the Church, into the highest ranks, I repeat, at 
 least as much as into the lower ; and the complexion 
 of the whole body is now so altered, judged by its ser- 
 mons, tracts, public speeches, support given to relig- 
 ious societies of every denomination, that, by compari 
 Bon with its own state seventy years ago, it may be 
 called an apostolic church. This is a point which can
 
 544 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 be determined only by those who have connections 
 which enable them to speak with knowledge ; for the 
 mass of public writers know nothing of the real exist- 
 ing Church, but merely echo an invidious clamor now 
 superannuated, and perhaps always grounded in the 
 main upon tithes. However, the immediate purpose 
 I had in this reference to the varying history of the 
 Church was to show that if the appeal were made to 
 the history or character of the clergy, then the report 
 must be as variable, and speak as variable a language, 
 as belongs to the whole range between the self-sacri- 
 ficing spirit of a primitive martyr and the most ab- 
 solute dedication to the world. But the creed is a 
 monument that cannot change. 
 
 Upon these arguments, and the spirit of these argu- 
 ments, I pronounce my censor wrong in supposing it 
 any part of my duty to have traced the conduct of 
 the Whigs and Tories. My business was with their 
 creed. And to that I now return. My censor has 
 made it necessary that I should do so, having appar- 
 ently never opened his eyes to the main principle on 
 which my whole theory of our two English constitu- 
 tional parties is built. I judge this because he has 
 made no objection or demur of any sort to my full and 
 open statement of that theory, and first opposes it by 
 a point-blank contradiction, when I am simply making 
 an application of this theory to a particular case. The 
 case is that of Mr. Pitt, of whom I affirm, that up to 
 a certain stage of the French Revolution he might have 
 smiled approvingly upon its promises (and probably 
 did so), not less cordially than any Whig the moaf 
 ardent as a Whig, and speaking in that character
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 545 
 
 That restriction must always be borne in mind, because 
 there is nothing to hinder any pure Republican, the 
 most alien to the British constitution, from calling him- 
 self a Whig; and many a fierce Republican has done 
 so. Upon this case of illustration, Mr. Pitt's case 
 in relation to the French Revolution, the censor 
 denies it roundly as a case within the verge of possibil- 
 ity. Mr. Pitt smile approvingly upon the French Rev- 
 olution ! impossible! " He could not" says the censor; 
 and that is the amount of his reply. Now a blank 
 negation is at any time met sufficiently by a blank re- 
 affirmation. And with respect to this particular nega- 
 tion, as regards the mere question of fact apart from 
 the question of principle, it is notorious that Mr. Pitt 
 not only might consistently, but did in very deed sym- 
 pathize with the French Revolution in a degree which 
 made it necessary for Edmund Burke to couch his 
 political vision from the cataract which obscured the 
 sanity of his views. Even in a recent Radical journal 
 (by way of an argument ad hominem) the censor will 
 find it noticed, that in the matter of the French Rev- 
 olution, Burke (though as yet still connected with a 
 soi-disant Whig party) " betrayed principles less pop- 
 ular than those of the minister ; and that afterwards, 
 when Burke (as it was termed) went over to him, the 
 junction took place, not by the former being converted 
 by the latter to anti-popular principles, but by Burke 
 converting the minister to his own anti-jacobinism." 
 (Lond. and West. Rev., No. 8 ; and 51, p. 496, Art. 
 Wraxall's Memoirs.) The Radical writer of this papei 
 goes on to say (Ibid., p. 497), that " for some time 
 after that event" (viz., the French Revolution), "Pitt 
 35
 
 546 OK THE POLITICAL TARTIES 
 
 coincided with Fox in regarding it as auspicious to the 
 friendly relations between France and England," 
 words which could not have been more apposite to the 
 present question if they had been expressly written 
 with a view to it, and (which is more important) words 
 in harmony with the entire tenor of the debates in 
 those days, and in equal harmony with all the attested 
 glimpses of Mr. Pitt's private sentiments, as expressed 
 either in conversation or in confidential letters. 
 
 Here, therefore, at least, the censor will find himself 
 in error as to the question of fact. But, even had it 
 been otherwise, this could not have affected the ques- 
 tion of principle there concerned, viz., that a true 
 Tory, understanding his own principles, let Mr. Pitt 
 have done as he would, was bound to rejoice in the 
 first promises of the French Revolution though, 
 perhaps, to " rejoice with trembling." Was it, or was 
 it not, a resemblance of his own Revolution, to which 
 he by his ancestors had set his seal ? If it was, if there 
 were the same great principles acknowledged, of repre- 
 sentative government, of limits set to the regal power, 
 >f accountability lodged in quarters where it could be 
 enforced, of universal contribution to the national bur- 
 dens, without immunities for any rank or order, of per- 
 sonal security from summary acts of oppression, open 
 or secret, if these and other grand cardinal grounds 
 of social liberty were laid down solemnly, and hallowed 
 in the earlier acts of that mighty Revolution, then I 
 affirm that both Whigs and Tories, supposing them 
 masters of their own original creeds, must in consist- 
 ency have concurred fervently to an act which was bu* 
 * republication of their own immortal precedent,
 
 OF MODERN KNGLAND. 547 
 
 that precedent by which they had inaugurated their 
 own political birth as parties. The disturbing light* 
 of present circumstances too often withdraw the atten- 
 tion of all parties, whether political or religious, from 
 their own original principles, those principles which 
 first confederated them into parties ; too often also it 
 happens that, from mere disuse of exercise in first 
 principles, from the total defect of occasions which 
 might adequately call them out (a case which emi- 
 nently belongs to the prosperous and secure condi- 
 tion of England throughout the latter half .of the eigh- 
 teenth century), men, otherwise the most intelligent, 
 fall into a dim or lukewarm recognition of their own 
 distinguishing creeds ; and above all, it has been found 
 continually that the possession of power indisposes a 
 man to admit any principles whatsoever in their per- 
 fect authority which are likely to prove personal ob- 
 stacles. Cromwell was originally a lover of freedom, 
 and perhaps would never have been other than a lover, 
 had freedom not clashed with his personal views. All 
 these reasons might have concurred to make Mr. Pitt 
 scowl upon the French Revolution, had he scowled, 
 which it is clear that he did not. But no matter for 
 individual examples ; it will remain true after all that 
 the ideal Tory was pledged by his faith to an approba- 
 tion of the French Revolution in its early stages. And 
 the censor, in contradicting me, has failed to observe 
 that his contradiction is planted in the wrong place 
 the general inference, that a Tory was bound to sym- 
 pathize with the earliest stages of the French Revolu- 
 tion, is already involved in my theory of the relations 
 between Whigs and Tories, which theory, therefore,
 
 548 OX THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 and not a casual illustration of it, the censor ought to 
 have impeached. 
 
 That he has not done this, I ascribe to his having 
 been thrown off any distinct apprehension of it by the 
 hurried style of reading which is become a mere neces- 
 sity for a political writer, or even a large political ob- 
 server, in these days. In this I mean no reproach, for 
 thei'e is a sheer incompatibility between seeing largely 
 of all aspects and accurately of each. So that I have 
 no cause to complain, and do not complain ; but the 
 fact is still so, that he has failed to observe my peculiar 
 view of our original constitutional parties, without 
 which he could not do justice to anything I have said, 
 that theory being the ground of the whole. 
 
 This view, therefore, this theory, I shall re-state 
 with amendments, not merely by way of a resume 
 or recapitulation introductory to what I have to say of 
 Radicalism, but also because in and for itself I contend 
 that my views on this subject are the first which gave 
 meaning or coherency to the history of these king- 
 doms. Let it be understood that I offer my present 
 theory as in defiance of all former theories. I contend 
 that no previous account of Whigs and Tories, of their 
 origin, or of their relations, is self-consistent or even 
 intelligible ; and I contend also that all are historically 
 false. The history of England, and still more that of 
 Scotland, is grossly falsified in all the main circum- 
 stances connected with the narrative chapters of Whig 
 and Tory progress, and is thrown into absolute con- 
 radiction in its philosophic chapters. Bear with me 
 whiht I reassert my own scheme ; it will contain but 
 little of repetition, it will not be long. And, at the
 
 OF MODKRN ENGLAND. 
 
 549 
 
 tame time, remember that, if just, it will have a further 
 value than according to its present position, a value 
 not in relation to fugitive politics, or their more fugi- 
 tive aspects, but in relation to philosophic and self- 
 consistent history. 
 
 I have already made you acquainted with my lead- 
 ing thesis in this speculation, a thesis which at once 
 changes the whole field and area of the question. It 
 is this : that the kind of opposition between Whig and 
 Tory is not, as the current notions make it, logical, 
 that is, contradictory each of the other ; in the way, for 
 instance, that a Christian and an anti-Christian are op- 
 posed, an Episcopalian and a Presbyterian, a the- 
 ist and an atheist. All these denominations and coun- 
 ter-denominations are of such a nature that they obvi- 
 ously include each other. Theism, for instance, being 
 true, Atheism (as a mere rebound of that proposition) 
 must be false. Not only cannot both consist in the 
 same subject, but even in different subjects both can- 
 uot be simultaneously true : one must be false (speak- 
 .ng of speculative truth) ; one must be wrong (speak- 
 ing of practical). Either of such alternatives being 
 assumed for a substance, the other instantly becomes a 
 shadow. But the opposition between "Whig and Tory 
 is not of this kind, as has been universally assumed 
 suid argued upon : it is not logical as between A and 
 non-Aj between is and is not, between true and false, 
 between wrong and right. The opposition is of the 
 same nature as that which takes place in algebra, 
 when quantities equally real, but in opposite direction, 
 \re treated as positive and negative. A ship sailing 
 tastwards is carried by currents certain distances to the
 
 550 OX THE 1'CLITICAI, PARTIES 
 
 west : the motions in one direction you put down as 
 affirmative, those in the other (equally real, observe) 
 as negative, and it matters not which you call affirma- 
 tive, which negative : so far is there from being any 
 true logical negation in the matter, which would imply 
 one of the two to be necessarily a nonentity ; and the 
 opposition between the two is of that nature which 
 can allow them actually to exist in the same subject, 
 though not simultaneously. A still better illustration, 
 because including this circumstance of simultaneity, 
 may be drawn from the case of action and reaction in 
 mechanics, or from that of attraction and repulsion in 
 dynamics ; for these forces, though in perfect opposi- 
 tion, are so far from therefore excluding each other, 
 that they cannot exist apart, each, in fact, exists 
 by and through its antagonist. 
 
 In perfect analogy to these cases is the relation be- 
 tween Whig and Tory. But how little this can have 
 been perceived is evident from the universal language 
 of our political literature, in which the case is treated 
 as one of standing and irreconcilable dissension with 
 regard to the separate pretensions of the Crown and 
 the people. The notion is, not merely that the Whigs 
 carry the popular claims, for example, to a higher point 
 (which might still be a Jixed point) than the Tories, 
 and that, in the same proportion, these Whigs depress 
 the claims of the Sovereign, but this notion is carried 
 even to the preposterous extremity of supposing each 
 party to seek an unlimited extension of privilege for 
 that one among the triple forces of our constitution 
 whose interest it espouses. If this were really so, if it 
 bad been the prevailing policy and the rationale o
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 551 
 
 that policy among the Tories to seek the unconditional 
 depression of the popular interest, and reciprocally of 
 the Whigs to seek the unconditional depression of the 
 Crown, then, indeed, we must acknowledge opposition 
 between the two parties in the main articles of their 
 separate creeds. That an interpretation so idle of the 
 refined differences between two parties, arising in the 
 very bosom of civilization, and at the most intellect- 
 ual era of the most intellectual of nations, interpreta- 
 tions so gross of differences so spiritual, ever could 
 have been entertained by reflective men, is marvellous. 
 Mere orators, and public men with public merits of the 
 popular order, are little qualified to meet any question 
 which lies below the surface, the opinion of such 
 men is of no authority in the second or third generation 
 from their own day ; but that Burke should have so far 
 yielded to the vulgar error as to speak of it in common 
 conversation as a problem still pending and sub judice, 
 whether AVhigs or Tories were " in the right, 1 " would 
 be humiliating if it were clearly established. But I 
 doubt the fact : to the philosophic understanding of 
 Burke such an error was impossible. There is an ex- 
 planation which, whilst it palliates or even cancels the 
 peccant part of his meaning, that part which seems 
 to countenance the vulgar error, is equally useful in 
 accounting for the rise of that vulgar error amongst 
 Tien in general. I will state it immediately. 
 
 Meantime, you understand that I deny broadly and 
 universally, and place amongst the vast catalogue of 
 vulgar errors, that notion which attributes any logical 
 imposition to the relations between Whigs and Tories 
 any such opposition as would make it necessary, i/
 
 552 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 Dne were pronounced right, that the other should be 
 pronounced wrong. Both are right ; and not only so 
 not only can these party differences coexist without 
 violence to truth, but, as in the mechanical law for- 
 merly referred to, of action and reaction, they are able 
 to exist only by means of their coexistence. The true 
 view of their relations is this, that each party forms one 
 hemisphere ; jointly they make up the total sphere. 
 They divide, it is true, the functions of the constitu- 
 tion, one party administering the popular or dem- 
 ocratic, the other administering the anti-popular or 
 timocratic functions. But in dividing the functions, 
 they still distribute their care over the whole. In so 
 exquisite a system of balances as are at work in the 
 British constitution, there is a constant reason for fear 
 that in one function or other the equilibrium should be 
 disturbed. Consequently, it is fit that to every organ 
 through which the constitution acts or is acted upon, 
 a vigilant jealousy should be directed. This jealousy 
 cannot, by any possibility, be rendered so keen and 
 effective, if lodged comprehensively and indiscrimi- 
 nately, for all parts of the constitution, in the same gen- 
 eral hands, charged alternately with the duty of re- 
 pressing the Crown and the people, as it would be if 
 assigned dramatically, by separate parts or castings, to 
 separate agents. Human nature itself would make it 
 a self-defeating jealousy, if it were necessary for the 
 tame man to vary his own passions to suit the varying 
 circumstances ; and the task of training his feelings 
 this day in one direction, and to-morrow in another 
 would be a mere impossibility for any man of steady 
 feelings, such feelings as it could be otherwise righ
 
 OP MODERN ENGLAND. 553 
 
 X) rely on. Habits are the great pledge for the due 
 performance of duties ; and habits, to be habits, cannot 
 be supposed applying themselves to variable or con- 
 tradictory impulses. Hence it is that the Whigs have 
 charged themselves with one class of duties to the 
 British constitution, and the Tories with another. Not 
 that I would wish to represent this wise division of 
 labor as having been originally prescribed by human 
 foresight, but that, under the wise leading of human 
 nature, and under the natural tendencies of human pas- 
 sions or interests, things having once settled into this 
 arrangement or into this tendency, the result was seen 
 and improved by the deliberate judgment of parties. 
 An advocate would not feel himself entitled (or, if en- 
 titled, not reconciled) to the practice of urging the pre- 
 sumptions strongly against an accused person simply by 
 the balancing right of that person to take off the effect 
 of evidence, and in the utmost degree that he could to 
 throw dust in the eyes of the court ; but perhaps he 
 may feel reconciled to this by the consciousness that 
 the very extremity of this rigor on his own part, and 
 the anticipation of it, like the intensity of a mechanic 
 force, will be the very best pledge in the long run for 
 a corresponding extremity of effort in the reaction. 
 And thus the guardians of the Crown prerogative are 
 warranted in pressing this prerogative to the very ut- 
 termost tension, by the certainty that thus, more effect- 
 ually than by all the bribes in this world, they will en- 
 Tire the permanent reaction of the Democratic partv 
 di defence of popular privilege. But that, in the very 
 midst of this bisection of the public spirit into two 
 polar forces of reciprocal antagonism for the sake of a
 
 554 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 steadier, stronger, and more continuous action, there 
 does, in fact, preside latently and in the rear a tran- 
 scendent regard to the total interest in the most com- 
 prehensive sense ; that neither party wishes the weight 
 of the other party to be diminished, much less annihi- 
 lated, as is often imagined, by an excess of blundering 
 in respect of principles (for as to personal influence, 
 and the question of Ministerial power, that is quite an- 
 other thing) : all these truths flow like so many cor- 
 ollaries from that great consummating act by which, at 
 the same moment, our constitution was finally estab- 
 'ished, and our two great constitutional parties origi- 
 nally inaugurated. You understand, of course, that I 
 mean the Revolution of 1 688-9. For let me ask any 
 man who clings to the old notion, that the Whigs and 
 Tories are hostile parties (hostile, I mean, as deposita- 
 ries. of principle, not in the very different sense of par- 
 ties seeking against parties possessing power), and that 
 they wish (or have reason to wish) each other's de- 
 struction ; such a man let me ask how he will reconcile 
 this notion of essential hostility with the unanimity 
 and absolute harmony which they manifested in the 
 most critical and important measure, the measure most 
 fitted to divide men otherwise hostile, of all which 
 ever have agitated this nation. Did the Whigs and 
 the Tories adjust the measure of the Revolution in 
 the way of a capitulation that is, by mutual conces- 
 sions, by reciprocal sacrifices of interests which had 
 lonfessedly held a high party value ? Was the Revo- 
 lution, in the sense of Roman law, a transactio, that 
 , was it a compromise in which both parties, under a 
 tense of their situation and doubtful power, yielded op
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 555 
 
 jorae capital principles ? Nothing of the sort. Never 
 was there a measure to which both parties more cor- 
 dially or unreservedly concurred in all that touched 
 upon principles, for the articles on which they much 
 differed were articles of a personal pressure : as, for 
 instance, should the nephew of the exiled king stand 
 first and single in the substitution ; or 2dly, be as- 
 sociated with that king's eldest daughter (in which 
 case, undoubtedly, there was a personal wrong to the 
 younger daughter and to her children) ; or, 3dly, be 
 coldly remanded to his original place in the line of 
 succession ? These questions were certainly personal 
 questions, and merely personal, for the least unscrupu- 
 lous of the deliberators never meant to raise a prece- 
 dent, in the case of calling William to the throne, that 
 should be construed in favor of nephews generally by 
 preference to daughters. On every question of prin- 
 ciple, all questions which concerned the rights of kings, 
 of people, of the church, the mode of administration, 
 the exercise of the prerogative, and the tenure of prop- 
 erty, both parties coalesced, and both were equally for- 
 ward. No capital opposition was raised but from a" 
 third party, connected by no ties of principle whatever, 
 but purely by private considerations, either of fidelity, 
 gratitude, or disinterested attachment to the king's per- 
 son viz., Jacobites. And it must also be remem- 
 bered, that in other instances of opposition, not capi- 
 tal, the parties were often neither Whigs, Tories, nor 
 Jacobites ; for there were many in both Houses who 
 professed neither the great principles of the two former 
 oarties, nor the personal bias of tne latter. 
 
