THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 TZ"
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 SOME UiNSETTLED QUESTIONS 
 
 OY 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 SOME UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STUAET MILL 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, READER, AND DYER 
 
 1874
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SATILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTKRS, CHANDOS STREET, 
 
 COVEKT GARDEN.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 MB 
 161 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Of these Essays, which were written in 1829 and 
 1830, the fifth alone has been previously printed. 
 The other four have hitherto remained in manuscript, 
 because, during the temporary suspension of public 
 interest in the species of discussion to which the}' 
 belong, there was no inducement to their publication. 
 
 They are now published (with a few merely verbal 
 alterations) under the impression that the contro- 
 versies excited by Colonel Torrens' Budget have again 
 called the attention of political economists to the dis- 
 cussions of the abstract science ; and from the addi- 
 tional consideration, that the first paper relates ex- 
 pressly to the point upon which the question at issue 
 between Colonel Torrens and his antagonists has prin- 
 cipally turned. 
 
 From that paper it will be seen that opinions 
 identical in principle with those promulgated by 
 Colonel Torrens (there would probably be considerable 
 difference as to the extent of their practical applica- 
 tion) have been held by the writer for more than 
 fifteen years : although he cannot claim to himself the 
 original conception, but only the elaboration, of tlie 
 fundamental doctrine of the Essay. 
 
 845G<;(>
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 A prejudice appears to exist in many quarters 
 against the theory in question, on tlie supposition of 
 its being opposed to one of the most valuable results 
 of modern political philosophy, tlie doctrine of Free- 
 dom of Trade between nation and nation. The 
 opinions now laid before the reader are presented as 
 corollaries necessarily following from the principles 
 upon which Free Trade itself rests. The writer has 
 also been careful to point out, that from these opinions 
 no justification can be derived for any p'otectin/j 
 duty, or other preference given to domestic over 
 Ibreign industry. But in regard to those duties on 
 foreign commodities which do not operate as protec- 
 tion, but are maintained solely for revenue, and which 
 do not touch either the necessaries of life or the 
 materials and instruments of production, it is his 
 opinion that any relaxation of such duties, beyond 
 what ma}'' be required by the interest of the revenue 
 itself, should in general be made contingent upon the 
 adoption of some corresponding degree of freedom of 
 trade with this country, by the nation from which the 
 commodities are imported.
 
 C N T E N T S. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of the Laws of Interchange between N;itious ; and the Disti'ibu- 
 tion of the Gams of Commerce among the Countries of the 
 Commercial World 1 
 
 ESSAY TI. 
 Of the Influence of Consumption upon Production . . . 47 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 On the Words Productive and Unproductive . . . . 75 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 On Profits, and Interest TO 
 
 ESSAY T. 
 
 On the Definition of Political Economy ; and on the Method of 
 
 Investigation proper to it , 120
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 OF THE LAWS OF INTEr.CPIANGE BETWEEN NATIONS; 
 AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE GAINS OF COM- 
 MERCE AMONG THE COUNTRIES OF THE 
 COMMERCIAL WORLD. 
 
 Of the truths with which political economy has been 
 enriched by Mr. Ricardo, none has contributed more 
 to give to that branch of knowledge the comparatively 
 precise and scientific character which it at present bears, 
 than the more accurate analysis which he performed of 
 the nature of the advantage which nations derive from 
 a mutual interchange of their productions. Previously 
 to his time, the benefits of foreign trade were deemed, 
 even by the most philosophical enquirers, to consist in 
 affording a vent for surplus produce, or in enabling a 
 portion of the national capital to replace itself with a 
 profit. The futility of the theory implied in tliese 
 and similar phrases, was an obvious consequence from 
 the speculations of writers even anterior to Mr. 
 Ricardo. But it was he who first, in the chapter 
 on Foreign Trade, of his immortal Principles of 
 Polifical Economy and Taxation, substituted for the 
 former vague and unscientific, if not positively false, 
 conceptions with regard to the advantage of trade, 
 a philosophical exposition which explains, with strict 
 precision, the nature of that advantage, and affords an 
 accurate measure of its amount. 
 
 He showed, that the advantage of an interchange 
 of commodities between nations consists simply and 
 solely in this, that it enables each to obtain, with a 
 given amount of labour and capital, a greater quantity 
 
 B
 
 2 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 of all commodities taken together. This it accom- 
 plishes by enabling each, with a quantity of one com- 
 modity which has cost it so much labour and capital, 
 to purchase a quantity of another commodity which, 
 if produced at home, would have required labour and 
 capital to a greater amount. To render the importa- 
 tion of an article more advantageous than its produc- 
 tion, it is not necessary that the foreign country 
 should be able to produce it with less labour and 
 capital than ourselves. We may even have a positive 
 advantage in its production : but, if we are so far 
 favoured by circumstances as to have a still greater 
 positive advantage in the production of some other 
 article which is in demand in the foreign countr}^, we 
 may be able to obtain a greater return to our labour and 
 capital by employing none of it in producing the article 
 in which our advantage is least, but devoting it all to the 
 production of that in which our advantage is greatest, 
 and giving this to the foreign country in exchange 
 for the other. It is not a difference in the absolute cost 
 of production, which determines the interchange, but 
 a difference in the comparaiive cost. It may be to our 
 advantage to procure iron from Sweden in exchange for 
 cottons, even although the mines of England as well 
 as her manufactories should be more productive than 
 those of Sweden ; for if we have an advantage of one- 
 half in cottons, and only an advantage of a quarter in 
 iron, and could sell our cottons to Sweden at the price 
 which Sweden must pay for them if she produced them 
 herself, we should obtain our iron with an advantage 
 of one-half, as well as our cottons. We may often, by 
 trading with foreigners, obtain their commodities at a 
 smaller expense of labour and capital than tliey cost 
 to the foreigners themselves. The bargain is still 
 advantageous to the foreigner, because the commodity
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 3 
 
 which he receives in exchange, though it has cost us 
 less, would have cost him more. As often as a 
 country possesses two commodities, one of which it 
 can produce with less lahour, comparatively to what it 
 would cost in a foreign country, than the other ; so 
 often it is the interest of the country to export the 
 first mentioned commodity and to import the second ; 
 even though it might be able to produce both the one 
 and the other at a less expense of labour than the 
 foreign country can produce them, but not less in the 
 same degree ; or might be unable to produce either 
 except at a greater expense, but not greater in the 
 same degree. 
 
 On the contrary, if it produces both commodities 
 with greater facility, or both with greater difficulty, 
 and greater in exactly the same degree, there will be 
 no motive to interchange. 
 
 " If the cloth and the corn, each of which required 
 100 days' labour in Poland required each 150 days' 
 labour in England ; it would follow, that the cloth of 
 150 days' labour in England, if sent to Poland, would 
 be equal to the cloth of 100 days' labour in Poland : if 
 exchanged for corn, therefore, it would exchange for 
 the corn of only 100 days' labour. But the corn of 
 100 days' labour in Poland, was supposed to be the 
 same quantity with that of 150 days' labour in 
 England. AVith 150 days' labour in cloth, therefore, 
 England would only get as much corn in Poland as 
 she could raise with 150 days' labour at home; and 
 she would, in importing it, have the cost of carriage 
 besides. In these circumstances no exchange would 
 take place. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, while the cloth produced 
 with 100 days' labour in Poland was produced with 
 150 days' labour in England, the corn which was pro- 
 
 B 2
 
 4 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 duced in Poland with 100 days' lalDOiir could not be 
 produced in England with less than 200 days' labour ; 
 an adequate motive to exchange would immediately 
 arise. With a quantity of cloth which England pro- 
 duced with 150 daj^s' labour, she would be able to 
 purchase as much corn in Poland as was there pro- 
 duced with lOQdaj^s' labour ; but the quantity, which 
 was there produced with 100 days' labour, would be 
 as great as the quantity produced in England with 
 200 davs' labour. 
 
 " The power of Poland would be reciprocal. 
 With a quantity of corn which cost her 100 days' 
 labour, equal to the quantity produced in England by 
 200 days' labour, she could in the supposed case pur- 
 chase in England the produce of 200 days' labour in 
 cloth." But "the produce of 150 daj^s' labour in 
 England in the article of cloth would be equal to the 
 produce of 100 days' labour in Poland*." 
 
 The remainder of what Mr. Eicardo has done for 
 the philosophical exposition of the principles of foreign 
 trade, is to show, that the truth of the propositions 
 now recapitulated is not affected by the introduction 
 of money as a medium of exchange ; the precious 
 metals always tending to distribute themselves in such 
 a manner throughout the commercial world, that every 
 country shall import all that it would have imported, 
 and export all that it would have exported, if ex- 
 changes had taken place, as in the example above 
 supposed, by barter. 
 
 To this branch of the subject we shall, in the 
 sequel of this essay, return. At present it will be 
 more convenient that we should continue to suppose. 
 
 * Elements of Political Economy, by James Mill, Esq., 3rd 
 edit., pp. 120-1.
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 5 
 
 that exchanges take place by tlie direct trucking of 
 one commodity against another. 
 
 It is estabhshed, that the advantage which two 
 countries derive from trading with each other, results 
 from the more advantageous employment which thence 
 arises, of the labour and capital — for shortness let us 
 say the labour — of both jointly. The circumstances are 
 such, that if each country confines itself to the pro- 
 duction of one commodity, there is a greater total 
 return to the labour of both together ; and this in- 
 crease of produce forms the whole of what the two 
 countries taken together gain by the trade. 
 
 It is the purpose of the present essay to inquire, in 
 what proportion the increase of produce, arising from 
 the saving of labour, is divided between the two 
 countries. 
 
 This question was not entered into by Mr. Ricardo, 
 whose attention was engrossed by far more important 
 questions, and who, having a science to create, had not 
 time, or room, to occupy himself with much more than 
 the leading principles. When he had done enough to 
 enable any one who came after him, and who took the 
 necessary pains, to do all the rest, he was satisfied. 
 He very rarely followed out tlie principles of the 
 science into the ramifications of their consequences. 
 But we believe that to no one, who has thoroughly 
 entered into the spirit of his discoveries, will even 
 the minutiae of the science offer any difficulty but 
 that which is constituted by the necessity of patience 
 and circumspection in tracing principles to their re- 
 sults. 
 
 Mr. Eicardo, while intending to go no further 
 into the question of the advantage of foreign trade 
 than to show what it consisted of, and under what 
 circumstances it arose, unguardedly expressed himself
 
 6 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 as if each of the two countries making: the exchanc^e 
 separately gained the whole of the difference between 
 the comparative costs of the two commodities in one 
 country and in the other. But, the whole gain of both 
 countries together, consisting in the saving of labour ; 
 and the saving of labour being exactly equal to the 
 difference between the costs, in the two countries, of 
 the one commodity as compared with the other ; the 
 two countries taken together gain no more than this 
 difference : and if either country gains the whole of it, 
 the other country derives no advantage from the trade. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that 10 yards of broad cloth 
 cost in England as much labour as 1 5 yards of linen, 
 and in Germany as much as 20. If England sends 10 
 yards of broad cloth to Germany, and is able to ex- 
 change them for linen according to the German cost 
 of production, she will get 20 yards of linen, with a 
 quantity of labour with which she could not have pro- 
 duced more than 15 ; and will gain, therefore, 5 j^ards 
 on every J 5, or 33i per cent. But in this case Ger- 
 many would obtain only 10 yards of cloth for 20 of 
 linen. Now, 10 yards of cloth cost exactly the same 
 quantity of labour in Germany as 20 of linen ; Ger- 
 many, therefore, derives no advantage from the trade, 
 more than she would possess if it did not exist. 
 
 So, on the other hand, if Germany sends 15 yards of 
 linen to England, and finding the relative value of the 
 two articles in that country determined by the English 
 costs of production, is enabled to purchase with 1 5 
 yards of linen 10 yards of cloth; Germany now gains 
 5 yards, just as England did before, — for with 15 yards 
 of linen she purchases 10 yards of cloth, when to produce 
 these 10 yards she must have employed as much labour 
 as would have enabled her to produce 20 yards of 
 linen. But in this case England would gain nothing :
 
 BETWEEN XATIOXS. 7 
 
 she would only obtain, for lier 10 yards of cloth, 15 
 yards of linen, which is exactly the comparative cost at 
 which she could have produced them. 
 
 This, which was not an error, but a mere oversight 
 of Mr. Eicardo, arising from his having left the ques- 
 tion of the division of the advantage entirely unnoticed, 
 was first corrected in the third edition of Mr. Mill's 
 Elemenfs of PoUtical Economy. It can hardly, however, 
 be said that Mr. Mill has prosecuted the inquiry any- 
 further; which, indeed, would have been quite as 
 inconsistent with the nature of his plan as of Mr. 
 Eicardo's. 
 
 1. When the trade is established between the two 
 countries, the two commodities will exchange for each 
 other at the same rate of interchange in both coun- 
 tries — bating the cost of carriage, of which, for the 
 present, it will be more convenient to omit the consi- 
 deration. Supposing, therefore, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that the carriage of the commodities from one 
 country to another could be effected without labour 
 and without cost, no sooner would the trade be opened 
 than, it is self-evident, the value of the two commo- 
 dities, estimated in each other, would come to a level 
 in both countries. 
 
 If we knew what this level would be, we should 
 know in what proportion the two countries would 
 share the advantage of the trade. 
 
 When each country produced both commodities for 
 itself, 10 yards of broad cloth exchanged for 15 yards 
 of linen in England, and for 20 in Germany. They 
 will now exchange for the same number of yards of 
 linen in both. For what number? If for 15 yards, 
 England will be just as she was, and Germany will 
 gain all. If for 20 yards, Germany will be as before, 
 and England will derive the whole of the benefit. If
 
 8 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 for any number intermediate between 15 and 20, the 
 advantage will be shared between the two countries. 
 If, for example, 10 yards of cloth exchange for IS 
 of linen, England will gain an advantage of 3 yards 
 on every 15, Germany will save 2 out of every 20. 
 
 The problem 4s, what are the causes which deter- 
 mine the proportion in which the cloth of England 
 and the linen of Germany will exchange for each other ? 
 
 This, therefore, is a question concerning exchange- 
 able value. There must be something which determines 
 how much of one commodity another commodity will 
 purchase ; and there is no reason to suppose that the 
 law of exchano-eable value is more difficult of ascertain- 
 
 o 
 
 ment in this case than in other cases. 
 
 The law, however, cannot be precisely the same as 
 in the common cases. When two articles are produced 
 in the immediate vicinity of one another, so that, with- 
 out expatriating himself, or moving to a distance, a 
 capitalist has the choice of producing one or the other, 
 the quantities of the two articles which v^ill exchange 
 for each other will be, on the average, those which are 
 produced by equal quantities of labour. But this can- 
 not be applied to the case where the two articles are 
 produced in two difi'erent countries ; because men do 
 not usually leave their country, or even send their 
 capital abroad, for the sake of those small difi'erences 
 of profit which are sufficient to determine their choice 
 of a business, or of an investment, in their own country 
 and neighbourhood. 
 
 The principle, that value is proportional to cost of 
 production, being consequently inapplicable, we must 
 revert to a principle anterior to that of cost of pro- 
 duction, and from which this last flows as a conse- 
 quence, — namely, the principle of demand and supply. 
 
 In order to apply this principle, with any advantage.
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 9 
 
 to the solution of the question which now occupies us, 
 the principle itself, and the idea attached to the term 
 demand, must be conceived with a precision, which the 
 loose manner in which the words are used generally 
 prevents. 
 
 It is well known that the quantity of any commo- 
 dity which can be disposed of, varies with the price. 
 The higher the price, the fewer will be the purchasers, 
 and the smaller the quantity sold. The lower the 
 price, the greater will in general be the number of 
 purchasers, and the greater the quantity disposed of 
 This is true of almost all commodities whatever : 
 though of some commodities, to diminish the con- 
 sumption in any given degree would require a much 
 greater rise of price than of others. 
 
 Whatever be the commodity — the supply in any 
 market being given, there is some price at which the 
 whole of the supply exactly will find purchasers, and 
 no more. That, whatever it be, is the price at which, 
 by the effect of competition, the commodity will be 
 sold. If the price be higher, the whole of the supply 
 will not be disposed of, and the sellers, by their com- 
 petition, will bring down the price. .If the price be 
 lower, there will be found purchasers for a larger sup- 
 ply, and the competition of these purchasers will raise 
 the price. 
 
 This, then, is what we mean, when w^e say that 
 price, or exchangeable value, depends on demand and 
 supply. We should express the principle more ac- 
 curately, if we were to say, the price so regulates itself 
 that the demand shall be exactly sufficient to carry off 
 the supply. 
 
 Let us now apply the principle of demand and 
 supply, thus understood, to the interchange of broad- 
 cloth and linen between England and Germany,
 
 10 LATTS OF IXTERCHANGE 
 
 As exchangeable value in this case, as in every 
 other, is proverbially fluctuating, it does not matter 
 what we suppose it to be when we begin ; we shall 
 soon see whether there be any fixed point about which 
 it oscillates — which it has a tendency always to approach 
 to, and to remain at. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that by the effect of what 
 Adam Smith calls the higgling of the market, 10 yards 
 of cloth, in both countries, exchange for 17 yards of 
 linen. 
 
 •The demand for a commodity, that is, the quantity 
 of it which can find a purchaser, varies, as we have 
 before remarked, according to the price. In Grermany, 
 the price of 10 yards of cloth is now 17 yards of 
 linen ; or whatever quantity of money is equivalent 
 in Germany to 17 yards of linen. Now, that being 
 the price, there is some particular number of yards 
 of cloth, which will be in demand, or wi\\ find pur- 
 chasers, at that price. There is some given quantity 
 of cloth, more than which could not be disposed of at 
 that price, — less than which, at that price, would not 
 fully satisfy the demand. Let us suppose this quantity 
 to be, 1000 times 10 yards. 
 
 Let us now turn our attention to England. There, 
 the price of 17 yards of linen is 10 ysu'ds of cloth, or 
 whatever quantity of money is equivalent in England 
 to 10 yards of cloth. There is some particular number 
 of yards of linen, which, at that price, will exactly 
 satisfy the demand, and no more. Let us suppose 
 that this number is 1000 times 17 yards. 
 
 As 17 yards of linen are to 10 yards of cloth, 
 so are 1000 times 17 yards to 1000 times 10 yards. 
 At the existing exchangeable value, the linen which 
 England requires, will exactly pay for the quantit}^ 
 of cloth which, on the same terms of interchange,
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 11 
 
 Germany requires. The demand on each side is 
 precisely sufficient to carry off the supply on the 
 other. The conditions required by tlie principle of 
 demand and supply are fulfilled, and the two com- 
 modities will continue to be interchanged, as we sup- 
 posed them to be, in the ratio of 1 7 yards of linen for 
 10 yards of cloth. 
 
 But our supposition might have been diiferent. 
 Suppose that, at the assumed rate of interchange, 
 England had been disposed to consume no greater 
 quantity of linen than 800 times 17 yards ; it is 
 evident that, at the rate supposed, this would not 
 have sufficed to pay for the 1000 times 10 yards of 
 cloth, which we have supposed Germany to require 
 at the assumed value. Germany would be able to 
 procure no more than SCO times 10 yards, at that 
 price. To procure the remaining 200, which she 
 would have no means of doing but by bidding higher 
 for them, she would offer more than 17 yards of linen in 
 exchange for 10 yards of cloth ; let us suppose her 
 to offer 18. At tliat price, perhaps, England would 
 be inclined to purchase a greater quantity of linen. 
 She could consume, possibly, at that price, 900 times 
 18 yards. On the other hand, cloth having risen 
 in price, the demand of Germany for it would, pro- 
 bably,have diminished. If, instead of 1000 tim.es 10 yards, 
 she is now contented with 900 times ten yards, these 
 wdll exactly pay for the 900 times 18 yards of linen 
 wdiich England is willing to take at the altered price : 
 the demand on each side will again exactly suffice to 
 take off the corresponding supply ; and 1 yards for 
 18 will be the rate at which, in both countries, cloth 
 will exchange for linen. 
 
 The converse of aU this would have happened if 
 instead of 800 times 17 yards, we had supposed that
 
 12 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 England, at the rate of 10 for 17, would have taken 
 1200 times 17 yards of linen. In this case, it is 
 England whose demand is not fully supplied ; it is 
 England who, by bidding for more linen, will alter the 
 rate of interchange to her own disadvantage ; and 10 
 yards of cloth will fall, in both countries, below the 
 value of 17 j^ards of linen. By this fall of cloth, or 
 what is the same thing, this rise of linen, the demand 
 of Germany for cloth will increase, and the demand 
 of England for linen will diminish, till the rate of 
 interchange has so adjusted itself that the cloth and 
 the linen will exactly pay for one another ; and when 
 once this point is attained, values will remain as they 
 are. 
 
 It may be considered, therefore, as established, 
 "that when two countries trade together in two com- 
 modities, the exchangeable value of these commodities 
 relatively to each other will adjust itself to the in- 
 clinations and circumstances of the consumers on both 
 sides, in such manner that the quantities required by 
 each country, of the article which it imports from its 
 neighbour, shall be exactly sufficient to pa}^ for one 
 another. As the inclinations and circumstances of con- 
 sumers cannot be reduced to any rule, so neither can 
 the proportions in which the two commodities will 
 be interchanged. We know that the limits within 
 which the variation is confined are the ratio between 
 their costs of production in the one country, and the 
 ratio bet ween their costs of production in the other. Ten 
 yards of cloth cannot exchange for more than 20 yards 
 of linen, nor for less than 15. But they may exchange 
 for any intermediate number. The ratios, therefore, 
 in which the advantage of the trade may be divided 
 between the two nations, are various. The circum- 
 stances on which the proportionate share of each coun-
 
 BETWEEN XATIOXS. 13 
 
 try more remotely depends, admit only of a very general 
 indication. 
 
 It is even j)ossiblo to conceive an extreme case, in 
 which the whole of the advantage resulting from the 
 interchange would be reaped by one party, the other 
 country gaining nothing at all. • There is no absurdity 
 in the hypothesis, that of some given commodity a 
 certain quantity is all that is wanted at any price, and 
 that when that quantity is obtained, no fall in the ex- 
 changeable value would induce other consumers to 
 come forward, or those who are alread}^ supplied to 
 take more. Let us suppose that this is the case in 
 German}'- with cloth. Before her trade with England 
 commenced, when 10 yards of cloth cost her as much 
 lahour as 20 yards of linen, she nevertheless con- 
 sumed as much cloth as she wanted under any circum- 
 stances, and if she could obtain it at the rate of 10 
 yards of cloth for 15 of linen, she would not con- 
 sume more. Let this fixed quantity be 1000 times 
 10 yards. At the rate, however, of 10 for 20, Eng- 
 land would want more linen than would be equiva- 
 lent to this quantity of cloth. She would consequently 
 offer a higher value for linen ; or, what is the same 
 thing, she would offer her cloth at a cheaper rate. But 
 as by no lowering of the value could she prevail on 
 Germany to take a greater quantity of cloth, there 
 would be no limit to the rise of linen, or fall of cloth, 
 until the demand of England for linen was reduced 
 by the rise of its value, to the quantity which one 
 thousand times ten yards of cloth would purchase. It 
 might be, that to produce this diminution of the demand, 
 a less fall would not suffice, than one which would 
 make 10 yards of cloth exchange for 15 of linen. 
 Germany would then gain the whole of the advantage, 
 and England would be exactly as she was before the
 
 14 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 trade commenced. It would be for tlie interest, how- 
 ever, of Germany herself, to keep her linen a little 
 below the value at which it could be produced in 
 England, in order to keep herself from being supplanted 
 by the home producer. England, therefore, would 
 always benefit in some degree by the existence of the 
 trade, though it might be in a very trifling one. 
 
 But in general there will not be this extreme in- 
 equality in the degree in which the demand in the two 
 countries varies with variations in the price. The 
 advantage will probably be divided equally, oftener 
 than in any one unequal ratio that can be .named ; 
 though the division will be much oftener, on the whole, 
 unequal than equal. 
 
 2. We shall now examine whether the same law of 
 interchange, which we have shown to apply upon the 
 supposition of barter, holds good after the introduction 
 ofmoney. Mr. Ricardo found that his more general pro- 
 position stood this test; and as the proposition which we 
 have just demonstrated is only a further development 
 of his principle, we shall probabl}^ find that it suffers as 
 little, by a mere change in the mode (for it is no 
 more) in which one commodity is exchanged against 
 another. 
 
 We may at first make whatever supposition we 
 will with respect to the value of money. Let us sup- 
 pose, therefore, that before the opening of the trade, 
 the price of cloth is the same in both countries, namely, 
 six shillings per yard*. As 1 yards of cloth were sup- 
 posed to exchange in England for 1 5 yards of linen, 
 in Germany for 20, we must suppose that linen is sold 
 in England at four shillings per yard, in Germany at 
 
 * The figures used are of course arbitrary, having uo reference 
 to any existing prices.
 
 BETWEEX NxiTIOXS. 15 
 
 three. Cost of carriage and importer's profit are left 
 as before, out of consideration. 
 
 In this state of prices, cloth, it is evident, cannot 
 yet be exported from England into Germany. But 
 linen can be imported from Germany into England. 
 It will be so, and, in the first instance, the linen will be 
 paid for in money. 
 
 The efilux of money from England, and its influx 
 into Germany, will raise money prices in the latter 
 country, and lower them in the former. Linen will 
 rise in Germany above three shillings per yard, and 
 cloth above six shillings. Linen in England being 
 imported from Germany, will (since cost of carriage is 
 not reckoned) sink to the same price as in that country, 
 while cloth will fall below six shillings. As soon as the 
 price of cloth is lower in England than in Germany, it 
 will begin to be exported, and the price of cloth in 
 Germany will fall to what it is in England. As long 
 as the cloth exported does not sufiice to pay for the 
 linen imported, money will continue to flow from 
 England into Germany, and prices generally will con- 
 tinue to fall in England, and rise in Germany. By 
 the fall, however, of cloth in England, cloth will fall in 
 Germany also, and the demand for it will increase. 
 By the rise of linen in Germany, linen must rise in 
 England also, and the demand for it will diminish. 
 Although the increased exportation of cloth takes place 
 at a lower price, and the diminished importation of 
 linen at a higher, yet the total money value of the 
 exportation would probably increase, that of the impor- 
 tation diminish. As cloth fell in price and linen rose, 
 there would be some particular price of both articles 
 at which the cloth exported, and the linen imported, 
 would exactly pay for each other. At this point prices 
 would remain, because money would then cease to
 
 16 LAWS OF TKTERCHANGE 
 
 move out of England into Germanj^ A¥liat tliis point 
 might be, would entirely depend uponthe circumstances 
 and inclinations of the purchasers on both sides. If 
 the fall of cloth did not much increase the demand for 
 it in Germany, and the rise of linen did not diminish 
 very rapidly the demand for it in England, much money 
 mustpassbeforetheequilibrium is restored; cloth would 
 fall very much, and linen would rise, until England, 
 perhaps, had to pay nearly as much for it as when she 
 produced it for herself. But if, on the contrary, the 
 fall of cloth caused a very rapid increase of the demand 
 for it in Germany, and the rise of linen in Germany 
 reduced very rapidly the demand in England from 
 what it was under the influence of the first cheapness 
 produced by the opening of the trade ; the cloth would 
 verv soon suflice to pay for the linen, little money would 
 pass between the two countries, and England would 
 derive a large portion of the benefit of the trade. We 
 have thus arrived at precisely the same conclusion, in 
 supposing the employment of money, which we found 
 to hold under the supposition of barter. 
 
 In what shape the benefit accrues to the two na- 
 tions from the trade, is clear enough. Germany, 
 before the commencement of the trade, paid six shil- 
 lings per yard for broadcloth. She now obtains it at 
 a lower price. This, however, is not the whole of her 
 advantage. As the money prices of all her other com- 
 modities have risen, the money incomes of all her pro- 
 ducers have increased. This is no advantage to them in 
 buying from each other ; because the price of what they 
 buy has risen in the same ratio with their means of 
 paying for it : but it is an advantage to them in 
 buying anything which has not risen ; and still more, 
 anything which has fallen. They therefore benefit as 
 consumers of cloth, not merely to the extent to which
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 17 
 
 clotli has fallen, but also to the extent to which other 
 prices have risen. Suppose that this is one-tenth. 
 The same proportion of their money incomes as before, 
 will suffice to supply their other wants, and the remain- 
 der, being increased one-tenth in amount, will enable 
 them to purchase one-tenth more cloth than before, 
 even though cloth had not f^iUen. But it has fallen : 
 so that they are doubly gainers. If they do not choose 
 to increase their consumption of cloth, this does not 
 prevent them from being gainers. They purchase the 
 same quantity with less money, and have more to 
 expend upon their other wants. 
 
 In England, on the contrary, general money-prices 
 have fallen. Linen, however, has fallen more than the 
 rest ; having been lowered in price, by importation from 
 a country where it was cheaper, whereas the others 
 have fallen only from the consequent efflux of money. 
 Notwithstanding, therefore, the general fall of money- 
 prices, the English producers will be exactly as they 
 were in all other respects, while they will gain as pur- 
 chasers of linen. 
 
 The greater the efflux of money required to re- 
 store the equilibrium, the greater will be the gain of 
 Germany ; both by the fall of cloth, and by the rise of 
 her general prices. The less the efflux of money 
 requisite, the greater will be the gain of England ; " 
 because the price of linen will continue lower, and her 
 general prices will not be reduced so much. It must 
 not, however, be imagined that high money-prices 
 are a good, and low money-prices an evil, in them- 
 selves. But the higher the general money-prices in 
 any country, the greater will be that country's means 
 of purchasing those commodities which, being imported 
 from abroad, are independent of the causes which keep 
 prices high at home. 
 
 C
 
 18 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 3. We have hitherto supposed the carriage to be 
 performed without labour or expense. If we abandon 
 this supposition, we must correct the statement of the 
 case in a slight degree. The prices of the two articles 
 will no longer, when the trade is opened, be the same 
 in both countries, nor will the articles exchange for 
 one another at the same rate in both. Ten yards of 
 cloth will purchase in Grermany a quantity of linen 
 greater than in England by a per-centage equal to the 
 entire cost of conveyance both of the cloth to Ger- 
 many and of the linen to England. The money-price 
 of linen will be higher in England than in Germany, 
 by the cost of carriage of the linen. The money-price 
 of cloth will be higher in Germany than in England, 
 by the cost of carriage of the cloth. 
 
 The expense of the carriage is evidently a deduction 
 pro tanto from the saving of labour produced by the 
 establishment of the trade. The two countries together, 
 therefore, have their gains by the trade diminished, by 
 the amount of the cost of carriage of both commodities. 
 But here the question arises, which of the two countries 
 bears this deduction, or in what proportion it is divided 
 between them. 
 
 At the first inspection it would appear that each 
 country bears its own cost of carriage, that is, that each 
 "country pays the carriage of the commodity which it 
 imports. Upon this supposition, each country would 
 gain whatever share of the joint saving of labour would 
 otherwise fall to its lot, minus the cost of bringing from 
 the other country the commodity which it imports. 
 This solution is rendered plausible by the circumstance 
 just now mentioned, that the price of the commodity 
 will be higher in the country which imports it, than in 
 the country w^hich exports it, by the amount of the 
 cost of carriage. If linen is sold in England at a
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 19 
 
 higher price than in Germany, by a percentage equal 
 to the cost of carriage of the linen, it appears obvious 
 that England pays for the carriage of the linen, and 
 Germany, by parity of reason, for that of the cloth. 
 
 But if we apply to these questions the principles 
 already explained, we shall see that this is not by any 
 means a universal law : the fact may correspond with 
 it, or it may not. 
 
 For suppose that the prices have adjusted them- 
 selves, no matter how, and that the imports and exports 
 balance one another, each commodity, of course, being 
 dearer by the cost of carriage, in the country which im- 
 ports than in that which exports it : and suppose now 
 that the cost of carriage, both of the one and of the 
 other, were suddenly and miraculously annihilated, and 
 that the commodities could pass from country to country 
 without expense. If each country bore its own cost of 
 carriage before, each country will save its own cost of 
 carriage now. Cloth, in Germany, will in that case fall 
 exactly to what it is in England ; linen in England, to 
 what it is in Germany. 
 