 Here then I take my stand : the Revolution, taken
 
 o ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 with its commentary in the trial of Sachev>M*ell, waa 
 the great record of our constitution; an act declara- 
 tory and enactory ; for at the same time it proclaimed 
 and republished former principles of freedom, defined 
 and limited all which were of dubious construction, 
 and solemnly enacted those integrations of our social 
 system which had been hitherto intrusted respectfully 
 (but, as recent experience had shown, dangerously) to 
 the royal forbearance or the ministerial responsibility. 
 By this great act were ascertained forever the true 
 locus of each function belonging to a state ; the power 
 of the sword (so agitating a topic of dispute forty odd 
 years before) ; the power of the purse ; the power of 
 legislation (which the last years of Charles II., his 
 avowed intentions, and the insinuations of James in his 
 very first speech from the throne, had threatened to 
 centre in the king and his privy council) ; the power 
 of the press and of confederate petition ; the municipal 
 powers all over the kingdom, and, by consequence, the 
 unfettered power of choosing juries (both of which had, 
 by implication, been assailed in the Quo warranto writs 
 of Charles II.) ; the powers of the Church and of free- 
 hold property as against the Crown ; and finally (to 
 omit many other great stipulations of present or future 
 consequence), the executive power in its pretensions to 
 a right of dispensation, and indirectly to the mainte- 
 nance of a standing force. To this great charter of 
 our rights, as collected from the written documents 
 
 O f 
 
 and the acts of the Convention and subsequent Parlia- 
 ment, who were the parties ? who the main movers 
 and authors of the measure itself which led to these 
 acts, viz., of the <reat secession from the
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 557 
 
 reigning king and the adhesion to the Prince oi 
 Orange ? Simply the Whigs and Tories ; and had 
 sither party proved recusant, instead of a bloodless rev- 
 olution, without even a civil commotion worth notice, 
 or the disturbance of individual rights, we must have 
 had a civil war. The inference as to the unity of 
 Whigs and Tories in every matter of principle, I need 
 not repeat. But one thing I must add, that this unity 
 is the more evident, because (as I shall immediately 
 show) the Whig and Tory parties were first ascer- 
 tained by the Revolution ; or rather, it would be more 
 accurate to say that these parties, in their full maturity, 
 were a twin-birth with that great event. And I hold 
 it a mistake to suppose that Whigs and Tories were 
 formally opposed to each other as antagonist forces pre- 
 viously to that era. The word Whiff was often used, 
 but the word Tory hardly ever ; and the first field in 
 which they were brought into direct antithesis was in 
 the north or Protestant part of Ireland ; whence they 
 passed to Dublin ; and from Dublin, about the year of 
 the Revolution, to London. 
 
 Now, upon this theory of the absolute unity be- 
 tween Whigs and Tories as to principle, and their bi- 
 section into parts of mutual repulsion only for prac- 
 tical effects, it will be demanded, Whence then comes 
 the universal belief that the Whig is every way op- 
 posed to the Tory ? I answer, from these three 
 i uises : 
 
 1. From the original separation for the purpose al- 
 ~eady explained, viz., the more entire dedication ol 
 one agency to one class of constitutional objects. 
 
 2. Still more from this cause, that once separated
 
 r >58 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 into distinct bodies, on this principle of the division of 
 labor, each body acting separately, as was natural, in 
 a distinct province, they became marked out to the 
 sovereign as two parties having distinct personal con- 
 nections ; and by means of these connections having 
 varying forces of property and borough interest, and 
 national influence amongst them. Hence arose a rea- 
 son to the king for choosing his minister now amongst 
 one party, now amongst the other, with no view to 
 any sort of principles, good or bad, but simply to the 
 party connections. Thus it was that the Whigs and 
 Tories came to be viewed under new and shifting rela- 
 tions as Ministerial or in Opposition, Ins or Outs, men 
 having power and men seeking power. 
 
 3. Even apart from this relation to the momentary 
 possession of power and place, the simple circumstance 
 of uniform confederation for the same line of policy 
 (however unconnected that policy might be with prin- 
 ciples of any quality, and however disconnected within 
 itself), nay, the mere force of names as rallying points 
 for men in public acts, would again tend to disturb and 
 confuse the original distinctions on which Whig and 
 Tory parties proceeded, viz., the distinctions of function, 
 that is to say, the attention of men would be far 
 more frequently called to the nominal distinctions of 
 party connection, from acting in concert with Notting- 
 ham, Bolingbroke, Oxford, or on the other side with 
 Marlborough, Somers, Godolphin, than with any pro- 
 founder characteristics. And these nominal party uni- 
 ties ars quite sufficient to explain the whole habit of 
 Attributing to Whig and Tory that kind of hostility 
 which never can attach to them as such, but do anc
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 559 
 
 will always attach to them in other superadded charac- 
 ters : first, of partisans confederated under two differ- 
 ent sections of the aristocracy ; and, secondly, of men 
 in the king's service or out of that service, and there- 
 fore, by the necessities of parliamentary tactics, in oppo- 
 sition. Seeing that Whigs and Tories were always in 
 fact opposed to each other, it was natural enough to 
 suppose them opposed as Whigs and Tories ; for though 
 in that character they were really united (except as to 
 the separate mode of applying their principles), yet, as 
 this one difference of practical functions had availed 
 naturally to keep them distinct and aloof, it led by con- 
 sequence to the other differences of personal connec- 
 tion, and taking or not taking office. 
 
 These distinctions justify 79 Burke : when he spoke 
 of it as a thing not decided whether his own party or 
 the Tories were in the right, he meant doubtless to 
 speak of neither with any reference to principles, but 
 simply in their character of parties abetting a different 
 line of public policy, one, suppose, a warlike, the 
 other a pacific policy ; but neither having any the least 
 connection with popular or anti-popular creeds. In 
 reality, if a foreigner were to enter as a student upon a 
 course of English history for the two last centuries, he 
 would find himself continually at a loss to understand 
 the rationale of our party distinctions. He would find 
 that the vast majority of public acts ascribed to the 
 Tories, and said by the historian to have been opposed 
 by the Whigs, had no discoverable connection with any 
 principles at all that bear upon either popular or aris- 
 tocratic pretensions. Many other cases he would find 
 n which the Tories had taken the popular side, the
 
 5CO 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 Whigs the aristocratic. For instance, Mr. Fox's Indian 
 Bill, by denying all control over Indian affairs to the 
 proprietors of India stock, certainly treaded upon at. 
 aristocratic path. Again, his theory in the Regency 
 question was better suited to the atmosphere of old 
 France than of old England; whilst Mr. Pitt's pro- 
 ceeded upon a due regard to the democratic influences 
 in our mixed constitution. Mr. Fox would have had 
 us believe that the mere fact of an incapacity in the 
 sovereign, when solemnly put on record, at once de- 
 volved the regency upon the heir-apparent, as an estate 
 that had lapsed. Mr. Pitt, with a noble contempt of 
 self-interest, which obviously pointed all men's ambi- 
 tion towards the rising sun, insisted that a regency, 
 and every place in a regency, must be the mere creation 
 of Parliament. In this instance there is but too much 
 reason to suspect Mr. Fox of having complied with his 
 private bias in favor of the existing Prince of Wales. 
 But there are other cases in which the Whig party, 
 without even Mr. Fox's apology, promoted measures 
 violently opposed to their traditional principles (as 
 guardians more peculiarly of democratic rights), by 
 clamorously coming forward to abet the most conspic- 
 uous tyrant in history. They fought against the Pen- 
 insular warfare, or any other mode for showing our 
 sympathy with outraged Spain, even to a point of 
 acharnement. But this they did, it will be pleaded, not 
 in their character of Whigs, but as opponents, by hook 
 or by crook, to the Ministerial policy of those days. 
 Exactly so : that is the very thing I am saying ; and 
 the foreign student here supposed would very soon dis- 
 wver that in a vast majority of cases neither Whig
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 561 
 
 nor Tory did or could model his conduct upon any 
 system of Whig or Tory principles that ever was con- 
 ceived, and precisely because the questions are rare 
 indeed which bear any relation whatever either to pop- 
 ular pretensions or to anti-popular. And from all this 
 I deduce the following inference, that the common 
 notion (that notion which Mr Burke was assuming in 
 the case referred to) of an original and essential hos- 
 tility between Whig and Tory first took its rise, and 
 has since sustained itself, by observing them in constant 
 opposition as an acting party : which circumstance has 
 availed naturally to obscure the primary truth, as I 
 shall always maintain it to be, that as a speculative party 
 as a party appealing to political principles, they are 
 the very same party under two different phases, one 
 looking to one interest of the constitution, the other to 
 the other ; but phases, surely, not arguing any essen- 
 tial differences or hostility, since hostility there can be 
 none between different parts of the same constitution. 
 
 At this point, therefore, you will observe, that if the 
 censor persists in rejecting all appeal to creeds as of DO 
 importance, if he persists in urging the appeal to the 
 acts of the two parties, in that case, although I deny 
 utterly the pretence that the Tory acts, taken compre- 
 hensively, have been less friendly to civil liberty than 
 those of their antagonists, and although I have shown 
 n some cases (and might show in many others) that 
 upon the whole the Whigs have manifested a much 
 greater insensibility to such interests in any case when 
 they happened to clash with personal party objects, 
 yet, if it had been otherwise, as any such hostility to 
 freedom must have arisen from the particular position 
 
 36
 
 of the Tories as the king's ministers at the moment, 
 and not from their peculiar principles, the censor 
 has precisely the same evil to apprehend from the 
 Whigs, now that their time has come for occupying 
 power and place. For instance, Mr. Pitt, in a period 
 of war upon a fearful scale, and afterwards with much 
 less reason his successors, in a period of profound 
 peace, suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. Well, no 
 man can imagine that either one or the other ministry 
 did this as Tories ; they did it as the persons then 
 carrying on the government, and responsible to the 
 nation for the security of towns, districts, arsenals, 
 and generally of the public peace. Any, danger which 
 menaces interests so vast and so feverishly susceptible 
 of derangement, is likely to be exaggerated, and to 
 prove a trying temptation to him upon whose shoulders 
 the total responsibility has settled. And, on the other 
 hand, it is a homage to public freedom which costs a 
 man absolutely nothing, to depreciate the danger and the 
 necessities of the crisis when he happens to be himself 
 released from all pressure of the responsibility, and 
 when the utmost realization of the dangers apprehended 
 would but serve his own nearest interest by loading 
 his antagonist with blame. Take an illustration from 
 rioting : innumerable have been the local riots in this 
 free country, and almost as innumerable the shades of 
 conduct and the varieties of forbearance amongst the 
 magistrates. Some, from native timidity and want ot 
 nerve, have proceeded at once to the very harshest ex- 
 tremities. Others scarcely would find any circum- 
 stances sufficient to warrant the application of military 
 force. And wherefore these differences ? Would anj
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 563 
 
 man attempt to explain them out of Whig and Tory 
 principles, as though the generous, forbearing, and 
 confiding magistrate must naturally be a Whig, and the 
 timid one a Tory ? Obviously, they are due to differ- 
 ences of bodily temperament and of moral disposition. 
 But in the case which called for the suspension of the 
 Habeas Corpus Act, the responsibility was on a scale 
 far transcending that which can have ever attached to 
 a local magistrate ; and, perhaps, under the same cir- 
 cumstances the boldest of men and the most fervent 
 Whig would have adopted the same course suppos- 
 ing, always, that he was under the same onus of re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 Making these distinctions, and clearing themselves 
 from the confusion so often used to darken these ques- 
 tions, between the acts which are done in the superin- 
 duced character of king's minister, and those which are 
 done in the original character of Tory, every honest 
 Radical must feel that there is not one atom of differ- 
 ence between the two parties, except what arises from 
 being in or out, which difference is now altogether in 
 favor of the Tories. Can it be pretended for one in- 
 stant that the Whig aristocracy are less an aristocracy? 
 Are they less decorated with titles, stars, and garters ? 
 Did they, before the Reform Bill, traffic less habitually 
 in boroughs ? At this very moment, do the Whig 
 nobility and landed proprietors less regularly avail 
 themselves of their natural influence over the voters on 
 their estates ? Do they, or ever did they, less firmly 
 support the practice of entails, or any other connected 
 with primogeniture ? Do they less disdainfully recoil 
 from unequal alliances in their families ? Many more
 
 564 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 Btich questions might be asked ; and, considering the 
 sort of answer which must be given to them, an honest 
 Radical must blush scarlet. 
 
 Having stated with rigor my theory of the relations 
 between the two great constitutional parties of Eng- 
 land, it may be useful to say a word or two on the case 
 treated historically ; by which means I shall be able at 
 the same time to support what I have said, and to 
 apply myself with better effect to Radicalism. The 
 history of this subject must naturally be confused when 
 the theory is false. You must be well aware that the 
 first Earl of Strafford and the first Earl of Clarendon, 
 Lord Treasurer Southampton, and the first Duke of 
 Ormond, are not unfrequently called Tories. Mr. 
 Fox, with all the benefit of modern research, does not 
 scruple to allow himself in that mode of expression, 
 with what propriety we shall see ; and indeed no writer 
 whom I have yet seen, whether historical or directly 
 political, escapes the same leading errors. The fact of 
 so very general a consent in this direction might have 
 weighed with me to suspect my own grounds, were 
 it not that the palpable error, which I have so repeat- 
 edly had occasion to press upon your notice, of neglect- 
 ing (but rather, I should say, of overlooking) the capital 
 distinction between a party considered as a depository 
 of certain principles, and the same party as a depository 
 of ministerial power, entitles me to slight all my pred- 
 ecessors for so much of their opinions as arises out of 
 this oversight. The justice of criticism cannot refuse 
 me this concession, that the thousand reviews of any 
 question whatsoever, conducted in perfect ignorance of 
 tome capital distinction, are of meaner authority than
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 565 
 
 any single review written under the benefit of this 
 guiding light. It will be evident, indeed, to any 
 thoughtful interpreter of English history, that he who 
 can deliberately call Lord Clarendon a Tory uses that 
 word in a sense so vague and unlimited, that Cicero, 
 Atticus, or even Marcus Brutus, might be termed Tories 
 with equal propriety ; as, on the other hand, with a 
 view to the democratic agencies which he employed 
 for his own elevation, Csesar might be termed a Whig. 
 But such a latitudinarian use of these designations 
 would end in conveying a mere loose analogy, in a case 
 where he must be supposed in quest of a close and 
 special determination. Amongst the decorations of 
 rhetoric, such an application of party distinctions may 
 have its value ; but severer purposes demand a corre- 
 sponding severity in the terminology : low thinking _ 
 only can allow of a lax use of language. 
 
 The rise of parties in England may be traced back 
 to the reign of Charles the First. It is true that, be- 
 fore that era, the rudiments were forming, and large 
 materials were gathering, for the future construction of 
 organized parties. But as yet they were slenderly 
 combined, and too exclusively personal in their objects. 
 I have elsewhere ascribed the growth of Parliamentary 
 power and dignity, which advanced chiefly in the reign 
 of the first James, but manifested itself as a conscious 
 strength not very emphatically before the reign of the 
 fii'st Charles, to the large expansion of a gentry, or 
 junior nobility, throughout the sixteenth century, iu 
 consequence of the inroads made upon the great feudal 
 aristocracy by the sagacious measures of Henry VII.,* 1 
 mpported as they were by measures having the same
 
 56(5 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 tendency on the part of his son. The most direct of 
 these measures, a prohibitory measure, attacked the 
 mercenary supporters of aristocracy, the standing 
 nucleus of armies ; the other, a permissive measure, 
 withdrew the props from the main basis on which the 
 aristocratic power was built, viz., territorial wealth 
 locked up into masses by the spirit of ancient usage and 
 of legislation. The same measures, applied in other 
 directions, were pursued through the reigns of the suc- 
 ceeding century, until their operation had been univer- 
 sally diffused and made effective. Out of the partial 
 ruins which followed was recomposed a new order, 
 an order which was first known in England, viz., an 
 inferior nobility connected upwards and downwards, 
 dignified enough by descent, in a large proportion, and 
 by property, to maintain a concurrent political au- 
 thority with the haute noblesse, and yet popular enough 
 in its sympathies, by means of the continual interfusion 
 kept up between itself and the working order, to stand 
 forward as a general trustee for protecting the interests 
 and for uttering the voice of the Commons of the laud. 
 That order had certainly existed before the revolution 
 of Henry VII., but in too narrow and uncombined a 
 form to support an independent authority and settled 
 influence upon the legislation of the land or the ad- 
 ministration of the government. Two circumstances 
 gave at intervals to the House of Commons a prema- 
 ture character of grandeur and independence, but an 
 unsteady character, because as yet insufficiently sup- 
 ported by the intrinsic power of property and the sanc- 
 tion of public opinion ; and these were, 1st, the occa- 
 lional necessity in which the Crown found itself o/
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 56? 
 
 breaking the odium attached to unpopular measures by 
 sharing it with a popular body ; 2dly, the interest of 
 particular sovereigns to obtain a guarantee for arrange- 
 ments on behalf of their children which were not of 
 a nature to be fulfilled in their own lifetimes. The 
 testamentary settlements of kings were then of a more 
 aspiring and comprehensive character, so as to require 
 a corresponding superiority of character in the wit- 
 nesses and the trustees charged with the executory 
 duties. The pride of prerogative, doubtless, must have 
 struggled against this humiliating appeal (as it would 
 then be felt) ; but such feelings naturally yielded to 
 parental affection, to paramount interests, and in some 
 instances to the necessities of the situation. But in 
 spite of these casual and momentary exaltations given 
 to the character of Parliament, by which it seemed 
 at times to anticipate its present station of authority, 
 the instances are far more numerous, and of a pict- 
 uresque liveliness, which recall us to the general tone of 
 depression and conscious inferiority of function mark- 
 ing the demeanor of the Lower House to the Crown, 
 
 O * 
 
 and even to its fellow-laborers of the Upper House. 
 The censor thinks I have exaggerated the features of 
 this inferiority, and he notices particularly the two 
 cases of religion and taxation as those in which the 
 Commons exhibited a jealous and haughty reserve in 
 their intercourse with the other members of the Leg- 
 islature. True; and as those were exactly the cases 
 which I had myself excepted, I do not see why the 
 censor should imply that I had overlooked them. We 
 might add the case of their own privileges, in which 
 he Commons manifested a punctilious rigor at aiJ
 
 568 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 times. But upon questions of foreign policy they ven- 
 tured with the timid step of an aggressor ; and from 
 all such intrusions, as well as from those of still more 
 delicate character, into the privileged recesses of the 
 court or the royal household, the House of Commons 
 was harshly, insolently, and sometimes ferociously re- 
 pelled. There are cases even in the sixteenth century 
 of members suffering capital punishment for pushing 
 their inquiries too curiously or too presumptuously 
 into the conduct, past or to come, of royal personages. 
 Not until the era of James I. did the Parliament as- 
 sume the masculine tone of a national senate ; not 
 until that of his son was this tone so systematically 
 sustained and mutually understood that on either side 
 menacing eyes began to be visible lowering fronts, 
 and the gathering elements arranging themselves for 
 hostility. During this whole period (the period from 
 the accession of the Scottish family to the imperial 
 throne up to the termination of the civil war, and for 
 the eight years which intervened between that termi- 
 nation and the supremacy of Oliver Cromwell), that 
 is, during a period of fifty-one years, the minds of men 
 were in the most intense fermentation ; crude and ex 
 treme notions were cherished upon each side, as was 
 inevitable from that sort of hostility which could make 
 its appeal to the brutal decision of the sword. Between 
 extremes so determinate as these there could not be 
 any compromise, nor (according to the language of 
 that day) any "temperament" that is, neither that 
 sort of compromise which arises from reciprocal sacri- 
 fices, where so many principles are adopted from A, 
 nd an equal number (or equal weight) from anti-A
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 569 
 
 for this would be a treaty of equality which cannot be 
 supposed to take place amongst parties standing on 
 Buch unequal grounds, one the conqueror, the other 
 conquered ; nor, again, that sort of compromise which 
 arises from a tertium quod, ideas which partake 
 equally of the two hostile ideas, what logicians style a 
 medium participationis ; for this sort of treaty presup- 
 poses an adjustment and harmonious equilibrium of 
 principles such as cannot so well be the cause as the 
 effect of a peace between the parties. The civil war 
 raged for nearly three years, beginning in the au- 
 tumn of 1642, ending virtually with the battle of 
 Naseby about the middle of June 1 645. 81 Then came 
 an interval of peace for three years, interrupted by the 
 short Scottish inroad of 1648, defeated at Preston, 
 which was, in fact, but one day's fighting (with a little 
 episode on the Thames and in Essex). Then came 
 another peace of two years, followed by the entrance 
 of Charles II. on the stage of Scotland, his coronation, 
 the short campaign of 1650, terminated, in effect, by 
 the battle of Dunbar, and next year the summary cam- 
 paign of Worcester. This makes up the whole of 
 the war, which would not, all put together, make more 
 than three years' actual state of war, apart from Ire- 
 land, as far as England or English armies were con- 
 cerned. And yet most people suppose the whole pe- 
 riod of twenty years, from the convening of the Long 
 Parliament in November, 1640, to the restoration of 
 Charles II., to have been a belligerent period. And 
 Cromwell, who did not ascend to the formal supremacy 
 intil thirteen years after tne opening of this period, 
 ind died twenty mouths before its close, the same
 
 570 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIEU 
 
 people generally imagine to have governed through- 
 out the whole or nearly the whole of it. However 
 though absolute oppression of the public voice did not 
 take effect for anything approaching to the duration 
 commonly supposed, and though the war itself was un- 
 expectedly short, and therefore the plea for anything 
 like martial law could not be long, still it is certain 
 that partly the expectation of war (which, in fact, but 
 for the heavy amercements by fine and sequestration, 
 would have been a reasonable expectation), and partly 
 the simulated expectation of war as a plea for keeping 
 op a standing army, had the effect of stifling that free 
 exercise of thought which might have resulted in the 
 organization of regular constitutional parties at an ear- 
 lier period. After the establishment of the Protector- 
 ate there was an end of all hopes in that direction, 
 until peace and non-military government were restored 
 with Charles II. 
 
 This reign has been described most justly by Sir J. 
 Dalrymple as the least easy to interpret of all which 
 compose our history. It is the reign, par eminence, of 
 plots, conspiracies, cabals, and intrigues. And yet it 
 will be evident, on a little consideration, that it is not 
 a reign dignified by constitutional parties fully organ- 
 ized. And yet it is true that some regular tendencies 
 began now to shape themselves towards that consum- 
 mation. Many great principles of the Constitution 
 had now been ascertained, particularly the leading one 
 of the king's vicarious responsibility in the persons of 
 his ministers. This principle had not been even un- 
 derstood by Charles I. He considered it an insult to 
 Viinself that his ministers should be called to account
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 571 
 
 exactly of that kind which any master of a family con 
 ceives offered in the attempt to scrutinize his house- 
 hold arrangements. That, in a subject, was seditious 
 insolence. Did he then mean that the accountability 
 lay in himself? That was treason. And thus there 
 was absolutely no hope left amongst those who ad- 
 hered to Charles's doctrine, nor any use in laws, how- 
 ever good, which after all were left to an irresponsible 
 administration. For so little had been gained with 
 that order of men by all the terrific experience of the 
 last twenty years, that the act which they continued 
 to deplore most was the judicial execution of Strafford, 
 not for the individual wrong, which was a wrong 
 (considering the law on the one hand, and his acts on 
 the other), but for the wrong done to the character 
 with which he was clothed, of king's minister. How- 
 ever, that most men had been weaned from this way of 
 thinking appears from the case of Charles's sons ; even 
 James in his Memoirs frequently quotes, and some- 
 times in its constitutional meaning, the new formula 
 which embodies this doctrine of ministerial responsi- 
 bility (viz., that the king can do no wrong) ; and as to 
 Charles II., he not only acknowledged it in outward 
 show, but practically gave way to it on several occa- 
 sions. Other advances had been of the last impor- 
 tance. Especially, at the very moment of the Resto- 
 ration, the last wrecks of the king's feudal revenue and 
 feudal influence had been given up, so that under any 
 ordinary circumstances the power of the sword (now 
 \t length justly settled in the king) became an empty 
 .ame without the concurrence of the people ; that is, 
 ji effect, the power was finely balanced and divided,
 
 572 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 These advances led to a further advance, viz., not 
 the mere doctrinal concession of a use in Parliaments, 
 but to the practical necessity of holding them. And, 
 again, the special rights of one branch of Parliament, 
 particularly that of impeachment, were ascertained. 
 All these were constitutional advances ; and as to in- 
 dividual laws, more were passed in this despotic reign 
 of importance to some capital interest of the subject, 
 than in any which had preceded. So much so, that 
 the year 1679 has been fixed on by one eminent 
 writer, with the sanction of Mr. Fox, as " the period at 
 which our constitution had reached its greatest theoret- 
 ical perfection," notwithstanding the accompanying ac- 
 knowledgment, which also Mr. Fox quotes, " that the 
 times immediately following were times of great practi- 
 cal oppression." It may be that this notion of the year 
 1679 being the culminating epoch of our constitution, 
 may have been Mr. Fox's reason for adopting the year 
 1 680, with Rapin, as the era at which the party distinc- 
 tion of Whig and Tory first came into use. He can 
 hardly be supposed to have felt much respect for Ra- 
 pin's reason, which is so truly absurd as to remind one 
 of the old Joe Millar story, which represents a traveller 
 as saying, "What do you call this place Lincoln? 
 Ay ; you may well call it lincoln ; for I never was so 
 pestered with fleas in my life." Pretty much as Lincoln 
 8 thus supposed to arise out of the word fleas, so (ac- 
 cording to Rapin) do the words Whig and Tory arise 
 out of addresser and nbhorrer ; for he gives no better 
 reason for referring Whig and Tory to the year 1680, 
 than that in this year arose the momentary distinction 
 between those who, upon principle, chose to address the
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 573 
 
 king on a certain occasion, and those whc chose to ex- 
 press their abhorrence of that principle. Mr. Fox will 
 appear to have somewhat more reasonable grounds for 
 this preference of 1680, as the true era of our great 
 party distinctions, if he were accurate in representing 
 the previous era as that which had ripened our consti- 
 tution. But a slight glance at the condition of public 
 affairs at that moment, and the relations between the 
 several organs of the state, as well as between the ex- 
 isting parties, will convince you that, so far from all con- 
 fusions in theory having then settled down into place 
 and order, the very chaos of all political elements was 
 actually brooding over the various parties which dis- 
 tracted the state, and all parties in positions so anoma- 
 lous, and the rationale of the complex movements so 
 difficult to be deciphered even by us at this day, who 
 overlook all the game, that it would have puzzled both 
 (Edipus and the Sphynx combined to guess at the re- 
 sult. We had then a king who hung loose upon the 
 world, unpledged to posterity by any care for his suc- 
 cessor, for he had no legitimate child ; and all other 
 pretensions falling short of that, did not so much inter- 
 est as distract him. We had, besides females, four male 
 pretenders to the throne, all liable to exclusion accord- 
 jng to any claim that had yet been created ; except that 
 one who, upon prudential grounds, was most liable to 
 exclusion, and against whom a formal Parliamentary ex- 
 clusion had been actually urged. These pretenders were 
 . two natural sons of the king, his nephew, and his 
 brother. Neither were these pretensions mere verbal 
 demonstrations; for all of then, as we learn from Br\ril- 
 lon, the French ambassador, had parties in and out of
 
 574 ON TI1E POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 Parliament actively supporting their claims. We had a 
 public, in all that part of it which concerned itself with 
 politics, not only corruptible, not only corrupted, but 
 even the object of fierce rivalry amongst the several cor- 
 rupters. The King of France bribed 82 the King of Eng- 
 land, his brother, his ministers, &c., and at the same time 
 bribed all those who were, had been, or might be, con- 
 spirators against this King of England. He bribes even 
 the great patriots, and amongst them Algernon Sidney. 
 He bribes the existing Parliament against the king, 
 and the king against all future Parliaments. He bribes 
 especially against Spain and Holland ; Spain, again, of- 
 fers to bid against the bribes of France ; and Holland, 
 through the Prince of Orange, at one time also bribes 
 the King of England. The King of France, moreover, 
 bribes a great English minister; but hearing of another 
 man who will undertake to ruin him, he gives this man 
 a bill for about 8,000, made payable so many months 
 after the ruin of the other man ; but when the bill falls 
 due, he pays it with a discount of 50 per cent., on the 
 allegation to the indorsee that the man had been only 
 half ruined. Even in this scene of confusion, it will 
 be difficult to descry any place or possibility for fixed 
 constitutional parties to stand and act with systematic 
 purpose. But, to look a little further, we find the King 
 of England himself planning a scheme for driving one 
 part of his subjects into rebellion ; and upon this meth- 
 odical calculation, that he might thus have a plausible 
 pretext tor raising an army, which, once levied, he 
 would not need to disband until it should suit his own 
 pleasure We find the same king, to evade the nev 
 doctrine of ministerial responsibility, drawing up a
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 575 
 
 treaty with his own hands, and sealing it with a pocket 
 seal. We find the brother of this king, when exasper- 
 ated at his banishment from court, protesting, not ia 
 one but in a score of letters, that he saw no hope for 
 himself but in a civil war, which, accordingly, he de 
 termines to raise in Scotland and Ireland. Whereupon 
 by the very next post, the King of France begs that big 
 Highness will not forget, in such a case, the old connec- 
 tion of Louis and Co. ; that he has a large assortment 
 of arms upon his hands, and provisions in abundance, 
 which he will immediately ship off to his order. But 
 happening, in a few posts after, to hear that a repub- 
 lican army is likely to do a little business in the same 
 article of civil war, and precisely against his High- 
 ness, he desires his ambassador at London to wait upon 
 the gentlemen at the head of the concern, and declare 
 how much pleasure it will give him to be favored with 
 their commands ; both offers being, as is evident from 
 the confidential communications now exposed to public 
 view, perfectly sincere. However, you will say, in the 
 midst of this general political depravity, though most of 
 the party connections were at best merely personal, still 
 there might be some small body of men obscured from 
 separate notice by acting at different times with differ- 
 ent men, and acting indiscriminately with all at inter- 
 vals, according to any views they had of what was 
 best for the moment, and under the circumstances, who 
 might keep alive within their little circle some recogni- 
 tion of what was due to the constitution. And here 
 might lurk the salt of regeneration the nucleus of 
 true believers the original Whigs and Tories. But I 
 believe you will find that the very enormity of evil in
 
 576 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 our political system of those days expresses itself 
 peculiarly in this, that all parties almost of necessity 
 took the form of personal parties. This arose out of 
 the fact that our greatest political danger, that of 
 Popery, in the prevailing circumstances of Europe, 
 was then actually incarnated ; for it took a personal 
 shape and substance in the Duke of York. Had the 
 nation been Popish, or inclined to Popery, the case 
 would have been very different. But as things were, 
 and with the certainty that the nation would pull one 
 way and its future king another, about which king, 
 moreover, there was no one fact so absolutely made 
 out as his sublime obstinacy, and his desperate deter- 
 mination to sacrifice the whole world to his absurd 
 conscience, the danger was assuredly no trifle or 
 chimera. Hence you see that all parties, cabals, fac- 
 tions, in this reign had been pointed to personal ob- 
 jects. The great events of the reign the Popish 
 Plot and the Exclusion Bill were both personal and 
 hurled at the same person. And coming, lastly, to the 
 two great parties, what were they denominated ? Not 
 surely Whig and Tory? that is not the designation 
 which you hear of them : no ; but the Country Party 
 and the Court Party. Now, then, I ask, What waa 
 the Country Party ? It was so called upon a sort oi 
 double meaning ; for it was the party composed chiefly 
 of country gentlemen, men living upon rural estates, 
 and it was the party which professed country, t. e., 
 patriotic views. And of what elements did this party 
 consist? Chiefly and originally of High-church men 
 men who leaned too much to the kingly preroga 
 tive, and strenuous haters of what were called Com
 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND. 
 
 577 
 
 monwealth men. Now, uuder this Country Party were 
 gathered (see Dalrymple and K. James's Memoirs) all 
 those who were then styled Republicans, as well as 
 those who maintained the divine right of kings in the 
 utmost extremity. I might pursue this subject farther, 
 but I have said enough ; the fact may be shown from 
 the records of those days. Whatever may be said by 
 more recent writers, the two great parties had no 
 public existence until that great event out of which 
 they grew ; and by that they must be measured. For 
 though the names were adopted from other quarters, 
 they were adjusted, on their introduction into a public 
 use in England, to a meaning which designated fixed 
 relations to the constitution ; and, detached from those 
 relations, they have no import at this day ; and those 
 relations they fill up and exhaust. 
 
 Now, if this be so, then the Radicals must bear a 
 relation to some other constitution ; and, indeed, they 
 now avow that the form of government to which they 
 give their affections is a pure democracy. If this is 
 generally avowed by the Radicals, why spend any words 
 in deducing it by any detail of argument or of histor- 
 ical deduction ? But it is not avowed generally as yet ; 
 though doubtless the tendency is in that direction, and 
 upon any national encouragement it would be avowed 
 universally. Meantime this doctrine, however kept in 
 the rear, and in military language refused to the gross 
 public, viz., the doctrine that all they are doing has 
 for its object some other and different constitution, some 
 other and different mode of administering the govern- 
 ment, and not at all any possible improvement of our 
 existing constitution or government,- this doctrine ia 
 87
 
 378 ON THE POLITICAL PARTIES 
 
 ihe esotonc one of the Radicals who are in the secrei 
 And it is useless, as with regard to them, to discuss any 
 mode or degree of improvements applied to the old 
 forms. They must all be discussed on another footing, 
 viz., as with reference to a pure democracy. 
 