 Now this fall of price, supposing it to happen, will 
 probably affect the demand on both sides ; and it will 
 either affect it alike in both countries, or it will affect 
 it unequally. It will affect it alike, if the fall of price 
 does not affect the demand at all, or if it affects it 
 equally in both countries. If either of these results 
 should take place, the cloth and the linen would continue 
 to balance each other as before : no money would pass 
 from one country to the other; prices in both would 
 continue at the point to which they had fallen, and 
 each country would exactly save the cost of carriage 
 on the commodity which it imports from the other. 
 
 But the result might be, that the fall of price might 
 not have an effect exactly e(jual, on the demand in the 
 
 C 2
 
 20 LAWS OF INTERCIIAXGE 
 
 two countries. Suppose, for instance, that the fall of 
 cloth in Germany owing to the saving of the cost of 
 carriage, did not increase the demand for cloth in Ger- 
 many ; but that the fall of linen in England from a 
 like cause, did increase the demand for linen in Eng- 
 land. The linen imported would he more than could 
 be paid for by the cloth exported : the difference must 
 be paid in money : the change in the distribution of 
 the precious metals between the two countries \vould 
 lower the price of cloth in England, (and consequently 
 in Germany), while it would raise the price of linen in 
 Germany, (and consequently in England). Germany, 
 therefore, by the annihilation of cost of carriage, would 
 save in price more than the cost of carriage of the 
 cloth ; 'England would save less in price than the cost 
 of carriage of the linen. But if by the miraculous 
 annihilation of cost of carriage, England would not save 
 the whole of the carriage of her imports, it follows that 
 England did not previously j»<7y the whole of that cost 
 of carriage. 
 
 Thus, the division of the cost of trade, and the 
 division of the advantage of trade, are governed by 
 precisely the same principles ; and the only general 
 proposition which can be affirmed respecting the cost 
 is, that it \% pro tanfo a deduction from the advantage. 
 It cannot even be maintained that the cost is shared 
 in the same proportion as the advantage is ; because 
 the increase of the demand for a commodity as its 
 price falls, is not governed by any fixed law. Sup- 
 pose, for instance, that the advantage happened to be 
 divided equally : this must be because the greater 
 cheapness arising from the establishment of the trade, 
 either did not affect the demand at all, or affected it 
 in an equal proportion on both sides. Now, because 
 such is the effect of the degree of increased cheapness
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 21 
 
 resulting from importation burthened with cost of car- 
 riiig-e, it would not follow that the still greater degree 
 of cheapness, produced by the additional saving of the 
 cost of carriage itself, would also affect the demand of 
 botli countries in precisely an equal degree. But we 
 cannot be said to bear an expense, which, if saved, 
 would be saved to somebody else, and not to us. Two 
 countries may have equal shares of the clear benefit of 
 the trade, while, if the cost of carriage were saved, 
 they would divide that saving unequally. If so, they 
 divide the gross gain in one unequal ratio, the cost in 
 another unequal ratio, though their shares of the cost 
 being deducted from their shares of the gain leave 
 equal remainders. 
 
 4. The question naturally suggests itself, whether 
 any country, by its own legislative policy, can engross 
 to itself a larger share of the benefits of foreign com- 
 merce, than would fall to it in the natural or sponta- 
 neous course of trade. 
 
 The answer is, it can. By taxing exports, for 
 instance, we may, under certain circumstances, pro- 
 duce a division of the advantage of the trade more 
 favourable to ourselves. In some cases, we may draw 
 into our coffers, at the expense of foreigners, not only 
 the whole tax, but more than the tax : in other cases, 
 we should gain exactly the tax, — in others, less than 
 the tax. In this last case, a part of tiie tax is borne 
 by ourselves : possibly the whole, possibly even, as we 
 shall show, more than the whole. 
 
 Suppose that England taxes her export of clotli : 
 the tax not being supposed high enough to induce 
 Germany to produce cloth for herself. The price at 
 which cloth can be sold in Germany is augmented by 
 the tax. This will probably diminish the quantity 
 consumed. It may diminish it so much, that even at
 
 22 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 the increased price, there will not be required so great 
 a money value as before. It may diminish it in sucli 
 a ratio, that the money value of the quantity consumed 
 will be exactly the same as before. Or it may not 
 diminish it at all, or so little, that, in consequence of 
 the higher price, a greater money value will be pur- 
 chased than before. In this last case, England will 
 gain, at the expense of Germany, not only the whole 
 amount of the duty, but more. Por the money value 
 of her exports to Germany being increased, while her 
 imports remain the same, money will flow into England 
 from Germany. The price of cloth will rise in Eng- 
 land, and consequently in Germany ; but the price of 
 linen will fall in Germany, and consequently in Eng- 
 land. We shall export less cloth, and import more 
 linen, till the equilibrium is restored. It tlius appears, 
 what is at first sight somewhat remarkable, that, by 
 taxing her exports, England would, under some con- 
 ceivable circumstances, not only gain from her foreign 
 customers the whole amount of the tax, but would also 
 get her imports cheaper. She would get them cheaper 
 in two ways, — for she would obtain them for less 
 money, and would have more money to purchase them 
 with. Germany, on the other hand, would suffer 
 doubly : she would have to pay for her cloth a price 
 increased not only by the duty, but by the influx 
 of money into England, while the same change in the 
 distribution of the circulating medium would leave 
 her less money to purchase it with. 
 
 This, however, is only one of three possible cases. 
 If, after the imposition of the duty, Germany requires 
 so diminished a quantity of cloth, that its total money 
 value is exactly the same as before, the balance of 
 trade will be undisturbed: England will gain the duty, 
 Germany will lose it, and nothing more. If, again,
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 23 
 
 the imposition of the duty occasions such a falling off 
 in the demand, that Germany requires a less pecuniary 
 value than before, our exports will no longer pay for 
 our imports, money must pass from England into 
 Germany, and Germany^s share of the advantage of the 
 trade will be increased. By the change in the distri- 
 bution of money, cloth will fall in England ; and there- 
 fore it will, of course, fall in Germany. Thus Germany 
 will not pay the whole of the tax. From the same 
 cause, linen will rise in Germany, and consequently in 
 England. When this alteration of prices has so ad- 
 justed the demand, that the cloth and the linen again 
 pay for one another, the result is, that Germany has 
 jDaid only a part of the tax, and the remainder of what 
 has been received into our treasury has come indi- 
 rectly out of the pockets of our own consumers of 
 linen, who pay a higher price for that imported com- 
 modity, in consequence of the tax on our exports, while 
 at the same time they^ in consequence of the efflux of 
 money and consequent fall of prices, have smaller 
 money incomes wherewith to pay for the linen at that 
 advanced price. 
 
 It is not an impossible supposition that, by taxing 
 our exports, we might not only gain nothing from 
 the foreigner, the tax being paid out of our own 
 pockets, but might even compel our own people to 
 pay a second tax to the foreigner. Suppose, as before, 
 that the demand of Germany for cloth falls off so 
 much on tlie imposition of the duty, that she requires 
 a smaller money value than before, but that the case 
 is so different with linen in England, that when the 
 price rises the demand either does not fall off at all, or 
 so little that the money value required is greater than 
 before. The first effect of laying on the duty is, as 
 before, that the cloth exported will no longer pay for
 
 24 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 the linen imported. Money will, therefore, flow out 
 of England into Germany. One efiect is to raise the 
 I^rice of*linen in Grermany, and, consequently, in Eng- 
 land. But this, by the supposition, instead of stopping 
 the efflux of money, only makes it greater, because the 
 higher the price, the greater the money value of the 
 linen consumed. The balance, therefore, can only be 
 restored by the other effect, which is going on at the 
 same time, namely, the fall of cloth in the English, 
 and, consequently, in the German market. Even 
 when cloth has fallen so low that its price with the 
 duty is only equal to what its price without the duty 
 was at first, it is not a necessary consequence that the 
 fall will stop ; for the same amount of exportation as 
 before will not now suffice to pay the increased money 
 value of the imports ; and although the German con- 
 sumers have now not only cloth at the old price, but 
 likewise increased money incomes, it is not certain 
 that the}^ will be inclined to employ the increase of 
 their incomes in increasing their purchases of cloth. 
 The price of cloth, therefore, must perhaps fall, to 
 restore the equilibrium, more than the whole amount 
 of the duty ; Germany may be enabled to import 
 cloth at a lower price when it is taxed, than when it 
 Avas untaxed : and this gain she will acquire at the 
 expense of the English consumers of linen, who, in 
 addition, will be the real payers of the whole of what 
 is received at their own custom-house under the name 
 of duties on the export of cloth. 
 
 Such are the extremely various effects which may 
 result to ourselves, and to our customers, from the im- 
 position of taxes on our exports : * and the determining 
 
 * We have not deemed it necessary to enter minutely into all the 
 circumstauces Avhich might modify the results mentioned in the
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 25 
 
 circumstances are of a nature so imperfectly ascer- 
 tainable, that it must be almost impossible to decide 
 with any certainty, even alter the tax has been im- 
 posed, whether we have been gainers by it or losers. 
 It is certain, however, tliat whatever we gain, is lost 
 by somebody else, and there is the expense of the 
 collection besides : if international morality, therefore, 
 were rightly understood and acted upon, such taxes, 
 as being contrary to the universal weal, would not 
 exist. Moreover, the imposition of such a tax fre- 
 quently will, and always may, expose a country to lose 
 this branch of its trade altogether, or to carry it on with 
 diminished advantage, in consequence of the compe- 
 tition of untaxed exporters from other countries, or 
 of the domestic producers in the country to which it 
 exports. Even on the most selfish principles, there- 
 fore, the benefit of such a tax is always extremely pre- 
 carious. 
 
 5. We liave had an example of a tax on exports. 
 
 text. For example, let us revert to tlie first case, that in wliich 
 the demand for cloth in Germany is so little affected by the rise of 
 price in consequence of the tax, that the quantity bought exceeds 
 in pecuniary value what it was before. As the German consumers 
 lay out more money in cloth, they have less to lay out in other things; 
 other money prices will fall ; among tlie rest that of linen ; and this 
 may so increase the demand for linen in England as to restore tlie 
 equilibrium of exports and imports without any passage of money. 
 But England's treasury will stid gain from Germany the whole of 
 the tax, and the English people will buy their linen cheaper 
 besides. Again, in the opposite case, where the tax so diminishes 
 the demand, that a smaller pecuniary value is required than before. 
 The German consumers have, therefore, more to expend in ether 
 things ; these, and among the rest linen, will rise ; and this mny 
 so diminish the demand for linen in England, as to restore the 
 equilibrium without the transmission of money. But the effect, as 
 respects the division of the advantage, is still as stated iu the text.
 
 26 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 tliat is, on foreigners, falling in part on ourselves. We 
 shall, therefore, not be surprised if we find a tax on 
 imports, that is, on ourselves, partly falling upon 
 foreigners. 
 
 Instead of taxing the cloth which, we export, sup- 
 pose that we tax the linen which we import. The 
 duty which we are now supposing must not be what is 
 termed a protecting duty, that is, a duty sufficiently 
 high to induce us to produce the article at home. If 
 it had this effect, it would destroy entirely the trade 
 both in cloth and in linen, and both countries would 
 lose the whole of the advantage which they previously 
 gained by exchanging those commodities with one 
 another. We suppose a duty which might diminish 
 the consumption of the article, but which would not 
 prevent us from continuing to import, as before, what- 
 ever linen we did consume. 
 
 Tije equilibrium of trade would be disturbed if 
 the imposition of the tax diminished in the slightest 
 degree the quantity of linen consumed. For, as the 
 tax is levied at our own custom-house, the German 
 ex])orter only receives the same price as formerly, 
 though the English consumer pays a higher one. If, 
 therefore, there be any diminution of the quantity 
 bought, although a larger sura of money may be 
 actually laid out in the article, a smaller one will be 
 due from England to Germany : this sum will no 
 longer be an equivalent for the sum due from Ger- 
 many to England for cloth, the balance therefore must 
 be paid in money. Prices will fall in Germany, and 
 rise in England ; linen will fall in the German market ; 
 cloth will rise in the English. The Germans will pay 
 a higher price for cloth, and will have smaller money 
 incomes to buy it with ; while the English will obtain 
 linen cheaper, that is, its price will exceed what it
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 27 
 
 previously was by less tlian the amount of the daty, 
 while their means of purchasing it will be increased 
 by-the increase of their money incomes. 
 
 If the imposition of the tax does not diminish the 
 demand, it will leave the trade exactly as it was 
 before. We shall import as much, and export as 
 much ; the whole of the tax will be paid out of our 
 own pockets. 
 
 But the imposition of a tax on a commodity, 
 almost always diminishes the demand more or less ; 
 and it can never, or scarcely ever increase the demand. 
 It may, therefore, be laid down as a principle, that a 
 tax on imported commodities, when it really operates 
 as a tax, and not as a prohibition, either total or 
 j^artial, almost always falls in part upon the foreigners 
 who consume our goods : and that this is a mode in 
 which a nation may be almost sure of appropriating to 
 itself, at the expense of foreigners, a larger share than 
 would otherwise belong to it of the increase in the 
 general productiveness of the labour and capital of 
 the world, which results from the interchange of 
 commodities among nations. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to observe, that no such 
 advantage can result from the duty, if it operate as a 
 protecting duty ; if it induce the country which im- 
 poses it, to produce for herself that which she would 
 otherwise have imported. The saving of labour — the 
 increase in the general productiveness of the capital 
 of the world — which is the effect of commerce, 
 and which a non-protecting duty would enable the 
 country imposing it to engross, could not be engrossed 
 by a protecting duty, because such a duty prevents 
 any such increased production from existing. 
 
 With a view to practical legislation, therefore, 
 duties on importation may be divided into two classes :
 
 28 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 tliose wliicli have the effect of encouraging some par- 
 ticular branch of domestic inclustr}^, and those which 
 have not. 
 
 The former are purely mischievous, both to the 
 country imposing them, and to those with whom it 
 trades. They prevent a saving of labour and capital, 
 wiiich, if permitted to be made, would be divided in 
 some proportion or other between the importing 
 country and the countries which buy what that 
 country does or might export. 
 
 The other class of duties are those which do not 
 encourage one mode of procuring an article at the 
 expense of another, but allow interchange to take place 
 just as if the duty did not exist — and to produce the 
 saving of labour which constitutes the motive to inter- 
 national as to all other commerce. Of this kind, are 
 duties on the importation of any commodity which 
 could not by any possibility be produced at home ; 
 and duties not sufficiently high to counterbalance the 
 difference of expense between the production of the 
 article at home, and its importation. Of the money 
 which is brought into the treasury- of any country by 
 taxes of this last description, a part only is paid by 
 the people of that country ; the remainder by the 
 Ibreign consumers of their goods. 
 
 Nevertheless, this latter kind of taxes are in prin- 
 ciple as ineligible as the former, although not precisely 
 on the same ground. A protecting duty can never be 
 a cause of gain, but always and necessarily of loss, to 
 the country imposing it, just so far as it is efficacious 
 to its end. A non-protecting duty on the contrary 
 would, in most cases, be a source of gain to the 
 country imposing it, in so far as throwing part of the 
 weight of its taxes upon other people is a gain ; but 
 it would be a means of gain which it could seldom
 
 BETWEEN NATTOXS. 29 
 
 be advisable to adopt, being so easily counteracted by 
 a precisely similar proceeding on the other side. 
 
 If England, in the case already supposed, souglit to 
 obtain for herself more than her natural share of the 
 advantage of the trade with Germany, by imposing a 
 duty upon cloth, Germany would only have to impose 
 a duty upon linen, sufficient to diminish the demand 
 for that article about as much as the demand for cloth 
 had been diminished in England by the tax. Tliino-s 
 would then be as before, and each country would pay 
 its own tax. Unless, indeed, the sum of the two duties 
 exceeded the entire advantage of the trade ; for in that 
 case the trade, and its advantage, would cease entirely. 
 
 There would be no advantage, therefore, in im- 
 posing duties of this kind, with a view to gain by 
 them, in the manner which has been pointed out. 
 But so long as any other kind of taxes on commodities 
 are retained, as a source of revenue, these may often 
 be as unobjectionable as the rest. It is evident, more- 
 over, that considerations of reciprocity, which are 
 quite unessential when the matter in debate is a pro- 
 tecting duty, are of material importance when the 
 repeal of duties of this other description is discussed. 
 A country cannot be expected to renounce the power 
 of taxing foreigners, unless foreigners will in return 
 practise towards itself the same forbearance. The 
 only mode in which a country can save itself from 
 being a loser by tlie duties imposed by other countries 
 on its commodities, is to impose corresponding duties 
 on theirs. Only it must take care that these duties 
 be not so high as to exceed all that remains of the 
 advantage of the trade, and put an end to importation 
 altogether ; causing the article to be either produced 
 at home, or imported from another and a dearer 
 market.
 
 30 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 It is not necessary to apply the principles which 
 we have stated to the case of bounties on exporta- 
 tion or importation. The application is easy, and the 
 conclusions present nothing of particular interest or 
 importance, 
 
 6. Any cause w^hich alters the exports or imports 
 from one country into another, alters the division of 
 the advantage of interchange between those two coun- 
 tries. Suppose the discovery of a new process, by 
 which some article of export, or some article not pre- 
 viously exported, can be produced so cheap as to 
 occasion a great demand for it in other countries. This 
 of course produces a great influx of money from other 
 countries, and lowers the prices of all articles im- 
 ported from them, until the increase of importation 
 produced by this cause has restored the equilibrium. 
 Thus, the country which acquires a new article of 
 export gets its imports cheaper. This is not a case of 
 mere alteration in the division of the advantage ; it is 
 a new advantage created by the discovery. 
 
 But suppose that the invention, to which the 
 nation is indebted for this increase of the return to 
 its industry, comes into use also in the other country, 
 and that the process is one which can be as perfectly 
 and as cheaply performed in the one country as in the 
 other. The new exportation will cease ; trade will 
 revert to its old channels, the money which flowed in 
 will again flow out, and the country which invented 
 the process will lose that increase of its gain by trade, 
 which it had derived from the discovery. 
 
 Now the exportation of machinery comes within 
 the case which we have just described. 
 
 If the fact be, that by allowing to foreigners a 
 participation in our machinery, we enable them to 
 produce any of our leading articles of export, at a.
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 31 
 
 lower money price than we can sell those articles, it 
 is certain that unless we possess as great an advantage 
 in the production of the machinery itself as we have 
 in the production of other articles by means of ma- 
 chinery, the permitting of its exportation would alter 
 to our disadvantage the division of the benefit of 
 trade. Our exports being diminished, we should have 
 to pay a balance in money. This would raise, in 
 foreign countries, the price of everything which we 
 import from thence : while our incomes, being reduced 
 in money value, would render us less able to buy those 
 articles even if they had not risen. The equilibrium 
 of exports and imports would only be restored, when 
 either some of the latter became so dear that we 
 could produce them cheaper at home, or some articles 
 not previously exported became exportable from the 
 fall of prices. In the one case, we lose the benefit of 
 importation altogether, and are obliged to produce at 
 home, at a greater cost. In the other case, we con- 
 tinue to import, but pay dearer for our imports. 
 
 Notwithstanding what has now been observed, 
 restrictions on the exportation of machinery are not, 
 in our opinion, justifiable, either on the score of 
 international morality or of sound policy. It is evi- 
 dently the common interest of all nations that each 
 of them should abstain from every measure by which 
 the aggregate wealth of the commercial world would 
 be diminished, although of this smaller sum total it 
 might tliereby be enabled to attract itself a larger 
 share. And the time will certainly come when na- 
 tions in general will feel the importance of this rule, 
 and will so direct their approbation and disappro- 
 bation as to enforce observance of it. Moreover, a 
 countr}'- possessing machines would consider that if a 
 similar advantage were extended to other countries,
 
 32 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 they would employ it above all in tlie production of 
 those articles, in which they had already the greatest 
 natural advantages ; and if the former country would 
 be a loser by their improvements in the production of 
 articles which it sells, it would gain by their improve- 
 ments in those which it bu3^s. The exportation of 
 machinery may, however, be a proper subject for 
 adjustment with other nations, on the principle of 
 reciprocity. Until, by the common consent of nations, 
 all restrictions upon trade are done away, a nation 
 cannot be required to abolish those from which she 
 derives a real advantage, without stipulating for an 
 equivalent. 
 
 7. The case which we have just examined, is an 
 example in how remarkable a manner every cause 
 which materially influences exports, operates upon 
 the prices of imports. According to the ancient 
 theory of the balance of trade, and to the associa- 
 tions of the generality of what are termed practical 
 men to this day, the sole benefit derived from com- 
 merce consists in the exports, and imports are rather 
 an evil than otherwise. Political economists, seeing 
 the folly of these views, and clearly perceiving that 
 the advantage of commerce consists and must consist 
 solely of the imports, have occasionally suffered them- 
 selves to employ language evincing inattention to the 
 fact, that exports, though unimportant in themselves, 
 are important by their influence on imports. So real 
 and extensive is this influence, that every new market 
 which is opened for any of our goods, and every 
 increase in the demand for our commodities in foreign 
 countries, enables us to supply ourselves with foreign 
 commodities at a smaller cost. 
 
 Let us revert to our earliest and simplest example, 
 but which displays the real law of interchange more
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 33 
 
 luminously than any formula into which money enters; 
 the case of simple barter. We showed, that if at the 
 rate of 10 yards of cloth for 17 of linen, the demand 
 of Germany amounted to 1000 times 10 ^^ards of 
 cloth, the two nations will trade together at that rate 
 of interchange, provided that the linen required in 
 England be exactly 1000 times 17 yards, neither 
 more nor less. For the cloth and the linen will then 
 exactly pay for one another, and nobody on either 
 side will be obliged to offer what he has to sell at a 
 lower rate, in order to procure what he wants to buy. 
 
 Now if the increase of wealth and population in 
 Germany should greatly increase the demand in that 
 country for cloth, the demand for linen in England 
 not increasing in the same ratio, — if, for instance, Ger- 
 many became willing, at the above rate, to take 1500 
 times 10 yards ; is it not evident, that to induce 
 England to take in exchange for this the only arti- 
 cle which Germany by supposition has to give, the 
 latter must offer it at a rate more advantageous to 
 England — at 18, or perhaps 19 yards, for 10 of cloth? 
 So that the division of the advantage becomes more 
 and more favourable to a country, in proportion as 
 the demand for its commodities increases in foreign 
 countries. 
 
 It is not even necessary that the country which 
 takes its goods, should supply it with any commodity 
 whatever. Suppose that a country should be opened 
 to our merchants, disposed to buy from us in abun- 
 dance, but which can sell to us scarcely anything, as 
 every commodity which it affords could be got cheaper 
 by us from some other quarter. Nevertheless, our 
 trade with this country will enable us to obtain from 
 all other countries their commodities at a lower price. 
 At the first opening of this commerce of mere export- 
 
 D
 
 34 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 ation, we must have received in payment a large 
 quantity of money ; for which our customer will have 
 been indemnified by other countries, in exchange for 
 ber commodities. Prices must consequently be lower 
 in all other countries, and higher with us, than be- 
 fore the opening of the new branch of trade ; and we 
 therefore obtain the commodities of other countries at 
 a less cost, both as we pay less money for them, and 
 as that money is lower in value. 
 
 8. Another obvious application of the same prin- 
 ciple will enable us to explain, and to bring within 
 the dominion of strict science, the rivality of one 
 exporting nation and another, or what is called, in the 
 language of the mercantile system, underselling : a sub- 
 ject which political economists have taken little 
 trouble to elucidate, from the habit before alluded to 
 of disregarding almost entirely, in their purely scientific 
 inquiries, those circumstances which affect the trade 
 of a country by operating immediately upon the 
 exports. 
 
 Let us revert to our old example, and to our old 
 figures. Suppose that the trade between England 
 and Germany in cloth and linen is established, and 
 that the rate of interchange is 10 yards of cloth for 
 1 7 of linen. Now suppose that there arises in another 
 country, in Flanders, for example, a linen manu- 
 facture ; and that the same causes, the working of 
 which in England and Germany has made 10 yards 
 exchange for 17, would in England and Flanders, 
 putting Germany out of the question, have made the 
 rate of interchange 10 for 18. It is evident that 
 Germany also must give IS yards of linen for 10 of 
 cloth, and so carry on the trade with a diminished 
 share of the advantage, or lose it altogether. If the 
 play of demand in England and Flanders had made
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 35 
 
 the rate of interchange not 10 for 18 but 10 for 21, 
 (10 to 20 being in Grermany the comparative cost 
 of production), it is evident that Germany could not 
 have maintained the competition, and would have 
 lost, not part of her share of the advantage, but all 
 advantage, and the trade itself. 
 
 It would be no answer to say, that Germany could 
 probably still have found the means of importing cloth 
 from England, by exporting something else. If she 
 had purchased cloth with anything else, she would 
 have purchased it dearer: as it proved by the fact, 
 that having free choice, she found it most advan- 
 tageous to purchase it with linen. When she could 
 get 10 yards of cloth for 17 of linen, that was the 
 mode in which she could get it with least labour. 
 Being pressed by competition, she gave successively 
 17 J, 18, 18^; but rather than give 19 yards of linen, 
 she perhaps would prefer to give, as costing her rather 
 less labour, 10 yards of silk (which we will suppose 
 to be the quantity which in England will purchase 10 
 yards of cloth). It is obvious that, although Ger- 
 many has found the means of supplying herself with 
 cloth, by exporting a different article from that in 
 which she was undersold, yet the advantage of the 
 trade between her and England is now shared in a 
 proportion much less favourable to Germany. 
 
 There is no difficulty in showing that the same 
 series of consequences takes place in exactly the same 
 manner through the agency of money. The trade in 
 cloth and linen between England and Germany being 
 supposed to exist as before, Flanders produces linen at 
 a lower price than that at which Germany has hitherto 
 afforded it. The exportation from Germany is sus- 
 pended; and Germany, continuing to import cloth, pays 
 for it in money. By so doing she lowers her own 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 prices, ancl raises those in England : she hasto pay more 
 money for cloth, and to pay it in a currency of higher 
 value. She thus suffers more and more as a consumer 
 of cloth, until by the fall of her prices she can either 
 afford to sell linen as cheap as Flanders, or to export 
 some other commodity which she could not export 
 before. In either case, her trade resumes its course, 
 but with diminished advantage on her side.* 
 
 It is in the mode j ust described, that those coun- 
 
 * The world at large, sellers and buyers taken together, is 
 always a gainer by underselling. If, in the case supposed, England 
 were compelled by a commercial treaty to exclude the linen of 
 Flanders from her market, the total wealth of the world, if affected 
 at all, would be diminished. 
 
 For, what is the cause which enables Flanders to undersell 
 Germany ? That Flanders, if she had the trade, would exchange 
 linen for cloth at a rate of interchange more advantageous to 
 England. And why can Flanders do so ? It must be either 
 because Flanders can produce the article with a less comparative 
 quantity of labour than Germany, and therefore the total advan- 
 tage to be divided between the two countries is greater in the case 
 of Flanders than of Germany ; or else because, though the total 
 advantage is not greater, Flanders obtains a less share of it, her 
 demand for cloth being greater, at the same rate of interchange, 
 than that of Germany. In the former case, to exclude Flemish 
 linen from England would be to prevent the world at large from 
 making a greater saving of labour instead of a less. In the latter, 
 the exclusion would be inefficacious for the only end it could be 
 intended for, viz., the benefit of Germany, unless Flemish money 
 were excluded from England as well as Flemish linen. For 
 Flanders would buy English cloth, paying for it in money, until 
 the fall of her prices enabled her to pay for it with something 
 else : and the ultimate result would be that, by the rise of prices 
 in England, Germany must pay a higher price for her cloth, and 
 so lose a part of the advantage in spite of the treaty ; while Eng- 
 land would pay for German linen the same price indeed, but as 
 the money incomes of her OAvn people would be increased, the 
 same money price would imply a smaller sacrifice.
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 37 
 
 tries which formerly supplied Europe with manufac- 
 tures, but which owed their power of doing so not to 
 any natural and permanent advantages, but to their 
 more advanced state of civilization as compared with 
 other countries, have lost their pre-eminence as other 
 countries successively attained an equal degree of 
 civilization. Lombardy and Flanders, in the middle 
 ages, produced some descriptions of clothing and or- 
 nament for all Europe : Holland, at a much later 
 period, supplied ships, and almost all articles which 
 came in shii^s, to most other parts of the world. All 
 these countries have probably at this moment a much 
 larger amount of capital than ever they had, but 
 having been undersold by other countries, they have 
 lost by far the greater part of the share which they 
 had euOTOSsed to themselves of the benefit which the 
 
 o 
 
 world derives from commerce ; and their capital yields 
 to them in consequence a smaller proportional return. 
 We are aware that other causes have contributed to 
 the same effect, but we cannot doubt that this is a 
 principal one. 
 
 As much as is really true of the great returns 
 alleged to have been made to capital during the last 
 war, must have arisen from a similar cause. Our 
 exclusive command of the sea excluded from the 
 market all by whom we should have been undersold. 
 
 The adoption by France, Eussia, the Netherlands, 
 and the United States, of a more severely restric- 
 tive commercial policy, subsequently to 1815, has 
 done great injury undoubtedly to those countries ; for 
 the duties which they have established are intended 
 to be, and really are, of the class termed jnotediiifj ; 
 that is to say, such as force the production of com- 
 modities by more costly processes at home, instead 
 of suffering them to be imported from abroad. But
 
 38 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 these duties, though chiefly injurious to the countries 
 imposing them, have also been higlily injurious to 
 England. By diminishing her exportation, or pre- 
 venting it from increasing as it would otherwise have 
 done, the}?- have kept up the prices of all imported 
 commodities in England, above what those prices 
 would have fallen to if trade had been left free. 
 
 By another obvious application of the same rea- 
 soning, it will be seen, that there is a real founda- 
 tion for the notion, that a country may be benefited 
 by receiving from another country the concession of 
 what used to be termed commercial advantages, or 
 by restraining its colonies from purchasing goods of 
 any country except itself. In the figured illustration 
 last used (p. 34), it is evident, that if England had 
 been bound by a treaty with Germany to buy linen 
 exclusively from her, Grermany would have retained 
 the trade which we supposed her to lose, and would 
 have continued to purchase cloth at a comparatively 
 cheap rate from England, instead of producing it by a 
 more costly process at home. Suppose that England 
 had been a colony of Germany, and we see that by 
 compelling colonies to deal at her shop, she may ob- 
 tain a real advantage, though of a nature which we 
 may hazard the assertion that the founders of our 
 colonial policy little dreamt of. 
 
 Such an advantage, however, being gained at the 
 expense of another country, is, at the least, simply 
 equivalent to a tax, or tribute. Now, if a country has 
 just grounds, or deems superiority of power a suffi- 
 cient ground, for exacting a tribute from another 
 country, the most direct mode is the best. First, 
 because it is the most intelligible, and has least of 
 trick or disguise. Secondly, because it allows the 
 people of the country paying the tribute, to raise the
 
 UETWEEN NATIONS. 39 
 
 money in whatever way the}'' consider least oppressive 
 to themselves. Thirdly, because the indirect mode of 
 taxing a country, by restrictions on its commerce, dis- 
 turbs the distribution of industry most advantageous 
 to the world at large, and occasions a greater loss to 
 the restricted country, and to the other countries 
 with which that country would have traded, than 
 gain to the country in whose favour the restrictions 
 are imposed. And lastly, because a country never 
 could obtain such privileges from an independent 
 nation, and has seldom been so undisguised an op- 
 pressor as to demand them even from its colonies, 
 without subjecting itself to restrictions in some de- 
 gree equivalent, for the benefit of those whom it has 
 thus taxed. Each country, therefore, usually pays 
 tribute to the other; and to produce this fruitless 
 reciprocity of exaction, the industry and trade of both 
 countries are diverted from the most advantageous 
 channels, and the return to the labour and capital of 
 both is diminished, in pure loss. 
 
 9. The same principles which have led to the 
 above conclusions, also suggests a remark of some 
 importance with respect to the probable effect of a 
 change from a restricted to a comparatively free 
 trade. 
 
 There is no doubt that our prohibiting the impor- 
 tation of a particular article, which, but for the pro- 
 hibition, would have been imported, enables us to 
 obtain our other imports at smaller cost. The article 
 for which we have the greatest demand, and for 
 which our demand is most increased by cheapness, is 
 that which we should naturally import preferably to 
 any other ; now of this article we should import the 
 quantity necessary to pay for our exports, on terms of 
 interchange less advantageous to us than in the case
 
 40 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 of any other commodity. If our legislature prohibits 
 this commodity, the other country will be obliged to 
 offer any other article on easier terms, in order to 
 force a sufficient demand for it to be an equivalent to 
 what she purchases from us. 
 
 The steps of the process, money being used, would 
 be these : — We prohibit the importation of linen. 
 The exportation of cloth continues, but is paid for in 
 money. Our prices rise, those in Germany fall, until 
 bilk, or some other article, can be imported from 
 Germany cheaper than it can be produced at home, 
 and in sufficient abundance to balance the export of 
 cloth. Thus by sacrificing the cheapness of one com- 
 modity, we gain the cheapness of another : but we 
 sacrifice a greater cheapness to gain a less, and we 
 sacrifice cheapness in the article which we most want, 
 and would import by preference, while our compensa- 
 tion is cheapness in an article which we either could 
 produce more advantageously at home, or which we 
 have so little desire for, that it requires a species of 
 bounty on the article to create a demand. 
 
 Restrictions on importation do, however, tend to 
 keep down the value and price of our remaining im- 
 ports, and to keep up the nominal or money prices 
 of all our other commodities, by retaining a greater 
 quantity of money in the country than would other- 
 wise be there. From this it obviously follows, that if 
 the restrictions were removed, we should have to pay 
 rather more for some of the articles which we now 
 import, while those which we are now prevented from 
 importing would cost us more than might be inferred 
 from their present price in the foreign market. And 
 general prices would fall ; to the benefit of those who 
 have fixed sums to receive ; to the disadvantage of 
 those who have fixed sums to pay ; and giving rise, as
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 4l 
 
 a general fall of prices always does, to an appearance, 
 though a temporary and fallacious one, of general 
 distress.* 
 
 It is right to observe tliat the measures of the 
 British Legislature which have been falsely characte- 
 rised as measures of free trade, must, from their ex- 
 tremely insignificant extent, have produced far too 
 little effect in increasing our importation, to have 
 actually led, in any degree worth mentioning, to the 
 results specified above. 
 
 It is of greater importance to take notice, that these 
 effects may be entirely obviated, if foreign countries 
 can be prevailed upon simultaneously to relax their 
 restrictive systems, so as to create an immediate in- 
 crease of demand for our exports at the present prices. 
 It is true that exports and imports must, in the end, 
 balance one another, and if we increase our imports, 
 our exports will of necessity increase too. But it is a 
 forced increase, produced by an efflux of money and fall 
 of prices ; and this fall of prices being permanent, 
 although it would be no evil at all in a country where 
 credit is unknown, it may be a very serious one where 
 large classes of persons, and the nation itself, are un- 
 der engagements to pay fixed sums of money of large 
 amount. 
 
 10. The only remaining application of the principle 
 set forth in this essay, which we think it of importance 
 to notice specially, is the effect produced upon a country 
 by the annual payment of a tribute or subsidy to a 
 foreign power, or by the annual remittance of rents to 
 absentee landlords, or of any other kind of income to 
 
 * This last possible effect of a sudden introduction of free trade, 
 was pointed out in an able article on the Silk question, in a work 
 of too short duration, the Parliamentary Review.
 
 42 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 its absent owners. Eemittances to absentees are often 
 very incorrectly likened in their general character to 
 the payment of a tribute; from which they differ in this 
 ver}^ material circumstance, that tribute, if not paid to 
 a foreign country, is not paid at all, whereas rents 
 are paid to the landlord, and consumed by him, even 
 if he resides at home. The two kinds of j)ayment, 
 however, have a perfect resemblance to each other in 
 such parts of their effects as we are about to point 
 out. 
 
 The tribute, subsidy, or remittance, is always in 
 goods ; for, unless the country possesses mines of the 
 precious metals, and numbers those metals among its 
 regular articles of export, it cannot go on, year after 
 year, parting with them, and never receiving them 
 back. When a nation has regular payments to make 
 in a foreign country, for which it is not to receive any 
 return, its exports must annually exceed its imports by 
 the amount of the payments which it is bound so to 
 make. In order to force a demand for its exports 
 greater than its imports will suffice to pay for, it must 
 offer them at a rate of interchange more favourable to 
 the foreign country, and less so to itself, than if it had 
 no payments to make bej'ond the value of its imports. 
 It therefore carries on the trade with less advantage, in 
 consequence of the obligations to which it is subject 
 towards persons resident in foreign countries. 
 
 The steps of the process are these. The exports and 
 imports being in equilibrium, suppose a treaty to be 
 concluded, by which the country binds itself to pay in 
 tribute to another country, a certain sum annually. It 
 makes, perhaps, the first payment by a remittance of 
 money. This lowers prices in the paying country, and 
 raises them in the receiving one : the exports of the 
 tributary country increase, its imports diminish. When
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 43 
 
 the efflux of money has altered prices in the requisite 
 degree, the exports exceed the imports annually, by the 
 amount of the tribute ; and the latter, being added to 
 the sum of the payments due, restores the balance of 
 payments between the two countries. The result to 
 the tributary country is a diminution of her share in 
 the advantage of foreign trade. She pays dearer for 
 her imports, in two ways, because she pays more 
 money, and because that money is of higher value, 
 the money incomes of her inhabitants being of smaller 
 amount. 
 
 Thus the imposition of a tribute is a double bur- 
 then to the country paying it, and a double gain to 
 that which receives it. The tributary country pays to 
 the other, first, the tax, whatever be its amount, and 
 next, something more, which the one country loses in 
 the increased cost of its imports, the other gains in the 
 diminished cost of its own. 
 
 Absenteeism, moreover, though not burthensome 
 in the former of these ways, since the money is paid 
 whether the receiver be an absentee or not, is yet 
 disadvantageous in the second of the two modes which 
 have been mentioned. Ireland pays dearer for her im- 
 ports in consequence of her absentees ; a circumstance 
 which the assailants of Mr. M'Culloch, whether poli- 
 tical economists or not, have not, we believe, hitherto 
 thought of producing against him, 
 
 11. If the question be now asked, which of the 
 countries of the world gains most by foreign commerce, 
 the following will be the answer. 
 
 If by gain be meant advantage, in the most enlarged 
 sense, that country will generally gain the most, 
 which stands most in need of foreign commodities. 
 
 But if by gain be meant saving of labour and 
 capital in obtaining the commodities which the country
 
 44 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE 
 
 desires to have, whatever they may be ; the country 
 will gain, not in proportion to its own need of foreign 
 articles, but to the need which foreigners have of the 
 articles which itself produces. 
 
 Let us take, as an illustration of our meaning, the 
 case of France and England. Those two nations, in 
 consequence of the restrictions with which they have 
 loaded their commercial intercourse, carry on so little 
 trade with each other, as may almost, regard being had 
 to the wealth and population of the two countries, 
 be called none at all. If these fetters were at once 
 taken off, which of the two countries would be the 
 greatest gainer ? England without doubt. There would 
 instantly arise in France an immense demand for the 
 cottons, woollens, and iron of England ; while wines, 
 brandies, and silks, the staple articles of France, are 
 less likely to come into general demand here, nor would 
 the consum{7tion of such productions, it is probable, be 
 so rapidly increased by the fall of price. The fall would 
 probably be very great before France could obtain a 
 vent in England for so much of her exports as would 
 suffice to pay for the probable amount of her imports. 
 There would be a considerable flow of the precious 
 metals out of France into England. The English 
 consumer of French wine would not merely save the 
 amount of the duty which that wine now pays, but 
 would find the wine itself falling in prime cost, while 
 his means of purchasing it would be increased by the 
 augmentation of his own money income. The French 
 consumer of English cottons, on the contrary, would 
 not long continue to be able to purchase them at the 
 price they now sell for in England. He would gain 
 less, as the English would gain more, than might 
 appear from a mere comparison between the present 
 prices of commodities in the two countries.
 
 BETWEEN NATIONS. 45 
 
 Various consequences would flow from opening the 
 trade between France and England, which are not ex- 
 pected, either by the friends or by the opponents of the 
 present restrictive system. The wine-growers of France, 
 who imagine that free trade would relieve their distress 
 by raising the price of their wine, might not impro- 
 bably find that price actually lowered. On the other 
 hand, our silk manfacturers would be surprised if they 
 were told that the free admission of our cottons and 
 hardware into the French market, would endanger 
 their branch of manufacture : yet such might very pos- 
 sibly be the effect. France, it is likely, could most 
 advantageously pay us in silks for a portion of the large 
 amount of cottons and hardware which we should sell 
 to her ; and though our silk manufacturers may now 
 be able to compete advantageously, in some branches 
 of the manufacture, with their French rivals, it by no 
 means follows that they could do so when the efflux of 
 money from France, and its influx into England, had 
 lowered the price of silk goods in the French market, 
 and increased all the expenses of production here. 
 
 On the whole, England probably, of all the coun- 
 tries of Europe, draws to herself the largest share of 
 the gains of international commerce : because her ex- 
 portable articles are in universal demand, and are of 
 such a kind that the demand increases rapidly as the 
 price falls. Countries which export food, have the 
 former advantage, but not the latter. But our own 
 colonies, and the countries which supply us with the 
 materials of our manufactures, maintain a hard struggle 
 with us for an equal share of the advantages of their 
 trade ; for their exports are also of a kind for which 
 there exists a most extensive demand here, and a de- 
 mand capable of almost indefinite extension by a fall 
 of price. Contrary, therefore, to common opinion, it is
 
 46 LAWS OF INTERCHANGE BETWEEN NATIONS. 
 
 probable that our trade witli the colonies, and with the 
 countries which send us the raw materials of our na- 
 tional industry, is not more but less advantageous to 
 us, in proportion to its extent, than our trade with the 
 continent of Europe. We mean in respect to the mere 
 amount of the return to the labour and capital of the 
 country ; considered abstractedly from the usefulness 
 or agreeableness of the particular articles on which the 
 receivers may choose to expend it.
 
 ESSAY IL 
 
 OF THE INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION ON 
 PRODUCTION. 
 
 Before the appearance of those great writers whose 
 discoveries have given to political economy its present 
 comparatively scientific character, the ideas universally 
 entertained both by theorists and by practical men, on 
 the causes of national wealth, were grounded upon 
 certain general views, which almost all who have given 
 any considerable attention to the subject now justly 
 hold to be completely erroneous. 
 
 Among the mistakes which were most pernicious 
 in their direct consequences, and tended in the great- 
 est degree to prevent a just conception of the objects 
 of the science, or of the test to be applied to the 
 solution of the questions which it presents, was the 
 immense importance attached to consumption. The 
 great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, 
 according to the prevalent opinion, was to create con- 
 sumers. A great and rapid consumption was what 
 the producers, of all classes and denominations, wanted, 
 to enrich themselves and the country. This object, 
 under the varying names of an extensive demand, a 
 brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and 
 sometimes totidem verbis a large consumption, was con- 
 ceived to be the great condition of prosperity. 
 
 It is not necessary, in the present state of the sci- 
 ence, to contest this doctrine in the most flagrantly 
 absurd of its forms or of its applications. The utility 
 of a large government expenditure, for the purpose of
 
 48 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 encouraging industry, is no longer maintained. Taxes 
 are not now esteemed to be " like the dews of heaven, 
 which return again in prolific showers." It is no longer 
 supposed that you benefit tlie producer by taking his 
 money, provided you give it to him again in exchange 
 for his goods. There is nothing which impresses a 
 person of reflection with a stronger sense of the shallow- 
 ness of the political reasonings of the last two centuries, 
 than the general reception so long given to a doctrine 
 which, if it proves anything, proves that the more you 
 take from the pockets of the people to spend on your 
 own pleasures, the richer they grow ; that the man 
 who steals money out of a shop, provided he expends 
 it all again at the same shop, is a benefactor to the 
 tradesman whom he robs, and that the same opera- 
 tion, repeated suSiciently often, would make the 
 tradesman's fortune. 
 
 In opposition to these palpable absurdities, it was 
 triumphantly established by political economists, that 
 consumption never needs encouragement. All which 
 is produced is already consumed, either for the purpose 
 of reproduction or of eujo3^ment. The person who 
 saves his income is no less a consumer than he who 
 spends it : he consumes it in a different way ; it sup- 
 plies food and clothing to be consumed, tools and 
 materials to be used, by productive labourers. Con- 
 sumption, therefore, already takes place to the greatest 
 extent which the amount of production admits of; 
 but, of the two kinds of consumption, reproductive 
 and unproductive, the former alone adds to the na- 
 tional wealth, the latter impairs it. What is con- 
 sumed for mere enjoyment, is gone ; what is consumed 
 for reproduction, leaves commodities of equal value, 
 commonly with the addition of a j^rofit. The usual 
 effect of the attempts of government to encourage
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. 49 
 
 consumption, is merely to prevent saving ; that is, to 
 promote unproductive consumption at the expense of 
 reproductive, and diminish the national wealth by the 
 very means which were intended to increase it. 
 
 What a country wants to make it richer, is never 
 consumption, but production. Where there is the lat- 
 ter, we may be sure there is no want of the former. 
 To produce, implies that the producer desires to con- 
 sume ; wliy else should he give himself useless labour ? 
 He may not wish to consume w^hat he himself pro- 
 duces, but his motive for producing and selling is the 
 desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally 
 produce and sell more and more, they certainly also 
 buy more and more. Each may not want more of 
 what he himself produces, but each wants more of what 
 some other produces ; and, by producing what the other 
 wants, hojDes to obtain what the other produces. There 
 will never, therefore, be a greater quantity produced, of 
 commodities in general, than there are consumers for. 
 But there may be, and always are, abundance of per- 
 sons who have the inclination to become consumers of 
 some commodity, but are unable to satisfy their wish, 
 because they have not the means of producing either 
 that, or anything to give in exchange for it. The 
 legislator, therefore, needs not give himself any con- 
 cern about consumption. There will always be con- 
 sumption for everything which can be produced, until 
 the wants of all who possess the means of producing 
 are completely satisfied, and then production will not 
 increase any farther. The legislator has to look solely 
 to two points : that no obstacle shall exist to prevent 
 those who have the means of producing, from employ- 
 ing those means as they find most for their interest ; 
 and that those who have not at present the means of 
 producing, to the extent of their desire to consume, 
 
 E
 
 50 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 shall have every facility afforded to their acquiring the 
 means, that, becoming producers, they may be enabled 
 to consume. 
 
 These general principles are now well understood 
 by almost all who profess to have studied the sub- 
 ject, and are disputed by few except those who osten- 
 tatiously proclaim their contempt for such studies. 
 We touch upon the question, not in the hope of ren- 
 dering these fundamental truths clearer than they 
 already are, but to perform a task, so useful and need- 
 ful, that it is to be wished it were oftener deemed part 
 of the business of those who direct their assaults 
 against ancient prejudices, — that of seeing that no 
 scattered particles of important truth are buried and 
 lost ni the ruins of exploded error. Every prejudice, 
 which has long and extensively prevailed among the 
 educated and intelligent, must certainly be borne out 
 by some strong appearance of evidence ; and when 
 it is found that the evidence does not prove the re- 
 ceived conclusion, it is of the highest importance to 
 see what it does prove. If this be thought not worth 
 inquiring into, an error conformable to appearances 
 is often merely exchanged for an error contrary to 
 appearances ; while, even if the result be truth, it is 
 paradoxical truth, and will have difficulty in obtaining 
 credence while the false appearances remain. 
 
 Let us therefore inquire into the nature of the 
 appearances, which gave rise to the belief that a great 
 demand, a brisk circulation, a rapid consumption (three 
 equivalent expressions), are a cause of national pros- 
 perity. 
 
 If every man produced for himself, or with his ca- 
 pital employed others to produce, everything wliich he 
 required, customers and their wants would be a matter
 
 UrON niODUCTION. 51 
 
 of profound indiiference to liim. He would be rich, if 
 lie had produced aud stored up a large supply of the 
 articles which he was likely to require ; and poor, if he 
 had stored up none at all, or not enough to last until 
 he could produce more. 
 
 The case, however, is different after the separation 
 of employments. In civilized society, a single producer 
 confines himself to the production of one commodity, 
 or a small number of commodities ; and his influence 
 depends, not solely upon the quantity of his commo- 
 dity which he has produced aud laid in store, but upon 
 his success in finding purchasers for that commodity. 
 
 It is true, therefore, of every particular producer 
 or dealer, that a great demand, a brisk circulation, a 
 rapid consumption, of the commodities which he sells 
 at his shop or produces in his manufactory, is im- 
 portant to him. The dealer whose shop is crowded 
 with customers, who can dispose of a product almost 
 the very moment it is completed, makes large profits, 
 while his next neighbour, with an equal capital but 
 fewer customers, gains comparatively little. 
 
 It was natural that, in this case, as in a hundred 
 others, the analogy of an individual should be unduly 
 applied to a nation : as it has been concluded that a 
 nation generally gains in wealth by the conquest of a 
 province, because an individual frequently does so by 
 the acquisition of an estate ; and as, because an indi- 
 vidual estimates his riches by the quantity of money 
 which he can command, it was long deemed an excel- 
 lent contrivance for enriching a countr}-, to heap up 
 artificially the greatest possible quantity of the precious 
 metals within it. 
 
 Let us examine, then, more closely than has usually 
 been done, the case from which the misleading analogy 
 is drawn. Let us ascertain to what extent the two cases 
 
 E 2
 
 52 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 actually resemble ; what is the explanation of the false 
 appearance, and the real nature of the phenomenon 
 which, being seen indistinctly, has led to a false con- 
 clusion. 
 
 We shall propose for examination a very simple 
 case, but the explanation of which will suffice to clear 
 up all other cases which fall within the same principle. 
 Suppose that a number of foreigners with large incomes 
 arrive in a countr}^, and there expend those incomes : 
 will this operation be beneficial, as respects the national 
 wealth, to the country which receives these immigrants? 
 Yes, say many political economists, if they save any 
 part of their incomes, and employ them reproduc- 
 tively ; because then an addition is made to the national 
 capital, and the produce is a clear increase of the na- 
 tional wealth. But if the foreigner expends all his 
 income unproductively, it is no benefit to the country, 
 say they, and for the following reason. 
 
 If the foreigner had his income remitted to him in 
 bread and beef, coats and shoes, and all the other 
 articles which he was desirous to consume, it would 
 not be pretended that his eating, drinking, and wear- 
 ing them, on our shores rather than on his own, could 
 be of any advantage to us in point of wealth. Now, 
 the case is not different if his income is remitted to 
 him in some one commodity, as, for instance, in money. 
 For whatever takes place afterwards, with a view to 
 the supply of his wants, is a mere exchange of equiva- 
 lents ; and it is impossible that a person should ever 
 be enriched by merely receiving an equal value in 
 exchange for an equal value. 
 
 When it is said tliat the purchases of the foreign 
 consumer give employment to capital which would 
 otherwise yield no proht to its owner, the same poli-
 
 UPON PRODUCTION". 53 
 
 tlcal economists reject this proposition as involvinc^ the 
 fallacy of what has been called a " general glut." They 
 say, that the capital, which any person has chosen to 
 produce and to accumulate, can always find employ- 
 ment, since the fact that he has accumulated it proves 
 that he had an unsatisfied desire ; and if he cannot 
 find anything to produce for the wants of other con- 
 sumers, he can for his own. 
 
 It is impossible to contest these propositions as 
 thus stated. But there is one consideration which 
 clearly shows, that there is something more in the 
 matter than is here taken into the account ; and this 
 is, that the above reasoning tends distinctly to prove, 
 that it does a tradesman no good to go into his shop 
 and buy his goods. How can he be enriched ? it might 
 be asked. He merely receives a certain value in money, 
 for an equivalent value in goods. Neither does this 
 give employment to his capital ; for there never exists 
 more capital than can find employment, and if one per- 
 son does not buy his goods another will ; or if nobod}^ 
 does, there is over-production in that business, he can 
 remove his capital, and find employment for it in 
 another trade. 
 
 Every one sees the fallacy of this reasoning as 
 applied to individual producers. Every one knows 
 that as applied to them it has not even the semblance 
 of plausibility ; that the wealth of a producer does in a 
 great measure depend upon the number of his cus- 
 tomers, and that in general every additional purchaser 
 does really add to his profits. If the reasoning, which 
 would be so absurd if applied to individuals, be ap- 
 plicable to nations, the principle on which it rests 
 must require much explanation and elucidation. 
 
 Let us endeavour to analyse with precision the
 
 54 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 real nature of the advantage wliicli a producer derives 
 from an addition to the number of his customers. 
 
 For this purpose, it is necessary that we should 
 premise a single observation on the meaning of the 
 word capital. It is usually defined, the food, clothing, 
 and other articles set aside for the consumption of the 
 labourer, together with the materials and instruments 
 of production. This definition appears to us peculiarly 
 liable to misapprehension ; and much vagueness and 
 some narrow views have, we conceive, occasionally 
 resulted from its being interpreted with too mecha- 
 nical an adherence to the literal meaning of the 
 words. 
 
 The capital, whether of an individual or of a na- 
 tion, consists, we ap])rehend, of all matters possessing 
 exchangeable value, which the individual or the nation 
 has in his or in its possession for the purpose of re- 
 production, and not for the purpose of the owner's 
 unproductive enjoyment. All unsold goods, therefore, 
 constitute a part of the national capital, and of the 
 capital of the producer or dealer to whom they belong. 
 It is true that tools, materials, and the articles on 
 which the labourer is supported, are the only articles 
 which are directly subservient to production : and if I 
 have a capital consisting of money, or of goods in 
 a warehouse, I can only employ them as means of 
 production in so far as they are capable of being 
 exchjmged for the articles wliich conduce directly 
 to that end. But the food, machinery, &c., which 
 will ultimately be purchased with the goods in my 
 warehouse, may at this moment not be in the country, • 
 may not be even in existence. If, after having sold 
 the goods, I hire labourers with the money, and set 
 them to work, I am surely employing capital, though
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. 55 
 
 the corn, which in the form of bread those kibourers 
 may buy with the money, may be now in warehouse 
 at Dantzic, or perhaps not yet above ground. 
 
 Whatever, therefore, is destined to be employed 
 reproductively, either in its existing shape, or indi- 
 rectl}' by a previous (or even subsequent) exchange, is 
 capitaL Suppose that I have laid out all the money 
 I possess in wages and tools, and that the article 
 I produce is just completed : in the interval which 
 elapses before I can sell the article, realize the pro- 
 ceeds, and lay them out again in wages and tools, will 
 it be said that I have no capital ? Certainly not : I 
 have the same capital as before, perhaps a greater, 
 but it is locked up, as the expression is, and not 
 disposable. 
 
 When we have thus seen accurately what really 
 constitutes capital, it becomes obvious, that of the 
 capital of a country, there is at all times a very 
 krge proportion lying idle. The annual produce of 
 a country is never anything approaching in magnitude 
 to what it might b^ if all the resources devoted to 
 reproduction, if all the capital, in short, of the country, 
 were in full employment. 
 
 If every commodity on an average remained un- 
 sold for a length of time equal to that required for its 
 production, it is obVious that, at any one time, no 
 more than half the productive capital of the country 
 would be really performing the functions of capital. 
 The two halves would relieve one another, like the 
 semichori in a Greek tragedy ; or rather the half which 
 was in employment would be a fluctuating portion, 
 composed of varying parts ; but the result would 
 be, that each producer would be able to produce 
 every year only half as large a supply of com- 
 modities, as he could produce if he were sure of
 
 56 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 selling them the moment the production was com- 
 pleted. 
 
 This, or something like it, is however the habitual 
 state, at every instant, of a very large proportion of all 
 the capitalists in the world. 
 
 The number of producers, or dealers, who turn 
 over their capital, as the expression is, in the shortest 
 possible time, is very small. There are few who 
 have so rapid a sale for their wares, that all the 
 goods which their own capital, or the capital which 
 tiiey can borrow, enables them to supply, are car- 
 ried off as fast as they can be supplied. The ma- 
 jority have not an extent of business, at all adequate 
 to the amount of the capital they dispose of. It is 
 true that, in the communities in which industry and 
 commerce are practised with greatest success, the 
 contrivances of banking enable tlie possessor of a 
 larger capital than he can employ in his own business, 
 to employ it productively and derive a revenue from 
 it notwithstanding. Yet even then, there is, of neces- 
 sity, a great quantity of capital which remains fixed 
 in the shape of implements, machinery, buildings, &c., 
 whether it is only half employed, or in complete em- 
 ployment : and every dealer keeps a stock in trade, to 
 be ready for a possible sudden demand, though he pro- 
 bably may not be able to dispose of it for an indefinite 
 period. 
 
 This perpetual non-employment of a large propor- 
 tion of capital, is the price we pay for the division of 
 labour. The purchase is worth what it costs ; but 
 the price is considerable. 
 
 Of the importance of the fact which has just been 
 noticed there are three signal proofs. One is, the 
 large sum often given for the goodwill of a particular 
 business. Another is, the large rent which is paid
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. 57 
 
 for shops in certain situations, near a great thorough- 
 fare for example, which have no advantage except 
 that the occupier may expect a larger body of cus- 
 tomers, and be enabled to turn over hiy capital more 
 quickly. Another is, that in many trades, there are 
 some dealers who sell articles of an equal quality at a 
 lower price than other dealers. Of course, this is not 
 a voluntary sacrifice of profits : they expect by the 
 consequent overflow of customers to turn over their 
 capital more quickly, and to be gainers by keeping 
 the whole of their capital in more constant employ- 
 ment, though on any given operation their gains are 
 less. 
 
 The reasoning cited in the earlier part of this paper, 
 to show the uselessness of a mere purchaser or cus- 
 tomer, for enriching a nation or an individual, applies 
 only to the case of dealers who have already as much 
 business as their capital admits of, and as rapid a sale 
 for their commodities as is possible. To such dealers 
 an additional purchaser is really of no use ; for, if they 
 are sure of selling all their commodities the moment 
 those commodities are on sale, it is of no consequence 
 whether they sell them to one person or to another. 
 But it is questionable whether there be any dealers 
 in whose case this hypothesis is exactly verified ; and to 
 the great majority it is not applicable at all. An addi- 
 tional customer, to most dealers, is equivalent to an 
 increase of their productive capital. He enables them 
 to convert a portion of their capital which was lying 
 idle (and which could never have become productive in 
 their hands until a customer was found) into wages 
 and instruments of production ; and if we suppose that 
 the commodity, unless bought by him, would not have 
 found a purchaser for a year after, then all which a 
 capital of that value can enable men to produce during
 
 58 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 a year, is clear gain — gain to the dealer, or producer, 
 and to the labourers whom he will employ, and thus 
 (if no one sustains any corresponding loss) gain to the 
 nation. The aggregate produce of the country for the 
 succeeding year is, therefore, increased ; not by the 
 mere exchange, but by calling into activity a portion 
 of the national capital, which, had it not been for the 
 exchange, would have remained for some time longer 
 unemployed. 
 
 Thus there are actually at all times producers and 
 dealers, of all, or nearly all classes, whose capital is 
 lying partially idle, because they have not found the 
 means of fulfilling the condition which the division of 
 labour renders indispensable to the full employment of 
 capital, — viz., that of exchanging their products with 
 each other. If these persons could find one another 
 out, they could mutually relieve each other from this 
 disadvantage. Any two shopkeepers, in insufficient 
 employment, who agreed to deal at each other's shops 
 so long as they could there purchase articles of as good 
 a quality as elsewhere, and at as low a price, would 
 render the nation a service. It may be said that they 
 must previously have dealt, to the same amount, with 
 some other dealers ; but this is erroneous, since they 
 could only have obtained the means of purchasing by 
 being previously enabled to sell. By their compact, 
 each would gain a customer, who would call his capital 
 into fuller employment ; each therefore would obtain 
 an increased produce; and they would thus be en- 
 abled to become better customers to each other than 
 they could be to third parties. 
 
 It is obvious that every dealer who has not business 
 sufficient fully to employ his capital (which is the case 
 with all dealers when they commence business, and with 
 many to the end of their lives), is in this predicament
 
 UPON TRODUCTION. 59 
 
 simply for want of some one with vvliom to excliango his 
 commodities ; and as there are such persons to about the 
 same degree probably in all trades, it is evident tliat if 
 these persons sought one another out, they have their 
 remedy in their own hands, and by each other's 
 assistance might bring their capital into more full 
 employment. 
 
 We are now qualified to define the exact nature of 
 the benefit which a producer or dealer derives from 
 the acquisition of a new customer. It is as follows : — 
 
 1. If any part of his own capital was locked up in 
 the form of unsold goods, producing (for a longer 
 period or a shorter) nothing at all ; a portion of this 
 is called into greater activity, and becomes more con- 
 stantly productive. But to this we must add some 
 further advantages. 
 
 2. If the additional demand exceeds what can be 
 supplied by setting at liberty the capital which exists in 
 the state of unsold goods ; and if the dealer has addi- 
 tional resources, which were productively invested (in 
 the public funds, for instance), but not in his own trade; 
 he is enabled to obtain, on a portion of these, not mere 
 interest, but profit, and so to gain that difference be- 
 tween the rate of profit and the rate of interest, which 
 may be considered as " wages of superintendance." 
 
 8. If all the dealer's capital is employed in his own 
 trade, and no part of it locked up as unsold goods, the 
 new demand affords him additional encouragement to 
 save, by enabling his savings to yield him not merely 
 interest, but profit ; and if he does not choose to save 
 (or until he shall have saved), it enables him to carry 
 on an additional business with borrowed capital, and 
 so gain the difference between interest and profit, or, 
 in other words, to receive wages of superintendance 
 on a larger amount of capital.
 
 60 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 Tliis, it will be found, is a complete account of all 
 the gains which a dealer in any commodity can derive 
 from an accession to the number of those who deal 
 with him : and it is evident to every one, that these 
 advantages are real and important, and that they are 
 the cause which induces a dealer of any kind to desire 
 an increase of his business. 
 
 It follows from these premises, that the arrival of a 
 new unproductive consumer (living on his own means) 
 in any place, be that place a village, a town, or an 
 entire country, is beneficial to that place, if it causes 
 to any of the dealers of the place any of the advan- 
 tages above enumerated, without withdrawing an equal 
 advantage of the same kind from any other dealer of 
 the same place. 
 
 This accordingly is the test by which we must try 
 all such questions, and by which the propriety of the 
 analogical argument, from dealing with a tradesman to 
 dealing with a nation, must be decided. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, as our example, Paris, 
 which is much frequented by strangers from various 
 parts of the world, who, as sojourners there, live 
 unproductively upon their means. Let us consider 
 whether the presence of these persons is beneficial, in 
 an industrial point of view, to Paris. 
 
 We exclude from the consideration that portion of 
 the strangers' incomes which they pay to natives as 
 direct remuneration for service, or labour of any de- 
 scription. This is obviously beneficial to the country. 
 An increase in the funds expended in employing 
 labour, whether that labour be productive or unpro- 
 ductive, tends equally to raise wages. The condition 
 of the whole labouring class is, so far, benefited. It 
 is true that the labourers thus employed by sojourners 
 are probably, in |)art or altogether, withdrawn from pro-
 
 UPON rRODUCTION. 61 
 
 ductive employment. But this is far from being an 
 evil ; for either the situation of the labouring classes is 
 improved, which is far more than an equivalent for a 
 diminution in mere production, or the rise of wages 
 acts as a stimulus to population, and then the number 
 of productive labourers becomes as great as before. 
 
 To this we may add, that what the sojourners pay 
 as wages of labour or service (whether constant or 
 casual), though expended unproductively by the first 
 possessor, may, when it passes into the hands of the 
 receivers, be by them saved, and invested in a pro- 
 ductive employment. If so, a direct addition is made 
 to the national capital. 
 
 All this is obvious, and is suflQciently allowed by 
 political economists ; who have invariably set apart 
 the gains of all persons coming under the class of 
 domestic servants, as real advantages arising to a place 
 from the residence there of an increased number of 
 unproductive consumers. 
 
 We have only to examine whether the purchases of 
 commodities by these unproductive consumers, confer 
 the same kind of benefit upon the village, town, or 
 nation, which is bestowed upon a particular tradesman 
 by dealing at his shop. 
 
 Now it is obvious that the sojourners, on their ar- 
 rival, confer the benefit in question upon some dealers, 
 who did not enjoy it before. They purchase their food, 
 and many other articles, from the dealers in the place. 
 They, therefore, call the capital of some dealers, which 
 was locked up in unsold goods, into more active em- 
 ployment. They encourage them to save, and enable 
 them to receive wages of superintendance upon a larger 
 amount of capital. These effects being undeniable, the 
 question is, whether the presence of the sojourners
 
 62 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 deprives any others of the Paris dealers of a similar 
 advantage. 
 