 Even in that shape, even as a pure democracy, Radi- 
 calism will not be able to exist upon a very extended 
 scale. There are strong reasons for believing that, 
 upon that one principle of Universal Suffrage, Radi- 
 calism would and must dissolve any extensive commu- 
 nity. England would break up into small confedera- 
 tions, some Radical, some half Radical ; and even 
 then as a primary condition demanding the expulsion 
 (as so often occurred in the little Greek republics) oi 
 the aristocratic orders. Riches could not coexist with 
 Radical forms ; for the possession of wealth infers anti- 
 Radical feelings. The union of several rich men would 
 give local triumph to aristocratic notions, aided, I mean, 
 by the indirect influence which cannot but accompany 
 wealth under any arrangements of law, property, or 
 usage. Even apart from the case of wealth, the de- 
 mocracy of universal suffrage would be too intense for 
 those but one or two steps raised in the social condi- 
 tion. A state of civic privilege which consists in the 
 denial of all privilege, would forfeit the main springs 
 of hope, fear, and ambition, by which even the purest 
 patriotism is nursed ; and the result would be that 
 Radicalism, even to maintain itself, must relax the stern- 
 ness of its principles, and thus soon make way for the 
 gradual restoration of all which it had destroyed. This 
 would be its euthanasy ; but other and more fearfp 
 ftgouies would too probably step in for hastening th<
 
 DF MODERN ENGLAND. 579 
 
 catastrophe : these it would be unpleasant to dwelt 
 upon. But the catastrophe itself, by some agency 01 
 other, it seems impossible to evade, unless upon one 
 of two assumptions, either upon the assumption of 
 a coercion from without, which Radicalism disclaims, 
 or on the assumption that all niea. were philosophers, 
 rhich we all of us disclaim.
 
 MOTES. 
 
 NOTE 1. Page 10. 
 
 MEANING no credit at all, but ready money. One incompre- 
 hensible old commentator pretends that Plautus, in this phrase, de- 
 signed a compliment to Greek integrity ! He is obliged, however, to 
 confess, as the true ground of the saying, that " Fluxze fucrunt olim 
 ndmodum fidci Graeci : idcirco Graecus Grseco non fidebat, nisi prse- 
 scnti ct numeratu pecunia." Meantime, though the fluxa fides of the 
 unprincipled Greek was quite undeniable, and, in fact, ruinous to the 
 fiscal service, yet, doubtless, the general want of capital amongst 
 sellers contributed to this absence of credit almost as much as the 
 universal want of probity in the buyers. 
 
 NOTE 2. Page 12. 
 
 " A striking instance of such a use." It occurs in a very useful 
 letter (under date of Dantzic, January 21, 1843) on the Baltic corn- 
 trade, from a writer evidently familiar with the subject, and authenti- 
 cating his statements by a real signature. The object of the writer, 
 Mr. J L. Stoddart, is to expose the true and ultimate operation of 
 all fixed duties considered as protections to the home-grower, under 
 those dreadful fluctuations in price which not man but nature causes, 
 and which " cannot be avoided, in spite of the philosophers, who 
 dream they have discovered the philosopher's stone for steadying 
 prices." The purpose and the execution of this gentleman's letter 
 are equally excellent ; but the use which he makes of the word value, 
 was so perplexing to mo in its particular position and connection, 
 that at first I apprehended some gross misprint. After one introduc- 
 tory sentence, in which ho describes himself as a neutral observer un- 
 der the advantage of being " removed from the excitement of the 
 struggle between manufacturer and agriculturist," Mr. Stoddart goes
 
 J>H* NOTES. 
 
 They are most useful, nay, they are indispensable as initial postu- 
 lates for the guidance of the mind in developing other ideas ; without 
 them, although in themselves often fugitive, and never to be over- 
 taken in practice, we could not advance at all. And such is the pre- 
 cise benefit from Ricardo's idea of " wealth," technically so called ; it 
 is an artificial idea, which, though inert, keeps in their proper places 
 other ideas more tangible and constitutive. On the other hand, the 
 counterpole of this idea viz. Value in Exchange enters largely, 
 and as a constituent element, into all the cardinal ideas of political 
 economy. 
 
 NOTE 5. Page 18. 
 
 " By such a cavil as is stated below." When hay, for instance, is 
 cited as an article uniting the two conditions laid down, and for that 
 reason as obtaining exchangeable value, it might be alleged that hay 
 meets no human desire, but only a bestial desire. True ; and with a 
 view inter alia to this particular form of cavil, I have enlarged the 
 definition by saying, " human desire or purpose." A man has no di- 
 rect gratification from hay, but indirectly he may have a good deal. 
 The hay may be nothing to the man who buys it ; but his horse, who 
 is a connoisseur in hay, may be indispensable to his daily happiness, 
 or even to his safety ; and that, which in some proportion is essential 
 to the desires of his horse, becomes secondarily a purpose to the 
 man. 
 
 NOTE 6. Page 19. 
 
 "Inter-repellent." The late Mr. Coleridge suggested, and by his 
 own example sanctioned, the use of the preposition inter for express- 
 ing cases of reciprocal action, or, in his language, of interaction. 
 Thus, the verb interpenetrate, when predicated of the substances A 
 and B, implied that, by an equal action and reaction, each penetrated 
 the other ; to interaid (though strictly a Latin prejxDsition should not 
 coalesce with a word not Latin), would express the case where aid in 
 different modes is lent by each of two parties interchangeably. The 
 same complex function is sustained by the French prefix s'enlre. But, 
 even as a justifiable English usage, it may be found occasionally in 
 Shakespeare; and much more frequently in Daniel, a writer of the 
 samo age, unusually meditative and philosophic, botli in his prose 
 and in his verse. The word interview, though now tamed into a 
 lower cast of idea, originally arose upon this application of inter- 
 changeable or reciprocating actions.
 
 NOTES. 585 
 
 NOTE 7. Pago 23. 
 
 "As realty is the paradox." Some readers will here admonish mo 
 to say, not " is " the paradox, but " seems " the paradox ; or rather, 
 they will require me to omit the word paradox altogether, under the 
 prevailing notion that a paradox implies something really extrava- 
 gant, and something eventually hostile to the truth. In these circum- 
 stances it will scarcely be sufficient for me to remind them of the 
 original Grecian meaning attached to this word, which implied no 
 more than what was off-lying from the high-road of popular opinion, 
 or what contradicted the tenor of popular expectation, all which 
 might surely be found in some great truth as well as in some notori- 
 ous falsehood. The objector will retort upon me, that the original 
 Grecian use may have been effectually disturbed and defeated by a 
 long and steady English abuse. Meantime, the fact is, that the orig- 
 inal sense of the jKiradoxical has maintained itself not less in our lan- 
 guage than in the ancient Greek. I remember once to have placed 
 this under a clear light by the following antithetic form of words : 
 ' Not that is paradoxical, or not that chiefly, which, being false, puts 
 on the semblance of truth ; but, on the contrary, that which, being 
 time, puts on the semblance of falsehood." Therefore it was that 
 Boyle most accurately entitled some striking cases in statical physics, 
 Ui/drostatical Paradoxes. Did he mean to advertise these startling 
 facts of science as splendid falsehoods 1 No, but as great truths, 
 which counterfeited the extravagant. 
 
 NOTE 8. Page 24. 
 
 " Six guineas." It is not a matter of much importance in a case 
 which concerns us only by its principle, and where the principle would 
 remain unaffected by any variation in the factual circumstances, what 
 might be the price of a hypothetic snuff box, in the hands of a hypo- 
 thetic Jew, on the deck of a hypothetic steamboat. However, as a 
 case within my own experience, it may be interesting to state the 
 knoi.cn extremes of price upon this class of trinkets. At present 
 (1843) such boxes, coarsely mounted (in horn or mock tortoise- 
 shell), are offered in London for one guinea apiece. Each box con- 
 tains only two airs, which condition applies often indeed to boxes of 
 seven, eight, or nine times the price ; and a more important feature 
 of inferiority lies in the slender volume of sound which the cheap 
 ones emit. In a small room the music is sweet and sonorous, with
 
 f)6 NOTES. 
 
 the mimicry of an orchcstric fulness ; but, unless confined and con- 
 centrated, its power is too much on a miniature scale. On the other 
 hand, in the opposite extreme, about twenty-seven years ago, I hud 
 an opportunity of seeing (or more appropriately of hearing) a mu- 
 sical snuff-box, which had cost a thousand guineas. Inclosing a 
 much profounder compass of harmonies, unavoidably it was incon- 
 veniently large ; that was its fault : and perhaps fifty guineas of the 
 price might have been spent on the mounting, which was of gold, or- 
 namented. The interest of this toy lay in its history. Like a famous 
 sword in the elder days of paganism, which gave occasion to the 
 Greek proverb, ra da>pa TO>V Tro\f/uu>v JSwpa, bootless are the gifts of 
 enemies, or like a more famous horse in days a little later, both of 
 which carried death and ruin through a long series of owners, this 
 trinket was supposed to have caught in a fatal net of calamity all 
 those whom it reached as proprietors. The box was a twin box 
 (same time of making, same maker, same price) with one presented 
 as a bribe to Napoleon. Amongst those who had once possessed it 
 was a Jew, not our Jew on Lake Superior, but another of Lon- 
 don and Amsterdam, vulgarly reputed of immense wealth, who 
 died unhappily. Him slightly I knew, and valued his acquaintance, 
 for he had known intimately, and admired, as " the foremost man of 
 all this earth," Lord Nelson ; and it illustrates the fervor of his ven- 
 eration, that always on reaching a certain point in Parliament Street 
 he used to raise his hat, and bowed as to some shadowy presence, in 
 memory that there for the last time he had met the great admiral on 
 the day next but one before he left London forever; viz. in the 
 brief interspace between his return to Portsmouth from chasing the 
 French fleet to the West Indies, and his sailing to take the command 
 off Cadiz. To Lord Nelson this perilous snuff-box had been offered 
 repeatedly as an expression of idolatrous affection ; but as the fatal 
 legend connected with it had not been concealed, Lord Nelson laugh- 
 ingly declined the gift. To laugh was inevitable in our age of weak 
 faith for such superstitions ; but as a sailor, who is generally credu- 
 lous in such matters, and, if at all a man of feeling, must be so, 
 considering the many invitations to superstition connected with that 
 world of solitary wildernesses through which he roams forever, Lord 
 Nelson was almost confessedly afraid of the box. Indeed, at that 
 stage of its history, the owner would have found as much difficulty in 
 transferring what he called his " pocket consoler," as the man who 
 awned the bottle imp, in ridding himself of that little pestilent perse, 
 cutor. Here, however, so far as my own knowledge has extended,
 
 NOTES. 587 
 
 lay the higher extreme of costliness for such an article, one thou- 
 sand guineas ; whilst the lower extreme, in a tin or horn case is 
 offered, as I have said, for one guinea. But in the East Indies, 
 amongst the native princes, such trinkets are found in abundance, 
 and some perhaps even of higher value, musical clocks by the 
 score, all chiming at once ; and musical snuff-boxes by the hundred. 
 They are naturally of European workmanship, as is perceived at 
 once by the choice of the music. 
 
 NOTE 9. Page 27. 
 
 " By no consideration of the present T>." i. e. in the appreciation 
 which is thrown entirely upon u ; but otherwise, in submitting to 
 have the price thrown upon u, in submitting to purchase at all at 
 a price so vastly exalted, doubtless he is governed by the existing D 
 as a negative condition. 
 
 NOTE 10. Page 33. 
 
 This remark, made by myself in a spirit of youthful scorn for shal- 
 low thinkers, I shall not complain on finding imputed to others- 
 Some years after, I met with it in one of the smaller philosophic 
 essays, varying so much in merit, of Immanuel Kant. Fortunately, 
 it is of little consequence who first uttered a weighty truth ; it is of 
 the greatest, that every truth be received for what it really is. The 
 very feeblest amongst the " sons of the feeble " must be roused to the 
 sense that they are canting, when they find themselves challenged to 
 the proof that ever any dispute, that so much as one, which in any 
 generation could be said properly to have existed by any test of 
 books produced, or passions excited, has turned at all upon words. 
 And the daily experience in society, that all distinctions difficult to 
 manage or to appraise, are pronounced to be " more verbal than real," 
 should open our eyes to the true origin of such pretences ; they are 
 the desperate resource of conscious weakness, the readiest evasion 
 of a conflict for which the disputant feels that he has no strength and 
 no preparation. 
 
 NOTE 1 1 . Page 33. 
 
 Every man knows to what quarter the apologist for the cry of 
 verbal disputes will address himself, viz. the schoolmen ; and, if 
 we were to believe Locke, or many another of the same unsubtilizing
 
 n6 NOTES. 
 
 the mimicry of an orchcstric fulness ; but, unless confined and con- 
 centrated, its power is too much on a miniature scale. On the other 
 hand, in the opposite extreme, about twenty-seven years ago, I had 
 an opportunity of seeing (or more appropriately of hearing) a mu- 
 sical snuff-box, which had cost a thousand guineas. Inclosing a 
 much profounder compass of harmonies, unavoidably it was incon- 
 veniently large ; that was its fault : and perhaps fifty guineas of the 
 price might have been spent on the mounting, which was of gold, or- 
 namented. The interest of this toy lay in its history. Like a famous 
 sword in the elder days of paganism, which gave occasion to the 
 Greek proverb, TO Scopa TO>V TroAe/uwi/ aScopa, bootless are the gifts of 
 enemies, or like a more famous horse in days a little later, both of 
 which carried death and ruin through a long series of owners, this 
 trinket was supposed to have caught in a fatal net of calamity all 
 those whom it reached as proprietors. The box was a twin box 
 (same time of making, same maker, same price) with one presented 
 as a bribe to Napoleon. Amongst those who had once possessed it 
 was a Jew, not our Jew on Lake Superior, but another of Lon- 
 don and Amsterdam, vulgarly reputed of immense wealth, who 
 died unhappily. Him slightly I knew, and valued his acquaintance, 
 for he had known intimately, and admired, as " the foremost man of 
 all this earth," Lord Nelson ; and it illustrates the fervor of his ven- 
 eration, that always on reaching a certain point in Parliament Street 
 he used to raise his hat, and bowed as to some shadowy presence, in 
 memory that there for the last time he had met the great admiral on 
 the day next but one before he left London forever; viz. in the 
 brief interspace between his return to Portsmouth from chasing the 
 French fleet to the West Indies, and his sailing to take the command 
 off Cadiz. To Lord Nelson this perilous snuff-box had been offered 
 repeatedly as an expression of idolatrous affection ; but as the fatal 
 legend connected with it had not been concealed, Lord Nelson laugh- 
 ingly declined the gift. To laugh was inevitable in our age of weak 
 faith for such superstitions ; but as a sailor, who is generally credu- 
 lous in such matters, and, if at all a man of feeling, must be so, 
 considering the many invitations to superstition connected with that 
 world of solitary wildernesses through which he roams forever, Lord 
 Nelson was almost confessedly afraid of the box. Indeed, at that 
 stage of its history, the owner would have found as much difficulty in 
 transferring what he called his " pocket consoler," as the man who 
 owned the bottle imp, in ridding himself of that little pestilent perse, 
 cutor. Here, however, so far as my own knowledge has extended,
 
 NOTES. 587 
 
 lay the higher extreme of costliness for such an article, one thou- 
 sand guineas ; whilst the lower extreme, in a tin or horn case is 
 offered, as I have said, for one guinea. But in the East Indies, 
 amongst the native princes, such trinkets are found in abundance, 
 and some perhaps even of higher value, musical clocks by the 
 score, all chiming at once ; and musical snuff-boxes by the hundred. 
 They are naturally of European workmanship, as is perceived at 
 once by the choice of the music. 
 
 NOTE 9. Page 27. 
 
 " By no consideration of the present T>." i. e. in the appreciation 
 which is thrown entirely upon u ; but otherwise, in submitting to 
 have the price thrown upon u, in submitting to purchase at all at 
 a price so vastly exalted, doubtless he is governed by the existing D 
 as a negative condition. 
 
 NOTE 10. Page 33. 
 
 This remark, made by myself in a spirit of youthful scorn for shal- 
 low thinkers, I shall not complain on finding imputed to others. 
 Some years after, I met with it in one of the smaller philosophic 
 essays, varying so much in merit, of Immanuel Kant. Fortunately, 
 it is of little consequence who first uttered a weighty truth ; it is of 
 the greatest, that every truth be received for what it really is. The 
 very feeblest amongst the " sons of the feeble " must be roused to the 
 sense that they are canting, when they find themselves challenged to 
 the proof that ever any dispute, that so much as one, which in any 
 generation could be said properly to have existed by any test of 
 books produced, or passions excited, has turned at all upon words. 
 And the daily experience in society, that all distinctions difficult to 
 manage or to appraise, are pronounced to be " more verbal than real," 
 should open our eyes to the true origin of such pretences ; they are 
 the desperate resource of conscious weakness, the readiest evasion 
 of a conflict for which the disputant feels that he has no strength and 
 no preparation. 
 
 NOTE 1 1 . Page 33. 
 
 Every man knows to what quarter the apologist for the cry of 
 verbal disputes will address himself, viz. the schoolmen ; and, if 
 we were to believe Locke, or many another of the same unsubtilizing
 
 588 NOTES. 
 
 understanding, -whose propensities to the tangible and the ponderable 
 were a guaranty that they had never looked into such books, natu- 
 rally we must suppose the whole vast product from those looms to 
 be one tissue of moonshine and verbalism. Now, it is no part of my 
 intention in this place to undertake a defence of the scholastic philos- 
 ophy. But one error, I must remark, as tending to sustain that delu- 
 sive judgment on the schoolmen. It is popularly imagined that the 
 scholastic philosophy was proved to be false in the decisive collision 
 with another philosophy, more sound and practical ; a regular con- 
 flict (it is imagined) came on between the two, and the issue was, 
 that the one triumphed, while the other retired into obscurity. This 
 is not true. The scholastic philosophy decayed simply because the 
 scholastic divinity, to which it had been applied, andybr which it had 
 been originally created, was a Popish divinity. Thence came the 
 first shock; and, after the Reformation, even the Papal Church was 
 thrown upon such tactics and arms, not as might be the best in a 
 court of philosophy, but which could meet and parry the new practi- 
 cal and popular warfare of their opponents. Losing its professional 
 use, scholasticism lost its main functions and occupation. The case 
 was precisely as if special pleading were suddenly abolished in Eng- 
 land by law. In one day the whole subtilties of that science would 
 perish ; but it would not therefore have been undermined in its pre- 
 tensions, nor shown to be less than an exquisite system of casuistry, 
 and a most elaborate machinery for keeping law up to the level of 
 civilization. 
 