 It will be seen that it does ; and nothing will then 
 remain but a comparison of the amounts. 
 
 It is obvious to all who reflect (and was shown in 
 the paper which precedes this) that the remittances to 
 persons who expend their incomes in foreign countries 
 are, after a slight passage of the precious metals, de- 
 frayed in commodities : and that the result commonl}^ 
 is, an increase of exports and a diminution of imports, 
 until the latter fall short of the former by the amount 
 of the remittances. 
 
 The arrival, therefore, of the strangers (say from 
 England), while it creates at Paris a market for com- 
 modities equivalent in value to their funds, displaces in 
 the market other commodities to an equal value. To 
 the extent of the increase of exports from England 
 into Erance in the way of remittance, it introduces 
 additional commodities which, by their cheapness, dis- 
 place others formerly produced in that country. To 
 the extent of the diminution of imports into England 
 from Erance, commodities which existed or which 
 were habitually produced in that country are deprived 
 of a market, or can only find one at a price not suffi- 
 cient to defray the cost. 
 
 It must, therefore, be a matter of mere accident, if 
 by arriving in a place, the new unproductive consumer 
 causes any net advantage to its industry, of the kind 
 which we are now examining. Not to mention that 
 this, like any other change in the channels of trade, 
 may render useless a portion of fixed capital, and so 
 far injure the national wealth. 
 
 A distinction, however, must here be made. 
 
 The place to which the new unproductive con-
 
 UPON PRODUCTION". G3 
 
 sumers have come, may be a town or villai^e, as well 
 as a country. If a town or village, it may either be or 
 not be a place having an export trade. 
 
 If the place had no previous trade except with the 
 immediate neighbourhood, there are no exports and 
 imports, by the new arrangement of which, the remit- 
 tance can be made. There is no capital, formerly 
 employed in manufacturing for the foreign market, 
 which is now brought into less full employment. 
 
 Yet the remittance evidently is still made in 
 commodities, but in this case without displacing any 
 which were produced before. To show this, it is neces- 
 sary to make the following remarks. 
 
 The reason why towns exist, is that ceteris paribus \i 
 is convenient, in order to save cost of carriage, that the 
 production of commodities should take place as far as 
 practicable in the immediate vicinity of the consumer. 
 Capital finds its way so easily from town to country and 
 from country to town, that the amount of capital in the 
 town will be regulated wholly by the amount which 
 can be emplo3^ed there more conveniently than else- 
 where. Consequently the capital of a place will be 
 such as is sufficient 
 
 1st. To produce all commodities which from local 
 circumstances can be produced there at less cost than 
 elsewhere : and if this be the case to any great extent, 
 it will be an exporting town. When we ^?bj produced, 
 we may add, or stored. 
 
 2nd. To produce and retail the commodities which 
 are consumed by the inhabitants of the town, and the 
 place of whose production is in other respects a matter 
 of indifference. To the inhabitants of the town must 
 be added such dwellers in the adjoining country, as 
 are nearer to that place than to any other equally well 
 furnished market.
 
 64 mFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 Now, if new unproductive consumers resort to the 
 place, it is clear that for the latter of these two pur- 
 poses, more capital will be required than before. Con- 
 sequently, if less is not required for the former purpose, 
 more capital will establish itself at the place. 
 
 Until this additional capital has arrived, the pro- 
 ducers and dealers already on the spot will enjoy great 
 advantages. Every particle of their own capital will 
 be called into the most active employment. AVhat 
 their capital does not enable them to supply, will be 
 got from others at a distance, who cannot supply, it on 
 such favourable terms ; consequently they will be in the 
 predicament of possessing apartial monopoly — receiving 
 for everything a price regulated by a higher cost of 
 production than they are compelled to pay. They also, 
 being in possession of the market, will be enabled to 
 make a large portion of the new capital pass through 
 their hands, and thus to earn wages of superintendance 
 upon it. 
 
 If, indeed, the place from whence the strangers 
 came, previously traded with that where they have 
 taken up their abode, the effect of their arrival is, that 
 the exports of the town will diminish, and that it will 
 be supplied from abroad with something which it pre- 
 viously produced at home. In this way an amount of 
 capital will be set free equal to that required, and there 
 will be no increase on the whole. The removal of the 
 Court from London to Birmingham would not neces- 
 sarily, though it would probably,* increase the amount 
 
 * Probably ; because most articles of an ornamental descrip- 
 tion being still required from the same makers, these makers, 
 with their capital, would probably follow their customers. Be- 
 sides, from place to place within the same coi;utry, most persons 
 will rather change their habitation than their employment. But 
 the moving on this score would be reciprocal.
 
 UrON PRODUCTIOX. 63 
 
 of capital in the latter place. The afflux of money to 
 Birmingham, and its efflux from London, would render 
 it cheaper to make some articles in London for Bir- 
 mingham consumption ; and to make others in London 
 for home consumption, which were formerly brought 
 from Birmingham. 
 
 But instead of Birmingham, an exporting town, 
 suppose a village, or a town which only produced and 
 retailed for itself and its immediate vicinity. The 
 remittances must come thither in the shape of money ; 
 and though the money would not remain, but would be 
 sent away in exchange for commodities, it would, how- 
 ever, first pass through the hands of the producers and 
 dealers in the place, and would by them be exported in 
 exchange for the articles which they require — viz. the 
 materials, tools, and subsistence necessary for the in- 
 creased production now required of them, and articles 
 of foreign luxury for their own increased unproductive 
 consumption. These articles would not displace any 
 formerly made in the place, but on the contrary, would 
 forward the production of more. 
 
 Hence we may consider the following propositions 
 as established : 
 
 1. The expenditure of absentees (the case of domestic 
 servants excepted), is not necessarily any loss to the 
 country which they leave, or gain to the country which 
 they resort to (save in the manner shown in Essay 1.) : 
 for almost every coantry habitually exports and imports 
 to a much greater value than the incomes of its absen- 
 tees, or of the foreign sojourners within it. 
 
 2. But sojourners often do much good to the town 
 or village which they resort to, and absentees harm to 
 that which they leave. The capital of the petty 
 tradesman in a small town near an absentee's estate, 
 is deprived of the market for which it is conveniently 
 
 F
 
 QQ INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 situated, and must resort to another to wliich other 
 capitals lie nearer, and where it is consequentl}^ outbid, 
 and gains less ; obtaining only the same price, with 
 greater expenses. But this evil would be equally 
 occasioned, if, instead of going abroad, the absentee 
 had removed to his own capital city. 
 
 If the tradesman could, in the latter case, remove 
 to the metropolis, or in the former, employ himself 
 in producing increased exports, or in producing for 
 home consumption articles now no longer imported, 
 each in the place most convenient for that operation ; 
 he would not be a loser, though the place which he 
 was obliged to leave mifjlit be said to lose. 
 
 Paris undoubtedly gains much by the sojourn of 
 foreigners, while the counteracting loss by diminu- 
 tion of exports from France is suffered by the great 
 trading and manufacturing towns, Rouen, Bordeaux, 
 Lyons, &c., wliich also suffer the principal part of the 
 loss by importation of articles previously produced 
 at home. The capital thus set free, finds its most con- 
 venient seat to be Paris, since the business to which 
 it must turn is the production of articles to be unpro- 
 ductively consumed by the sojourners. 
 
 The great trading towns of France would undoubt- 
 edly be more flourishing, if France were not frequented 
 by foreigners. 
 
 Eome and Naples are perhaps purely benefited by 
 the foreigners sojourning there : for they have so little 
 external trade, that their case may resemble that of the 
 village in our hypothesis. 
 
 Absenteeism, therefore, (except as shown in the first 
 Essay) is a local, not a national evil ; and the resort of 
 foreigners, in so far as they purchase for unproductive 
 consumption, is not, in any commercial country, a na- 
 tional, though it may be a local good.
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. G7 
 
 From tlie considerations which we have now 
 adduced, it is obvious what is meant by such phrases 
 as a bris/i demand, and a rapid circulation. There is a 
 brisk demand and a rapid circulation, when goods, 
 generally speaking, are sold as fast as they can be 
 produced. There is slackness, on the contrary, and 
 stagnation, when goods, which have been produced, 
 remain for a long time unsold. In the former case, 
 tlie capital which has been locked up in production is 
 disengaged as soon as the production is completed ; 
 and can be immediately employed in further pro- 
 duction. In the latter case, a large portion of the 
 productive capital of the country is lying in temporary 
 inactivity. 
 
 From what has been already said, it is obvious that 
 periods of " brisk demand" are also the periods of 
 greatest production : the national capital is never called 
 into full employment but at those periods. This, 
 however, is no reason for desiring such times ; it is not 
 desirable that the whole capital of the country should 
 be in full employment. For, the calculations of pro- 
 ducers and traders being of necessity imperfect, there 
 are always some commodities which are more or less 
 in excess, as there are alwaj^s some which are in 
 deficiency. If, therefore, the whole truth were known, 
 there would always be some classes of producers con- 
 tracting, not extending, their operations. If all are 
 endeavouring to extend them, it is a certain proof 
 that some general delusion is afloat. The commonest 
 cause of such delusion is some general, or very 
 extensive, rise of prices (whether caused by specu- 
 lation or by the currency) which persuades all dealers 
 that they are growing rich. And hence, an increase of 
 production really takes place during the progress of 
 depreciation, as long as the existence of depreciation 
 
 F 2
 
 68 INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 is not suspected ; and it is this which gives to the falla- 
 cies of the currency school, principally represented by 
 Mr. Attwood, all the little plausibility they possess. But 
 when the delusion vanishes and the truth is disclosed, 
 those whose commodities are relatively in excess must 
 diminish their production or be ruined : and if during 
 the high prices they have built mills and erected 
 machinery, they will be likely to repent at leisure. 
 
 In the present state of the commercial world, 
 mercantile transactions being carried on upon an 
 immense scale, but the remote causes of fluctuations 
 in prices being very little understood, so that unrea- 
 sonable hopes and unreasonable fears alternately rule 
 with tyrannical sway over the minds of a majority of 
 the mercantile public ; general eagerness to buy and 
 general reluctance to buy, succeed one another in a 
 manner more or less marked, at brief intervals. Except 
 during short periods of transition, there is almost 
 always either great briskness of business or great stag- 
 nation ; either the principal producers of almost all the 
 leading articles of industry have as many orders as they 
 can possibly execute, or the dealers in almost all com- 
 modities have their warehouses full of unsold goods. 
 
 In this last case, it is commonly said that there is a 
 general superabundance ; and as those economists who 
 have contested the possibility of general superabund- 
 ance, would none of them deny the possibility or even 
 the frequent occurrence of the phenomenon which we 
 have just noticed, it would seem incumbent on them to 
 show, that the expression to which they object is not 
 applicable to a state of things in which all or most com- 
 modities remain unsold, in the same sense in which 
 there is said to be a superabundance of any one com- 
 modity when it remains in the warehouses of dealers 
 for want of a market.
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. G9 
 
 This is merely a question of naming, but an im- 
 portant one, as it seems to us that mucli apparent 
 difference of opinion has been produced by a mere 
 difference in the mode of describing the same facts, 
 and that persons who at bottom were perfectly agreed, 
 have considered each other as guilty of gross error, and 
 sometimes even misrepresentation, on this subject. 
 
 In order to afford the explanations, with which it 
 is necessary to take the doctrine of the impossibility 
 of an excess of all commodities, we must advert for a 
 moment to the argument by which this impossibility 
 is commonly maintained. 
 
 There can never, it is said, be a want of buj^ers 
 for all commodities ; because whoever offers a com- 
 modity for sale, desires to obtain a commodity in 
 exchange for it, and is therefore a buyer by the mere 
 fact of his being a seller. The sellers and the buyers, 
 for all commodities taken together, must, by the meta- 
 physical necessity of the case, be an exact equipoise 
 to each other ; and if there be more sellers than 
 buyers of one thing, there must be more buyers than 
 sellers for another. 
 
 This argument is evidently founded on the suppo- 
 sition of a state of barter ; and, on that supposition, it 
 is perfectl} incontestable. When two persons per- 
 form an act of barter, each of them is at once a seller 
 and a buyer. He cannot sell without buying. Unless 
 he chooses to buy some other person's commodity, he 
 -does not sell his own. 
 
 If, however, we suppose that money is used, these 
 propositions cease to be exactly true. It must be 
 admitted that no person desires money for its own 
 sake (unless some very rare cases of misers be an 
 exception), and that he who sells his commodity, 
 receiving money in exchange, does so with the inten-
 
 70 IXFLUEl^CE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 tion of buying with tliat same money some other com- 
 modity. Interchange by means of money is therefore, 
 as has been often observed, ultimately nothing but 
 barter. But there is this difference — that in the case 
 of barter, the selling and the buying are simulta- 
 neously confounded in one operation ; you sell what 
 you have, and buy what you want, by one indivisible 
 act, and you cannot do the one without doing the 
 other. Now the effect of the employment of money, 
 and even the utility of it, is, that it enables this 
 one act of interchange to be divided into two sepa- 
 rate acts or operations ; one of which may be per- 
 formed now, and the other a jea^v hence, or when- 
 ever it shall be most convenient. Although he who 
 sells, really sells only to buy, he needs not buy at 
 the same moment when he sells ; and he does not 
 therefore necessarily add to the immediate demand for 
 one commodity when he adds to the supply of another. 
 The buying and selling being now separated, it may 
 very well occur, that there may be, at some given 
 time, a very general inclination to sell with as little 
 delay as possible, accompanied with an equally general 
 inclination to defer all purchases as long as possible. 
 This is always actually the case, in those periods which 
 are described as periods of general excess. And no one, 
 after sufficient explanation, will contest the possibility 
 of general excess, in this sense of the word. The state 
 of things which we have just described, and which is 
 ot no uncommon occurrence, amounts to it. 
 
 For when there is a general anxiety to sell, and a 
 general disinclination to buy, commodities of all kinds 
 remain for a long time unsold, and those which find an 
 immediate market^ do so at a very low price. If it be 
 said that when all commodities fall in price, the fall is 
 of no consequence, since mere money price is not
 
 UPON PRODUCTION. 71 
 
 material while the relative value of all commodities 
 remains the same, we answer that this would be true 
 if the low prices were to last for ever. But as it is 
 certain that prices will rise again sooner or later, the 
 person who is obliged by necessity to sell his com- 
 modity at a low money price is really a sufferer, the 
 money he receives sinking shortly to its ordinary 
 value. Every person, therefore, delays selling if he 
 can, keeping his capital unproductive in the mean- 
 time, and sustaining tlie consequent loss of interest. 
 There is stagnation to those who are not obliged to 
 sell, and distress to those who are. 
 
 It is true that this state can be only tempo- 
 rary, and must even be succeeded by a reaction of 
 corresponding violence, since those who have sold 
 without buying will certainly buy at last, and there 
 will then be more buyers than sellers. But although 
 the general over-supply is of necessity only temporar}^ 
 this is no more than may be said of every partial 
 over-supply. An overstocked state of the market is 
 always temporary, and is generally followed by a more 
 than common briskness of demand. 
 
 In order to render the argument for the impos- 
 sibility of an excess of all commodities applicable to the 
 case in which a circulating medium is employed, 
 money must itself be considered as a commodity. It 
 must, undoubtedly, be admitted that there cannot be 
 an excess of all other commodities, and an excess of 
 money at the same time. 
 
 But those who have, at periods such as we have 
 described, affirmed that there was an excess of all 
 commodities, never pretended that money was one 
 of these commodities ; they held that there was not 
 an excess, but a deficiency of the circulating medium. 
 What thev called a general superabundance, was
 
 72 INFLUEXCE OF CONSUMPTION 
 
 not a superabundance of commodities relatively to 
 commodities, but a superabundance of all commodi- 
 ties relatively to money. What it amounted to was, 
 that persons in general, at that particular time, from a 
 general expectation of being called upon to meet 
 sudden demands, liked better to possess money than 
 any other commodity. Mone}^, consequently, was in 
 request, and all other commodities were in com- 
 parative disrepute. In extreme cases, money is col- 
 lected in masses, and hoarded ; in the milder cases 
 people merely defer parting with their money, or 
 coming under any new engagements to part with it. 
 But the result is, that all commodities fall in price, 
 or become unsaleable. When this happens to one 
 single commodity, there is said to be a superabundance 
 of that commodity ; and if that be a proper expres- 
 sion, there would seem to be in the nature of the case 
 no particular impropriety in saying that there is a 
 superabundance of all or most commodities, when all 
 or most of them are in this same predicament. 
 
 It is, however, of the utmost importance to observe 
 that excess of all commodities, in the only sense in 
 which it is possible, means only a temporary fall in 
 their value relatively to money. To suppose that the 
 markets for all commodities could, in any other sense 
 than this, be overstocked, involves the absurdity that 
 commodities may fall in value relatively to them- 
 selves ; or that, of two commodities, each can fall 
 relatively to the other, A becoming equivalent to 
 B — a;, and B to A — x, at the same time. And it is, 
 perhaps, a sufficient reason for not using phrases of this 
 description, that they suggest the idea of excessive pro- 
 duction. A want of market for one article may arise 
 from excessive production of that article ; but when 
 commodities in general become unsaleable, it is from
 
 UrOX PRODUCTION. 73 
 
 a very difTerent cause ; there cannot be cxcesslv^e pro- 
 duction of commodities in general. 
 
 The argument against tlie possibility of general 
 over-production is quite conclusive, so far as it aj^plies 
 to the doctrine that a country may accumulate capital 
 too fast ; that produce in general may, by increasing 
 faster than the demand for it, reduce all producers to 
 distress. This proposition, strange to say, was almost a 
 received doctrine as lately as thirty years ago ; and 
 the merit of those who have exploded it is much 
 greater than might be inferred from the extreme 
 obviousness of its absurdity when it is stated in its 
 native simplicity. It is true that if all the wants of 
 all the inhabitants of a country were fully satisfied, no 
 further capital could find useful employment ; but, in 
 that case, none would be accumulated. So long as 
 there remain any persons not possessed, we do not 
 say of subsistence, but of the most refined luxuries, 
 and who would work to possess them, there is employ- 
 ment for capital; and if the commodities which these 
 persons want are not produced and placed at their dis- 
 posal, it can onl}^ be because capital does not exist, 
 disposable for the purpose of employing, if not any other 
 labourers, those very labourers themselves, in producing 
 the articles for their own consumption. Nothing can 
 be more chimerical than the fear that the accumulation 
 of capital should produce poverty and not wealth, or 
 that it will ever take place too fast for its own end. 
 Is'othing is more true than that it is produce which 
 constitutes the market for produce, and that every 
 increase of production, if distributed without miscalcu- 
 lation among all kinds of produce in the proportion 
 which private interest would dictate, creates, or rather 
 constitutes, its own demand. 
 
 This is the truth which the deniers of general over-
 
 74 i:^FLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION UPON PRODUCTION. 
 
 production have seized and enforced; nor is it pretended 
 tliat anything has been added to it, or subtracted from 
 it, in the present disquisition. But it is thought that 
 those who receive the doctrine accompanied with the 
 explanations which we have given, will understand, 
 more clearly than before, what is, and what is not, 
 implied in it ; and will see that, when properl}^ under- 
 stood, it in no way contradicts those obvious facts 
 which are universally known and admitted to be not 
 only of possible, but of actual and even frequent occur- 
 rence. The doctrine in question only appears a para- 
 dox, because it has usually been so expressed as 
 apparently to contradict these w^ell-known facts ; 
 which, however, were equally well known to the 
 authors of the doctrine, who, therefore, can only have 
 adopted from inadvertence any form of expression 
 which could to a candid person appear inconsistent 
 with it. The essentials of the doctrine are preserved 
 when it is allowed that there cannot be permanent 
 excess of production, or of accumulation ; though it be 
 at the same time admitted, that as there may be a 
 temporary excess of any one article considered sepa- 
 rately, so may there of commodities generally, not in 
 consequence of over-production, but of a want of 
 commercial confidence.
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 ON THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE AND 
 UNPRODUCTIVE. 
 
 It would probably be difficult to point out any two 
 words, respecting the proper use of which political 
 economists have been more divided, than they have 
 been concerning the two woY^h productive and unpro- 
 ductive ; whether considered as applied to labour, to 
 coHSUtiiptio?!, or to expenditure. 
 
 Although this is a question solely of nomenclature, 
 it is one of sufficient importance to be worth another 
 attempt to settle it satisfactorily. For, although writers 
 on political economy have not agreed in the ideas which 
 they were accustomed to annex to these terms, the terms 
 have generally been employed to denote ideas of very 
 great importance, and it is impossible that some vague- 
 ness should not have been thrown upon the ideas them- 
 selves by looseness in the use of the words by which 
 they are habitually designated. Further, so long as 
 the pedantic objection to the introduction of new 
 technical terms continues, accurate thinkers on moral 
 and political subjects are limited to a very scanty 
 vocabulary for the expression of their ideas. It there- 
 fore is of great importance that the words with which 
 mankind are familiar, should be turned to the greatest 
 possible advantage as instruments of thought ; that one 
 word should not be used as the sign of an idea which 
 is already sufficiently expressed by another word , and 
 that words which are rec^uired to denote ideas of great
 
 76 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 importance, should not be usurped for the expression 
 of such as are comparatively insignificant. 
 
 The phrases productive labour, and jJ^'oducfive cou' 
 sumption, have been employed by some writers on 
 j^olitical economy with very ^reat latitude. They have 
 considered, and classed, as productive labour and pro- 
 ductive consumption, all labour which serves any useful 
 purpose — all consumption which is not ivaste. Mr, 
 M'C/ulloch has asserted, totidem verbis, that the labour 
 of Madame Pasta was as well entitled to be called pro- 
 ductive labour as that of a cotton spinner. 
 
 Employed in this sense, the words productive and 
 unproductive are superflaous, since the words useful and 
 agreeable on the one hand, useless and loorthless on the 
 other, are quite sufficient to express all the ideas to 
 which the words productive and unproductive are here 
 applied. 
 
 This use of the terms, therefore, is subversive of 
 the ends of lanoruasre. 
 
 Those writers who have emplo3'ed the words in a 
 more limited sense, have usually understood by pro- 
 ductive or unproductive labour, labour which is f)^- 
 ductive of wealth, or unproductive of wealth. But 
 what is wealth ? And here the words productive 
 and unproductive have been affected with additional 
 ambiguities, corresponding to the different exten- 
 sion which different writers have given to the term 
 wealth. 
 
 Some have given the name of wealth to all things 
 which tend to the use or enjoyment of mankind, and 
 which possess exchangeable value. This last clause is 
 added to exclude air, the light of the sun, and any other 
 things which can be obtained in unlimited quantity 
 without labour or sacrifice ; together with all such 
 things as, though produced by labour, are not held in
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 77 
 
 sufficient general estimation to command any price in 
 the market. 
 
 But when this definition came to be explained, 
 many persons were disposed to interpret '■•' all thi/ic/a 
 which tend to the use or enjoyment of man," as imply- 
 ing only all materialihmgs. Immaterial products they 
 refused to consider as wealth ; and labour or expen- 
 diture which yielded nothing but immaterial products, 
 they characterised as unproductive labour and unpro- 
 ductive expenditure. 
 
 To this it was, or might have been, answered, that 
 according to this classification, a carpenter's labour at 
 his trade is productive labour, but the same individual's 
 labour in learning his trade was unproductive labour. 
 Yet it is obvious thiit, on both occasions, his labour 
 tended exclusively to what is allowed to be production : 
 the one was equally indispensable with the other, to 
 the ultimate result. Further, if we adopted the above 
 definition, we should be obliged to say that a nation 
 whose artisans were twice as skilful as those of an- 
 other nation, was not, ceteris paribus, more wealthy ; 
 although it is evident that every one of the results uf 
 wealth, and everything for the sake of which wealth is 
 desired, would be possessed by the former country in a 
 higher degree than by the latter. 
 
 Ever}' classification according to which a basket 
 of cherries, gatliered and eaten the next minute, are 
 called wealth, while that title is denied to the acquired 
 skill of those who are acknowledged to be productive 
 labourers, is a purely arbitrary division, and does not 
 conduce to the ends for which classification and 
 nomenclature are designed. 
 
 In order to get over all difficulties, some political 
 economists seem disposed to make the terms express a 
 distinction sufficiently definite indeed, but more com-
 
 78 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 pletel}^ arbitrary, and having less foundation in nature, 
 than any of the former. Tliey will not allow to any 
 labour or to any expenditure the name of productive, 
 unless the produce which it yields returns into the 
 hands of the very person who made the outlay. 
 Hedging and ditching they term productive labour, 
 though those operations conduce to production onlyindi 
 rectly, by protecting the produce from destruction ; but 
 the necessary expenses incurred by a government for 
 the protection of property are, they insist upon it, con- 
 sumed unproductively : though, as has been well pointed 
 out by Mr. M'Culloch, these expenses, in their relation 
 to the national wealth, are exactly analogous to the 
 wages of a hedger or a ditcher. The only difference is, 
 that the farmer, who pays for the hedging and ditching, 
 is the person to whom the consequent increase of pro- 
 duction accrues, while the government, which is at the 
 expense of police officers and courts of justice, does 
 not, as a necessary consequence, get back into its own 
 coffers the increase of the national wealth resulting 
 from the security of property. 
 
 It would be endless to point out the oddities and 
 incongruities which result from this classification. 
 Whether we take the words wealth and production in 
 the largest, or in the most restricted sense in which 
 they have ever yet been employed, nobody will dis- 
 pute that roads, bridges, and canals, contribute in an 
 eminent degree, and in a very direct manner, to the 
 increase of production and wealth. The labour and 
 pecuniary resources emjDloyed in their construction 
 would, according to the above theory, be considered 
 productive, if every occupier of land were compelled by 
 law to construct so much of the road, or canal, as 
 passes through his own farm. If, instead of this, the 
 government makes the road, and throws it open to the
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 79 
 
 public toll-free, the labour and expenditure would be, 
 on tke above system, clearly unproductive. But if the 
 government, or an association of individuals, made the 
 road, and imposed a toll to defray the expense, we do 
 not see how these writers could refuse to the outlay 
 the title of productive expenditure. It would follow, 
 that the very same labour and expense, if given gra- 
 tuitously, must be called unproductive, which, if a 
 charge had been made for it, would have been called 
 productive. 
 
 When these consequences of the purely arbitrary 
 classification to which we allude have been pointed 
 out and complained of, the only answer which we have 
 ever seen made to the objection is, that the line of 
 demarcation must be drawn somewhere, and that in 
 every classification there are intermediate cases, which 
 might have been included, with almost equal propriety, 
 either in the one class or in the other. 
 
 This answer appears to us to indicate the want of 
 a sufficiently accurate and discriminating perception, 
 what is the kind of inaccuracy which generally cannot 
 be avoided in a classification, and what is that other 
 kind of inaccuracy, from which it always may be, and 
 should be, exempt. 
 
 The classes themselves may be, mentally speaking, 
 perfectly definite, though it may not alwa3's be easy to 
 say to which of them a particular object belongs. 
 When it is uncertain in which of two classes an object 
 should be placed, if the classification be properly 
 made, and properly expressed, the uncertainty can turn 
 only upon a matter of fact. It is uncertain to which 
 class the object belongs, because it is doubtful whether 
 it possesses in a greater degree the characteristics of 
 the one class or those of the other. But the charac- 
 teristics themselves may be defined and distinguished
 
 80 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 with the nicest exactness, and always ought to be 
 so. Especially ought they in a case like the present, 
 because here it is only the distinction between the 
 ideas which is of any importance. That we should be 
 able with ease to portion out all employments between 
 the two classes, does not happen to be of any particular 
 consequence. 
 
 It is frequently said that classification is a mere 
 affair of convenience. This assertion is true in one 
 sense, but not if its meaning be, that the most proper 
 classification is that in which it is easiest to say whe- 
 ther an object belongs to one class or to the other. 
 The use of classification is, to fix attention upon the 
 distinctions which exist among things ; and that is the 
 best classification, which is founded upon the most 
 important distinctions, whatever be the facilities wliicli 
 it may afford of ticketing and arranging the different 
 objects which exist in nature. In fixing, therefore, the 
 meaning of the words productive and unproductive, we 
 ought to endeavour to render them significative of the 
 most important distinctions which, without too glaring 
 a violation of received usage, they can be made to 
 express. 
 
 We ought further, when we are restricted to the 
 employment of old words, to endeavour as far as 
 possible that it shall not be necessary to struggle 
 against the old associations with those words. We 
 should, if possible, give the words such a meaning, that 
 the propositions in which people are accustomed to use 
 them, shall as far as possible still be true ; and that the 
 feelings habitually excited by them, shall be such as the 
 things to which we mean to appropriate them ought 
 to excite. 
 
 We shp.n endeavour to unite these couaitions in the 
 result of the following inquiry.
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 81 
 
 111 whatever manner political economists may have 
 settled the definition of productive and unproductive 
 labour or consumption, the consequences which they 
 have drawn from the definition are nearly the same. 
 In proportion to the amount of the productive labour 
 and consumption of a country, the country, they all 
 allow, is enriched : in proportion to the amount of the 
 unproductive labour and consumption, the country is 
 impoverished. Productive expenditure they are accus- 
 tomed to view as a gain ; unproductive expenditure, 
 however useful, as a sacrifice. Unproductive expendi- 
 ture of what was destined to be expended productively, 
 they always characterise as a squandering of resources, 
 and call it profusion and prodigality. The productive 
 expenditure of that which might, without encroaching 
 upon capital, be expended unproductively, is called 
 saving, economy, frugality. Want, misery, and starva- 
 tion, are described as the lot of a nation which annu- 
 ally employs less and less of its labour and resources 
 in production ; growing comfort and opulence as the 
 result of an annual increase in the quantity of wealth 
 so employed. 
 
 Let us then examine what qualities in expendi- 
 ture, and in the employment of labour, are those from 
 which all the consequences above mentioned really 
 flow. 
 
 The end to which all labour and all expenditure are 
 directed, is twofold. Sometimes it is enjof/ment imme- 
 diately ; the fulfilment of those desires, the gratification 
 of which is wished for on its own account. Whenever 
 labour or expense is not incurred immediately for the 
 sake of enjoyment, and is yet not absolutely wasted, it 
 must be incurred for the purpose of enjoyment indi- 
 rectly or mediately ; by either repairing and perpetu- 
 ating, or adding, to ^q permanent sources of enjoyment. 
 
 o
 
 82 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 Sources of enjoyment may be accumulated and 
 stored up ; enjoyment itself cannot. The wealth of a 
 country consists of the sum total of the permanent 
 sources of enjoyment, whether material or immaterial, 
 contained in it : and labour or expenditure which tends 
 to augment or to keep ap these permanent sources, 
 should, we conceive, be termed productive. 
 
 Labour which is employed for the purpose of 
 directly affording enjoyment, such as the labour of a 
 performer on a musical instrument, we term unpro- 
 ductive labour. Whatever is consumed by such a per- 
 former, we consider as unproductively consumed : the 
 accumulated total of the sources of enjoyment which 
 the nation possesses, is diminished by the amount of 
 what he has consumed : whereas, if it had been given 
 to him in exchange for his services in producing food or 
 clothing, the total of the permanent sources of enjoy- 
 ment in the country might have been not diminished 
 but increased. 
 
 The performer on the musical instrument then is, 
 so far as respects that act, not a productive, but an un- 
 productive labourer. But what shall we say of the 
 workman who made the musical instrument ? He, most 
 persons would say, is a productive labourer ; and with 
 reason ; because the musical instrument is a permanent 
 source of enjoyment, which does not begin and end 
 with the enjoying, and therefore admits of being accu- 
 mulated. 
 
 But the slcill of the musician is a permanent source 
 of enjoyment, as well as the instrument which he plays 
 upon : and although skill is not a material object, but 
 a quality of an object, viz., of the hands and mind of 
 the performer ; nevertheless skill possesses exchange- 
 able value, is acquired by labour and capital, and is 
 capable of being stored and accumulated. Skill, there-
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 83 
 
 fore, must be considered as wealth ; and tlie labour and 
 funds emploj^ed in acquiring skill in anything tending 
 to the advantage or pleasure of mankind, must be 
 considered to be productively employed and expended. 
 
 The skill of a productive labourer is analogous to 
 the machinery he works with : neither of them is en- 
 joyment, nor conduces directly to it, but both conduce 
 indirectly to it, and both in the same way. If a spin- 
 ning-jenny be wealth, the spinner's skill is also wealth. 
 If the mechanic who made the spinning-jenny laboured 
 productively, the spinner also laboured p)roductively 
 when he was learning his trade : and what they both 
 consumed was consumed productively, that is to say, its 
 consumption did not tend to diminish, but to increase 
 the sum of the permanent sources of enjoyment in "the 
 country, by effecting a new creation of those sources, 
 more than equal to the amount of the consumption. 
 
 The skill of a tailor, and the implements he emploj^s, 
 contribute in the same way to the convenience of him 
 who wears the coat, namely, a remote way : it is the 
 coat itself which contributes immediately. The skill 
 of Madame Pasta, and the building and decorations 
 which aid the effect of her jDcrformance, contribute in 
 the same way to the enjoyment of the audience, namely, 
 an immediate way, without any intermediate instru- 
 mentality. The building and decorations are con- 
 sumed unproductively, and Madame Pasta labours and 
 consumes unproductively ; for the building is used and 
 worn out, and Madame Pasta performs, immediately 
 for the spectators' enjoyment, and without leaving, 
 as a consequence of the performance, any permanent 
 result possessing exchangeable value : consequently the 
 epithet unproductive must be equally applied to the 
 gradual wearing out of the bricks and mortar, the 
 nightly consumption of the more perishable " proper- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 ties" of the tlieatre, the labour of Madame Pasta in 
 acting, and of the orchestra in phiying. But not- 
 withstanding this, the architect who built the theatre 
 was a productive labourer ; so were the producers of 
 the perishable articles ; so were those who constructed 
 the musical instruments ; and so, we must be permitted 
 to add, were those who instructed the musicians, and 
 all persons who, by the instructions which they may 
 have given to Madame Pasta, contributed to the for- 
 mation of her talent. All these persons contributed 
 to the enjoyment of the audience in the same way, and 
 that a remote way, viz., b}^ the production of 2, perma- 
 nent source of enjoijmetit. 
 
 The difierence between this case, and the case of 
 the cotton spinner already adverted to, is this. The 
 spinning-jenny, and the skill of the cotton spinner, are 
 not only the result of productive labour, but are them- 
 selves productively consumed. The musical instru- 
 ment and the skill of the musician are equally the 
 result of productive labour, but are themselves unpro- 
 ductively consumed. 
 
 Let us now consider what kinds of labour, and of 
 consumption or expenditure, will be classed as pro- 
 ductive, and what as unproductive, according to this 
 rule. 
 
 The following are always productive : 
 
 Labour and expenditure, of which the direct object 
 or effect is the creation of some material product useful 
 or agreeable to mankind. 
 
 Labour and expenditure, of which the direct effect 
 and object are, to endow human or other animated 
 beings with faculties or qualities useful or agreeable 
 to mankind, and possessing exchangeable value. 
 
 Labour and expenditure, which without having for 
 their direct object the creation of any useful material
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 8o 
 
 product or bodily or mental faculty or quality, yet 
 tend indirectly to promote one or otlier of those 
 ends, and are exerted or incurred solely for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The following are partly productive and partly 
 unproductive, and cannot with propriety be ranged 
 decidedly with either class : 
 
 Labour or expenditure which does indeed create, 
 or promote the creation of, some useful material pro- 
 duct or bodily or mental faculty or quality, but which 
 is not incurred or exerted for that sole end ; having 
 also for another, and perhaps its principal end, enjoy- 
 ment, or the promotion of enjoyment. 
 
 Such are the labour of the judge, the legislator, 
 the police-officer, the soldier ; and the expenditure 
 incurred for their support. These functionaries pro- 
 tect and secure mankind in the exclusive possession of 
 such material products or acquired faculties as belong 
 to them ; and by the security which they so confer, 
 they indirectly increase production in a degree ftir 
 more than equivalent to the expense which is neces- 
 sary for their maintenance. But this is not the only 
 purpose for which they exist ; they protect mankind, 
 not merely in the possession of their permanent re- 
 sources, but also in their actual enjoyments ; and so 
 far, although highly useful, they cannot, conformably 
 to the distinction which we have attempted to lay 
 down, be considered productive labourers. 
 
 Such, also, are the labour and the wages of domestic 
 servants. Such persons are entertained mainly as 
 subservient to mere enjoyment; but most of them 
 occasionally, and some habitually, render services 
 which must be considered as of a productive nature ; 
 such as that of cookery, the last stage in the manufac- 
 ture of food ; or gardening, a branch of agriculture.
 
 80 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 The following are wliolly unproductive : 
 
 Labour exerted, and expenditure incurred, directly 
 and exclusively for the purpose of enjoyment, and not 
 calling into existence anything, whether substance or 
 quality, but such as begins and perishes in the enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 Labour exerted and expenditure incurred use- 
 lessly, or in pure waste, and yielding neither direct 
 enjojanent nor permanent sources of enjoyment. 
 
 It may be objected, that expenditure incurred even 
 for pure enjoyment promotes production indirectly, by 
 inciting to exertion. Thus the view of the splen- 
 dour of a rich establishment is supposed by some 
 writers to produce upon the mind of an indigent 
 spectator an earnest desire of enjoying the same 
 luxuries, and a consequent purpose of working with 
 vigour and diligence, and saving from his earnings, 
 thus increasing the productive capital of the country. 
 
 It is true that mankind are, for the most part, ex- 
 cited to productive industry solely by the desire of 
 subsequently consuming the result of their labour and 
 accumulation. The consumption called unproductive, 
 viz., that of which the direct result is enjoyment, is in 
 reality the end, to which production is only the means ; 
 and a desire for the end, is what alone impels any one 
 to have recourse to the means. 
 
 But, notwithstanding this, it is of the greatest 
 importance to mark the distinction between the labour 
 and the consumption which have enjoyment for their 
 immediate end, and the labour and the consumption of 
 which the immediate end is reproduction. Though 
 the sight of the former may still further stimulate that 
 desire for the enjoyments afforded by wealth, which 
 the mere knowledge, without the immediate view, 
 would suffice to excite (and without dwelling on the
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 87 
 
 consideration that if the example of a hirge ex- 
 penditure excites one individual to accumulation, it 
 encourages two to prodigal expense) ; still, if we look 
 only to the eft'ects which are intended, or to those 
 which immediately follow from the consumption, and 
 whose connexion with it can be distinctly traced, it 
 evidently renders a country poorer in the permanent 
 sources of enjoyment ; while reproductive consumption 
 leaves the country richer in these same sources. 
 Besides, if what is spent for mere pleasure promotes 
 indirectly the increase of wealth, it can only be by 
 inducing others not to expend on mere pleasure. 
 
 Before quitting the subject, one more observa- 
 tion should be added. It must not be supposed that 
 what is expended upon unproductive labourers is ne- 
 cessarily, the whole of it, unproductively consumed. 
 The unproductive labourers may save part of their 
 wages, and invest them in a productive employment. 
 
 It is not unusual to speak of what is paid in wages 
 to a labourer as being thereby consumed, as if all 
 profit and loss to the nation were to be seen in the 
 capitalist's account-book. What is paid for produc- 
 tive labour is said to be productively consumed ; what 
 is paid for unproductive labour is said to be consumed 
 unproductively. It would be proper to say, not that 
 it is productively or unproductively consumed, but pro- 
 ductively or unproductively expended ; otherwise, we 
 shall be obliged to say that it is consumed twice over ; 
 the first time unproductively, perhaps, and the second, 
 it may be, productively. 
 
 To pronounce in which way the wages of the labourer 
 are consumed, we must follow them into the labourer's 
 own hands. As much as is necessary to keep the 
 productive labourer in perfect health and fitness for 
 his employment, may be said to be consumed produc-
 
 88 THE WORDS PRODUCTIVE 
 
 tivelj. To this should be added what he expends 
 in rearing children to the age at which they become 
 capable of productive industry. If the state of the 
 market for labour be such as to afford him more, this 
 he may either save, or, as the common expression is, 
 he may spend it. If he saves any portion, this (unless 
 it be merely hoarded) he intends to employ produc- 
 tively, and it will be productively consumed. If he 
 spends it, the consumption is for enjoyment imme- 
 diately, and is therefore unproductive. 
 
 This suggests another correction in the established 
 language. Political economists generally define the 
 " net produce" to be that portion of the gross annual 
 produce of a country which remains after replacing 
 the capital annually consumed. This, as they proceed 
 to explain, consists of profits and rent; wages being 
 included in the other portion of the gross produce, 
 that which goes to replace capital. After this defi- 
 nition, they usually proceed to tell us that the net 
 produce, and that alone, constitutes the fund from 
 which a nation can accumulate, and add to its capital, 
 as also that which it can, without retrograding in 
 wealth, expand unproductively, or for enjoyment. 
 Now, it is impossible that both the above propositions 
 can be true. If the net produce is that which remains 
 after replacing capital, then net produce is not the 
 only fund out of which accumulation may be made : for 
 accumulation may be made from wages ; this is in all 
 countries one of the great sources, and in countries 
 like America perhaps the greatest source of accumula- 
 tion. If, on the other hand, it is desirable to reserve 
 the name of net produce to denote the fund available 
 for accumulation or for unproductive consumption, we 
 must define net produce differently. The definition 
 which appears the best adapted to render the ordi-
 
 AND UNPRODUCTIVE. 89 
 
 nary doctrines relating to net produce true, would be 
 this : 
 
 The net produce of a country is whatever is annu- 
 ally produced beyond what is necessary for maintaining 
 the stock of materials and implements unimpaired, 
 for keeping all productive labourers alive and in con- 
 dition for work, and for just keeping up their numbers 
 without increase. What is required for these pur- 
 poses, or, in other words, for keeping up the produc- 
 tive resources of the country, cannot be diverted from 
 its destination without rendering the nation as a whole 
 poorer. But all which is produced beyond this, whether 
 it be in the hands of the labourer, of the capitalist, or 
 of any of the numerous varieties of rent-owners, may 
 be taken for immediate enjoyment, without prejudice 
 to the productive resources of the community ; and 
 whatever part of it is not so taken, constitutes a clear 
 addition to the national capital, or to the permanent 
 sources of enjoyment.
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 ON PROFITS, AND INTEREST. 
 
 The profits of stock are the surplus which remams to 
 the capitalist after replacing his capital : and the ratio 
 which that surplus bears to the capital itself, is the rate 
 of profit. 
 
 This being the definition of profits, it might seem 
 natural to adopt, as a sufiicient theory in regard to the 
 rate of profit, that it depends upon the productive 
 power of capital. Some countries are favoured beyond 
 others, either by nature or art, in the means of pro- 
 duction. If the powers of the soil, or of machinery, 
 enable capital to produce what is^ necessary for re- 
 placing itself, and twenty per cent more, profits will 
 be twenty per cent ; and so on. 
 
 This, accordingly, is a popular mode of speaking on 
 the subject of profits ; but it has only the semblance, 
 not the reahty, of an explanation. The " productive 
 power of capital," though a common, and, for some 
 purposes, a convenient expression, is a delusive one. 
 Capital, strictly speaking, has no productive power. 
 The only productive power is that of labour ; assisted, 
 no doubt, by tools, and acting upon materials. That 
 23ortion of capital which consists of tools and materials, 
 may be said, perhaps, without any great impropriety, 
 to have a productive power, because they contribute, 
 along with labour, to the accomplishment of produc- 
 tion. But that portion of capital which consists of 
 wages, has no productive power of its own. Wages 
 have no productive power ; they are the price of a pro-
 
 PROFITS AND INTEREST. 91 
 
 ductive power. AVages do not contribute, along with 
 labour, to the production of commodities, no more than 
 the price of tools contributes along with the tools 
 themselves. If labour could be had without purchase, 
 wages might be dispensed with. That portion of 
 capital which is expended in the wages of labour, is 
 only the means by which the capitalist procures to 
 himself, in the way of purchase, the use of tliat labour 
 in which the power of production reall}' resides. 
 
 The proper view of capital is, that anything what- 
 ever, which a person possesses, constitutes his capital, 
 provided lie is able, and intends, to employ it, not in 
 consumption for the purpose of enjoyment, but in 
 possessing himself of the means of production, with the 
 intention of emplo3'ing those means productively. Now 
 the means of production are labour, implements, and 
 materials. The only productive power which anywhere 
 exists, is the productive power of labour, implements, 
 and materials. 
 
 We need not, on this account, altogether proscribe 
 the expression, " productive power of capital ;" but we 
 should carefully note, that it can only mean the quantity 
 of real productive power which the capitalist, by means 
 of his capital, can command. This may change, though 
 the productive power of labour remains the same. 
 AVages, for example, may rise ; and then, although all 
 the circumstances of production remain exactly as they 
 were before, the same capital will yield a less return, 
 because it will set in motion a less quantity of pro- 
 ductive labour. 
 
 We may, therefore, consider the capital of a pro- 
 ducer as measured by the means which he has of pos- 
 sessing himself of the different essentials of production : 
 namely, labour, and the various articles which labour 
 requires as materials, or of which it avails itself as aids.
 
 92 PROFITS 
 
 The ratio between the price which he has to pay for 
 these means of production, and the produce which they 
 enable him to raise, is the rate of his jjrofit. If he 
 must give for labour and tools four- fifths of what they 
 will produce, the remaining fifth will constitute his 
 profit, and will give him a rate of one in four, or twen- 
 ty-five per cent, on his outlay. 
 
 It is necessary here to remark, what cannot indeed 
 by any possibility be misunderstood, but might pos- 
 sibly be overlooked in cases where attention to it is 
 indispensable, viz., that we are speaking now of the 
 rate of profit, not the gross profit. If the capital of 
 the country is very great, a profit of only five per 
 cent upon it may be much more ample, may sup- 
 port a much larger number of capitalists and their 
 families in much greater affluence, than a profit of 
 twentj^-five per cent on the comparatively small 
 capital of a poor country. The (/ross profit of a 
 country is the actual amount of necessaries, conve- 
 niences, and luxuries,, which are divided among its 
 capitalists ; but whether this be large or small, the 
 rate of profit may be just the same. The rate of 
 profit is the proportion which the profit bears to the 
 capital ; which the surplus produce after replacing 
 the outlay, bears to the outlay. In short, if we com- 
 pare the price paid for labour and tools with what 
 that labour and those tools ysiSSS. produce, from this ratio 
 we may calculate the rate of profit. 
 
 As the gross profit may be very different though 
 the rate of profit be the same ; so also may the absolute 
 price paid for labour and tools be very different, and 
 yet the proportion between the price paid and the pro- 
 duce obtained may be just the same. For greater 
 clearness, let us omit, for the present, the consideration 
 of tools, materials, &c., and conceive production as the
 
 AND INTEREST. 93 
 
 result solely of labour. In a certain country, let us 
 suppose, the wages of each labourer are one quarter of 
 wheat j)er year, and 100 men can produce, in one3^ear, 
 120 quarters. Here the price paid for labour is to 
 the produce of that labour as 100 to 120, and profits 
 are 20 per cent. Suppose now that, in another 
 country, wages are just double what they are in the 
 country before supposed ; namely, two quarters of 
 wheat per year, for each labourer. But suppose, like- 
 wise, that the productive power of labour is double 
 what it is in the first country ; that by the greater 
 fertility of the soil, 100 men can produce 240 quarters, 
 instead of 120 as before. Here it is obvious, that the 
 real price paid for labour is twice as great in the one 
 country as in the other ; but the produce being also 
 twice as great, the ratio between the price of labour 
 and the produce of labour is still exactly the same : an 
 outlay of 200 quarters gives a return of 240 quarters, 
 and profits, as before, are 20 per cent. 
 
 Profits, then (meaning not gross profits, but the 
 rate of profit), depend (not upon the price of labour, 
 tools, and materials — but) upon the ratio between the 
 price of labour, tools, and materials, and the produce 
 of them : upon the proportionate share of the produce 
 of industry which it is necessary to offer, in order to 
 purchase that industry and the means of setting it in 
 motion. 
 
 We have hitherto spoken of tools, buildings, and 
 materials, as essentials of production, co-ordinate with 
 labour, and equally indispensable with it. This is true ; 
 but it is also true that tools, buildings, and materials, are 
 themselves the produce of labour; and that the only cause 
 (cases of monopoly excepted) of their having any value, 
 is the labour which is required for their production.
 
 94 PROFITS 
 
 If tools, buildings, and materials were the spon- 
 taneous gifts of nature, requiring no labour either in 
 order to produce or to appropriate them ; and if they 
 were thus bestowed upon mankind in indefinite quantity, 
 and without the possibility of being monopolized ; they 
 would still be as useful, as indispensable as they now 
 are; but since they could, like air and the light of the 
 sun, be obtained without cost or sacrifice, they would 
 form no part of the expenses of production, and no 
 portion of the produce would be required to be set 
 aside in order to replace the outlay made for these 
 purposes. The whole produce, therefore, after re- 
 placing the wages of labour, would be clear profit to 
 the capitalist. 
 
 Labour alone is the jDrimary means of production ; 
 " the original purchase-money which has been paid for 
 everything." Tools and materials, like other things, 
 have originally cost nothing but labour ; and have a 
 value in the market only because wages have been 
 paid for them. The labour employed in making the 
 tools and materials being added to the labour after- 
 wards employed in working up the materials by aid of 
 the tools, the sum total gives the whole of the labour 
 employed in the production of the completed com- 
 modity. In the ultimate analysis, therefore, labour 
 appears to be the only essential of production. To re- 
 place capital, is to replace nothing but the wages of 
 the labour employed. Consequently, the whole of the 
 surplus, after replacing wages, is profits. From this it 
 seems to follow, that the ratio between the wages of 
 labour and the produce of that labour gives the rate of 
 profit. And thus we arrive at Mr. Ricardo's prin- 
 ciple, that profits depend upon wages ; rising as wages 
 fall, and falling as wages rise. 
 
 To protect this proposition (the most perfect form
 
 AND INTEREST. 95 
 
 in which the law of profits seems to have heen yet 
 exhibited) against misapprehension, one or two expla- 
 natory remarks are required. 
 
 If by wages, be meant what constitutes the real 
 affluence of the labourer, the quantity of produce 
 which he receives in exchange for his labour ; the pro- 
 position that profits vary inversely as wages, will be 
 obviously false. Tlie rate of profit (as has been 
 already observed and exemplified) does not depend upon 
 the price of labour, but upon the proportion between 
 the price of labour and the produce of it. If the 
 produce of labour is large, the price of labour may 
 also be large without any diminution of the rate of 
 profit : and, in fact, the rate of profit is highest in 
 those countries (as, for instance. North America) 
 where the labourer is most largely remunerated. For 
 the wages of labour, though so large, bear a less 
 proportion to the abundant ])rodi(ce of labour, there 
 than elsewhere. 
 
 But this does not affect the truth of Mr, Ricardo's 
 principle as he himself understood it ; because an 
 increase of the labourer's real comforts was not con- 
 sidered by him as a rise of wages. In his language 
 wages were only said to rise, when they rose not in 
 mere quantity but in value. To the labourer himself 
 (he would have said) the quantify/ of his remunera- 
 tion is the important circumstance : but its value is 
 the only thing of importance to the person who pur- 
 chases his labour. 
 
 The rate of profits depends not upon absolute or 
 real wages, but upon the value of wages. 
 
 If, however, by value, Mr. Ricardo had meant 
 exchangeable value, his proposition would still have 
 been remote from the truth. Profits depend no more 
 upon the exchangeable value of the labourer's remu-
 
 96 PROFITS 
 
 neration, than upon its quantity. The truth is, that 
 by the exchangeable value is meant the quantity of 
 commodities which the labourer can purchase with 
 his wages ; so that when we say the exchangeable 
 value of wages, we say their quantity, under another 
 name. 
 
 Mr. Ricardo, however, did not use the word value 
 in the sense of exchangeable value. 
 
 Occasionally, in his writings, he could not avoid 
 using the word as other people use it, to denote value 
 in exchange. But he more frequently employed it in 
 a sense peculiar to himself, to denote cost of pro- 
 duction ; in other words, the quantity of labour required 
 to produce the article ; that being his criterion of cost 
 of production. Thus, if a hat could be made with 
 ten days' labour in France and with five days' labour 
 in England, he said that the value of a hat was 
 double in France of what it was in England. If a 
 quarter of corn could be produced a century ago with 
 half as much labour as is necessary at present, Mr. 
 Eicardo said that the value of a quarter of corn 
 had doubled. 
 
 Mr. Eicardo, therefore, would not have said that 
 ■wasres had risen, because a labourer could obtain two 
 pecks of flour instead of one, for a day's labour ; but 
 if last year he received, for a day's labour, something 
 which required eight hours' labour to produce it, and 
 this year something which requires nine hours, then 
 Mr. Eicardo would say that wages had risen. A rise 
 of wages, with Mr. Eicardo, meant an increase in the 
 cost of production of wages ; an increase in the number 
 of hours' labour which goes to produce the wages of a 
 day's labour ; an increase in the proportion of the 
 fruits of labour which the labourer receives for his 
 own share ; an increase in the ratio between the wages
 
 AND INTEREST. 97 
 
 of his labour and the produce of it. This is the 
 theory : the reasoning, of which it is the result, has 
 been given in the preceding paragraphs. 
 
 Some of Mr. Iticardo's followers, or more pro- 
 perly, of those who have adopted in most parti- 
 culars the views of political economy which his genius 
 was the first to open up, have given explanations 
 of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine to nearly the same effect 
 as the above, but in rather different terms. They 
 have said that profits depend not on absolute but 
 onjjrojjoHional wages : which they expounded to mean 
 the proportion which the labourers e/i masse receive of 
 the total produce of the country. 
 
 It seems, however, to be rather an unusual and 
 inconvenient use of language to speak of anything as 
 depending upon the wages of labour, and then to 
 explain that by wages of labour you do not mean the 
 wages of an individual labourer, but of all the 
 labourers in the country collectively. Mankind will 
 never agree to call anything a rise of wages, except a 
 rise of the wages of individual labourers, and it is 
 therefore preferable to employ language tending to fix 
 attention upon the wages of the individual. The 
 wages, however, on which profits are said to depend, 
 are undoubtedly proportional wages, namely, the pro- 
 portional wages of one labourer : that is, the ratio 
 between the wages of one labourer, and (not the 
 whole produce of the country, but) the amount of 
 what one labourer can produce ; the amount of that 
 portion of the collective produce of the industry of 
 the country, which may be considered as correspond- 
 ing to the labour of one single labourer. Propor- 
 tional wages, thus understood, may be concisely termed 
 the cost of production of wages ; or, more concisely 
 
 H
 
 98 PROFITS 
 
 still, tlie cost of wages, meaning tlieir cost in tlie 
 " original piircliase-money," labour. 
 
 We have now arrived at a distinct conception of 
 Mr. Eicardo's theory of profits in its most perfect 
 state. And this theory we conceive to be the basis 
 of the true theory of profits. All that remains to 
 do is to clear it from certain difficulties which still 
 surround it, and which, though in a greater degree 
 apparent than real, are not to be put aside as wholly 
 imaginary. 
 
 Though it is true that tools, materials, and build- 
 ings (it is to be wished that there were some com- 
 pact designation for all these essentials of produc- 
 tion taken together), are themselves the produce of 
 labour, and are only on that account to be ranked 
 among the expenses of production ; yet the ivhole of 
 their value is not resolvable into the wages of the 
 labourers by whom they were produced. The wages 
 of those labourers were paid by a capitalist, and that 
 capitalist must have the same profit upon his advances 
 as any other capitalist; when, therefore, he sells the tools 
 or materials, he must receive from the purchaser not 
 only the reimbursement of the wages he has paid, but 
 also as much more as will afford him the ordinary rate 
 of profit. And when the producer, after buying the 
 tools and employing them in his own occupation, 
 comes to estimate his gains, he must set aside a por- 
 tion of the produce to replace not only the wages 
 paid both by himself and by the tool-maker, but also 
 the profits of the tool-maker, advanced by himself out 
 of his own capital. 
 
 It is not correct, therefore, to state that all which 
 the capitalist retains after replacing wages forms his 
 profit. It is true the whole return to capital is 
 either wages or profits ; but profits do not compose
 
 AND INTEREST. 99 
 
 merely the surplus after replacing the outlay ; they 
 also enter into the outlay itself. Capital is expended 
 partly in paying or reimbursing wages, and partly in 
 paying the profits of other capitalists, whose con- 
 currence was necessary in order to bring together the 
 means of production. 
 
 If any contrivance, therefore, were devised by which 
 that part of the outlay which consists of previous 
 profits could be either wholly or partially dispensed 
 with, it is evident tliat more would remain as the 
 profit of the immediate producer ; while, as the 
 quantity of labour necessary to produce a given 
 quantity of the commodity would be unaltered, as well 
 as the quantity of produce paid for that labour, it 
 seems that the ratio between the price of labour and 
 its produce would be the same as before ; that the 
 cost of production of wages would be the same, pro- 
 portional wages the same, and yet profits difierent. 
 
 To illustrate this by a simple instance, let it be 
 supposed that one-third of the produce is sufficient to 
 replace the wages of the labourers who have been 
 immediately instrumental in the production ; that 
 another third is necessary to replace the materials used 
 and the fixed capital worn out in the process ; while 
 the remaining third is clear gain, being a profit of 
 50 per cent. Suppose, for example, that 60 agricul- 
 tural labourers, receiving 60 quarters of corn for their 
 wages, consume fixed capital and seed amounting 
 to the value of 60 quarters more, and that the result 
 of their operations is a produce of 180 quarters. 
 When we analj^se the price of the seed and tools 
 into its elements, we find that they must have been 
 the produce of the labour of 40 men : for the wages 
 of those 40, together with profit at the rate pre- 
 viously supposed (50 per cent) make up 60 quarters. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 PROFITS 
 
 The produce, therefore, consisting of 180 quarters, 
 is the result of the labour altogether of 100 men: 
 namely, the 60 first mentioned, and the 40 by 
 whose labour the fixed capital and the seed were 
 produced. 
 
 Let us now suppose, by way of an extreme case, 
 that some contrivance is discovered, whereby the pur- 
 poses to which the second third of the produce had 
 been devoted, may be dispensed with altogether : that 
 some means are invented by which the same amount 
 of produce may be procured without the assistance of 
 any fixed capital, or the consumption of any seed or 
 material sufficiently valuable to be worth calculating. 
 Let us, however, suppose that this cannot be done 
 without taking on a number of additional labourers, 
 equal to those required for producing the seed and 
 fixed capital ; so that the saving shall be only in the 
 profits of the previous capitalists. Let us, in con- 
 formity with this supposition, assume that in dis- 
 pensing with the fixed capital and seed, value 60 
 quarters, it is necessary to take on 40 additional 
 labourers, receiving a quarter of corn each, as before. 
 
 The rate of profit has evidently risen. It has 
 increased from 50 per cent to 80 per cent. A i-eturn 
 of 180 quarters could not before be obtained but by 
 an outlay of 120 quarters ; it can now be obtained by 
 an outlay of no more than 100. 
 
 Here, therefore, is an undeniable rise of profits. 
 Have wages, in the sense above attached to them, 
 fallen or not ? It would seem not. 
 
 The produce (180 quarters) is still the result of 
 the same quantity of labour as before, namely, the 
 labour of 100 men. A quarter of corn, therefore, is 
 still, as before, the produce of -{-^ of a man's labour for 
 'A. year. Each labourer receives, as before, one quarter
 
 AND INTEREST. 101 
 
 of corn ; each, therefore, receives the produce of | " 
 of a 3^ear's hibour of one man, that is, the same cost of 
 production ; each receives if of the produce of his 
 own labour^ that is, the same proportional wages ; and 
 the labourers collectively still receive the same pro- 
 portion, namely if, of the whole produce. 
 
 The conclusion, then, cannot be resisted, that 
 Mr. E-icardo's theory is defective : that the rate of 
 profits does not exclusively depend upon the value of 
 wages, in his sense, namely, the quantity of labour 
 of which the wages of a labourer are the produce ; 
 that it does not exclusively depend upon proportional 
 wages, that is, upon the proportion which the labourers 
 collectively receive of the whole produce, or the ratio 
 which the wages of an individual labourer bear to the 
 produce of his individual labour. 
 
 Those political economists, therefore, who have 
 always dissented from Mr, Ricardo's doctrine, or who, 
 having at first admitted, ended by discarding it, were 
 so far in the right ; but they committed a serious 
 error in this, that, with the usual one-sidedness of dis- 
 putants, they knew no medium between admitting 
 absolutely and dismissing entirely ; and saw no other 
 course than utterly to reject what it would have been 
 sufficient to modify. 
 
 It is remarkable how very slight a modification will 
 suffice to render Mr. Eicardo's doctrine completely 
 true. It is even doubtful whether he himself, if called 
 upon to adapt his expressions to this peculiar case, 
 would not have so explained his doctrine as to render 
 it entirely unobjectionable. 
 
 It is perfectly true, that, in the example already 
 made use of, a rise of profits takes place, while wages, 
 considered in respect to the quantity of labour of which 
 they are the produce, have not varied at all. But
 
 102 PROFITS 
 
 though wages are still the produce of the same 
 quantity of labour as before, the cost of production 
 of wages has nevertheless fallen ; for into cost of 
 production there enters another element besides 
 labour. 
 
 We have already remarked (and the very example 
 out of which the difficulty arose presupposes it) that 
 the cost of production of an article consists generally 
 of two parts, — the wages of the labour employed, and 
 the profits of those who, in any antecedent stage of 
 the production, have advanced any portion of those 
 wages. An article, therefore, may be the produce 
 of the same quantity of labour as before, and yet, 
 if any portion of the profits which the last pro- 
 ducer has to make good to previous producers can be 
 economized, the cost of production of the article is 
 diminished. 
 
 Now, in our example, a diminution of this sort is 
 supposed to have taken place in the cost of production 
 of corn. The production of that article has become 
 less costly, in the ratio of six to five. A quantity of 
 corn, the means of producing which could not pre- 
 viously have been secured but at an exj)ense of 120 
 quarters, can now be produced by means which 100 
 quarters are sufficient to purchase. 
 
 But the labourer is supposed to receive the same 
 quantity of corn as before. He receives one quarter. 
 The cost of production of wages has, therefore, fallen 
 one-sixth. A quarter of corn, which is the remunera- 
 tion of a single labourer, is indeed the produce of the 
 same quantity of labour as before; but its cost of pro- 
 duction is nevertheless diminished. It is now the 
 produce of \^ of a man's labour, and nothing else ; 
 whereas formerly it required for its production the 
 conjunction of that quantity of labour with an expen-
 
 AND INTEREST. 103 
 
 diture, in tlie form of reimbursement of profit, amount- 
 ing to one-fifth more. 
 
 If the cost of production of wages had remained 
 the same as before, profits could not have risen. Each 
 labourer received one quarter of corn ; but one quarter 
 of corn at that time was the result of the same cost of 
 production, as li quarter now. In order, therefore, 
 that each labourer should receive the same cost of 
 production, each must now receive one quarter of corn, 
 plus one-fifth. The labour of 100 men could not be 
 purchased at this price for less than 120. quarters ; and 
 the produce, 180 quarters, would yield only 50 per 
 cent., as first supposed.* 
 
 It is, therefore, strictly true, that the rate of profits 
 varies inversely as the cost of production of wages. 
 Profits cannot rise, unless the cost of production of 
 wages falls exactly as much ; nor fall, unless it rises. 
 
 The proof of this position has been stated in figures, 
 and in a particular case : we shall now state it in gene- 
 ral terms, and for all cases. 
 
 We have supposed, for simplicity, that wages are 
 paid in the finished commodity. The agricultural 
 labourers, in our example, were paid in corn, and if we 
 had called them weavers, we should have supposed 
 them to be paid in cloth. This supposition is allow- 
 able, for it is obviously of no consequence, in a question 
 
 * It would be easy to go over in the same manner 
 any other case. For instance, we may suppose, that, instead 
 of dispensing with the whole of the fixed capital, material, &c., 
 and taking on labourers in equal number to those by whom 
 these were produced, half only of the fixed capital and material is 
 dispensed with ; so that, instead of 60 labourers and a fixed capital 
 worth 60 quarters of corn, wg have 80 labourers and a fixed capital 
 worth .SO. The numerical statement of this case is more intricate 
 than that in the text, but the result is not different.
 