 NOTE 12. Page 38. 
 
 " Except in one instance." Whether I remembered to make this ex- 
 ception, it is out of my power to say positively, having no copy of the 
 little sketch in question ; but certainly I ought to have made it. At 
 this moment there are men of great ability who believe that the whole 
 relief from the war taxation of 1814 and 1815 now accumulated, (say 
 in round numbers the difference annually between eighty and fifty 
 millions sterling,) is made nugatory by an alleged rise in the value of 
 money, as contrasted with the supposed depreciation (so eternally 
 asserted) upon the national currency during the last seven years of the 
 great war. What the tax-payer has gained by the relief, he has lost 
 in the higher value of what he continues to pay. Such is the allega-
 
 NOTES. 589 
 
 NOTE 13. Page 39. 
 
 Both of these principia (the esse and the scire) meet and are con- 
 founded in our word " determine." This was a former remark of my 
 own in the " Templar's Dialogues," which I am enabled to quote 
 indirectly though a quotation from that little sketch, made at page 
 171, by the Dissertator on Value: "The word determine may be 
 taken subjectively for what determines x in relation to our knowledge, 
 or objectively for what determines x in relation to itself. Thus, if I 
 were to ask, what determined the length of the race-course f and the 
 answer were, ' the convenience of the spectators,' or ' the choice of 
 the subscribers,' then it is plain that by the word determined I was 
 understood to mean determined objectively, in relation to the existence 
 of the object; in other words, what caused the race-course to be this 
 length rather than another length. But, if the answer were, an actual 
 admeasurement, it would then be plain that by the word determined I 
 had been understood to mean determined subjectively i. e. in relation 
 to our knowledge what ascertained it." 
 
 Thus, again, it may be said, in one sense, that men determined the 
 exact length of a degree in latitude, that is, of the interspace divided 
 by ninety between either pole of our earth and its equator. But this 
 is merely the ratio coynoscendi. Men determined it in the sense of 
 rigorously measuring it. But the length of a degree could be deter- 
 mined causatively (in the sense of first establishing such a quantity) 
 by no power less than that which could first form a planet having tho 
 shape of an oblate spheroid, combined with such and such dimensions, 
 arising out of an axis about seven thousand miles long. This is the 
 ratio essendi. 
 
 How necessary it is that this great distinction should be recalled, 
 might be exemplified by a large volume of cases where the failure of 
 philosophic attempts has been due exclusively to its neglect. A 
 greater failure, for example, there cannot be than in Paley's Moral 
 Philosophy as to its grounds, and in Lord Shaftesbury's Doctrine of 
 Ridicule as a Criterion of Truth. But, in both cases, the true vice of 
 the theories lay in this common confusion between the two rationes 
 the ratio essendi, (accounting causatively for the existence) the ratio 
 toijnoscc.ndi (accounting in the way of proof for the certainty of the 
 knowledge). As regards the doctrine of value, such a distinction was 
 m this point indispensable.
 
 590 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 14. Page 44. 
 
 In the text of this section it did not seem requisite to pause for any 
 distinction between monopoly and scarcity. But it may be right to 
 add a few lines in a note for the sake of novices, who will naturally 
 feel perplexed by the confused relations between two ideas approach- 
 ing to each other, yet not identical ; and still more perplexed by a 
 case growing out of the two, viz. this : They have heard the policy 
 of creating an artificial scarcity by a partial destruction, sometimes 
 ridiculed as an extravagance too monstrous to be entertained, except 
 by the most credulous of starving mobs, and sometimes solemnly 
 attested by historical records. Where lies the truth ? Is such a policy 
 conceivable, or is it an absurd romance ? 
 
 There are scarcities which imply no monopoly, as the occasional 
 scarcity in England (every ten years less possible) of corn or hay ; 
 and inversely there are monopolies which imply no original scarcity, 
 as that of spices in the hands of the old Dutch East India Company. 
 A monopoly does not necessarily act through any factitious or 
 counterfeit scarcity. The English East India Company, that wisest 
 and most princely of commercial institutions, long held a monopoly of 
 tea ; but there was no more of artificial scarcity ever created for the 
 sake of giving effect to this monopoly during its long existence, than 
 we have experienced since the period of its abolition. On the other 
 hand, the Dutch did confessedly destroy, at times, one ship-load of 
 spices out of three, in order to sustain the prices of the other two in 
 the markets of Europe. This fact is, I believe, historically certain ; 
 and might oftentimes become a very prudent policy. Yet, in opposi- 
 tion to this known precedent, what seems a parallel case of destruc- 
 tion on the part of English fanners, has been loudly rejected as 
 ridiculous; and certainly with justice. "But why?" the novice will 
 ask, " in what lies the difference ?" It lies in this : For any party 
 under any circumstances to create a beneficial scarcity, what he has 
 to do is this : 1st, To destroy so largely as materially to raise the 
 price on all which remains ; 2d, To leave so large a remainder as 
 may much more than compensate (by the higher price upon a reduced 
 quantity) that original price which might have been received upon the 
 whole quantity whilst unreduced. But to take the first step with any 
 effect demands a conspiracy amongst all the sellers. Now the Dutch 
 East India Company were always in a conspiracy ; they, from their 
 common interest, and unity of federation, stood constantly " in pro- 
 tinrtii " for such a measure. But to the English farmers, dispersed so
 
 NOTES. 591 
 
 widely, and thinking so variously, the initial steps towards a conspir- 
 acy, of whatever nature it might be, are impossible. No man can 
 count upon any sacrifice but his own ; yet even a conspiracy along a 
 whole district or country side, (all impossible as it is,) would not 
 affect the national price of grain more than by a quantity equal to the 
 consumption of one regiment or one liue-of-battle ship fully manned; 
 and we all know how trivial in its effects on the national markets is 
 the sailing on foreign service of many regiments and of many ships. 
 Such a removal of troops or seamen is, however, the case realized (as 
 to its uttermost effect) of a conspiracy far beyond any that ever will 
 be practicable. In the final result, therefore, the Dutchman, who is 
 the person to suffer by the first step, is the same who will reap the 
 whole indemnity and profit in the second. But the Englishman will 
 find himself unable to create any such second stage in the case : his 
 utmost sacrifices will not come near to the effect of raising the price ; 
 and if they could, it will not be himself, with a reduced quantity, who 
 can reap the compensation for his own sacrifices, but others who have 
 made no such sacrifices, and who retain their undiminished stock to 
 benefit by the new prices. 
 
 Yet how, it may be asked by the novice, can even the Dutchman 
 be sure of receiving a balance of gain upon the case ? of not losing 
 more by the quantity destroyed than can always be fetched back by a 
 higher price upon the quantity which remains 1 Simply under his 
 experience of the average, annual or triennial, demand for spices in 
 Europe, under this, taken in combination with that notorious prin- 
 ciple first consciously remarked by Sir Richard Steele in an age 
 almost ignorant of political economy ; viz. that upon any article of 
 primary demand, a deficiency to the extent of one tenth will not en- 
 hance the price simply by a corresponding one tenth, but say, by one 
 fourth; whilst a deficiency of one fourth will not, in its reaction upon 
 price, confine itself to that proportion, but will frequently go near to 
 double the price. Such are the circumstances of fact and principle 
 which make that experiment ludicrously impossible for the English 
 farmer, which, for the Dutch farmer of Java or the Moluccas, was, in 
 years of redundant produce, a hopeful, and at times even a necessary, 
 measure. 
 
 NOTE 15. Page 45. 
 
 " We Romans required." Originally, the test applied to a claim of 
 this nature lay in, the number of throats cut a minimum being fixed
 
 592 NOTES. 
 
 for a triumph, and a separate minimum for the " little go " of an ova- 
 tion. But this test was applied only in early times, whilst the basis 
 of difficulty was more nearly identical. In times of higher civiliza- 
 tion, when this basis became more complex and variously modified, 
 the grounds of claim and the test were modified conformably. 
 
 NOTE 16. Page 46. 
 
 Egypt was so capable of feeding vast armies, that for that reason 
 only she was viewed as the potential mother of rebellions, as the eter- 
 nal temptress of the ambitious. Whence grew the Roman rule, that 
 no proconsul, no man of senatorian rank, should ever go into Egypt 
 as a lieutenant of the Republic or the Emperor; such a man's 
 powers would have been too ample, and his rank of too much author- 
 ity. 
 
 NOTE 17. Page 47. 
 
 " Immediate," because, upon a secondary consideration, you become 
 aware that the trouble imposed on the maker is spared to yourself ; 
 yet still the ground of value remains what it was, not a benefit 
 reaped, but an evil evaded. 
 
 NOTE 18. Page 50. 
 
 "Raising that leaguer." Viz. by John Sobieski in 1683, upon 
 which great event (the final disappearance of Mussulmans from cen- 
 tral Christendom) is that immortal sonnet of Filicaja's, so nobly 
 translated by Wordsworth: "He " (Sobieski) " conquering THROUGH 
 God, and God BY him." 
 
 NOTE 19. Page 51. 
 
 " To affirmative value." That is, applied itself to the direct service 
 or pleasure anticipated from the animal, calculated on so many years' 
 purchase, not to any indirect exponent or measure of this service. In 
 the case of the rhinoceros, (and also of the modern race-horse, as 
 compared with the hunter a little further on,) the construction of the 
 affirmative value is somewhat different in form, though substantially 
 the same. There the animal is viewed productively : both rhinoceros 
 and racer sell upon the ground of affirmative value ; they make re-
 
 NOTES. 593 
 
 turns ; but returns in money ; and not (as the bashaw's horses) in 
 ornament, sense of beauty, luxurious motion, &c. 
 
 NOTE 20. Page 59. 
 
 British people are not entitled to judge by their experience in Ger- 
 many or Italy. Generally, the physician or the surgeon called in, f:s 
 some one founding his practice upon British patronage, and trained 
 to British habits of feeling. 
 
 NOTE 21. Page 72. 
 
 " War depreciation." I do not intend to say one word upon this 
 much-agitated question in so short a work. I will not therefore deny 
 the alleged depreciation of 1811, &c. ; for that would be arrogant in a 
 place which allows no room for assigning reasons. This, however, I 
 may say without blame, that no proof, good in point of logic, has 
 publicly been ever offered in evidence of the depreciation; conse- 
 quently, no previous presumption has been created in favor of the 
 supposed counter-movement of the currency, as a possible movement. 
 But the reason why at all I refer to the case, is for the sake of nega- 
 tiving the pretended countenance of Ricardo to the war depreciation. 
 True, he maintained this opinion nominally. But when it is under- 
 stood that, by Ricardo's definition of depreciation, any separation of 
 the paper currency from the metallic standard (whether growing out 
 of a higher Brazil cost of gold, or out of a real fall in the paper, ex- 
 pressed in a merely apparent rise of gold) equally satisfied his condi- 
 tions of a depreciation, it becomes plain that the whole doctrine 
 vanishes in smoke. 
 
 NOTE 22. Page 73. 
 
 Cavils might be raised against this statement having no reference 
 at all to the real question at issue, viz. quantity of labor against 
 cost of labor, by showing that oftentimes the produce on one side 
 might be none at all. But such cavils would be unsubstantial ; they 
 would affect, not the principle, but simply the mode of estimating, or 
 rating, quantities under that principle. The same principle of labor 
 rated by quantity would continue to govern, though the modes of 
 computing that quantity might grow continually more complex. 
 
 38
 
 504 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 23. Page 74. 
 
 For this change in the habits of the beaver, see the reports of him. 
 ters, Indians, Canadian half-breeds, &c. 
 
 NOTE 24. Page 79. 
 
 " Of Asia." The Asiatic princes notoriously put a higher affirma- 
 tive value on this kind of personal ornament, than has in any age 
 been allowed to it in Europe. The queen of Great Britain, so mighty 
 a potentate, has usually (whether queen consort or queen regnant) 
 worn diamonds and rubies on her coronation day, worth about one 
 hundred thousand pounds. The king of Oude, a petty Indian prince, 
 raised to that supreme rank by ourselves, has repeatedly, on his own 
 person, or his son's, worn such jewels to the value of two millions 
 sterling. In Christendom, Prince Esterhazy's " best coat " overlaid 
 with diamonds, is the most costly single article known, or not known 
 to pawnbrokers, but it is not valued at more than half a million ster- 
 ling. 
 
 NOTE 25. Page 80. 
 
 It would, however, be much more convenient in an amended polit- 
 ical economy, (that is, an economy in which not only the great doc- 
 trines should be formally harmonized and expanded, but in which 
 also a better terminology should be introduced, wearing the simplic- 
 ity equally with the broad applicability of an algebraic language,) 
 that some such term as ideologic or affirmative should be reserved con- 
 ventionally, in order to meet the following case : By teleologic 
 value, unless specially restrained to a more technical service, would 
 naturally be understood the case, a very common one, where the sell- 
 ing price of an article (the exchange value) happened at the moment, 
 or was supposed for any purpose of dispute, to found itself on the 
 use value. But we need also a term expressing this use value, for 
 instance, the value of atmospheric air, in cases where it is not only 
 contemplated apart from any exchange value, but where essentially 
 it repels all exchange value. In such a conventional restriction of 
 its acceptation, the term teleologic value would become tantamount 
 to the term riches, as rightly and sagaciously set up in a separate 
 chapter of Ricardo, by way of a counterpole to all exchange value 
 whatever. Ricardo has been liberally assaulted for this antithesis as 
 prima facie absurd and irrelate ; verbally it seems so. But the
 
 NOTES. 595 
 
 fcvyos , the dualism of these polar ideas, riches and value, is a mere 
 necessity of the understanding, and returns upon the severe thinker 
 after all verbal efforts to evade it. 
 
 NOTE 26. Page 87. 
 
 Salmasius subsequently explained his view of the passage in a 
 short paraphrastic commentary, which agrees exactly with the pres- 
 ent in pointing to the double form of exchange value, except as to 
 the temper of the vender, when Salmasius (doubtless warped by the 
 title of the particular chapter in Theophrastus, viz. Hept AvtfaSeias) 
 conceives to be acting in the spirit of insolence. This is part of what 
 Salmasius says, " Superbus et contumax venditor designatur his notis 
 a Theophrasto, qui" [i. e. venditor] "merces suas quanti vendat 
 indicare dedignatus, emptorem interroget, quanti valeant, et quo 
 pretio emi dignae sint ? " True : this is the nature of the substitution 
 which he makes, but not the spirit in which he makes it. Not as dis- 
 daining to declare at what price he sells, but fraudulently, as seeing 
 an interest in evading that question, does Scamp transfer the right of 
 question to himself, and the duty of answer, to the other side. He 
 transfers it from negative value to affirmative. 
 
 NOTE 27. Page 95. 
 
 " The actual value." "Actual," in the sense of present, is one of 
 the most frequent (but also of the most disgusting) Gallicisms. 
 L'e'tat actuel des arme'es Francoises, is good French ; but to say it? 
 English, " the actual condition," &c., is a jargon of foreigners. Aetna? 
 in English can never be opposed to future; it is with us the antitho- 
 sis, 1st, and generally to possible, 2d, to contingent; 3d, to a represei? 
 tation existing only in words, or by way of pretence. 
 
 NOTE 28. Page 100. 
 
 " Verbal equivocation." What equivocation ? some readers wiU 
 say. For though a false result is somehow obtained, it does not in- 
 stantly appear how the word market has, or can have, led to this 
 result by two senses. But it has. In one of its uses, and that the 
 commonest by very much, the word market indicates a FACT, an^ 
 nothing more, viz. simply the ubi of the sale But, in another ust 
 this word indicates a LAW, viz. the conditions under which the sak.
 
 596 NOTES. 
 
 was made ; which conditions are the three several states of the mar- 
 ket as to the balance existing between the quantity of any article and 
 the public demand for it. Every market, and in all times, must offer 
 of every commodity, either first, too much for the demand, or sec- 
 ondly, too little, or thirdly, neither too much nor too little ; and the 
 term " market value," when pointing to such conditions, points to a 
 coefficient which in part governs the price. But in the popular use, 
 where it expresses only a fact, it points to a mere inert accident hav- 
 ing no tendency to affect the price. 
 
 NOTE 29. Page 101. 
 