 104 PROFITS 
 
 of value, or cost of production, what precise article we 
 assume as the medium of exchange. The supposition 
 has, besides, the recommendation of being conformable 
 to the most ordinary state of the facts ; for it is by the 
 sale of his own finished article that each capitalist 
 obtains the means of hiring labourers to renew the pro- 
 duction ; which is virtually the same thing as if, instead 
 of selling the article for money and giving the money 
 to his labourers, he gave the article itself to the 
 labourers, and they sold it for their daily bread. 
 
 Assuming, therefore, that the labourer is paid in 
 the very article he produces, it is evident that, when 
 any saving of expense takes place in the production of 
 that article, if the labourer still receives the same cost 
 of production as before, he must receive an increased 
 quantity, in the very same ratio in which the produc- 
 tive power of capital has been increased. But, if so, 
 the outlay of the capitalist will bear exactly the same 
 proportion to the return as it did before ; and profits 
 will not rise. 
 
 The variations, therefore, in the rate of profits, and 
 those in the cost of production of wages, go hand in 
 hand, and are inseparable. Mr. Ricardo's principle, 
 that profits cannot rise unless wages fall, is strictly 
 true, if by low wages be meant not merely wages 
 which are the produce of a smaller quantity of labour, 
 but wages which are produced at less cost, reckon- 
 ing labour and previous profits together. But the 
 interpretation which some economists have put upon 
 Mr. Kicardo's doctrine, when they expkiin it to mean 
 that profits depend upon the proportion which the 
 labourers collectively receive of the aggregate produce, 
 will not hold at all ; for that, in our first example, 
 remained the same, and yet profits rose. 
 
 The only expression of the law of profits, which
 
 AND INTEREST. 105 
 
 seems to be correct, is, tliat they depend upon the cost 
 of production of wages. This must be received as the 
 ultimate princij)le. 
 
 From tliis may be deduced all the corollaries which 
 Mr, Ricardo and others have drawn from his theory of 
 profits as expounded by himself. The cost of produc- 
 tion of the wages of one labourer for a year, is the 
 result of two concurrent elements or factors, — viz., 1st, 
 the quantity of commodities which the state of the 
 labour market affords to him ; 2ndly, the cost of pro- 
 duction of each of those commodities. It follows, that 
 the rate of profits can never rise but in conjunction 
 with one or other of two changes, — 1st, a diminished 
 remuneration of the labourer ; or, 2ndly, an improve- 
 ment in production, or an extension of commerce, by 
 which any of the articles habitually consumed by the 
 labourer may be obtained at smaller cost. (If the 
 improvement be in any article which is not consumed 
 by the labourer, it merely lowers the price of that 
 article, and thereby benefits capitalists and all other 
 people so far as they are consumers of that particular 
 article, and may be said to increase gross profit, but 
 not the rate of profit.) 
 
 So, on the otlier hand, the rate of profit cannot fall, 
 unless concurrently with one of two events: 1st, an 
 improvement in the labourer's condition ; or, 2ndly, an 
 increased difficulty of producing or importing some 
 article which the labourer habitually consumes. The 
 progress of population and cultivation has a tendency 
 to lower profits through the latter of these two 
 channels, owing to the well known law of the appli- 
 cation of capital to land, that a double capital does 
 not ceteris paribus yield a double produce. There is, 
 therefore, a tendency in the rate of profits to fall with 
 the progress of society. But there is also an antago-
 
 106 PROFITS 
 
 nist tendency of j)rofits to rise, by the successive intro- 
 duction of improvements in agriculture, and in the 
 production of those manufactured articles which the 
 labourers consume. Supposing, therefore, that the 
 actual comforts of the labourer remain the same, pro- 
 fits will fall or rise, according as population, or improve- 
 ments in the production of food and other necessaries, 
 advance fastest. 
 
 The rate of profits, therefore, tends to fall from 
 the following causes: — 1. An increase of capital be- 
 yond population, producing increased competition for 
 labour ; 2. An increase of population, occasioning a 
 demand for an increased quantity of food, which 
 must be produced at a greater cost. The rate of 
 profits tends to rise from the following causes : — 1. 
 An increase of population beyond capital, producing 
 increased competition for employment; 2. Improve- 
 ments producing increased cheapness of necessaries, 
 and other articles habitually consumed by the labourer. 
 
 The circumstances which regulate the rate of 
 interest have usually been treated, even by professed 
 writers on political economy, in a vague, loose, and 
 unscientific manner. It has, however, been felt that 
 there is some connexion between the rate of interest 
 and the rate of profits; that (to use the words of 
 Adam Smith) much will be given for money, when 
 much can be made of it. It has been felt, also, that 
 the fluctuations in the market-rate of interest from 
 day to day, are determined, like other matters of 
 bargain and sale, by demand and supply. It has, 
 therefore, been considered as an established principle, 
 that the rate of interest varies from day to day 
 according to the quantity of capital offered or called 
 for on loan ; but conforms on the average of years to a
 
 AND INTEREST. 107 
 
 standard determined by the rate of profits, and bear- 
 ing some proportion to that rate— but a proportion 
 which few attempts have been made to define. 
 
 In consequence of these views, it has been customary 
 to judge of the general rate of profits at any time or 
 place, by the rate of interest at tliat time and place : it 
 being supposed that the rate of interest, though liable 
 to temporary fluctuations, can never vary for any long 
 period of time unless profits vary ; a notion wdiich 
 appears to us to be erroneous. 
 
 It was observed by Adam Smith, that profits 
 may be considered as divided into two parts, of 
 which one may properly be considered as the remu- 
 neration for the use of the capital itself, the other as 
 the reward of the labour of superintending its employ- 
 ment ; and that the former of these will correspond 
 with the rate of interest. The producer who borrows 
 capital to employ it in his business, will consent to 
 pay, for the use of it, all that remains of the profits he 
 can make by it, after reserving what he considers 
 reasonable remuneration for the trouble and risk 
 which he incurs by borrowing and employing it. 
 
 This remark is just ; but it seems necessary to give 
 greater precision to the ideas which it involves. 
 
 The difference between the profit which can be 
 made by the use of capital, and the interest which will 
 be paid for it, is rightly characterized as wages of 
 superintendance. But to infer from this that it is 
 regulated by entirely the same principles as other 
 wages, would be to push the analogy too far. It is 
 wages, but wages paid by a commission upon the 
 capital employed. If the general rate of profit is 10 
 per cent, and the rate of interest 5 per cent, the 
 wages of superintendance will be 5 per cent ; and 
 though one borrower employ a capital of 100,000/.,
 
 108 PROFITS 
 
 another no more than 100/., the labour of both will 
 be rewarded with the same per centage, though, in the 
 one case, this symbol will represent an income of 5/., 
 in the other case, of 5000/. Yet it cannot be pre- 
 tended that the labour of the two borrowers diiFers in 
 this proportion. The rule, therefore, that equal quan- 
 tities of labour of equal hardness and skill are equally 
 remunerated, does not hold of this kind of labour. 
 The wages of any other labour are here an inapplicable 
 criterion. 
 
 The wages of superinten dance are distinguished 
 from ordinary wages by another peculiarity, that they 
 are not paid in advance out of capital, like the wages 
 of all oth'er labourers, but merge in the profit, and are 
 not realized until the production is completed. This 
 takes them entirely out of the ordinary law of wages. 
 The wages of labourers who are paid in advance, are 
 regulated by the number of competitors compared 
 with the amount of capital ; the labourers can consume 
 no more than what has been previously accumulated. 
 But there is no such limit to the remuneration of a 
 kind of labour which is not paid for out of wealth 
 previously accumulated, but out of that produce which 
 it is itself employed in calling into existence. 
 
 When these circumstances are duly weighed, it 
 will be perceived, that although profit may be cor- 
 rectly analyzed into interest and wages of superintend- 
 ance, we ought not to lay it down as the law of 
 interest, that it is profits minus the wages of super- 
 intendance. Of the two expressions, it would be 
 decidedly the more correct, that the wages of super- 
 intendance are regulated by the rate of interest, or 
 are equal to profits minus interest. In strict propriety, 
 neither expression would be allowable. Interest, and 
 the wages of superintendance, can scarcely be said to
 
 AND INTEREST. 109 
 
 depend upon one another. They are to one another in 
 the same relation as wages and profits are. They are 
 like two buckets in a well; when one rises, the other 
 descends, but neither of the two motions is the cause 
 of the other ; both are simultaneous effects of the 
 same cause, the turning of the windlass. 
 
 There are among the capitalists ef every country a 
 considerable number who are habituall}^ and almost 
 necessarily, lenders ; to whom scarcely any difference 
 between what they could receive for their money and 
 what could be made by it, would be an equivalent for 
 incurring the risk and labour of carrying on business. 
 In this predicament is the property of widows and 
 orphans ; of many public bodies ; of charitable institu- 
 tions ; most property which is vested in trustees ; and 
 the property of a great number of persons unused to 
 business, and who have a distaste for it, or whose 
 other occupations prevent their engaging in it. How 
 large a proportion of the property lent to the nation 
 comes under this description, has been pointed out 
 in Mr. T<3oke's Consider ations on the State of the 
 Currency. 
 
 There is another large class, consisting of bankers, 
 bill-brokers, and others, who are money-lenders by 
 profession ; who enter into that profession with the 
 intention of making such gains as it will yield them, 
 and who would not be induced to change their busi- 
 ness by any but a very strong pecuniary inducement. 
 
 There is, therefore, a large class of persons who 
 are habitually lenders. On the other hand, all per- 
 sons in business may be considered as habitually bor- 
 rowers. Except in times of stagnation, they are all 
 desirous of extending their business bej^ond their own 
 capital, and are never desirous of lending any portion
 
 1 1 PROFITS 
 
 of their capital except for very short periods, during 
 which they cannot advantageously invest it in their 
 own trade. 
 
 There is, in short, a productive class, and there is, 
 besides, a class technically styled the monied class, 
 who live upon the interest of their capital, without 
 engaging personally in the work of production. 
 
 The class of borrowers may be considered as un- 
 limited. There is no quantity of capital that could 
 be offered to be lent, which the productive classes 
 would not be willing to borrow, at any ratt; of interest 
 which would afford them the slightest excess of profit 
 above a bare equivalent for the additional risk, in- 
 curred by that transaction, of the evils attendant on 
 insolvency. The only assignable limit to the inclina- 
 tion to borrow, is the power of giving security : the 
 producers would find it difficult to borrow more than 
 an amount equal to their own capital. If more than 
 half the capital of the country were in the hands of 
 persons who preferred lending it to engaging per- 
 sonally in business, and if the surplus were greater than 
 could be invested in loans to Government, or in mort- 
 gages upon the property of unproductive consumers ; 
 the competition of lenders would force down the rate 
 of interest very low. A certain portion of the monied 
 class would be obliged either to sacrifice their pre- 
 dilections by engaging in business, or to lend on 
 inferior security ; and they would accordingly accept, 
 where they could obtain good security, an abatement 
 of interest equivalent to the difference of risk. 
 
 This is an extreme case. Let us put an extreme 
 case of a contrary kind. Suppose that the wealthy 
 people of any country, not relishing an idle life, and 
 having a strong taste for gainful labour, were gene- 
 rally indisposed to accept of a smaller income in order
 
 AND INTEREST. Ill 
 
 to be relieved from the labour and anxiety of business. 
 Every producer in flourishing circumstances would 
 be eager to borrow, and few willing to lend. Under 
 these circumstances the rate of interest would differ 
 very little from the rate of profit. The trouble of 
 managing a business is not proportionally increased 
 by an increase of the magnitude of the business ; and 
 a very small surplus profit above the rate of interest, 
 would therefore be a sufficient inducement to capitalists 
 to borrow. 
 
 We may even conceive a people whose habits 
 were such, that in order to induce them to lend, it 
 might be necessary to offer them a rate of interest 
 fully equal to the ordinary rate of profit. In that 
 case, of course, the productive classes would scarcely 
 ever borrow. But government, and the unproductive 
 classes, who do not borrow in order to make a profit 
 by the loan, but from the pressure of a real or sup- 
 posed necessity, might still be ready to borrow at this 
 high rate. 
 
 Although the inclination to borrow has no fixed 
 or necessary limit except the power of giving security, 
 yet it always, in point of fact, stops short of this ; from 
 the uncertainty of the prospects of any individual 
 producer, which generally indisposes him to involve 
 himself to the full extent of his means of payment. 
 There is never any permanent want of market for 
 things in general ; but there may be so for the com- 
 modity which any one individual is producing ; and 
 even if there is a demand for the commodity, people 
 may not buy it of him but of some other. There are, 
 consequently, never more than a portion of the pro- 
 ducers, the state of whose business encourages them to 
 add to their capital by borrowing ; and even these are 
 disposed to borrow only as much as they see an imme-
 
 1 1 2 PROFITS 
 
 diate prospect of profitably employing. There is, 
 therefore, a practical limit to the demands of bor- 
 rowers at any given instant; and when these demands 
 are all satisiied, any additional capital offered on loan 
 can find an investment onl}^ b}' a reduction of the rate 
 of interest. 
 
 The amount of borrowers being given (and by the 
 amount of borrowers is here meant the aggregate 
 sum which people are willing to borrow at some 
 given rate), the rate of interest will depend upon 
 the quantity of capital owned by people who are 
 unwilling or unable to engage in trade. The circum- 
 stances which determine this, are, on the one hand, 
 the degree in which a taste for business, or an aver- 
 sion to it, happens to be prevalent among the classes 
 possessed of property ; and on the other hand, the 
 amount of the annual accumulation from the earnings 
 of labour. Those who accumulate from their wages, 
 fees, or salaries, have, of course, (speaking generally) 
 no means of investing their savings except by lending 
 them to others : their occupations prevent them from 
 personally superintending any employment. 
 
 Upon these circumstances, then, the rate of interest 
 depends, the amount of borrowers being given. And 
 the counter-proposition equally holds, that, the above 
 circumstances being given, the rate of interest depends 
 upon the amount of borrowers. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that when the rate of interest 
 has adjusted itself to the existing state of the circum- 
 stances which affect the disposition to borrow and to 
 lend, a war breaks out, which induces government, for 
 a series of years, to borrow annually a large sum of 
 money. During the whole of this period, the rate of 
 interest will remain considerably above what it was 
 before, and what it will be afterwards.
 
 AND INTKllEST. 113 
 
 Before the commencement of the supposed war, 
 all persons who were supposed to lend at the then 
 rate of interest, had found borrowers, and their capital 
 was invested. This may be assumed ; for if any 
 capital had been seeking for a borrower at the exist- 
 ing rate of interest, and unable to find one, its owner 
 would have offered it at a rate slightly below the 
 existing rate. He would, for instance, have bought 
 into the funds, at a slight advance of price ; and thus 
 set at liberty the capital of some fundholder, who, the 
 funds yielding a lower interest, would have been 
 obliged to accept a lower interest from individuals. 
 
 Since, then, aU who were willing to lend their 
 capital at the market rate, have already lent it, 
 Government will not be able to borrow unless by 
 offering higher interest. Though, with the exist- 
 ing habits of the possessors of disposable capital, an 
 increased number cannot be found who are willing to 
 lend at the existing rate, there are doubtless some who 
 will be induced to lend by the temptation of a higher 
 rate. The same temptation will also induce some per- 
 sons to invest, in the purchase of the new stock, what 
 they would otherwise have expended unprodactively 
 in increasing their establishments, or productively, in 
 improving their estates. The rate of interest will 
 rise just sufficiently to call forth an increase of lenders 
 to the amount required. 
 
 This we apprehend to be the cause why the rate 
 of interest in this country was so high as it is well 
 known to have been during the last war. It is, there- 
 fore, by no means to be inferred, as some have done, 
 that the general rate of profits was unusually high 
 during the same period, because interest was so. Sup- 
 posing the rate of profits to have been precisely the 
 same during the war, as before or after it, the rate 
 
 I
 
 114 PROFITS 
 
 of interest would nevertheless have risen, from the 
 causes and in the manner above described. 
 
 The practical use of the preceding investigation is, 
 to moderate the confidence with which inferences are 
 frequently drawn with respect to the rate of profit 
 from evidence regarding the rate of interest ; and to 
 shew that although the rate of profit is one of the 
 elements which combine to determine the rate of 
 interest, the latter is also acted upon by causes pecu- 
 liar to itself, and may either rise or fall, both tem- 
 porarily and permanently, while the general rate of 
 profits remains unchanged. 
 
 The introduction of banks, which perform the 
 function of lenders and loan-brokers, with or without 
 that of issuers of paper-money, produces some further 
 anomalies in the rate of interest, which have not, so 
 far as we are aware, been hitherto brought within the 
 pale of exact science. 
 
 If bankers were merely a class of middlemen 
 between the lender and the borrower ; if they merely 
 received deposits of capital from those who had it lying 
 unemployed in their hands, and lent this, together 
 with their own capital, to the productive classes, 
 receiving interest for it, and paying interest in their 
 turn to those who had placed capital in their hands ; 
 the effect of the operations of banking on the rate of 
 interest would be to lower it in some slight degree. 
 The banker receives and collects together sums of 
 money much too small, when taken individually, to 
 render it worth while for the owners to look out 
 for an investment, but which in the aggregate form 
 a considerable amount. This amount may be consi- 
 dered a clear addition to the productive capital of the 
 country; at least, to the capital in activity at any
 
 AND INTEREST. 115 
 
 moment. And as this addition to the capital accrues 
 wholly to that part of it which is not employed b}'- 
 the owners, but lent to other producers, the natural 
 effect is a diminution of the rate of interest. 
 
 The banker, to the extent of his own private 
 capital (the expenses of his business being first paid), 
 is a lender at interest. But, being subject to risk and 
 trouble fully equal to that which belongs to most 
 other employments, he cannot be satisfied with tlie 
 mere interest even of his whole capital : he must have 
 the ordinary profits of stock, or he will not engage 
 in the business: the state of banking must be such 
 as to hold out to him the prospect of adding to 
 the interest of what remains of his own capital after 
 paying the expenses of his business, interest upon 
 capital deposited with him, in sufficient amount to 
 make up, after paying the expenses, the ordinary 
 profit which could be derived from his own capital 
 in any productive employment. This will be accom- 
 plished in one of two ways. 
 
 1. If the circumstances of society are such as to 
 furnish a ready investment of disposable capital ; (as 
 for instance in London, where the public funds and 
 other securities, of undoubted stability, and affording 
 great advantages for receiving the interest without 
 trouble and realizing the principle without difficulty 
 when required, tempt all persons who have sums of 
 importance lying idle, to invest them on their own 
 account without the intervention of any middleman ;) 
 the deposits with bankers consist chiefly of small sums 
 likely to be w^anted in a very short period for current 
 expenses, and the interest on which would seldom be 
 worth the trouble of calculating it. Bankers, there- 
 fore, do not allow any interest on their deposits. Alter 
 
 I 2
 
 116 PROFITS 
 
 paying the expenses of their business, all the rest of 
 the interest they receive is clear gain. But as the 
 circumstances of banking, as of all other modes of 
 employing capital, will on the average be such as 
 to afford to a person entering into the business a 
 prospect of realizing the ordinary, and no more than 
 the ordinary, profits upon his own capital ; the gains 
 of each banker by the investment of his deposits, will 
 not on the average exceed what is necessary to make 
 up his gains on his own capital to the ordinary rate. 
 It is, of course, competition, which brings about this 
 limitation. Whether competition operates by lower- 
 ing the rate of interest, or by dividing the business 
 among a larger number, it is difficult to decide. Pro- 
 bably it operates in both ways ; but it is by no means 
 impossible that it may operate in the latter way 
 alone : just as an increase in the number of physicians 
 does not lower the fees, though it diminishes an aver- 
 age competitor's chance of obtaining them. 
 
 It is not impossible that the disposition of the lend- 
 ers might be such, that they would cease to lend rather 
 than acquiesce in any reduction of the rate of interest. 
 If so, the arrival of a new lender, in the person of a 
 banker of deposit, would not lower the rate of interest 
 in any considerable degree. A slight fall would take 
 place, and with that exception things would be as be- 
 ibre, except that the capital in the hands of the banker 
 would have put itself into the place of an equal por- 
 tion of capital belonging to other lenders, who would 
 themselves have engaged in business {e.g., by sub- 
 scribing to some joint-stock company, or entering into 
 commandite). Bankers' profits would then be limited 
 to the ordinary rate chiefly by the division of the 
 business among many banks, so that each on the
 
 AND INTEREST. 117 
 
 average would receive no more interest on his depo- 
 sits than would suffice to make up the interest on 
 his own capital to the ordinary rate of profit after 
 paying all expenses. 
 
 2. But if the circumstances of society render it 
 difficult and inconvenient for persons who wish to live 
 upon the interest of their money, to seek an invest- 
 ment for themselves, the bankers become agents foi 
 this specific purpose : large as well as small sums are 
 deposited with them, and they allow interest to their 
 customers. Such is the practice of the Scotch banks, 
 and of most of the country banks in England. Their 
 customers, not living at any of the great seats of 
 money transactions, prefer entrusting their capital to 
 somebody on the spot, whom they know, and in whom 
 they confide. He invests their money on the best 
 terms he can, and pays to them such interest as he can 
 afibrd to give ; retaining a compensation for his own 
 risk and trouble. This compensation is fixed by the 
 competition of the market. The rate of interest is no 
 further lowered by this operation, than inasmucli as it 
 brings tofyether the lender and the borrower in a safe 
 and expeditious manner. The lender incurs less risk^ 
 and a larger proportion, therefore, of the holders of 
 capital are willing to be lenders. 
 
 When a banker, in addition to his other functions, 
 is also an issuer of paper money, he gains an advantage 
 similar to that which the London bankers derive from 
 their deposits. To the extent to which he can put 
 forth his notes, he has so much the more to lend, 
 without himself having to pay any interest for it. 
 
 If the paper is convertible, it cannot get into cir- 
 culation permanently without displacing specie, which 
 goes abroad and brings back an equivalent value. 
 To the extent of this value, there is an increase of
 
 lis PROFITS 
 
 the capital of the country ; and the increase accrues 
 solely to that part of the capital which is employed in 
 loans. 
 
 If the paper is inconvertible, and instead of dis- 
 placing specie depreciates the currency, the banker by 
 issuing it levies a tax on every person who has money 
 in his hands or due to him. He thus appropriates to 
 himself a portion of the capital of other people, and a 
 portion of their revenue. The capital might have 
 been intended to be lent, or it might have been in- 
 tended to be employed by the owner : such part of it 
 as was intended to be employed by the owner now 
 changes its destination, and is lent. The revenue 
 was either intended to be accumulated, in which case 
 it had already become capital, or it was intended to 
 be spent : in this last case, revenue is converted into 
 capital : and thus, strange as it may appear, the depre- 
 ciation of the currency, when effected in this way, 
 operates to a certain extent as a forced accumulation. 
 This, indeed, is no palliation of its iniquity. Though 
 A might have spent his property unproductively, B 
 ought not to be permitted to rob him of it because 
 B will expend it on productive labour. 
 
 In any supposable case, however, the issue of 
 paper money by bankers increases the proportion of 
 the whole capital of the country which is destined to 
 be lent. The rate of interest must therefore fall, until 
 some of the lenders give over lending, or until the 
 increase of borrowers absorbs the whole. 
 
 But a fall of the rate of interest, sufficient to 
 enable the money market to absorb the whole of the 
 paper-loans, may not be sufficient to reduce the profits 
 of a lender who lends what costs him nothing, to the 
 ordinary rate of profit upon his capital. Here, there- 
 fore, competition will operate chiefly by dividing the
 
 AND INTEREST. 119 
 
 business. The notes of each bank will be confined 
 within so narrow a district, or will divide the supply 
 of a district with so many other banks, that on the 
 average each will receive no larger amount of interest 
 on his notes than will make up the interest on his 
 own capital to the ordinary rate of profit. 
 
 Even in this way, however, the competition has 
 the effect, to a certain limited extent, of lowering the 
 rate of interest ; for the power of bankers to receive 
 interest on more than their capital attracts a greater 
 amount of capital into the banking business than would 
 otherwise flow into it ; and this greater capital being 
 all lent, interest will fall in consequence.
 
 ESSAY Y. 
 
 ON THE DEFINITION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY; AND ON 
 THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION PKOFER TO IT. 
 
 It might be imagined, on a superficial view of the 
 nature and objects of definition, that the definition of 
 a science would occupy the same place in the chrono- 
 logical which it commonly does in the didactic order. 
 As a treatise on any science usually commences with 
 an attempt to express, in a brief formula, what the 
 science is, and wherein it differs from other sciences, 
 so, it might be supposed, did the framing of such a 
 formula naturally precede the successful cultivation of 
 the science. 
 
 This, however, is far from having been the case. 
 The definition of a science has almost invariably not 
 preceded, but followed, the creation of the science 
 itself Like the wall of a city, it has usually been 
 erected, not to be a receptacle for such edifices as 
 might afterwards spring up, but to circumscribe an 
 aggregation already in existence. Mankind did not 
 measure out the ground for intellectual cultivation 
 before they began to plant it ; they did not divide the 
 field of human investigation into regular compart- 
 ments first, and then begin to collect truths for the 
 purpose of being therein deposited ; they proceeded 
 in a less systematic manner. As discoveries were 
 gathered in, either one by one, or in groups resulting 
 from the continued prosecution of some uniform course 
 of inquiry, the truths which were successfully brought 
 into store cohered and became agglomerated accord-
 
 DEFINITION AND METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 121 
 
 ing to their individual affinities. Without any inten- 
 tional classification, the facts classed themselves. They 
 became associated in the mind, according to their 
 general and obvious resembhmces ; and the aggregates 
 thus formed, having to be frequently spoken of as 
 aggregates, came to be denoted by a common name. 
 Any body of truths which had thus acquired a collec- 
 tive denomination, was called a science. It was long 
 before this fortuitous classification was felt not to be 
 sufficiently precise. It was in a more advanced stage 
 of the progress of knowledge that mankind became 
 sensible of the advantage of ascertaining whether the 
 facts which they had thus grouped together were dis- 
 tinguished from all other facts by any common proper- 
 ties, and what these were. The first attempts to 
 answer this question were commonly very unskilful, 
 and the consequent definitions extremely imperfect. 
 
 And, in truth, there is scarcely any investigation in 
 the whole body of a science requiring so high a degree 
 of analysis and abstraction, as the inquiry, what the 
 science itself is ; in other words, what are the proper- 
 ties common to all the truths composing it, and distin- 
 guishing them from all other truths. Many persons, 
 accordingly, who are profoundly conversant with the 
 details of a science, would be very much at a loss to 
 supply such a definition of the science itself as should 
 not be liable to well-grounded logical objections. 
 From this remark, we cannot except the authors of 
 elementary scientific treatises. The definitions which 
 those works furnish of the sciences, for the most part 
 either do not fit them — some being too wide, some too 
 narrow — or do not go deep enough into them, but 
 define a science by its accidents, not its essentials ; by 
 some one of its properties which may, indeed, serve 
 the purpose of a distinguishing mark, but which is of
 
 122 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 too little importance to have ever of itself led man- 
 kind to give the science a name and rank as a separate 
 object of study. 
 
 The definition of a science must, indeed, be placed 
 among that class of truths which Dugald Stewart had 
 in view, when he observed that the first principles of 
 all sciences belong to the philosophy of the human 
 mind. The observation is just ; and the first principles 
 of all sciences, including the definition of them, have 
 consequently participated hitherto in the vagueness 
 and uncertainty which has pervaded that most difficult 
 and unsettled of all branches of knowledge. If we 
 open any book, even of mathematics or natural philo- 
 sophy, it is impossible not to be struck with the misti- 
 ness of what we find represented as preliminary and 
 fundamental notions, and the very insufficient manner 
 in which the propositions which are palmed upon us 
 as first principles seem to be made out, contrasted 
 with the lucidity of the explanations and the conclu- 
 siveness of the proofs as soon as the writer enters 
 upon the details of his subject. Whence comes this 
 anomaly? Wliy is the admitted certainty of the 
 results of those sciences in no way prejudiced by the 
 want of solidity in their premises ? How happens it 
 that a firm superstructure lias been erected upon an 
 unstable foundation ? Tiie solution of the paradox is, 
 that what are called first principles, are, in truth, last 
 principles. Instead of being the fixed point from 
 whence the chain of proof which supports all the rest 
 of the science hangs suspended, they are themselves 
 the remotest link of the chain. Though presented as 
 if all other truths were to be deduced from them, they 
 are the truths which are last arrived at ; the result of 
 the last stage of generalization, or of the last and 
 subtlest process of analysis, to which the particular
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 123 
 
 truths of the science can be subjected ; those parti- 
 cular trutlis having been previously been ascertained 
 by the evidence proper to their own nature. 
 
 Like other sciences, Political Economy has re- 
 mained destitute of a definition framed on strictly 
 logical principles, or even of, what is more easily to be 
 had, a definition exactly co-extensive with the thing 
 defined. This has not, perhaps, caused the real bounds 
 of the science to be, in this country at least, prac- 
 tically mistaken or overpassed ; but it has occasioned 
 — perhaps we should rather say it is connected with — ■ 
 indefinite, and often erroneous, conceptions of the 
 mode in which the science should be studied. 
 
 We proceed to verify these assertions by an ex- 
 amination of the most generally received definitions of 
 the science. 
 
 1. First, as to the vuls^ar notion of the nature and 
 object of Political Economy, we shall not be wide of 
 the mark if we state it to be something to this effect : 
 - -That Political Economy is a science which teaches, 
 or professes to teach, in what manner a nation may 
 be made rich. This notion of what constitutes the 
 science, is in some degree countenanced by the title 
 and arrangement which Adam Smith gave to his in- 
 valuable work. A systematic treatise on Political 
 Economy, he chose to call an Tnq/iir)/ into the Nature 
 and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ; and the topics 
 are introduced in an order suitable to that view of the 
 purpose of his book. 
 
 With respect to the definition in question, if defi- 
 nition it can be called which is not found in any set 
 form of words, but left to be arrived at by a process of 
 abstraction from a hundred current modes of speaking 
 on the subject ; it seems liable to the conclusive objec- 
 tion, that it confounds the essentially distinct, though
 
 124 DEFIXITIOX AND METHOD 
 
 closely connected, ideas of science and art. These two 
 ideas differ from one another as the understanding 
 differs from the will, or as the indicative mood in 
 grammar differs from the imperative. The one deals in 
 facts, the other in precepts. Science is a collection of 
 truths ; art a body of rules, or directions for conduct. 
 The language of science is. This is, or, This is not ; 
 This does, or does not, happen. The language of art 
 is, Do this ; Avoid that. Science takes cognizance of 
 'di phenomenon , and endeavours to discover its law ; art 
 proposes to itself an end, and looks out for means to 
 effect it. 
 
 If, therefore. Political Economy be a science, it 
 cannot be a collection of practical rules ; though, 
 unless it be altogether a useless science, practical 
 rules must be capable of being founded upon it. 
 The science of mechanics, a branch of natural philoso- 
 phy, lays down the laws of motion, and the properties 
 of what are called the mechanical powers. The art of 
 practical mechanics teaches how we may avail our- 
 selves of those laws and properties, to increase our 
 command over external nature. An art would not be 
 an art, unless it were founded upon a scientific know- 
 ledge of the properties of the subject-matter : without 
 this, it would not be philosophy, but empiricism ; 
 IjUTTEipia, not Texvrh in Plato's sense. Eules, therefore, 
 for making a nation increase in wealth, are not a 
 science, but they are the results of science. Political 
 Economy does not of itself instruct how to make a 
 nation rich ; but whoever would be qualified to judge 
 of the means of making a nation rich, must first be a 
 political economist. 
 
 2. The definition most generally received among 
 instructed persons, and laid down in the commence- 
 ment of most of the professed treatises on the subject,
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 125 
 
 is to the following effect : — That Political Economy 
 informs ns of the laws which regulate the production, 
 distribution, and consumption of wealth. To this 
 definition is frequently appended a familiar illustra- 
 tion. Political Economy, it is said, is to the state, 
 what domestic economy is to the family. 
 
 This definition is free from the fault which we 
 pointed out in the former one. It distinctly takes 
 notice that Political Economy is a science and not an 
 art ; that it is conversant with laws of nature, not with 
 maxims of conduct, and teaches us how things take 
 place of themselves, not in what manner it is advisable 
 for us to shape them, in order to attain some par- 
 ticular end. 
 