 " An old English standard." Upon this subject there exists a most 
 inveterate prejudice in Scotland, which ought not to be hard of over- 
 throw, being absolutely unfounded; only that to be attacked with 
 success, it must be attacked upon a new principle It is universally 
 held by the Scotch, or rather postulated as a point confessed and no- 
 torious, that the English, as compared with themselves, are a nation 
 luxurious in diet. Now, as to the Scottish gentry, this notion is a 
 mere romance ; between them and the English gentry there is no 
 difference whatever in that respect. But, on descending below the 
 gentry, through all the numerous classes of society, you will certainly 
 find a lower diet prevailing in Scotland ; and, secondly, a lower re- 
 gard to diet. As compared with the Scottish, it cannot be denied 
 that the English working classes, and the lower class of shopkeepers, 
 were (I wish it could be said are) considerably more luxurious as 
 to diet. I know not whether this homely diet of Scotland has, upon 
 the whole, proved an advantage for her ; very sure I am that a more 
 generous diet has been a blessing of the first order to England. Even 
 as regards health, there is something to be said for a more genial diet. 
 That diet, which leads people to indifference for eating, may sound 
 more philosophic ; but it is not the healthiest: on that point there are 
 conclusive experiments. On the other hand, considered as a political 
 advantage, a high standard of diet is invaluable. Many arc the writ- 
 ers who have properly insisted on the vast benefits, in periods of 
 scarcity, which accrue to nations enjoying a large latitude of descent; 
 whereas the Swedish or Scottish nation, from habitual poverty of diet 
 (though fortunately a diet improved and improving through the last 
 hundred years), finds itself already on the lowest round of the ladder, 
 whenever the call comes for descending. In a famine what can be 
 flteir resources ' This, however, is but one of the ereat national
 
 NOTES. 5'J7 
 
 benefits arising from a high standard of diet. The others lie in tlic 
 perpetual elevation which such a standard communicates to wages, 
 and to the expectations generally of the laboring classes. Through 
 this higher tone it is, in part, that the English working order has for 
 a century fought up against the degrading tendencies of population, 
 irregularly stimulated. Their condition has often locally deterio- 
 rated ; but, under a lower standard of general domestic comfort, 
 England would, by this time, have approximated to the condition of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The fact, therefore, of a less luxurious diet for the working classes 
 of Scotland, may be conceded without conceding an unmixed advan- 
 tage. I have no personal interest in defending a more luxurious 
 standard, being myself a mere anchorite as to such enjoyments ; but 
 I cannot overlook the advantage to a nation, that under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, its whole level of enjoyment should be raised pretty high. 
 Meantime, the main practical question is still unsettled. Because 
 the English working class is luxurious (or was so) by comparison 
 with the same class in Scotland, must it therefore follow that the 
 English working class is luxurious in any positive sense ' Relatively 
 to one sole nation it is so. but that one nation is not Europe, is 
 not the world. This has been quite forgotten by the Scotch. And 
 upon a large inquiry it becomes evident beyond all possibility of dis- 
 pute, that Scotland realizes a noticeable extreme in that respect; 
 France and Germany the opposite extreme ; and that England stands 
 between these two extremes, but much nearer to the Scottish extreme 
 than to the Franco-German. Merc ignorance can shut a man's eyes 
 to this relation of things. Any man having had opportunities of ob- 
 serving the French emigrants in England, or who remembers the tes- 
 timony of Mr. Cobbett, Jun., and other qualified witnesses, to the 
 enormous voracity of the French peasantry, or who reflects on the 
 fact that women universally are untainted in England with the vice 
 of gourmandise, and that any women who have made themselves 
 memorable in England by this vice (as, for instance, the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth, with others that I could add), were French women; 
 that the French only have cultivated cookery as a science, and have 
 a large gastronomic literature ; or who knows anything of the expe- 
 rience in English inns, when French prisoners of war were quartered 
 upon them, will laugh at the idea that the English lower classes in 
 such neighborhood can need any defence. But the Germans arc worse 
 than the French. Let a man make himself acquainted with the vni~ 
 vcrsal duration and excess of the dinner throughout Lower Germany,
 
 09S NOTES. 
 
 ::i)d he will begin to rectify his opinions upon this subject. Upper 
 Germany is worse still; and Austria, in particular, wallows in sensu- 
 ality of all kinds ; but in none so much as that of good eating. Many 
 travellers are beginning to publish the truth on this subject. One in 
 particular, a very clever man, founds upon this one vice (which, too 
 laxly, he calls the continental vice) no small share of the continental 
 poverty. They spend their time (says he), which justly he alleges 
 is their money, on good cooking. This charge, observe, applies to 
 seventy millions of men. Even of the Prussian army, he remarks, 
 that "the lusty roundabout, rather than a muscular growth," which 
 strikes the eye in that military body, " is no doubt derived from the 
 good living to which " at home they have been " accustomed from in- 
 fancy." Speaking of all France, and all Germany, the same travel- 
 ler says (p. 368), "It costs at the least twice as much of human 
 time and labor to dine five millions of French or German people as 
 to dine five millions of English ; and time and labor are the basis of 
 all national wealth." Again, " the loss of time in the eating and 
 preparation of food, forms a very important drawback on the pros- 
 perity of families on the Continent." Again, listen to this : " (Jour- 
 mandise is found to be a vice as troublesome to deal with among the 
 French soldiery as tippling with ours." The same vice is the cause of 
 the French depredations in the field. The poor, he says, arc infected 
 with this vice, and betray it in their looks and teeth Finally, he 
 clenches the matter thus : " In the total, it is fully a fifth of the time 
 and the labor of a continental population that is daily wasted in cook- 
 ery and eating." And what nation is it that he contrasts so favor- 
 ably for itself with Germans and French ? It is the English. And 
 who is the traveller that makes this striking record ? An English- 
 man, you fancy. By no means. It is a Scotchman, Mr. Samuel 
 Laing, in the year 1842. So perish opinions founded on a narrow 
 and partial range of comparison. 
 
 NOTE 30. Page 103. 
 
 "Encampment." Which mode of life, however, might be ex- 
 tended greatly, if some Asiatic plans of raising a circular, dry ter- 
 race for receiving the tent were adopted ; and if, secondly, for canvas 
 were substituted hides, tarpaulins, or other substances resisting heavy 
 rains. The Roman expression for a good substantial encampment 
 was " sub pellibus," under hides ; but this is a point in the science 
 of castramcntation which we moderns have too much neglected, and
 
 NOTES. 599 
 
 perhaps chiefly from the following cause. To what professional art 
 should we naturally look for the encouragement and improvement of 
 tents'? Manifestly to the military art. Now, unfortunately for this 
 result, there is a growing indisposition amongst military men to the 
 use of tents. Napoleon, it will be seen, in Las Cases, pronounced 
 them unwholesome, and greatly preferred the practice of bivouacking 
 i. e. of sleeping sub dio as respected salubrity. But this prefer- 
 ence could not apply to tropical climates, or to others where the 
 dews are very heavy. 
 
 NOTE 31. Page 107. 
 
 It struck many as the coolest specimen of audacity on record, that 
 not long since a governor of one amongst our English colonies abso- 
 lutely made it the subject of solemn official congratulation, in writing 
 home, that the emancipated slaves were buying up the estates of their 
 ancient masters. (This language of triumph had been held before, 
 but not before by any official person.) And how? Did that pro- 
 claim any real advance on the part of the slaves ? The purchase 
 money had been accumulated chiefly in their days of slavery, and 
 formed therefore the emphatic measure and expression of the kind- 
 ness and liberality with which they had been treated. But, after all, 
 the true revolution was in the masters : not the slaves had prospered 
 by the change, but the masters had been ruined. The capital being 
 gone which should have cultured the estates, naturally the estates 
 became often nearly worthless ; and under those circumstances it was, 
 that the wretched negro, by uniting himself with his fellows, became 
 the new proprietor. Was that any subject of congratulation and self- 
 glorification for a wise man 1 It is too late now to be wise for the 
 ends of justice. The proprietor has retired, if he was rich, has per- 
 ished, if he was poor. The social system has been wrecked ; prop- 
 erty is in ruins ; capital has fled. Beginning, as it has done, in spoli- 
 ation, the edifice of society now stands upon an evil footing in the 
 British West Indies. But this will soon become worse (as we may 
 read in the experience of Hayti), unless some redress, such as is yet 
 possible, shall be applied to the anti-social disorders which threaten 
 those colonies. And the nature of this redress cannot be better 
 learned than in the French policy of the Due de Broglie, or (as to 
 this point) in the still more cautious policy of his partisan oppo- 
 nents.
 
 500 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 32. Page 109. 
 
 It is perfectly astonishing to hear one mistake current upon this 
 subject. Because the New Poor-law, amongst its many heavy offen- 
 ces against Christian wisdom, sanctions this one measure of natural 
 justice, that, upon becoming chargeable to an English parish, the 
 Irish pauper (if found to be without a settlement) shall be shipped back 
 to Ireland, it is therefore assumed that the evils of Irish pauperism 
 <juoad ourselves are now corrected. How so ? Was that the main 
 evil ? It might have become such under the action of a known trick 
 practised locally in Ireland. Subscriptions were at one time raised in 
 certain districts for shipping off mendicants to English ports : at a 
 present cost of one guinea a-head, the town or district in Ireland got 
 rid permanently of those whom it could bribe into emigration. This 
 policy, which is not surprising when played off by a poor country 
 against a rich one, has certainly been crushed in an early stage by the 
 Poor Bill ; but, however ruinous that policy was by its menace, actu- 
 ally it had not been realized upon any very large scale. The true 
 ruin of Irish pauperism to England and Scotland is far different, and 
 not of a nature to be checked by any possible Poor Bill. This ruin 
 lies, first and chiefly, in the gradual degradation of wages, English 
 and Scotch, under the fierce growth of Irish competition ; secondly, 
 in the chargeableness of Irish pauperism, once settled, (or for any 
 reason not liable to removal,) upon funds English and Scotch. In 
 Scotland the case is even worse at present than in England ; for there 
 the Poor Laws are in so desperate a condition of craziness, by origi- 
 nal insufficiency, that the government will now be violently compelled 
 into an interference with evils too monstrous to be longer tolerated. 
 The Scottish aristocracy have, in this one instance, manifested a big- 
 otry of opposition to the reforms clamorously called for by the expo- 
 sures of Dr. Pultcncy Alison, such as could hardly have been antici- 
 pated from a patriotism so sincere as theirs. But the abuses are too 
 crying for any further attempt at disguise. The one ^rcat evil of the 
 Scottish Poor-laws lies in the mockery of its own professed purposes, 
 in the mere idle simulation of a relief which too often is no relief at 
 all. Cases are before the public in which half-a-cro\vn, or even one 
 shilling, per annum, is the amount of each pauj>cr's dividend. But 
 when the evil of public distress becomes too gigantic to IK- trifled with 
 in that way, then it is seen, in mighty cities like Glasgow, to what 
 extent the parasitical pauperism of Ireland has strangled and crushed 
 the native vigor of the land. Paisley, with a sudden development of
 
 NOTES. 601 
 
 pauperism in 1842, beyond all proportions that had ever been sup- 
 posed possible, was compelled to draw heavily upon alien funds ; and 
 yet, with all this non-local aid, both Scotch and English, the sheer 
 impossibility of feeding adequately the entire body of claimants co- 
 erced the humane distributors of the relief into drawing a line 
 between Scotch and Irish. Then it was that the total affliction be- 
 came known, viz. the hideous extent in which Irish intruders upon 
 Scotland had taken the bread out of her own children's mouths. As 
 to England, it has long been accepted as a fair statement, that fifty 
 thousand Irish interlopers annually swell the great tide of our native 
 increase, (say two hundred and twenty or two hundred and forty thou- 
 sand per annum,) already too rapidly advancing. Yet how has this 
 twofold increase met with any final absorption ? In fact, it might be 
 replied, that latterly it has not been absorbed ; and so far as there was 
 any distress at all through the year 1842, (a distress which, on the 
 faith of m^ny public returns, I greatly doubt, excepting, first, as 
 distress will always exist in so vast a working population forced into 
 n variable sympathy with every part of the globe; and excepting, 
 secondly, the local distress of Paisley, Glasgow, Stockport, Leicester, 
 &c ,) it is to this partial non-absorption of extra labor, falling in with 
 dreadful American derangements of commerce, that the domestic 
 pressure has been owing. A man might, however, demur to the pos- 
 sibility of so much alien labor crowding into our great labor markets. 
 Where, he might say, is the opening for so much new labor ? And 
 especially since the tendency has been, of late years, not to limit the 
 virtual amount of labor for each person, but (by greatly extending 
 the laboring hours, with the result of at last forcing an interposition 
 from the legislature) materially to augment that individual amount. 
 There has, however, been a change in the channels of labor favorable 
 to the concurrent increase of labor numerically, and of the separate 
 labor for each, and so far favorable to this tide of Irish intrusion. 
 Even where the absolute work to be done has but little increased, the 
 numerical increase of laborers has been great, through the growing 
 substitution of female for male (and above all of childish for adult) 
 labor Three girls of thirteen, at wages of six shillings to eight shil- 
 lings a week, have by myriads displaced the one man of mature age, 
 at wages varying from eighteen shillings to forty-five. This revolu- 
 tion has not uniformly been injurious, even to the English working 
 classes ; or, at least, its injurious reaction upon the adult working 
 population has not yet had time for reaching its full display. But to 
 the Irish family, starting from so low a standard of domestic comfort,
 
 602 NOTES. 
 
 the change has acted as a bounty. And in this triple race of the 
 English labor against machinery, against Irish competition, 
 against infant competition, has lain the real opening and possibility 
 for that cruel encroachment upon infant health and happiness, which 
 has at length awakened the thunders of public indignation, never 
 again to be laid asleep. At present there is this one sole barrier of 
 se//"-protection for English labor ; viz. the high domestic standard of 
 comfort inherited from English ancestors. Left to itself, that barrier, 
 so long assaulted and shaken, would soon give way entirely; and the 
 English labor market would be finally prostrated to a level with any, 
 the very basest human degradation ever witnessed amongst Oriental 
 slaves. This protection, if it survives at all, will survive through the 
 yet energetic spirit of the English working man. But in the acci- 
 dents of his situation there is one collateral encouragement to the 
 English native. Machinery, which has so often stranded him for a 
 time, is at length likely to depress the bounty on Irish intrusion ; the 
 infant-labor revolution probably has reached its maximum; and, in 
 the mean time, Ireland, it may be hoped, by railroads, by good gov- 
 ernment, and by growing capital, will soon be preparing better days 
 for her own children at home. 
 
 NOTE 3.3. Page 118. 
 
 " The last result." A remark very nearly approaching to this is 
 made by Edmund Burke in some part of the little " Essay on Taste," 
 prefixed to his " Essay on the Sublime." Burke, however, a very 
 young man at the date of that work, was not sufficiently cautions. 
 At that time his philosophical reading and meditation could not have 
 been extensive, and he neglected to qualify the resulting definition as 
 the real one, in contradistinction to the nominal. Naturally, and 
 almost inevitably, the nominal definition goes before the discussion ; 
 since, without some TTfpiA 77^*9, or rough circumscribing outline of 
 the subject, a reader cannot be supposed to know the very object or 
 substance of the inquiry. 
 
 NOTE 34. Page 119. 
 
 " Says RicarJo" i. e. says by the tenor of his argument, says im- 
 plicitly, else he docs not say so explicitly ; for the case itself of the 
 coal-cellar is not his illustration, but mine.
 
 NOTES. 603 
 
 NOTE 35. Page 121. 
 
 William Jacob, F. R S., stood in a position of advantage, on a sort 
 of isthmus, for judging of any question in economy relating to agri- 
 culture ; for (on the one side) he was well read in the literature of 
 Economy, and (on the other) he was practically familiar with the 
 whole condition and details of rural industry in this island. His 
 " Considerations on the Protection required by British Agriculture," 
 in 1814, is a valuable work. And the talent, together with the mod- 
 eration and the knowledge displayed in it, recommended him subse- 
 quently to the government as a commissioner for inquiries into Con- 
 tinental agriculture. 
 
 NOTE 36. Page 128. 
 
 " Eternal encroachments of rent," eternal by an argument ad hom- 
 inem, which neither Sir Edward West, the original discoverer of the 
 doctrine, nor Ricardo, was in any condition to refuse ; as to them, the 
 encroachments are eternal. But I have repeatedly urged elsewhere, 
 that this law is checked by an opposite law, this tendency is neu- 
 tralized from century to century by a counter tendency. 
 
 NOTE 37. Page 137. 
 
 " Westwards." It would be mere pedantry to refuse this brief ter- 
 minology, derived from the theory of maps. The diagram is treated 
 as a map, or chart, in which the upper side is by ancient usage the 
 north, &c. The advantage for the diagram is, that a single word 
 does the office of a very operose circumlocution. 
 
 NOTE 38. Page 138. 
 
 "Inaptitude." The facts overlooked in Ricardo's position are 
 two; 1st. That by original conformation of mind, like some other 
 powerful and original minds, he found no genial pleasure in communi- 
 cating knowledge ; 2dly. His mind was in a fermenting state, so that 
 his knowledge was often provisional and tentative. The prodigious 
 events of his era, the vast experiments (even in the relations of com- 
 merce and political economy) forced upon nations by the Titan strug- 
 gle of England with a barbarizing despot, taught him often to 
 suspend, to watch, and to listen, as it were, for something yet to 
 come. Hence it happened, that certain great principles, few, but suf-
 
 004 NOTES. 
 
 ficient, for a total revolution in economy, these he held with the 
 grasp of Talus, the iron man of Crete. In the outlying parts of his 
 own system, meantime, he was sceptical ; and what was not determi- 
 nate to himself, he could not make so to others. 
 
 NOTE 39. Page 140. 
 
 " Might rejoice." No, he might not rejoice. In any case he is 
 bound to mourn, says the man of the superannuated economic sys- 
 tems smashed by Ricardo. But why does he say so ? Consistently 
 enough : his doctrine, his creed, is known : wages, for Aim, constitute 
 the basis of price. Do wages happen to rise under a rise of wheat ? 
 Prices, he holds, must rise commensurately. Ergo, as all men use 
 grain or other landed produce, to him it seems that all prices must 
 rise ; and pro tanto. But we, Ricardian Protestants, know far other- 
 wise. Even the novice is now aware that a rise in wages would leave 
 prices undisturbed. And now, perhaps, by this practical application 
 of his knowledge, the novice begins to suspect that his studies upon 
 value were not quite so aerial. 
 
 NOTE 40. Page 146. 
 
 " The case c." One, and perhaps the very largest, vice in the sci- 
 ence of teaching is, that the teacher, chained up by his own subjec- 
 tive preoccupations, cannot see with the eyes of the novice; cannot 
 dismiss his own difficulties, and enter, as into an inheritance, upon 
 those of his pupil. Not until this moment did it strike me, that the 
 reader, having lately heard and read so much of the land-scale, (which 
 means the devolution of culture through all gradations of soil, from 
 optimism down to pessimism, in order to meet the expansions of pop- 
 ulation,) will naturally suppose that Ricardo's table rests upon a basis 
 of that kind ; that the case c, for instance, means land which is one 
 degree worse than that in case B. Not at all. A, B, c, D, and E, all 
 represent one and the same soil, but continually forced, by other soils, 
 into fresh expansions of rent. 
 