 But though the definition is, with regard to this 
 particular point, unobjectionable, so much can scarcely 
 be said for the accompanying illustration ; which 
 rather sends back the mind to the current loose 
 notion of Political Economy already disposed of. 
 Political Economy is really, and is stated in the 
 definition to be, a science : but domestic economy, so 
 far as it is capable of being reduced to principles, is 
 an art. It consists of rules^ or maxims of prudence, 
 for keeping the family regularly supplied with what 
 its wants require, and securing, with any given amount 
 of means, the greatest possible quantity of physical 
 comfort and enjoyment. Undoubtedly the beneficial 
 result, the great practical application of Political Eco- 
 nomy, would be to accomplish for a nation something 
 like wliat the most perfect domestic economy accom- 
 plishes for a single household : but supposing this 
 purpose realised, there would be the same difference 
 between the rules by which it might be effected, and 
 Political Economy, which there is between the art of 
 gunnery and the theory of projectiles, or between the
 
 126 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 rules of matliematical land-survejdng and the science 
 of trigonometry. 
 
 The definition, though, not liable to the same ob- 
 jection as the illustration which is annexed to it, is 
 itself far from unexceptionable. To neither of them, 
 considered as standing at the head of a treatise, have 
 we much to object. At a very early stage in the 
 study of the science, anything more accurate would be 
 useless, and therefore pedantic. In a merely initia- 
 tory definition, scientific precision is not required : the 
 object is, to insinuate into the learner's mind, it is 
 scarcely material by what means, some general precon- 
 ception of what are the uses of the pursuit, and what 
 the series of topics through which he is about to travel. 
 As a mere anticipation or ehauclie of a definition, in- 
 tended to indicate to a learner as much as he is able 
 to understand before he begins, of the nature of what 
 is about to be taught to him, we do not quarrel with 
 the received formula. But if it claims to be admitted 
 as that complete definitio or boundary-line, which re- 
 sults from a thorough exploring of the whole extent 
 of the subject, and is intended to mark the exact place 
 of Political Economy among the sciences, its preten- 
 sion cannot be allowed. 
 
 " The science of the laws which regulate the pro- 
 duction, distribution, and consumption of wealth." The 
 term wealth is surrounded by a haze of floating and 
 vapoury associations, which will let nothing that is 
 seen through them be shown distinctly. Let us supply 
 its place by a periphrasis. Wealth is defined, all ob- 
 jects useful or agreeable to mankind, except such as 
 can be obtained in indefinite quantity without labour. 
 Instead of all objects, some authorities say, all mate- 
 rial objects : the distinction is of no moment for the 
 present purpose.
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 127 
 
 To confine ourselves to production : If the laws of 
 the production of all objects, or even of all material 
 objects, which are useful or agreeable to mankind, were 
 comprised in Political Econom}^, it would be difficult 
 to say where the science would end : at the least, all 
 or nearly all physical knowledge would be included in 
 it. Corn and cattle are material objects, in a high 
 degree useful to mankind. The laws of the production 
 of the one include the principles of agriculture ; the 
 production of the other is the subject of the art of 
 cattle-breeding, which, in so far as really an art, must 
 be built upon the science of physiology. The laws of 
 production of manufactured articles involve the 
 whole of chemistry and the whole of mechanics. The 
 laws of the production of the wealth which is ex- 
 tracted from the bowels of the earth, cannot be set 
 forth without taking in a large part of geology. 
 
 When a definition so manifestly surpasses in ex- 
 tent what it professes to define, we must suppose that 
 it is not meant to be interpreted literally, though the 
 limitations with which it is to be understood are not 
 stated. 
 
 Perhaps it will be said, that Political Economy is 
 conversant with such only of the laws of the produc- 
 tion of wealth as are applicable to all kinds of wealth : 
 those which relate to the details of particular trades 
 or employments forming the subject of other and 
 totally distinct sciences. 
 
 If, however, there were no more in the distinction 
 between Political Economy and physical science than 
 this, the distinction, we may venture to affirm, would 
 never have been made. No similar division exists in 
 any other department of knowledge. We do not 
 break up zoology or mineralogy into two parts ; one 
 treating of the properties common to all animals, or to
 
 128 DEFrXITION AND METHOD 
 
 all minerals ; another conversant with the properties 
 peculiar to each particular species of animals or mine- 
 rals. The reason is obvious ; there is no distinction 
 iti kind between the general laws of animal or of 
 mineral nature and the peculiar properties of parti- 
 cular species. There is as close an analogy between 
 the general laws and the particular ones, as there is 
 between one of the general laws and another : most 
 commonly, indeed, the particular laws are but the 
 complex result of a plurality of general laws modify- 
 ing each other. A separation, therefore, between the 
 general laws and the particular ones, merely because 
 the former are general and the latter particular, would 
 run counter both to the strongest motives of con- 
 venience and to the natural tendencies of the mind. 
 If the case is different with the laws of the production 
 of wealth, it must be because, in this case, the general 
 laws differ in kind from the particular ones. But if 
 so, the difference in kind is the radical distinction, 
 and we should find out what that is, and found our 
 definition upon it. 
 
 But, further, the recognised boundaries which 
 separate the field of Political Economy from that of 
 physical science, by no means correspond with the 
 distinction between the truths which concern all kinds 
 of wealth and those which relate only to some kinds. 
 The three laws of motion, and the law of gravitation, 
 are common, as far as human observation has yet ex- 
 tended, to all matter ; and these, therefore, as being 
 among the laws of the production of all wealth, should 
 form part of Political Economy. There are hardly 
 any of the processes of industry which do not partly 
 depend upon the properties of the lever ; biit it would 
 be a strange classification which included those pro- 
 perties among the truths of Political Economy. Again,
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 129 
 
 the latter science has many inquiries altogether as 
 special, and relating as exclusively to particular sorts 
 of material objects, as any of the branches of physical 
 science. The investigation of some of the circum- 
 stances which regulate the price of corn, has as little 
 to do with the laws common to the production of all 
 wealth, as any part of the knowledge of the agricul- 
 turist. The inquiry into the rent of mines or fisheries, 
 or into the value of the precious metals, elicits truths 
 which have immediate reference to the production 
 solely of a peculiar kind of wealth ; yet these are 
 admitted to be correctly placed in the science of 
 Political Economy. 
 
 The real distinction between Political Economy 
 and phj'sical science must be sought in somethin'j- 
 deeper than the nature of the subject-matter ; which, 
 indeed, is for the most part common to both. Politi- 
 cal Economy, and the scientific grounds of all the 
 useful arts, have in truth one and the same subject- 
 matter ; namely, the objects which conduce to man's 
 convenience and enjoyment : but they are, neverthe- 
 less, perfectly distinct branches of knowledge. 
 
 3. If we contemplate the whole field of human 
 knowledge, attained or attainable, we find that it 
 separates itself obviously, and as it were spontane- 
 ously, into two divisions, which stand so strikingly in 
 opposition and contradistinction to one another, that 
 in all classifications of our knowledge they have been 
 kept apart. These are, physical science, and 7i}oral or 
 psychological science. The difference between these 
 two departments of our knowledge does not reside in 
 the subject-matter with which they are conversant: 
 for although, of the simplest and most elementary 
 parts of each, it may be said, with an approach to 
 truth, that they are concerned with different subject- 
 
 K
 
 130 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 matters — namely, the one with the human mind, the 
 other with all things whatever except the mind ; this 
 distinction does not hold between the higher regions 
 of the two. Take the science of politics, for instance, 
 or that of law : who will say that these are physical 
 sciences ? and yet is it not obvious that they are con- 
 versant fully as much with matter as with mind ? 
 Take, again, the theory of music, of painting, of any 
 other of the fine arts, and who will venture to pro- 
 nounce that the facts they are conversant with belong 
 either wholly to the class of matter, or wholly to that 
 of mind? 
 
 The following seems to be the rationale of the dis- 
 tinction between ph3^sical and moral science. 
 
 In all the intercourse of man with nature, whether 
 we consider him as acting upon it, or as receiving im- 
 pressions from it, the effect or phenomenon depends 
 upon causes of two kinds: the properties of the object 
 acting, and those of the object acted upon. Every- 
 thing which can possibly happen in which man and 
 external things, are jointly concerned, results from the 
 joint operation of a law or laws of matter, and a law 
 or laws of the human mind. Thus the production of 
 corn by human labour is the result of a law of mind, 
 and many laws of matter. Tlie laws of matter are 
 those properties of the soil and of vegetable life which 
 cause the seed to germinate in the ground, and those 
 properties of the human body which render food 
 necessary to its support. The law of mind is, that 
 man desires to possess subsistence, and consequently 
 wills the necessary means of procuring it. 
 
 Laws of mind and laws of matter are so dissimilar 
 in their nature, that it would be contrary to all prin- 
 ciples of rational arrangement to mix them up as part 
 of the same study. In all scientific methods, there-
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 131 
 
 fore, they are placed apart. Any compound effect or 
 phenomenon which depends botli on the properties of 
 matter and on those of mind, may thus become the 
 subject of two completely distinct sciences, or branches 
 of science ; one, treating of the phenomenon in so far 
 as it depends upon the laws of matter only ; the other 
 treating of it in so far as it depends upon the laws of 
 mind. 
 
 The physical sciences are those which treat of the 
 laws of matter, and of. all complex phenomena in so 
 far as dependent upon the laws of matter. The mental 
 or moral sciences are those which treat of the laws of 
 mind, and of all complex phenomena in so far as 
 dependent upon the laws of mind. 
 
 Most of the moral sciences presuppose physical 
 science ; but few of the physical sciences presuppose 
 moral science. The reason is obvious. There are 
 many phenomena (an earthquake, for example, or the 
 motions of the planets) which depend upon the laws 
 of matter exclusively ; and have nothing whatever to 
 do with the laws of mind. Many, therefore, of the 
 physical sciences may be treated of without any refe- 
 rence to mind, and as if the mind existed as a recipient 
 of knowledge only, not as a cause producing effects. 
 But there are no phenomena which depend exclusively 
 upon the laws of mind ; even the phenomena of the 
 mind itself being partially dependent upon the phy- 
 siological laws of the body. All the mental sciences, 
 therefore, not excepting the pure science of mind, 
 must take account of a great variety of physical 
 truths ; and (as physical science is commonly and v^ry 
 properly studied first) may be said to presuppose them, 
 taking up the complex phenomena where physical 
 science leaves them. 
 
 Now this, it will be found, is a precise statement 
 
 K 2
 
 T32 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 of the relation in which Political Economy stands to 
 the various sciences which are tributary to the arts of 
 production. 
 
 The laws of the production of the objects which 
 constitute wealth, are the subject-matter both of 
 Political Economy and of almost all the physical 
 sciences. Such, however, of those laws as are purely 
 laws of matter, belong to physical science, and to that 
 exclusively. Such of them as are laws of the human 
 mind, and no others, belong to Political Economy, 
 which finally sums up the result of both combined. 
 
 Political Economy, therefore, presupposes all the 
 physical sciences ; it takes for granted all such of the 
 truths of those sciences as are concerned in the pro- 
 duction of the objects demanded by the wants of 
 mankind ; or at least it takes for granted that the 
 physical part of the process takes place somehow. It 
 then inquires what are the phenomena of mind which 
 are concerned in the production and distribution* of 
 
 * We say, the production and distrihition, not, as is usual 
 with writers on this science, the production, distribution, and con- 
 sumption. For we contend that Political Economy, as conceived 
 by those very writers, has nothing to do with the consumption of 
 wealth, further than as the consideration of it is inseparable from 
 that of production, or from that of distribution. We know not of 
 any laws ©f the consumption of wealth as the subject of a distinct 
 science : they can be no other than the laws of human enjoyment. 
 Political economists have never treated of consumption on its own 
 account, but always for tlie purpose of the inquiry in what manner 
 different kinds of consumption affect the production and distri- 
 bution of wealth. Under the head of Consumption, in professed 
 treatises on the science, the following are the subjects treated of: 
 1st, The distinction between productive and unproductive consump- 
 tion ; 2nd, The inquiry whether it is possible for too much wealth 
 to be produced, and for too great a portion of what has been pro- 
 duced to be applied to the purpose of further production ; 3rd,
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 133 
 
 those same objects ; it borrows from the pure science 
 of mind the laws of those phenomena, and inquires 
 what effects follow from these mental laws, acting in 
 concurrence with those physical ones*. 
 
 From the above considerations the following- seems 
 to come out as the correct and complete definition of 
 Political Economy : — " The science which treats of the 
 production and distribution of wealth, so far as they 
 depend upon the laws of human nature," Or thus — 
 " The science relating to the moral or psychological 
 laws of the production 'and distribution of wealth." 
 
 For popular use this definition is amply sufficient, 
 but it still falls short of the complete accuracy re- 
 quired for the jDurposes of the philosopher. Political 
 Economy does not treat of the production and dis- 
 tribution of wealth in all states of mankind, but only 
 in what is termed the social state ; nor so far as they 
 depend upon the laws of human nature, but only so 
 far as they depend upon a certain portion of those 
 laws. This, at least, is the view which must be taken 
 of Political Economy, if we mean it to find any place 
 in an encyclopedical division of the field of science. 
 On any other view, it either is not science at all, or it 
 is several sciences. This will appear clearly, if, on 
 
 The theory of taxation, that is to say, the following two questions — 
 by whom each particular tax is paid (a question of distributimi) , 
 and in what manner particular taxes affect production, 
 
 * The physical laws of the production of useful objects are all 
 equally presupposed by the science of Political Economy : most of 
 them, however, it presupposes in the gross, seeming to say nothing 
 about them. A few (such, for instance, as the decreasing ratio in 
 which the produce of the soil is increased by an increased appli- 
 cation of labour) it is obliged particularly to specify, and thus 
 seems to borrow those truths from the physical sciences to which 
 they properly belong, and include them among its own.
 
 134 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 the one hand, we take a general survey of the moral 
 sciences, with a view to assign the exact place of 
 Political Economy among them ; while, on the other, 
 we consider attentively the nature of the methods or 
 processes by which the truths which are the object of 
 those sciences are arrived at. 
 
 Man, who, considered as a being having a moral 
 or mental nature, is the subject-matter of all the 
 moral sciences, may, with reference to that part of his 
 nature, form the subject of philosophical inquiry under 
 several distinct hypotheses. We may inquire what 
 belongs to man considered individually, and as if no 
 human being existed besides himself; we may next 
 consider him as coming into contact with other in- 
 dividuals ; and finally, as living in a state of society, 
 that is, forming part of a body or aggregation of 
 human beings, systematically co-operating for common 
 purposes. Of this last state, political government, 
 or subjection to a common superior, is an ordinary 
 ingredient, but forms no necessary part of the con- 
 ception, and, with respect to our present purpose, 
 needs not be further adverted to. 
 
 Those laws or properties of human nature which 
 appertain to man as a mere individual, and do not 
 presuppose, as a necessary condition, the existence of 
 other individuals (except, perhaps, as mere instru- 
 ments or means), form a part of the subject of pure 
 mental philosophy. They comprise all the laws of the 
 mere intellect, and those of the purely self-regarding 
 desires. 
 
 Those laws of human nature which relate to the 
 feelings called forth in a human being by other indi- 
 vidual human or intelligent beings, as such ; namely, 
 the affeclioHS,i\\Qi conscience, or feeling of duty, and the 
 love of approbation ; and to the conduct of man, so
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 135 
 
 far as it depends upon, or has relation to, these parts 
 of his nature— form the subject of another portion of 
 pure mental philosophy, namely, that portion of it on 
 which morals, or ethics, are founded. For morality 
 itself is not a science, but an art ; not truths, but 
 rules. The truths on which the rules are founded are 
 drawn (as is the case in all arts) from a variety of 
 sciences ; but the principal of them, and those which 
 are most nearly peculiar to this particular art^ belong 
 to a branch of the science of mind. 
 
 Finally, there are certain principles of human 
 nature which are peculiarly connected with the ideas 
 and feelings generated in man by living in a state of 
 society, that is, by forming part of a union or aggre- 
 gation of human beings for a common purpose or 
 purposes. Few, indeed, of the elementary laws of the 
 human mind are peculiar to this state, almost all 
 being called into action in the two other states. But 
 those simple laws of human nature, operating in that 
 wider field, give rise to results of a sufficiently uni- 
 versal character, and even (when compared with the 
 still more complex phenomena of which they are the 
 determining causes) sufficiently simple, to admit of 
 being called, though in a somewhat looser sense, laws 
 of society, or laws of human nature in the social 
 state. These laws, or general truths, form the subject 
 of a branch of science which may be aptly designated 
 from the title of social economy ; somewhat less happily 
 by that of speculative politics, or the science of politics, 
 as contradistinguished from the art. This science 
 stands in the same relation to the social, as anatomy 
 and physiology to the physical body. It shows by 
 what principles of his nature man is induced to enter 
 into a state of society ; how this feature in his position 
 acts upon his interests and feelings, and through them
 
 136 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 upon his conduct ; how the association tends progres- 
 sively to become closer, and the co-operation extends 
 itself to more and more purposes ; what those pur- 
 poses are, and what the varieties of means most gene- 
 rally adopted for furthering them ; what are the various 
 relations which establish themselves among human 
 beings as the ordinaiy consequence of the social 
 union ; what those which are different in different 
 states of society ; in what historical order those states 
 tend to succeed one another ; and what are the effects 
 of each upon the conduct and character of man. 
 
 This branch of science, whether we prefer to call 
 it social economy, speculative politics, or the natural 
 history of society, presupposes the whole science of 
 the nature of the individual mind ; since all the laws 
 of which the latter science takes cognizance are 
 brought into play in a state of society, and the truths 
 of the social science are but statements of the manner 
 in which those simple laws take effect in complicated 
 circumstances. Pure mental philosophy, therefore, is 
 an essential part, or preliminary, of political philoso- 
 phy. The science of social economy embraces every 
 part of man's nature, in so far as influencing the con- 
 duct or condition of man in society ; and therefore 
 may it be termed speculative politics, as being the 
 scientific foundation of practical politics, or the art 
 of government, of which the art of legislation is a 
 part*. 
 
 * The science of legislation is an incorrect and misleading ex- 
 pression. Legislation is making laws. We do not talk of the 
 science of making anything. Even the science of government would 
 be an objectionable expression, were it not that government is often 
 loosely taken to signify, not the act of governing, but the state or 
 condition of being governed., or of living under a government. A 
 preferable expression would be, the science oi political society; a
 
 OF POLITICAL ECOXOMY. 137 
 
 It is to this important division of the field of 
 science that one of tlie writers who have most cor- 
 rectly conceived and copiously illustrated its nature 
 and limits,— we mean M. Say, — has chosen to give 
 the name Political Economy. And, indeed, this large 
 extension of the sigrnification of that term is coun- 
 tenanced by its etymology. But the words "political 
 economy " have long ceased to have so large a meaning. 
 Every writer is entitled to use the words which are 
 his tools in the manner which he judges most con- 
 ducive to the general purposes of the exposition of 
 truth ; but he exercises this discretion under liability 
 to criticism : and M. Say seems to have done in this 
 instance, what should never be done without strong 
 reasons ; to have altered the meanmg of a name 
 which was appropriated to a particular purpose (and 
 for which, therefore, a substitute must be provided), 
 in order to transfer it to an object for which it was 
 easy to find a more characteristic denomination. 
 
 What is now commonly understood by the term 
 " Political Economy " is not the science of speculative 
 politics, but a branch of that science. It does not 
 treat of the whole of man's nature as modified by the 
 social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in 
 society. It is concerned with him solely as a being 
 who desires to possess w^ealtli, and who is capable 
 of judging of the comparative efficacy of means for 
 obtaining that end. It predicts only such of the 
 phenomena of the social state as take place in con- 
 sequence of the pursuit of wealth. It makes entire 
 abstraction of every other human passion or motive ; 
 except those which may be regarded as perpetually 
 
 principal branch of the more extensive science of society, charac- 
 terized in the text.
 
 138 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 antagonizing principles to the desire of wealth, namely, 
 aversion to labour, and desire of the present enjoy- 
 ment of costly indulgences. These it takes, to a 
 certain extent, into its calculations, because these 
 do not merely, like other desires, occasionally con- 
 flict with the pursuit of wealth, but accompany it 
 always as a drag, or impediment, and are therefore 
 inseparably mixed up in the consideration of it. Poli- 
 tical Economy considers mankind as occupied solely 
 in acquiring and consuming wealth ; and aims at show- 
 ing what is the course of action into which mankind, 
 living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that 
 motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by 
 the two perpetual counter-motives above adverted to, 
 were absolute ruler of all their actions. Under the 
 influence of this desire, it shows mankind accumu- 
 lating wealth, and employing that wealth in the pro- 
 duction of other wealth ; sanctioning by mutual agree- 
 ment the institution of property ; establishing laws to 
 prevent individuals from encroaching upon the pro- 
 perty of others by force or fraud ; adopting various 
 contrivances for increasing the productiveness of their 
 labour ; settling the division of the produce by agree- 
 ment, under the influence of competition (competition 
 itself being governed by certain laws, which laws are 
 therefore the ultimate regulators of the division of the 
 produce) ; and employing certain expedients (as money, 
 credit, &c.) to facilitate the distribution. All these 
 operations, though many of them are really the result 
 of a plurality of motives, are considered by Political 
 Economy as flowing solely from the desire of wealth. 
 The science then proceeds to investigate the laws 
 which govern these several operations, under the sup- 
 position that man is a being who is determined, by 
 the necessity of his nature, to prefer a greater portion
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 139 
 
 of wealth fo a smaller in all cases, without any other 
 exception than that constituted by the two counter- 
 motives already specified. Not that any political 
 economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that 
 mankind are really thus constituted, but because this 
 is the mode in which science mast necessarily proceed. 
 When an effect depends upon a concurrence of causes, 
 those causes must be studied one at a time, and their 
 laws separately investigated, if we wish, through the 
 causes, to obtain the power of either predicting or 
 controlling the effect ; since the law of the effect is 
 compounded of the laws of all the causes which deter- 
 mine it. The law of the centripetal and that of the 
 tangential force must have been known before the 
 motions of the earth and planets could be explained, 
 or many of them predicted. The same is the case 
 with the conduct of man in society. In order to 
 judge how he will act under the variety of desires and 
 aversions which are concurrently operating upon him, 
 we must know how he would act under the exclusive 
 influence of each one in particular. There is, perhaps, 
 no action of a man's life in which he is neither under 
 the immediate nor under the remote influence of any 
 impulse but the mere desire of wealth. With respect 
 to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is 
 not even the principal object, to these Political Eco- 
 nomy does not pretend that its conclusions are appli- 
 cable. But there are also certain departments of 
 human aff'airs, in which the acquisition of wealth is 
 the main and acknowledged end. It is only of these 
 that Political Economy takes notice. The manner in 
 which it necessarily proceeds is that of treating the 
 main and acknowledged end as if it were the sole end ; 
 which, of all hj'potheses equally simple, is the nearest 
 to the truth. The political economist inquires, what
 
 140 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 are the actions which would be produced by this 
 desire, if, within the departments in question, it were 
 unimpeded by any other. In this way a nearer ap- 
 proximation is obtained than would otherwise be prac- 
 ticable, to the real order of human affairs in those 
 departments. This approximation is then to be cor- 
 rected by making proper allowance for the effects of 
 any impulses of a different description, which can be 
 shown to interfere with the result in any particular 
 case. Only in a few of the most striking cases (such 
 as the important one of the principle of population) 
 are these corrections interpolated into the expositions 
 of Political Economy itself ; the strictness of purely 
 scientific arrangement being thereby somewhat de- 
 parted from, for the sake of practical utility. So far 
 as it is known, or may be presumed, that the conduct 
 of mankind in the pursuit of wealth is under the col- 
 lateral influence of any other of the properties of 
 our nature than the desire of obtaining the greatest 
 quantity of wealth with the least labour and self- 
 denial, the conclusions of PoHtical Economy will so 
 far fail of being applicable to the explanation or pre- 
 diction of real events, until they are modified by a 
 correct allowance for the degree of influence exercised 
 by the other cause. 
 
 Political Economy, then, may be defined as fol- 
 lows ; and the definition seems to be complete : — 
 
 " The science which traces the laws of such of the 
 phenomena of society as arise from the combined 
 operations of mankind for the production of wealth, 
 in so fir as those phenomena are not modified by the 
 pursuit of any other object." 
 
 But while this is a correct definition of Political 
 Economy as a portion of the field of science, the 
 didactic writer on the subject will naturally combine
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 141 
 
 in his exposition, with the truths of the pure science, 
 as many of tlie practical modifications as will, in his 
 estimation, be most conducive to the usefulness of his 
 work. 
 
 The above attempt to frame a stricter definition 
 of the science than what are commonly received as 
 such^ may be thought to be of little use ; or, at best, 
 to be chiefly useful in a general survey and classifi- 
 cation of the sciences, rather than as conducing to the 
 more successful pursuit of the particular science in 
 question. We think otherwise, and for this reason ; 
 that, with the consideration of the definition of a 
 science, is inseparably connected that o? the p/iilosop/iic 
 method of the science ; the nature of the process by 
 which its investigations are to be carried on, its 
 truths to be arrived at. 
 
 Now, in whatever science there are systematic 
 differences of o])inion — which is as much as to say, 
 in all the moral or mental sciences, and in Political 
 Economy among the rest ; in whatever science there 
 exist, among those who have attended to the subject, 
 what are commonly called differences of principle, 
 as distinguished from diflferences of matter-of-fact or 
 detail, — the cause will be found to be, a difference in 
 their conceptions of the philosophic method of the 
 science. The parties who differ are guided, either 
 knowingly or unconsciously, by different views con- 
 cerning the nature of the evidence appropriate to the 
 subject. They differ not solely in what they believe 
 themselves to see, but in the quarter whence they 
 obtained the light by which they think they see it. 
 
 The most universal of the forms in which this dif- 
 ference of method is accustomed to present itself, is the 
 ancient feud between what is called theory, and what
 
 142 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 is called practice or experience. There are, on social 
 and political questions, two kinds of reasoners : there 
 is one portion who term themselves practical men, and 
 call the others theorists ; a title which the latter do not 
 reject, though the}' by no means recognise it as peculiar 
 to them. The distinction between the two is a very 
 broad one, though it is one of which the language em- 
 ployed is a most incorrect exponent. It has been again 
 and ag-ain demonstrated, that those who are accused of 
 despising facts and disregarding experience build and 
 profess to build wholly upon facts and experience; while 
 those who disavow theory cannot make one step with- 
 out theorizing. But, although both classes of inquirers 
 do nothing but theoiize, and both of them consult no 
 other guide than experience, there is this difference 
 between them, and a most important difference it is : 
 that those who are called practical men require specific 
 experience, and argue wholly upiDarcU from particular 
 facts to a general conclusion ; while those who are 
 called theorists aim at embracing a wider field of expe- 
 rience, and, having argued upwards from particular 
 facts to a general principle including a much wider 
 range than that of the question under discussion, then 
 argue doto7iioards from that general principle to a variety 
 of specific conclusions. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that the question were, wlie% 
 ther absolute kings were likely to employ the powers 
 of government for the welfare or for the oppression of 
 their subjects. The practicals would endeavour to 
 determine this question by a direct induction from the 
 conduct of particular despotic monarchs, as testified 
 by history. The theorists would refer the question 
 to be decided by the test not solely of our experience 
 of kings, but of our experience of men. They would 
 contend that an observation of the tendencies which
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 143 
 
 liuman nature has manifested in tlie variety of situa- 
 tions in which human being-s have been placed, and 
 especially observation of what passes in our own minds, 
 warrants u.s in inferring tliat a human being in the 
 situation of a despotic king will make a bad use of 
 power' ; and that this conclusion would lose nothing of 
 its certainty even if absolute kings had never existed, 
 or if history furnished us with no information of tlie 
 manner in which they had conducted themselves. 
 
 The first of these methods is a method of induction, 
 merely ; the last a mixed method of induction and 
 ratiocination. The first may be called the method d 
 posteriori ; the latter, the method a priori. We are 
 aware that this last expression is sometimes used to 
 characterize a supposed mode of philosophizing, which 
 does not profess to be founded upon experience at all. 
 But we are not acquainted with any mode of philoso- 
 phizing, on political subjects at least, to which such a 
 description is fairly applicable. By the method a pos- 
 teriori we mean that which requires, as the basis of its 
 conclusions, not experience merely, but specific expe- 
 rience. By the method d priori we mean (what has 
 commonly been meant) reasoning from an assumed 
 hypothesis ; which is not a practice confined to mathe- 
 matics, but is of the essence of all science which ad- 
 mits of general reasoning at all. To verify the hypo- 
 thesis itself d posteriori, that is, to examine whether the 
 facts of any actual case are in accordance with it, is no 
 part of the business of science at all, but of the appli- 
 cation of science. 
 
 In the definition which we have attempted to frame 
 of the science of Political Economy, we have charac- 
 terized it as essentially an abstract science, and its 
 method as the method d priori. Such is undoubtedly 
 its character as it has been understood and taught by
 
 144 DEFINITION AND LIETHOD 
 
 all its most distinguished teachers/ It reasons, and, as 
 we contend, must necessarily reason, from assumptions, 
 not from facts. It is built upon hypotheses, strictly 
 analogous to those which, under the name of defini- 
 tions, are the foundation of the other abstract sciences. 
 Geometry presupposes an arbitrary definition of a line, 
 " that which has length but not breadth." Just in the 
 same manner does Political Economy presuppose an 
 arbitrary definition of man, as a being who invariably 
 does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount 
 of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the 
 smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial 
 with which they can be obtained in the existing state 
 of knowledge. It is true that this definition of man 
 is not formally prefixed to any work on Political Eco- 
 nom}^, as the definition of a line is prefixed to Euclid's 
 Elements ; and in proportion as by being so prefixed it 
 would be less in danger of being forgotten, we may see 
 ground for regret that this is not done. It is proper 
 that what is assumed in every particular case, should 
 once for all be brought before the mind in its full 
 extent, by being somewhere formally stated as a gene- 
 ral maxim. Now, no one who is conversant with sys- 
 tematic treatises on Political Economy will question, 
 that whenever a political economist has shown that, by 
 acting in a particular manner, a labourer may obviously 
 obtain higher wages, a capitalist larger profits, or a 
 landlord higher rent, he concludes, as a matter of 
 course, that they will certainly act in that manner. 
 Political Economy, therefore, reasons from assumed 
 premises — from premises which might be totally with- 
 out foundation in fact, and which are not pretended to 
 be universally in accordance with it. The conclusions 
 of Political Economy, consequently, like those of geo- 
 metry, are only true, as the common phrase is, in the
 
 OF POLITICAL ECOXOMY. 145 
 
 ohxfract ; that is, tliey are onl}' true under certain sup- 
 positions, in which none but general causes — causes 
 common to the wAole class of cases under consideration 
 — are taken into the account. 
 
 This ought not to be denied by the political econo- 
 mist. If he deny it, then, and then only, he places 
 himself in the wrong. The d priori method which is 
 laid to his charge, as if his employment of it proved his 
 whole science to be worthless, is, as we shall presently 
 show, the only method by wliich truth can possibly be 
 attained in any department of the social science. All 
 that is requisite is, that he be on his guard not to 
 ascribe to conclusions which are grounded upon an 
 hypothesis a different kind of certainty from that which 
 really belongs to them. They would be true without 
 qualification, only in a case which is purely imaginary. 
 In proportion as the actual facts recede from the hypo- 
 thesis, he must allow a corresponding deviation from 
 the strict letter of his conclusion ; otherwise it will be 
 true only of things such as he has arbitrarily supposed, 
 not of such things as really exist. That which is true 
 in the abstract, is always true in the concrete with 
 proper allowances. When a certain cause really exists, 
 and if left to itself would infallibly produce a certain 
 effect, that same effect, modijied by all the other con- 
 current causes, will correctly correspond to the result 
 really produced. 
 
 The conclusions of geometry are not strictly true 
 of such lines, angles, and figures, as human hands can 
 construct. But no one, therefore, contends that the 
 conclusions of geometry are of no utility, or that it 
 would be better to shut np Euclid's Elements, and 
 content ourselves with '' practice " and " experience." 
 
 No mathematician ever thought that his definition 
 of a line corresponded to an actual line. As little did 
 
 L
 
 146 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 any political econbrnist ever imagine that real men had 
 no object of desire but wealth, or none which woald not 
 give way to the slightest motive of a pecuniary kind. 
 But they were justified in assuming this, for the pur- 
 poses of their argument ; because they had to do only 
 with those parts of human conduct which have pecu- 
 niary advantage for their direct and principal object ; 
 and because, as no two individual cases are exactly 
 alike, no general maxims could ever be laid down un- 
 less some of the circumstances of the particular case 
 were left out of consideration. 
 
 But we go farther than to affirm that the method 
 a priori is a legitimate mode of philosophical investi- 
 gation in the moral sciences ; we contend that it is the 
 only mode. We affirm that the method a posteriori, or 
 that of specific experience, is altogether inefficacious in 
 those sciences, as a means of arriving at any consider- 
 able body of valuable truth ; though it admits of being 
 usefully applied in aid of the method a priori, and 
 even forms an indispensable supplement to it. 
 
 There is a property common to almost all the moral 
 sciences, and by which they are distinguished from 
 many of the physical ; this is, that it is seldom in our 
 power to make experiments in them. In chemistry 
 and natural philosophy, we can not only observe what 
 happens under all the combinations of circumstances 
 which nature brings together, but we may also try an 
 indefinite number of new combinations. This we can 
 seldom do in ethical, and scarcely ever in political sci- 
 ence. We cannot try forms of government and sys- 
 tems of national policy on a diminutive scale in our 
 laboratories, shaping our experimets as we think they 
 may most conduce to the advancement of knowledge. 
 We therefore study nature under circumstances of 
 great disadvantage in these sciences ; being confined
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 147 
 
 to the limited number of experiments which take place 
 (if we may so speak) of their own accord, without any 
 preparation or management of ours ; in circumstances, 
 moreover, of great complexity, and never perfectly 
 known to us ; and with the far greater part of the 
 processes concealed from our observation. 
 
 The consequence of this unavoidable defect in the 
 materials of the induction is, that we can rarely obtain 
 what Bacon has quaintly, but not unaptlj^ termed an 
 experimentum crucis. 
 
 In an}'' science which admits of an unlimited range 
 of arbitrary experiments, an experimenium crucis may 
 always be obtained. Being able to vary all the cir- 
 cumstances, we can always take effectual means of 
 ascertaining which of them are, and which are not, 
 material. Call the effect B, and let the question be 
 whether the cause A in any way contributes to it. 
 We try an experiment in which all the surrounding 
 circumstances are altered, except A alone : if the effect 
 B is nevertheless produced, A is the cause of it. Or, 
 instead of leaving^ A, and chans^^ins: the other circum- 
 stances, we leave all the other circumstances and 
 change A : if the effect B in that case does not take 
 place, then again A is a necessary condition of its 
 existence. Either of these experiments, if accurately 
 performed, is an experimentum crucis ; it converts the 
 presumption we had before of the existence of a con- 
 nection between A and B into proof, by negativing 
 every other hypothesis which would account for the 
 appearances. 
 
 But this can seldom be done in the moral sciences, 
 owing to the immense multitude of the influencing 
 circumstances, and our very scanty means of var^dng 
 the experiment. Even in operating upon an individual 
 mind, which is the case affording greatest room for 
 
 L 2
 
 148 DEFINITIOX AND METHOD 
 
 experimenting, we cannot often obtain a crucial expe- 
 riment. The effect, for example, of a particular cir- 
 cumstance in education, upon the formation of charac- 
 ter, may be tried in a variety of cases, but we can 
 hardly ever be certain that any two of those cases 
 differ in all their circumstances except the solitary 
 one of which we wish to estimate the influence. In 
 how much greater a degree must this difficulty exist in 
 the affairs of states, where even the number of recorded 
 experiments is so scanty in comparison with the variety 
 and multitude of the circumstances concerned in each. 
 How, for example, can we obtain a crucial experiment 
 on the effect of a restrictive commercial policy upon 
 national wealth ? We must find two nations alike in 
 every other respect, or at least possessed, in a degree 
 exactly equal, of everything which conduces to national 
 opulence, and adopting exactly the same policy in all 
 their other affairs, but differing in this only, that one 
 of them adopts a system of commercial restrictions, and 
 the other adopts free trade. This would be a decisive ex- 
 periment, similar to those which we can almost always 
 obtain in experimental physics. Doubtless this would 
 be the most conclusive evidence of all if we could get 
 it. But let any one consider how infinitely numerous 
 and various are the circumstances which either directly 
 or indirectly do or may influence the amount of the 
 national wealth, and then ask himself what are the 
 probabilities that in the longest revolution of ages two 
 nations will be found, which agree, and can be shown 
 to agree, in all those circumstances except one ? 
 
 Since, therefore, it is vain to hope that truth can 
 be arrived at, either in Political Economy or in any 
 other department of the social science, while we look 
 at the facts in the concrete, clothed in all the com- 
 plexity with which nature has surrounded them, and
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 149 
 
 endeavour to elicit a general law by a process of induc- 
 tion from a comparison of details ; there remains no 
 other method than the a priori one, or that of " abstract 
 speculation." 
 
 Although sufficiently ample grounds are not afforded 
 in the field of politics, for a satisfactory induction by a 
 comparison of the effects, the causes may, in all cases, 
 be made the subject of specific experiment. These 
 causes are, laws of human nature, and external circum- 
 stances capable of exciting the human will to action. 
 The desires of man, and the nature of the conduct to 
 which they prompt him, are within the reach of our 
 observation. We can also observe what are the ob- 
 jects which excite those desires. The materials of 
 this knowledge every one can principally collect within 
 himself; with reasonable consideration of the differ- 
 ences, of which experience discloses to him the exist- 
 ence, between himself and other people. Knowing 
 therefore accurately the properties of the substances 
 concerned, we may reason with as much certainty as in 
 the most demonstrative parts of physics from any 
 assumed set of circumstances. This will be mere trifling 
 if the assumed circumstances bear no sort of resem- 
 blance to any real ones ; but if the assumption is cor- 
 rect as far as it goes, and differs from the truth no 
 otherwise than as a part differs from the whole, then 
 the conclusions which are correctly deduced from the 
 assumption constitute abstract truth ; and when com- 
 pleted by adding or subtracting the effect of the non- 
 calculated circumstances, they are true in the concrete, 
 and may be applied to practice. 
 
 Of this character is the science of Political Economy 
 in the writings of its best teachers. To render it per- 
 fect as an abstract science, the combinations of circum- 
 stances which it assumes, in order to trace their effects,
 
 150 DEFIXITION AND METHOD 
 
 should embody all the circumstances that are common 
 to all cases whatever, and likewise all the circum- 
 stances that are common to any important class of cases. 
 The conclusions correctly deduced from these assump- 
 tions, would be as true in the abstract as those of 
 mathematics ; and would be as near an approxima- 
 tion as abstract truth can ever be, to truth in the 
 concrete. 
 
 When the principles of Political Economy are to 
 be applied to a particular case, then it is necessary to 
 take into account all the individual circumstances of 
 that case ; not only examining to which of the sets of 
 circumstances contemplated by the abstract science 
 the circumstances of the case in question correspond, 
 but likewise what other circumstances may exist in 
 that case, which not being common to it with any large 
 and strongly-marked class of cases, have not fallen 
 under the cognizance of the science. These circum- 
 stances have been called disturbing causes. And here 
 only it is that an element of uncertainty enters into 
 the process — an uncertainty inherent in the nature 
 of these complex phenomena, and arising from the 
 impossibility of being quite sure that all the circum- 
 stances of the particular case are known to us suffi- 
 ciently in detail, and that our attention is not undul}^ 
 diverted from any of them. 
 
 This constitutes the only uncertainty of Political 
 Economy ; and not of it alone, but of the moral sciences 
 in general. When the disturbing causes are known, 
 the allowance necessary to be made for them detracts 
 in no way from scientific precision, nor constitutes any 
 deviation from the a priori method. The disturbing 
 causes are not handed over to be dealt with by mere 
 conjecture, hike /ricfion in mechanics, to which they 
 have been often compared, they may at first have been
 
 OF POLITICAL ECOXOMY. 151 
 
 considered merely as a non-assignable deduction to be 
 made by guess from the result given by the general 
 principles of science ; but in time many of them are 
 brought within the pale of the abstract science itself, 
 and their effect is found to admit of as accurate an 
 estimation as those more striking effects which they 
 modify. The disturbing causes have their laws, as the 
 causes which are thereby disturbed have theire ; and 
 from the laws of the disturbing causes, the nature and 
 amount of the disturbance may be predicted a prioriy 
 like the operation of the more general laws which they 
 are said to modify or disturb, but with which tliey 
 might more properly be said to be concurrent. The 
 effect of the special causes is then to be added to, or 
 subtracted from, the effect of the general ones. 
 
 These disturbing: causes are sometimes circum- 
 stances which operate upon human conduct through 
 the same principle of human nature with wli'fth Poli- 
 tical Economy is conversant, namely, the desire of 
 wealth, but which are not general enough to be taken 
 into account in the abstract science. Of disturbances 
 of this description every political economist can pro- 
 duce many examples. In other instances the disturb- 
 ing cause is some other law of human nature. In the 
 latter case it never can fall within the province of 
 Political Economy ; it belongs to some other science ; 
 and here the mere political economist, he who has 
 studied no science but Political Economy, if he attempt 
 to apply his science to practice, will fail.* 
 
 * One of the strongest reasons for drawing the line of sepa- 
 ration clearly and broadly between science and art is the fol- 
 lowing: — That the principle of classification in science most 
 conveniently follows the classification of causes, while arts must 
 necessarily be classified according to the classification of the ejects,
 
 152 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 As for the other kind of disturhmg causes, namely 
 those which operate through the same law of human 
 nature out of which tlie general principles of the 
 science arise, these might always be brought within 
 the pale of the abstract science if it were worth while ; 
 and when we make the necessary allowances for them 
 in practice, if we are doing anything but guess, we are 
 following out the method of the abstract science into 
 minuter details ; inserting among its hypotheses a 
 fresh and still more complex combination of circum- 
 stances, and so adding pro hdc vice a supplementary 
 chapter or appendix, or at least a supplementary 
 theorem, to the abstract science. 
 
 Having now shown that the method a priori in 
 Political Economy, and in all the other branches of 
 moral science, is the only certain or scientific mode 
 of investigation, and that the a posteriori method, or 
 that of specific experience, as a means of arriving at 
 truth, is inapplicable to these subjects, we shall be 
 able to show that the latter method is notwithstanding 
 of great value in the moral sciences ; namely, not as a 
 
 the production of which is their appropriate end. Now an effect, 
 whether in physics or morals, commonly depends iipon a con- 
 currence of causes, and it frequently happens that several of these 
 causes belong to different sciences. Thus in the construction of 
 engines upon the principles of the science of mechanics, it is 
 necessary to bear in mind the chemical properties of the material, 
 such as its liability to oxydize ; its electrical and magnetic pro- 
 perties, and so forth. From this it follows that although the 
 necessary foundation of all art is science, that is, the knowledge 
 of the properties or laws of the objects upon which, and with 
 which, the art does its work ; it is not equally true that every art 
 corresponds to one particular science. Each art presupposes, not 
 one science, but science in general ; or, at least, many distinct 
 sciences.
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 153 
 
 means of discovering truth, but of verifying it, and 
 reducing to the lowest point that uncertainty before 
 alhided to as arising from the complexity of every 
 particular case, and from the difficulty (not to say 
 impossibility) of our being assured a priori that we 
 have taken into account all the material circumstances. 
 If we could be quite certain that we knew all the 
 facts of the particular case, we could derive little addi- 
 tional advantage from specific experience. The causes 
 being given, we may know what will be their effect, 
 without an actual trial of every possible combination ; 
 since the causes are human feelings, and outward cir- 
 cumstances fitted to excite them : and, as these for 
 the most part are, or at least might be, familiar to us, 
 we can more surely judge of their combined effect 
 from that familiarity, than from any evidence which 
 can be elicited from the complicated and entangled 
 circumstances of an actual experiment. If the know- 
 ledge what are the particular causes operating in any 
 given instance were revealed to us by infallible autho- 
 rity, then, if our abstract science were perfect, we 
 should become prophets. But the causes are not so 
 revealed : the}^ are to be collected by observation ; and 
 observation in circumstances of complexity is apt to 
 be imperfect. Some of the causes may lie beyond 
 observation ; many are apt to escape it, unless we are 
 on the look-out for them ; and it is only the habit of 
 long and accurate observation which can give us so 
 correct a preconception what causes we are likely to 
 find, as shall induce us to look for them in the right 
 quarter. But such is the nature of the human under- 
 standing, that the very fact of attending with intensity 
 to one part of a thing, has a tendency to withdraw 
 the attention from the other parts. We are conse- 
 quently in great danger of adverting to a portion only
 
 154 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 of the causes which are actually at work. And if we 
 are in this predicament, the more accurate our deduc- 
 tions and the more certain our conclusions in the 
 abstract (that is, making abstraction of all circum- 
 stances except those which form part of the hypo- 
 thesis), the less we are likely to suspect that we are 
 in error : for no one could have looked closely into the 
 sources of fallacious thinking without being deeply 
 conscious that the coherence, and neat concatenation 
 of our pliilosophical systems, is more apt than we are 
 commonly aware to pass with us as evidence of their 
 truth. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, too carefully endeavour to 
 verify our theory, by comparing, in the particular cases 
 to which we have access, the results whicli it would 
 have led us to predict, with the most trustworthy 
 accounts we can obtain of those which have been 
 actually realized. The discrepancy between our anti- 
 cipations and the actual fact is often the only circum- 
 stance which would have drawn our attention to some 
 important disturbing cause which we had overlooked. 
 Nay, it often discloses to us errors in thought, still 
 more serious than the omission of what can with any 
 propriety be termed a disturbing cause. It often 
 reveals to us that the basis itself of our whole argu- 
 ment is insufficient ; that the data, from which we had 
 reasoned, comprise only a part, and not always the 
 most important part, of the circumstances by which 
 the result is really determined. Such oversights are 
 committed by very good reasoners, and even by a still 
 rarer class, that of good observers. It is a kind of 
 error to which those are peculiarly liable whose views 
 are the largest and most philosophical ; for exactly in 
 that ratio are their minds more accustomed to dwell 
 upon those laws, qualities, and tendencies, which are
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 155 
 
 cominon to large classes of cases, and wliicli belong to 
 all place and all time ; while it often happens tliat 
 circumstances almost peculiar to the particular case 
 or era have a far greater share in governing that one 
 case. 
 
 Although, therefore, a philosopher be convinced 
 that no general truths can be attained in the affairs 
 of nations by the a poderiori road, it does not the less 
 behove him, according to the measure of his oppor- 
 tunities, to sift and scrutinize the details of every 
 specific experiment. Without this, he may be an 
 excellent professor of abstract science ; for a person 
 may be of great use who points out correctly what 
 effects will follow from certain combinations of pos- 
 sible circumstances, in whatever tract of the extensive 
 region of hypothetical cases those combinations may 
 be found. He stands in the same relation to the 
 legislator, as the mere geographer to the practical 
 navigator; telling him the latitude and longitude of 
 all sorts of places, but not how to find whereabouts 
 he himself is sailing. If, however, he does no more 
 than this, he must rest contented to take no share in 
 practical politics ; to have no opinion, or to hold it 
 with extreme modesty, on the applications which 
 should be made of his doctrines to existing circum- 
 stances. 
 
 No one who attempts to lay down propositions 
 for the guidance of mankind, however perfect his 
 scientific acquirements, can dispense with a practical 
 knowledge of the actual modes in which the affairs of 
 the world are carried on, and an extensive personal 
 experience of the actual ideas, feelings, and intellec- 
 tual and moral tendencies of his own country and of 
 his own age. The true practical statesman is he who 
 combines this experience with a profound knowledge
 
 156 DEFINITIOX AND METHOD 
 
 of abstract political pliilosopliy. Either acquirement, 
 without the other, leaves him lame and impotent if he 
 is sensible of the deficiency ; renders him obstinate and 
 presumptuous if, as is more probable, he is entirely 
 unconscious of it. 
 
 Such, then, are the respective offices and uses of 
 the a priori and the a posteriori methods — the method 
 of abstract science, and that of specific experiment — 
 as well in Political Economy, as in all the other 
 branches of social philosophy. Truth compels us to 
 express our conviction that whether among those who 
 have written on these subjects, or among those for 
 whose use they wrote, few can be pointed out who 
 have allowed to each of these methods its just value, 
 and systematically kept each to its proper objects and 
 functions. One of the peculiarities of modern times, 
 the separation of theory from practice — of the studies 
 of the closet from the outward business of the world — 
 has given a wrong bias to the ideas and feelings both 
 of the student and of the man of business. Each 
 undervalues that part of the materials of thought with 
 which he is not familiar. The one despises all com- 
 prehensive views, the other neglects details. The one 
 draws his notion of the universe from the few objects 
 with which his course of life has happened to render 
 him familiar ; the other having got demonstration on his 
 side, and forgetting that it is only a demonstration nisi 
 — a proof at all times liable to be set aside by the addi- 
 tion of a single new fact to the hypothesis — denies, in- 
 stead of examining and sifting, the allegations which are 
 opposed to him. For this he has considerable excuse 
 in the worthlessness of the testimony on which the facts 
 brought forward to invalidate the conclusions of theory 
 usually rest. In these complex matters, men see with 
 their preconceived opinions, not with their e3^es: an
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 157 
 
 interested or a passionate man's statistics are of little 
 worth ; and a year seldom passes without examples of 
 the astounding falsehoods which large bodies of re- 
 spectable men will back each other in publishing to 
 the world as facts within their personal knowledge. It 
 is not because a thing is asserted to be true, but be- 
 cause in its nature it may be true, that a sincere and 
 patient inquirer will feel himself called upon to inves- 
 tigate it. He will use the assertions of opponents not 
 as evidence, but indications leading to evidence ; sugges- 
 tions of the most proper course for his own inquiries. 
 
 But while the philosopher and the practical man 
 bandy half-truths with one another, we may seek far 
 without finding one who, placed on a higher eminence 
 of thought, comprehends as a whole what they see only 
 in separate parts ; who can make the anticipations of 
 the philosopher guide the observation of the practical 
 man, and the specific experience of the practical man 
 warn the philosopher where something is to be added 
 to his theory. 
 
 The most memorable example in modern times of 
 a man who united the spirit of philosophy with the 
 pursuits of active life, and kept wholly clear from the 
 partialities and prejudices both of the student and of 
 the practical statesman, was Turgot ; the wonder not 
 only of his age, but of history, for his astonishing com- 
 bination of the most opposite, and, judging from com- 
 mon experience, almost incompatible excellences. 
 
 Though it is impossible to furnish any test by which 
 a speculative thinker, either in Political Economy or in 
 any other branch of social philosophy, may know that 
 he is competent to judge of the application of his 
 principles to the existing condition of his own or any 
 other country, indications may be suggested by the 
 absence of which he may well and surely know that he
 
 158 DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 is not competent. His knowledge must at least en- 
 able him to explain and account for what is, or he is 
 an insufficient judg-e of what ought to be. If a poli- 
 tical economist, for instance, finds himself puzzled by 
 any recent or present commercial phenomena ; if there 
 is any mystery to him in the late or present state of 
 the productive industry of the country, which his know- 
 ledge of principle does not enable him to unriddle ; he 
 may be sure that something is wanting to render his 
 system of opinions a safe guide in existing circum- 
 stances. Either some of the facts which influence 
 the situation of the country and the course of events 
 are not known to him ; or, knowing them, he knows 
 not what ouCTlit to be their effects. In the latter case 
 his system is imperfect even as an abstract system ; it 
 does not enable him to trace correctly all the conse- 
 quences even of assumed premises. Though he suc- 
 ceed in throwing doubts upon the reality of some of 
 the phenomena which he is required to explain, his 
 task is not yet completed ; even then he is called upon 
 to show how the belief, which he deems unfounded, 
 arose ; and what is the real nature of the appearances 
 which gave a colour of probability to allegations which 
 examination proves to be untrue. 
 
 When the speculative politician has gone through 
 this labour — has gone through it conscientiously, not 
 with the desire of finding his system complete, but 
 of making it so — he may deem himself qualified to 
 apply his principles to the guidance of practice : but 
 he must still continue to exercise the same discipline 
 upon every new combination of facts as it arises ; he 
 must make a large allowance for the disturbing influ- 
 ence of unforeseen causes, and must carefully watch 
 the result of every experiment, in order that any 
 residuum of facts which his principles did not lead
 
 OF rOLITICAL ECONOMY. 150 
 
 him to expect, and do not enable him to explain, may 
 become the subject of a fresh analysis, and furnish the 
 occasion for a consequent enlargement or correction 
 of his general views. 
 
 The method of the practical philosopher consists, 
 therefore, of two processes ; the one analytical, the 
 other synthetical. He must anahjze the existing state 
 of society into its elements, not dropping and losing 
 any of them by the way. After referring to the expe- 
 rience of individual man to learn the law of each of 
 these elements, that is, to learn what are its natural 
 effects, and how much of the effect follows from so 
 much of the cause when not counteracted by any 
 other cause, there remains an operation of s(/nthe,ns ; 
 to put all these effects together, and, from what 
 they are separately, to collect what would be the 
 effect of all the causes acting- at once. If these 
 various operations could be correctly performed, the 
 result would be prophec}"; but, as they can be per- 
 formed only with a certain approximation to correct- 
 ness, mankind can never predict with absolute cer- 
 tainty, but only with a less or greater degree of proba- 
 bility ; according as they are better or worse apprised 
 what the causes are, — have learnt with more or less 
 accuracy from experience the law to which each of 
 those causes, when acting separately, conforms, — and 
 have summed up the aggregate effect more or less 
 carefully. 
 
 With all the precautions which have been indicated 
 there will still be some danger of flilling into partial 
 views ; but we shall at least have taken the best secu- 
 rities against it. All that we can do more, is to 
 endeavour to be impartial critics of our own theories, 
 and to free ourselves, as far as we are able, from that 
 reluctance from which few inquirers are altogether
 
 IGO DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 exempt, to admit the reality or relevancy of any 
 facts which they have not previously either taken into, 
 or left a place open for in, their systems. 
 
 If indeed every phenomenon was generally the 
 effect of no more than one cause, a knowledge of the 
 law of that cause would, unless there was a logical 
 error in our reasoning, enable us confidently to pre- 
 dict all the circumstances of the phenomenon, AYe 
 might then, if we had carefull}^ examined our pre- 
 mises and our reasoning, and found no flaw, venture 
 to disbelieve the testimony which might be brought to 
 show .that matters had turned out differently from 
 what we should have predicted. If the causes of 
 erroneous conclusions were always patent on the face 
 of the reasonings which lead to them, the human un- 
 derstanding would be a far more trustworthy instru- 
 ment tlian it is. But the narrowest examination of 
 the process itself will help us little towards discover- 
 ing that we have omitted part of the premises which 
 we ought to have taken into our reasoning. Effects 
 are commonly determined by a concurrence of causes. 
 If we have overlooked any one cause, we may reason 
 justly from all the others, and only be the further 
 wrong. Our premises will be true, and our reasoning 
 correct, and yet the result of no value in the par- 
 ticular case. There is, therefore, almost always room 
 for a modest doubt as to our practical conclusions. 
 Against false premises and unsound reasoning, a good 
 mental discipline may effectually secure us ; but against 
 the danger of overlooking something, neither strength 
 of understanding nor intellectual cultivation can be 
 more than a very imperfect protection. A person 
 may be warranted in feeling confident, that whatever 
 he has carefully contemplated with his mind's eye he 
 ^ has seen correctly ; but no one can be sure that there
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 161 
 
 is not sometliing in existence which he has not seen 
 at all. He can do no more than satisfy himself that 
 he has seen all that is visible to any other persons 
 who have concerned themselves with the subject. 
 For this purpose he must endeavour to place himself 
 at their point of view, and strive earnestly to see the 
 object as they see it ; nor give up the attempt until 
 he has either added the appearance which is floating 
 before them to his own stock of realities, or made out 
 clearly that it is an optical deception. 
 
 The principles which we have now stated are by no 
 means alien to common apprehension : they are not 
 absolutely hidden, perhaps, from any one, but are 
 commonly seen through a mist. We might have pre- 
 sented the latter part of them in a phraseology in 
 which they would have seemed the most familiar of 
 truisms : we might have cautioned inquirers against 
 too extensive generalization, and reminded them that 
 there are exceptions to all rules. Such is the current 
 language of those who distrust comprehensive think- 
 ing, without having any clear notion why or where it 
 ought to be distrusted. We have avoided the use of 
 these expressions purposely, because we deem them 
 superficial and inaccurate. The error, when there is 
 error, does not arise from generalizing too extensively ; 
 that is, from including too wide a range of particular 
 cases in a single proposition. Doubtless, a man often 
 asserts of an entire class what is only true of a part of 
 it ; but his error generally consists not in making too 
 wide an assertion, but in making the wrong kind of 
 assertion : he predicated an actual result, when he 
 should only have predicated a tendency to that result 
 — a power acting with a certain intensity in that 
 direction. With regard to ecccqjtions ; in any toler- 
 
 M
 
 162 . DEFINITION AND METHOD 
 
 ably advanced science there is properly no sucli tiling 
 as an exception. What is thought to be an excep- 
 tion to a principle is always some other and distinct 
 principle cutting into the former : some other force 
 which impinges against the first force, and deflects it 
 from its direction. There are not a law and an eoccep- 
 lion to that huv — the law acting in ninety-nine cases, 
 and the exception in one. There are two laws, each 
 possibly acting in the whole hundred cases, and bring- 
 ing about a common effect by their conjunct opera- 
 tion. If the force which, being the less conspicuous 
 of the two, is called the disturbing force, prevails 
 sufficiently over the other force in some one case, to 
 constitute that case v/hat is commonly called an ex- 
 ception, the same disturbing force probably acts as a 
 modifying cause in many other cases which no one 
 will call exceptions. 
 
 Thus if it were stated to be a law of nature, that 
 all heavy bodies fall to the ground, it would probably 
 he said that the resistance of the atmosphere, which 
 prevents a balloon from falling, constitutes the balloon 
 an exception to that pretended law of nature. But 
 the real law is, that all heavy bodies tend to fall ; and 
 to this there is no exception, not even the sun and 
 moon ; for even they, as every astronomer knows, 
 tend towards the earth, with a force exactly equal to 
 that with which the earth tends towards them. The 
 resistance of the atmosphere might, in the particular 
 case of the balloon, from a misaj^prehension of what 
 the law of gravitation is, be said to prevail over the 
 law ; but its disturbing eifect is quite as real in every 
 other case, since though it does ngt prevent, it retards 
 the fall of all bodies whatever. The rule, and the 
 so-called exception, do not divide the cases between 
 them ; each of them is a comprehensive rule extend-
 
 OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 103 
 
 ing to all cases. To call one of these concurrent 
 principles an exception to the other, is superficial, 
 and contrary to the correct principles of nomenclature 
 and arrangement. An effect of precisely the same 
 kind, and arising from the same cause, ought not to 
 be placed in two diiFerent categories, merely as there 
 does or does not exist another cause preponderating 
 over it. 
 
 It is only in art, as distinguished from science, that 
 we can with propriety speak of exceptions. Art, the 
 immediate end of which is practice, has nothing to do 
 with causes, except as the means of bringing about 
 efi'ects. However heterogeneous the causes, it carries 
 the effects of them all into one single reckoning, and 
 according as the sum-total is plus or minus, according 
 as it falls above or below a certain line, Art says. Do 
 this, or Abstain from doing it. The exception does 
 not run by insensible degrees into the rule, like what 
 are called exceptions in science. In a question of 
 practice it frequently happens that a certain thing is 
 either fit to be done, or fit to be altogether abstained 
 from, there being no medium. If, in the majority 
 of cases, it is fit to be done, that is made the rule. 
 When a case subsequently occurs in which the thing 
 ought not to be done, an entirely new leaf is turned 
 over ; the rule is now done with, and dismissed : a new 
 train of ideas is introduced, between which and those 
 involved in the rule there is a broad line of demarca- 
 tion ; as broad and tranchant as the difference between 
 Ay and No. Very possibly, between the last case 
 which comes within the rule and the first of the ex- 
 ception, there is only the difference of a shade : but 
 that shade probably makes the whole interval between 
 acting in one way and in a totally different one. We 
 may, therefore, in talking of art, unobjectionably speak
 
 164 DEFINITION AND METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of the ride and tlie exception ; meaning by tlie rule, 
 the cases in which there exists a preponderance, how- 
 ever slight, of inducements for acting in a particular 
 way; and by the exception, the cases in which the 
 preponderance is on the contrary side. 
 
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 INDEX. 
 
 Acton's Modem Cookery 20 
 
 Aied'3 Blackstone Ecotioniiscd i!0 
 
 Allies on Formation of Cliristendom IG 
 
 Allejj's Discourses of Chrysostom IG 
 
 Alpine Guide (The) IS 
 
 Amos's Jurispradeuco 5 
 
 Andeeson's Strengtli of Materials 9 
 
 Aenold's Manual of English Literature .. (5 
 
 Authority and Conscience 15 
 
 Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson 7 
 
 Atke's Treasury of Bible Knowledge 16 
 
 Bacox 's Essays by Whatelt 5 
 
 Life and Letters, by Speddixg .. 4 
 
 "Works 5 
 
 Bain's Mental and Moral Science 8 
 
 on the Senses and Intellect 8 
 
 Ball's Guide to the Central Alps 18 
 
 Guide to the Western Alps 18 
 
 Guide to the Eastern Alps 18 
 
 Batldon's Rents and Tillages 15 
 
 Beckee's Charicles and Gallus IS 
 
 Benfet's Sanskrit-English Dictionary 6 
 
 Black's Treatise on Brewing iO 
 
 Blackley's German-Enghsh Dictionary .. 6 
 
 Blaine's Rural Sports 19 
 
 Veterinary Art 19 
 
 Bloxam's Metals 9 
 
 BooTu's Problem of the World and the 
 
 Church 15 
 
 Saint-Simon S 
 
 BouLTBEB on 39 Articles 15 
 
 BouENE's Catechism of the Steam Engine. . 1-i 
 
 Handbook of Steam Engine .... 14 
 
 Treatise on the Steam Engine. . . . 14 
 
 • Improvements in the same 14 
 
 BowDLEE's Family Shakspeaee 19 
 
 Eeaddon's Life in India 17 
 
 Eeamley-Mooee's Six Sisters of the Valley 18 
 Beande's Dictionary of Science, Literature, 
 
 and Art \\ 
 
 Beat's Manual of Anthropology 8 
 
 Philosophy of Jy^ecessity 8 
 
 On Force 8 
 
 Beee's Fallacies of Darwinism 11 
 
 BKEXCHLfiT's Cruise of the ' Curacoa ' 17 
 
 Beowne's Exposition of the 39 Articles .... IG 
 
 BEfNEL's Life of Beunel 4 
 
 Buckle's History of Civilisation 2 
 
 Posthnnious Remains 7 
 
 Bull's Hints to Mothers oq 
 
 Maternal Management of Children'. '. 20 
 
 BuNSEN's God in History 3 
 
 Prayers 15 
 
 Burgomaster's Family (The) -8 
 
 BUEKE's Rise of Great Families . ". '. '. ". '. .... 5 
 
 " ' Vicissitudes of Families 5 
 
 Bceton's Christian Church 3 
 
 Cabinet Lawyer £0 
 
 Campbell's Xorway 17 
 
 Cates's Eiographical Dictionary 4 
 
 and VVooD^VAED's Encyclapa?dia 2 
 
 Cats and Fablie's Moral Emblems 13 
 
 Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths .... 7 
 
 Cuesnet's Indian Polity 2 
 
 Waterloo Campaign 2 
 
 Chorale Book for England 13 
 
 Christ the Consoler 15 
 
 Clough's Lives from Plutarch 2 
 
 Codrington's (Admiral) ."Memoirs 4 
 
 CoLENSO on Pentateuch and Book of Joshua 10 
 The Speaker's Bible Commen- 
 tary 15 
 
 CoLLiNs's Perspective 14 
 
 Colomb's Slave Catching in the Indian 
 
 Ocean 17 
 
 Commonplace Philosopher in Town and 
 
 Country, by A. K. H. B 7 
 
 Conington's Translation of Virgil's ^neid 19 
 
 Miscellaneous Writings .... 7 
 
 Contanseau'8 Two French Dictionaries . . G 
 CoNY-BEAEEand.HowsoN'sLife and Epistles 
 
 of St. Paul IG 
 
 Cooke's Grotesque Animals 13 
 
 Coopee's Surgical Dictionary 12 
 
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