 NOTE 41. Page 147. 
 
 " A similar reason," viz. because 30 quarters out of 180 being now 
 disposable for rent, leaving only 150 for wages and profits, then by 
 the rule of three, 150 : 180 : : 4 : 4 16s.
 
 NOTES. 605 
 
 NOTE 42. Page 160. 
 
 "An inversion of the same formula.' 1 '' Such an inversion, the reader 
 may fancy, might escape a clever man's eye for itself, but hardly 
 when pursued to its consequences. Mr. Malthus, however, has per- 
 sisted in this blunder, even where it was so pursued, and where it 
 deeply affected the inference ; viz. during his long attempt to over- 
 throw Ricardo's doctrine of value. He refuses to see, nay, he posi- 
 tively denies, that if two men (never more, never less) produce a va- 
 riable result of ten and five, then in one case each unit of the result 
 has cost double the labor which it has cost in the other. On the con- 
 trary, because there are always two men, Mr. M. obstinately insists 
 that the cost in labor is constant. 
 
 NOTE 43. Page 174. 
 
 In reality, the disposition to the engrossment, by large capitalists, 
 of many farms, or of many cotton-mills, which is often complained of 
 injudiciously as a morbid phenomenon in our modern tendencies, is 
 partly to be regarded as an antagonist tendency, meeting and com- 
 bating that other tendency irregularly manifested towards a subdi- 
 vision too minute in the ordinary callings of trade. The efforts con- 
 tinually made to intrude upon the system of a town, or a quarter, by 
 interpolating an extra baker, grocer, or druggist, naturally reacts, by 
 irritating the counter tendency to absorb into one hand many sepa- 
 rate mills, &c., or to blend into one function many separate trades. 
 In Scotland, for instance, grocers are also wine-dealers, spirit-dealers, 
 cheesemongers, oilmen. 
 
 NOTE 44. Page 183. 
 
 " But not until the downward tendency of interest," &c. And, on the 
 other hand, by parity of reason, if, 1. through draining ; 2. guano ; 
 3. bone-dust; 4. spade culture, &c., the agriculturists of this coun- 
 try should (as probably they will if not disturbed by corn traitors), 
 through the known antagonist movement to that of rent, translate the 
 ^and of England within the next century to a higher key, so that No 
 250 were to become equal in power with the present No. 210, and 
 so rcgressively, No 40 equal with the present No. 1, in that case 
 all functions of capital (wages, rent, "profit) would rise gradually and 
 concurrently, though not equally. Through the known nexus be- 
 tween landed capital and all other capital, it would follow that all 
 manufacturing capital (wages and profit) must rise; since, after all,
 
 606 NOTES. 
 
 however far removed by its quality or its habits from agricultural 
 industry, not the less the very ultimate refinements of industry in the 
 arts or manufactures must still come back to the land for its main 
 demand, viz. of beef, mutton, butter, cheese, milk, bread, hides, barks, 
 tallow, flax, &c. ; even for the haughty artist of cities, the coarse rural 
 industry must be the final vis regulatrix. This being so, it follows, 
 that under an advance in our agriculture, such as even the next gen- 
 eration will probably secure (through the growing combination of 
 science and enormous capital), profits must rise in their rate, and 
 therefore interest. Consequently, it will not then answer to the gov- 
 ernment, under the legal par of the English funds, to borrow for the 
 sake of paying off any stock whatever. They will not be able to 
 obtain money on any terms that could offer a temptation for paying 
 off a 3^ per cent stock. 
 
 NOTE 45. Page 185. 
 
 This circumstantiality is requisite, because there is another Mon- 
 sieur Say in the market, of whom (being dead I believe) it may now 
 be said, without offence, in the words of an ancient Joe Millerism, 
 that if he is a counsellor also, he is not a counsellor likewise. 
 
 NOTE 46. Page 189. 
 
 These courts for insolvencies, as well as for bankruptcies, present 
 many openings for discovery to the political economist. In the 
 course of this very examination, another truth came out which may 
 serve to convince the "knowing" men upon town, that they are not 
 always so knowing as they think themselves. What notion is more 
 popular amongst the prudential masters of life, than the hollow pre- 
 tensions of cheap shops, and the mere impossibility that they should 
 have any power to offer " bargains ? " Now, few people are more 
 disposed to that opinion, as generally sound, than myself. To see 
 " tickets " or " labels " indicating prices below the standard, is for 
 every man of sense a caution against that establishment. Yet still 
 the possible exceptions are not few. In this instance, it was proved 
 beyond a doubt, that for many months the bankrupt had gone upon 
 the principle of raising money, for his own instant uses, by selling 
 the Parisian goods below the original cost of the manufacturer. Such 
 dishonorable practices certainly soon exhaust their own principle of 
 movement But, in so vast a community as London, always there 
 must be new cases arising ; consequently, always there must be some 
 limited possibility of real bargains.
 
 NOTES. 607 
 
 NOTE 47. Page 289. 
 
 Once for all let me say to the readers of these memoranda, 
 that I use the term negative condition as equivalent to the term 
 aonditio sine qua non, and both in the scholastic sense. The neg- 
 ative condition of X is that which being absent X cannot exist ; 
 but which being present X will not therefore exist, unless a pos- 
 itive ground of X be co-present. Briefly, if not, not : if yes, 
 not therefore yes. 
 
 NOTE 48. Page 293. 
 
 What is the particular shape which they put on in most parts 
 of the earth furnishes matter for the commentary of Mr. 
 Malthns on his own doctrine, and occupies the greater part of 
 his work. The materials are of course drawn from voyages and 
 travels ; but from so slender a reading in that department of 
 literature, that the whole should undoubtedly be re-written and 
 more learnedly supported by authorities. 
 
 NOTE 49. Page 295. 
 
 Mr. Malthus has been charged with a libel on hnman nature 
 for denying its ability, even in its present imperfect condition, 
 to practise the abstinence here alluded to provided an ade 
 quate motive to such abstinence existed. But this charge I re 
 quest the reader to observe that I do not enter into. Neither 
 do I enter into the question whether any great change for the 
 better in the moral nature of the man is reasonably to be antici- 
 pated. What I insist on is simply the logical error of Mr. Mal- 
 thus in introducing into the hypothesis which he consents to 
 assume one element which is a contradiction in terminis to that 
 hypothesis. Admit that Mr. Malthus is right in denying the 
 possibility of a perfect state of man on this earth ; he cannot be 
 in assuming an enormous imperfection (disorder of the 
 as one constituent of that perfect state 
 
 NOTE 50. Page" 297. 
 
 Fundamental, I mean, for the political economist : otherwise 
 >*r the philosopher they have a still profounder vice, in their
 
 608 NOTES. 
 
 obvious tendency to degrade the moral character of their object* 
 in their be.>>t elements of civic respectability. 
 
 NOTE 51. Page 299. 
 
 In a slight article on Mr. Malthus, lately published, I omitted 
 to take any notice of the recent controversy between this gentle- 
 man Mr. Godwin and Mr. Booth; my reason for which 
 was that I have not yet found time to read it. But, if Mr. 
 Lowe has rightly represented this principle of Mr. Booth'B 
 argument in his late work on the Statistics of England, it is & 
 most eiToneous one : for Mr. Booth is there described as alleg 
 iug against Mr. Malthus that, in his view of the tendencies of 
 the principle of population, he has relied too much on the case 
 of the United States which Mr. Booth will have to be an ex- 
 treme case, and not according to the general rule. But of what 
 consequence is this to Mr. Malthus 1 And how is he interested 
 in relying on the case of America rather than that of the oldest 
 European country ? Because he assumes a perpetual nisus in 
 the principle of human increase to pass a certain limit, he does 
 not therefore hold that this limit ever is passed either in the 
 new countries or in old (or only for a moment, and inevitably 
 to be thrown back within it). Let this limit he placed where it 
 may, it can no more be passed in America than in Europe ; and 
 America is not at all more favorable to Mr. Malt h us 's theory 
 than Europe. Births, it must be remembered, are more in ex- 
 cess in Europe than in America ; though they do not make so 
 much positive addition to the population. 
 
 NOTE 52. Page 305. 
 
 Thai ia, by missionaries in their dictionaries of the Sandwich 
 language : but formerly better known to sailors as that Ou-hyhee 
 where Captain Cook was massacred. 
 
 NOTE 53. Page 307. 
 
 I quote from an abstract of the census in the .Vew York Jour 
 nal of Commerce for December 5, 1851, transmitted by an Amer 
 loan friend before it had been published even in the Washington 
 journals. This estimate does not include a vast extent of waterj 
 domains.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 G09 
 
 NOTE 54. Page 312. 
 
 "Iniquity." Naturally one might suppose that Lynoh law 
 irould not be liable to much of downright injustice, unless though 
 disproportionate severity in its punishments, considering how gross 
 and palpable are the offences which fall within its jurisdiction. But 
 the fact is otherwise. If with us in Europe the law, that superin- 
 tends civil rights, works continual injustice by its cruel delays, so 
 often announcing a triumph over oppression to an ear that has 
 long been asleep in the grave ; on the other hand, the Lynch code 
 is always trembling by the brink of bloody wrong through the 
 very opposite cause of its rapturous precipitance. A remarkable 
 case if this nature is reported in the Washington and New York 
 journals of Christmas last A man had been arrested on a charge 
 of robbery in some obscure place two hundred miles from San 
 Francisco. Reasons for doubt had arisen amongst the intelligent, 
 and amongst consciences peculiarly tender, but not such reasons 
 as would have much weight amongst an infuriated mob. Two 
 gentlemen, a physician and a young lawyer, whose names should 
 be glorified by history, made a sublime though fruitless effort, at 
 great personal risk, to rescue the prisoner from the bigots who had 
 prejudged him. Finally, however, he was rescued ; but, as may be 
 supposed, in a place so slenderly peopled, with no result beyond that 
 of gaining a little additional time that is, so long as the hiding- 
 place of the prisoner should remain undiscovered. Fortunately 
 this time proved sufficient for the discovery of the real offender. 
 He was taken at San Francisco, two hundred miles off. Luckily 
 he confessed : and that took away all pretence for raising demurs. 
 But so satisfied were some of the witnesses against the innocent 
 prisoner with their own identification of the criminal through 
 his features, build of person, size, apparent age, and dress that 
 ihcy resisted even the circumstantialities of the regular judicial 
 confession. Some of these incredulous gentlemen mounted their 
 horses, and rode off to San Frincisco ; where, upon visiting the 
 prison, to their extreme astonishment, they found a man who pre- 
 sented a mere duplicate and fac simile of the prisoner whom they 
 hail left behind. It is true that precipitancy would not often be 
 misled into injustice by this specific error : but neither is this spe- 
 eific error the only one, by many a hundred, that might give a 
 89
 
 610 
 
 XOTES. 
 
 fatal tarn to the sentence of a jury deciding by momentary and 
 random gleams of probability. 
 
 NOTE 55. Page 317. 
 
 Very grievously I suspect myself here of plagiarism from Mo 
 Here. In one of his plays, Mons. Y. says to Mons. X., " You un- 
 derstand Greek, I believe?" To which Mons. X. replies, " O 
 yes, I understand Greek perfectly. But have the goodness, my deal 
 friend, to talk to me as if by chance I did not understand Greek ' 
 
 NOTE 56. Page 321. 
 
 The supply furnished by Borneo, upon what data I know not, is 
 often rated at one million sterling. So that the two great annual 
 influxes of gold do not apparently exceed five millions sterling. 
 But all this must give way, or must be greatly lowered in cost, 
 before any great impression could be produced by California. 
 
 NOTE 57. Page 328. 
 
 ' JVut by two thirds upon so larye a scale." It is in the last 
 degree difficult to obtain any reports that can be relied on. In the 
 absence of official returns, there is naturally an invitation held out 
 to the double spirit of romance, moving its wings in an atmosphere 
 of unlimited credulity, and also of furious self-interest, having an 
 equal motive (though not the same motive) to exaggeration. I 
 speak, therefore, as everybody mutt speak, under correction from 
 better authorities, if any such shall come forward ; although it 
 must be still borne in mind that even official returns, supposing 
 them fully organized, could do little more than apply a conjectural 
 correction to those irregular transmissions of gold which, under 
 various motives (sometimes of politic concealment, sometimes of 
 ignorant distrust) , are going on largely amongst a population BO 
 mixed and disorderly as that of Australia. Taking, however, such 
 authorities as could be found, and collating them together, I had 
 reason to estimate the Californian produce annually at about 
 twenty-seven millions sterling, when California stood alone ; ana 
 to estimate the present Australian produce at three times thai 
 uuount, or very ucarly one million sterling per week.
 
 NOTES. 611 
 
 NOTE 58. Page 331. 
 
 And this in cases where the use or office of the article must b 
 Itrictly vicarious and substitutional. But in large classes of things, 
 is, for instance, children's toys, gifts of affection, parting memo- 
 rials, ornaments for mantelpieces, or brackets, etc., a large range 
 of substitution is possible when the function of the article may be 
 totally different. A watch, for instance, may be presented by 
 substitution for a fan ; or a porcelain vase for a brace of pistols ; or 
 A crucifix for a pearl necklace. 
 
 NOTE 59. Page 340. 
 
 " Without warning," The mistake is to imagine that the retro- 
 gression must travel through stages corresponding to the movement 
 in advance ; but it is forgotten that, even if so even upon that 
 ?ery assumption the movement would not be leisurely, but, on 
 the contrary, fearfully and frantically fast. What a storm-flight 
 has been the forward motion of the gold development ! People forget 
 that. But they also forget altogether the other consideration, 
 which I have suggested under the image of an interposing valley 
 needing to be filled up ; which necessity of course retarded for two 
 or three years, and so long, therefore, masked and concealed the 
 true velocity of the impending evil. If an enemy is obliged to move 
 under ground in order to approach one's assailable points, during 
 all this hidden advance, it is inevitable to forget the steps that are 
 at once out of sight and inaudible. 
 
 NOTE 60. Page 342. 
 
 Mr. Hankey, meantime, happens to be governor of the bank, 
 and that being so, his opinion will have weight. That is all I ask. 
 In the tendencies we coincide : the only difference is as to the 
 degree. And for that the Australian exports of gold will soon 
 speak loudly enough. 
 
 NOTE 61. Page 357- 
 
 This is literally trae more frequently than would be supposed 
 For instance, a jest often ascribed to Voltaire, and of late pcmt- 
 tdly reclaimed for him by Lord Brougham, as being one that 
 oe (Lord B.) could swear to for his, so characteristic seemed the
 
 612 MOTES. 
 
 Impression of Voltaire's mind upon the tourmire of the s.irc-asm, 
 unhappily for this waste of sagacity, may be found recorded ly 
 Fabricius in the " Bibliotheca Graeca," as the jest of a Greek 
 who has been dead for about seventeen centuries. The man cer- 
 tainly did utter the jest, and seventeen hundred and fifty years 
 ago ; but who it was that he stole it from is another question. 
 To all appearance, and according to Lord Brougham's opinion, 
 the party robbed must have been M. de Voltaire. I notice the 
 case, however, of the Greek thefts and frauds committed upon 
 BO many of our excellent wits belonging to the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries chiefly with a view to M. de Talleyrand 
 that rather middling bishop, but very eminent knave. He also 
 has been extensively robbed by the Greeks of the second and 
 third centuries. How else can you account for so many of his 
 payings being found amongst their pages'? a thing you may 
 ascertain in a moment, at any police office, by having the Greeks 
 searched ; for surely you would never think of searching a 
 bishop. Most of the Talleyrand jewels will be found concealed 
 amongst the goods of these unprincipled Greeks. But one, and 
 the most famous in the whole jewel case, sorry am I to confess, 
 was nearly stolen from the bishop, not by any Greek, but by an 
 English writer, namely, Goldsmith, who must have been 
 dying about the time that his excellency the diplomatist had the 
 goodness to be born. That famous mot about language, as a gift 
 made to man for the purpose of concealing his thoughts, is lurking 
 in Goldsmith's Essays. Think of that! Already, in his inno- 
 cent childhood, whilst the bishop was in petticoats, and aim oat 
 before he had begun to curse and to swear plainly in French, 
 an Irish vagabond had attempted to swindle him out of that 
 famous witticism which has since been as good as a life annuity 
 to tho venerable knave's literary fame. 
 
 NOTE 62. Page 358. 
 
 The word anecdotes, first, I believe, came into currency about 
 the middle of the sixth century, from the use made of it by 
 Procopius. Literally it indicated nothing that could interest 
 either public malice or public favor ; it promised only unpnb- 
 Mshed notices of the Emperor Justinian, his wife Theodora 
 Varses, Belisarius, &c. But why had they been unpublished *
 
 NOTES. 
 
 era 
 
 Simply because scandalous and defamatory ; and IK'TNV, from 
 Ihe interest which invested the case of au imperial court so rv- 
 inarkable, tliis oblique, secondary, and purely accidental modifi- 
 cation of the word came to influence its general acceptation. 
 Simply to have been previously unpublished no longer raised 
 any statement into an anecdote; it iiow received a new integra- 
 tion it must be some fresh publication of personal memora- 
 ilia ; and these, having reference to human creatures, must 
 always be presumed to involve more evil than good much 
 defamation, true or false much doubtful insinuation much 
 suggestion of things worse than could be openly affirmed. So 
 arose the word ; but the ihintj arose with Suetonius, that dear, 
 excellent, and hard-working '' father of lies." 
 
 NOTE 63. Page 370. 
 
 What section, if you please ? T, for my part, do not agree 
 with those that geographically degrade Christianity as occupy- 
 ing but a trifle on the area of our earth. Mark this : all Eastern 
 populations have dwindled upon better acquaintance. Persia, 
 that ought to have at least, two hundred and fifty millions of 
 people, and would have them under English government, and 
 once was supposed to have at least one hundred millions, how 
 many millions has she ? Eight .' This was ascertained by 
 Napoleon's emissary in 1808, General Cardan ne. Afghanistan 
 has very little more ; though some falsely count fourteen mil- 
 lions. There go two vast chambers of Mahometanism ; not 
 twenty millions between them. Hindostan may really have one 
 hundred and twenty millions claimed for her. As to the Bur- 
 man empire, neither I nor anybody else knows the truth ; but 
 as to China, I have never for a moment been moved by those 
 ridiculous estimates of the flowery people which our simple 
 countrymen copy. Instead of three hundred and fifty millions 
 a third of the human race upon the most exaggerated estimate, 
 read eighty or one hundred millions at most. Africa, as it re- 
 gards religion, counts for a cipher. Europe, America, and the 
 half of Asia, as to space, are Christian. Consequently the total 
 f acit, as regards Christianity, is not what many amiable infi- 
 
 iels make it to be. My dears, your wish was father to that 
 
 bought.
 
 314 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 64. Page 373. 
 
 "Spartan warfare:" It was a tradition in Greece, thai 
 about seven centuries before Christ the " Iliad " was carried 
 Into Sparta ; some said by Lycurgus the lawgiver when return- 
 ing from his travels. But the tradition added, that the im- 
 porter excluded the " Odyssey ; " not as being non-Homeric 
 for which objection that age was not critical enough ; but an 
 tending to cherish ideas of happiness derived from peace and the 
 domestic affections ; whereas the " Iliad " exhibited war as the 
 final object for which man existed. Whether this tradition 
 were well-founded or not, it shows us in either case what was 
 the reputed character through Greece of the Spartan. No tribe 
 of semi-savages on record ever labored so effectually as the 
 Spartans to strip war of all its grandeur by clothing it with un- 
 generous arrogance ; and the consequence is, that all readers to 
 this day rejoice in every defeat and humiliation which this ken 
 nel of hounds sustained. 
 
 NOTE 65. Page 377. 
 
 To banish them " forth of the kingdom " was the euphuismus , 
 but the reality understood was, to carry the knaves, like foxes 
 in a bag, to the English soil, and there unbag them for English 
 use. 
 
 NOTE 66. Page 380. 
 
 One great nidus of this insidious preparation for war under 
 the very mask of peace, which Kant, from brevity, has failed to 
 particularize, lies in the neglecting to make any provision for 
 cases that are likely enough to arise. A, B, C, D are all equally 
 possible ; but the treaty provides a specific course of action only 
 for A, suppose. Then, upon B or C arising, the high con tract- 
 ing parties, though desperately and equally pacific, find them 
 selves committed to war actually by a treaty of lasting peace 
 Their pacific majesties sigh and say, Alas that it should be BO 
 Rut really fight we must ; for what says the treaty ?
 
 NOTES. 6 1 5 
 
 NOTE 67. Page 382. 
 
 [From this point to the end of the paper is new matter ap- 
 pended when the author revised the article for the late Edin- 
 burgh edition.] 
 
 NOTE 68. Page 383. 
 
 " Science more exquisite : " How inadequately this is appre- 
 ciated, may be seen in the popular opinion applied to our wars 
 with the Chinese and Burmese namely, that gradually we 
 shall teach those semi-barbarous peoples to fight. Some obvious 
 improvements, purchasable with money, it is probable enough, 
 will be adopted from us. But as to any general improvement of 
 their military system, this is not of a nature to be transferred. 
 The science, for instance, applied to our artillery and engineer- 
 ing systems presupposes a total change of education, and the 
 establishment of new institutions. It will not be sufficient to 
 have institutions for teaching mathematics ; these must be sup- 
 ported by a demand for mathematic knowledge in every quarter 
 of public industry, in civil engineering, in nautical commerce, 
 in mining, &c. Moreover, the manufacturing establishments 
 that would be required as a basis of support for the improved 
 science, such as cannon foundries, manufactories of philosophi- 
 cal instruments, &c., presuppose a concurrent expansion in 
 many other directions, so as to furnish not only new means, but 
 B!SO new motives, and, in short, presuppose an entire new civ- 
 ilization 
 
 NOTE 69. Page 389 
 
 But judge not, reader, of French skill by the attempts of 
 fourth-rate artists ; and understand me to speak with respect of 
 this skill, not as it is the tool of luxury, but as it is the hand- 
 maid of health. 
 
 NOTE 70. Page 402. 
 
 " Harry GiU:" Many readers in this generation may not be 
 ware of this ballad as one amongst the early poems of Word*-
 
 616 NOTES. 
 
 worth. Thirty or forty years ago it was the object of soinw 
 insipid ridicule, which ought, perhaps, in another place to b 
 noticed ; aud doubtless this ridicule was heightened by the 
 false impression that the story had been some old woman's 
 superstitious fiction, meant to illustrate a supernatural judgment 
 on hard-heartedncss. But the story was a physiologic fact ; and 
 originally it had been brought forward in a philosophic work bj 
 Darwin, who had the reputation of an irreligious man, and even 
 of an infidel. A bold freethinker he certainly was ; a Deist ; 
 and, by public repute, founded on the interual evidence of his 
 writings as well as of his daily conversation, something more. 
 Dr. Darwin, by the way, WAS one of the temperance fanatics 
 long before temperance societies arose, and is supposed to have 
 paid for his fanaticism with his life. He practised as a physi- 
 cian with great success and eminent reputation at Ashhourn 
 in Derbyshire ; but being a man of many crotchets, amongst 
 them was this that, when other men called for wine, the 
 Doctor called (oh Bacchus !) for cream. Suddenly, on one fine 
 golden morning, the Doctor was attacked by a spasmodic affec- 
 tion. A glass of old brandy was earnestly suggested. Thirty 
 years having fled since the Doctor had tasted alcohol in any 
 shape, it was imagined that old cognac would have a magical 
 effect. But no, the Doctor called loudly for cream : and alas ! 
 Death called still more loudly for the Doctor. 
 
 NOTE 71. Page 403. 
 
 It is literally true that even the Khan of Khiva, a territory 
 between Bokhara and the Caspian, and a much more insignifi- 
 cant state, relying simply on its own position and inaccessibility 
 too far north for England, too far south for Russia, has of- 
 fered insults and outrages to that lubberly empire for one hun- 
 dred and forty years, commencing its aggressions in the reign 
 of Peter the Great, as some people call him ; who, being a 
 true bully, pocketed his affronts in moody silence. The most 
 ludicrous part of our own relations with Khiva is this : The 
 var with Afghanistan in 1838 and three following years, which 
 >ost us eighteen millions sterling, and pretty nearly exterminated 
 &e whole race of camels through all Central Ada [some saj
 
 NOTES. 617 
 
 shirty thousand], was undertaken purely on the conceit that 
 Russia might assault us on the Indus. Meantime, Russia was 
 unable to reach even the little Khan of Khiva a thousand 
 miles northwest of the Indus. And it is a most laughable 
 feature of the Affghan war, that only through the intercession 
 of a single English cavalry officer (Sir Richmond Shakspear) 
 was Russia able to obtain from the Khan a surrender of those 
 unhiippy Russians whom, by various accidents on the Caspian, 
 he bad treacherously made captives. 
 
 NOTE 72. Page 416. 
 
 This is remarked by her editor and descendant Julius Hutch- 
 inson, who adds some words to this effect ' that if the patriots 
 of that day were the inventors of the maxim [ The king can do 
 no wrong], we are much indebted to them.' The patriots cer- 
 tainly did not invent the maxim, for they found it already cur 
 rent : but they gave it its new and constitutional sense. I refer to 
 the book, however, as I do to almost all books in these notes, from 
 memory ; writing most of them in situations where I have no 
 access to books. By the way, Charles I., who used the maxim in 
 the most odious sense, furnished the most colorable excuse for 
 his own execution. He constantly maintained the irresponsi- 
 bility of his ministers : but, if that were conceded, it would then 
 follow that the king must be made responsible in his own 
 person : and that construction led of necessity to his trial and 
 death. 
 
 NOTE 73. Page 421. 
 
 Amongst these Mr. D'Israeli in one of the latter volumes of 
 his ' Curiosities of Literature ' has dedicated a chapter or so to a 
 formal proof of this proposition. A reader who is familiar witb 
 the history of that age comes to the chapter with a previous in- 
 dignation, knowing what sort of proof he has to expect. This 
 indignation is not likely to be mitigated by what he will there 
 find Becaup some one madman, fool, or scoundrel makes a 
 monstrous proposal which dies of itself unsupported, and is in 
 nolent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times,
 
 618 NOTES. 
 
 this is to sully the character of the parliament aud three-fourth! 
 of the people of England. If this proposal had grown out of the 
 spirit of the age, that spirit would have produced many mere 
 proposals of the same character and acts corresponding to them. 
 Yet upon this one infamous proposal, and two or three scandalou* 
 anecdotes from the libels of the day, does the whole onus of Mr. 
 D'Israeli's parallel depend. Tantamne rem tain negligenterl 
 In the general character of an Englishman I have a right to 
 complain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of England and 
 her most virtuous patriots in her most virtuous age should be 
 made with so much levity : a charge so solemn in its matter 
 should have been prosecuted with a proportionate solemnity cf 
 manner. Mr. D'lsraeli refers with just applause to the opinions 
 of Mr. Coleridge : I wish that he would have allowed a little 
 more weight to the striking passage in which that gentleman 
 contrasts the French revolution with the English revolution of 
 1640-8. However, the general tone of honor and upright prin- 
 ciple, which marks Mr. D'Israeli's work, encourages me and 
 others to hope that he will cancel the chapter and not persist 
 in wounding the honor of a great people for the sake of a paral 
 lelism, which even if it were true is a thousand times too 
 slight and feebly supported to satisfy the most accommodating 
 reader. 
 
 NOTE 74. Page 422. 
 
 Sir William and hia cousin Sir Hardress Waller, were both 
 remarkable men. Sir Hardress had no conscience at all ; Sir 
 William a very scrupulous one ; which, however, he was for ever 
 tampering with and generally succeeded in reducing into 
 compliance, with his immediate interest. He was, however, an 
 accomplished gentleman : and as a man of talents worthy of the 
 highest admiration. 
 
 NOTE 75. Page 427. 
 
 Uutil after the year 1688, I do not remember ever to have 
 found the terra Whig applied except to the religious character- 
 istics of that party : whatever reference it might have to theii 
 political distinctions was only secondary ind by implication.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 619 
 
 NOTE 76. Page 433. 
 
 Sir William had quoted to Charles a saying from Gourville (a 
 Frenchman whom the king esteemed, and whom Sir "William 
 himself considered the only foreigner he had ever known that 
 understood England) to this effect : ' That a king of England, 
 who will be the man of his people, is the greatest king in 
 the world ; but, if he will be something more, by G he is 
 nothing at alL' 
 
 NOTE 77. Page 487. 
 
 And, by the way, another revolution was then silently pre- 
 pared, npon the cause of which there has been much disputing 
 without result; simply because one cause only was assigned, 
 when in fact there were two. Mr. Buhver, of late ("England 
 and the English "), Lord Auckland many years ago, and num- 
 bers beside, have ridiculed those who deduce English pauperism, 
 from the suppression of the monasteries. Early in the reign of 
 Henry VIII., says Mr. Bulwer, and therefore before the dissolu- 
 tion of these religious houses, there are, in express laws and 
 elsewhere, indications of pauperism. Certainly, pauperism, as 
 a national disease, began in the previous reign. Latimer alone, 
 writing in Edward VI.'s time, an author npon whom elsewhere 
 Mr. Bulwer relies, complains heavily of the extensive depopula- 
 tions in progress for some time back. There, where formerly 
 nourished a populous village, we find now-a-days a single shep- 
 herd boy or two, tending large flocks of sheep. I quote hi? 
 meaaing, though not his exact words, not having his sermons at 
 hand. Now, it is clear to any reflecting reader, that, on the one 
 hand, these changes must have been going on through one or 
 two generations previous to the date of Latimer's sermons, 
 which suppose 1 550 ; otherwise they could not have been so ex- 
 tensively accomplished, as the very nature of his complaint im- 
 plies. Yet, on the other hand, it is equally clear, that Latimer 
 points in these complaints to a state of things still within the 
 memory of his elder auditors ; he is making his comparison
 
 P20 NOTES. 
 
 between a vicions present (as he views it) and a happier part. 
 But the transition he denounces as even then going on, and the 
 two states then equally under the cognizance of the existing 
 generation. For it could not have answered any purpose to tix 
 the eyes of man upon some Arcadian condition of remote ages, 
 or of merely possible prosperity. Latimer is manifestly be- 
 moaning a revolution, yet raw and unreconciled, one which 
 had passed within the knowledge of those to whom he appealed, 
 which was in fact still going onwards. In one place he datea 
 the change expressly from his grandfather's time- The case, 
 therefore, tells its own history. Henry VII. had operated upon 
 the feudal habits of the aristocracy by two separate acts : 1st, 
 By abolishing the long trains of martial retainers ; 2dly, By re- 
 moving the bars to the alienation and subdivision of landed 
 estates. These two acts aided each other. The nobility, finding 
 no benefits of feudal pomp in a large body of dependants, 
 these being now by law tendered utterly useless for show or for 
 defence, began necessarily to seek some countervailing benefits 
 from the territorial domains hitherto applied to the support of a 
 vast retinue now suddenly made unavailable by law. Lands 
 were now applied to the purposes prescribed by rural economy. 
 Many wera consequently turned into sheep-walks ; and those 
 which were otherwise applied, as for instance to agriculture, 
 were still able to disencumber themselves of a large surplus pop- 
 ulation. The economic use of land had now superseded the 
 feudal use. The maximum of produce from the minimum of 
 labor, had now become the problem for all land whatsoever. 
 And, as the produce, thus continually increasing, with a contin- 
 ually decreasing amount of labor, could no longer be consumed 
 in kind, hence arose a continually greater opening for exotic 
 uxuries. These tastes, with other consequences, formed so 
 ti.vi v increasing temptations to the alienation of estates, the 
 facilities for which had been prepared concurrent!/. Upon this 
 breaking up of the great feudal and ecclesiastical estates, arose 
 a new order of secondary aristocracy ; a gentry, formed in part 
 from the younger brothers of the upper aristocracy, in part front 
 the magnates of towns. That was one effect ; but another 
 that other with which we are now concerned was, that au im
 
 NOTES. 62 1 
 
 mouse surplus of population was thrown ofl upon the nation. 
 This formed a stream continually increasing ; and, in the fol- 
 lowing reign, this stream became confluent with another stream 
 from the monasteries. And these two bodies of surplus popu- 
 lation, making, perhaps, not less than 350.000 souls in a total 
 population of nearly 5,000,000, composed the original fnndut of 
 the pauperism for which Elizabeth provided, first, by a crude 
 law in the beginning of her reign ; secondly, by an improved 
 law towards the close of it which last law has ever since 
 formed the basis of our pauper code. Those who have read the 
 book of Lord Selkirk, published about thirty years ago, are 
 aware that the very same process was repeated in the Scottish 
 Highlands after the rebellion of 1745-46, and the abolition of the 
 heritable jurisdictions. Martial retainers, and the very purpose 
 to which only they could be applied, namely, feudal quarrels, 
 were then severely and resolutely put down by Government : 
 forts were built, military roads opened, permanent garrisons 
 establisned, to enforce the new policy of a Government at once 
 strong and enlightened, provident and vindictive. The chief- 
 tains, like the English nobles, were obliged to seek a new use in 
 their retainers ; which use, it was soon found, could be better 
 attained from the tenth than from the whole. n\tov fifuffv 
 iravros. The nine-tenths were therefore turned adrift. In 
 Scotland, as previously in England, it took about two genera- 
 tions to bring the principle into full play ; for the lords, as also 
 the chieftains, were variously situated, and were of various 
 tempers : some catching eagerly, and from the first, at the ut- 
 most gain ; others hankering to the last after their ancient 
 usages and their hereditary pomp. So far the cases were the 
 same in England and in Scotland. But one capital difference 
 arose from the general circumstances of the country. After 1745 
 there was an outlet for all the surplus Scotch Highlanders, in 
 the British colonies; and, accordingly, Lord Selkirk himself 
 turned a strong current of emigration into Prince Edward Island 
 In the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and afterwards, when that island 
 Vas sufficiently colonized, into the Canadas. But for England, 
 juring the sixty years of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. (1485- 
 \ 545), there was no outlet whatever. The whole surplus wai
 
 622 NOTES. 
 
 thrown back upon the domestic resources of the land. Ami, 
 doubtless, many a fierce retainer, as also many a big-boned 
 monk, was to be found amongst those " masterful beggars,' 
 ' stout thieves," and " Abraham men," who plagued our ances- 
 tors so much during the sixteenth century, and were so plenti- 
 fully and so frivolously hanged. This deduction of pauperism, 
 though collateral to my main purpose, I have thought it right 
 to give ; because the subject is so much of a qucestio vexatia ; be- 
 cause no party has hit upon the whole truth ; because that solu- 
 tion, to which Mr. Bulwer and others object, is half the truth ; 
 and because the previous and the confluent cause, which I now 
 allege, makes the complement, or other half of the truth. The 
 paupers of England arose out of two acts emanating from Henry 
 VII. as well as from that single act of his son, which, doubtless, 
 taken by itself, is insufficient to meet the case.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 MAY 2 3 197? 
 
 Book S)ip-35m-9,'62(D221884)4280
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PR 4532 1877 
 
 College 
 Library