out of cultivation, i. e. make it a desert. But the scheme will fail; for as the great customers of Manchester, viz. the landlords, farmers, and little towns depending on them, will be ruined, Manchester is not likely to increase; it will only have exchanged its customers-rich customers of England, for poor ones of Poland.

12. Mr. Torrens says, "If, in consequence of our skill in manufactures, any given portion of our labor and capital can, by working up cloth, obtain from Poland a thousand quarters of wheat, while it could raise, from our own soil, only nine hundred; then, even on the agricultural theory, we must increase our wealth by being, to this extent, a manufacturing rather than an agricultural people." How extraordinary that these philosophers should not see that they only consider one side of the question! In the first place, we part with the whole value of the wheat to Poland in cloth; in the second, England keeps both cloth and wheat, nearly double. In the first case, after the transaction, she remains master of the value of one thousand quarters of wheat; in the second, of nineteen hundred.

If England only possess the whole nineteen hundred, it is of little consequence whether they be represented by pounds or shil lings she has the wealth; and if you suppose the thousand to represent the labor of any given number of men, of course the nineteen will be nearly double; thus there will be nearly double the number of persons to pay the same taxes, &c. in the one case that there are in the other.

It is no small part of the merit of this argument, if any merit it has, that it is perfectly consistent with the theories on the subject of rent, both of A. Smith, Mr. Ricardo, and Mr. Torrens ; and it is also intelligible to every person who has never hearda word of political economy.

13. The result of the whole argument is, that it is desirable that the corn-grower should be able to sell his corn at such a price, that the manufacturer should be able to sell his calico for a fair remunerating price; but at all events, that the Briton should be the person to supply the corn, in order that the country may have the double profit. The interests of the manufacturer and the corngrower are identically the same; and it is very unfortunate for them that they should permit a third party, whose interest is at variance with them both, to sow dissension betwixt them, in order that, out of their misunderstandings, he may succeed in doubling his property; for surely no person can deny that the public annuitant will double his property, if, by the abolition of the corn law, he can buy double the quantity of wheat which he can buy He has got possession of the diurnal press, by which he never ceases his exertions to inflame the passions of the parties, many of whom are ignorant of the nature of the question.

now.

14. Mr. McCulloch and all these economists know very well that reducing the price of grain will not increase the necessary rate of wages in the slightest degree, and that the poor man's means of purchasing the comforts of life will not be increased in the slightest degree.

15. The gentlemen who compose the school of modern economists boast that their science is capable of the strictest demonstration. This is a very bold assumption. They surely forget that this assertion is always made by every school in its day.

The gentleman who may be considered as the founder of the British school, was Adam Smith. For a long time his opinions were received almost without contradiction: of late, however, he has had many opponents; some of his most important doctrines are now said to be erroneous. Of the different subjects for the consideration of the political economist, there is no one so important as that of rent, and its immediate relatives. In the very nature of things agriculture takes the first place. Dr. Smith states it as his opinion, that the capital employed in agriculture, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labor than any equal capital employed in manufactures, but, in proportion to the quantity of productive labor which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labor of the country; to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. He says, "Of all the ways in which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to society."-Wealth of Nations, ii. p. 53. McCulloch, Polit. Econ. p. 149.

16. This is a gravely-delivered opinion on a subject of no trifling importance. What says Mr. McCulloch to this? « This is perhaps the most objectionable passage in the Wealth of Nations; and it is really astonishing how so acute and sagacious a reasoner as Dr. Smith could have maintained a doctrine so manifestly erroneous." Thus one of the most important, if not actually the most important, of the fundamental doctrines of the father of political economy, is declared to be false. Mr. McCulloch afterward says, "The rent of the landlord is not, as Dr. Smith conceived it to be, the recompense of the work of nature, remaining after all that part of the product is deducted which can be regarded as the recompense of the work of man!"

Mr. A. Smith is correct: the rent of the land is the recompense of the work of nature, remaining after all that part of the product is deducted which can be regarded as the recompense of the work of man. But this recompense may perhaps be measured by the value of the excess of produce obtained from the best soils over that obtained from the worst. However bad the soils may be which are brought into cultivation, the quantity of quarters of corn from the best land will not be varied. But the exchangeable

money value of the corn will be varied or increased as bad lands are cultivated; because bad lands will only be cultivated, as corn, by the increase of population, is permanently increased in value. This is not inconsistent with Mr. McCulloch's doctrine of value. If the value of an article is in proportion to the quantity of labor required to produce it, the value of the corn produced on the best land, will bear always a certain fixed relative proportion to the labor expended, whenever the worst soils are cultivated.

17. On the subject of profits, Mr. McCulloch says, "Profits consist of the excess of the commodities produced by the expenditure of a given quantity of capital over that quantity of capital.". Prin. Polit. Econ. p. 366. Or, in other words, profit is the excess of the produce of labor and capital, which will remain over the produce of the labor and capital which have been expended for the production of any article. This being premised, I think we shall see that Mr. M'Culloch has made another mistake. He says, Parl. Abs. p. 392. As the value of goods is made up wholly of labor and profit, the whole and only effect of a French manufacturer getting his labor for less than an English manufacturer, is to enable him to make more profit than the English manufacturer can make, but not to lower the price of his goods." Now let us suppose that the English and French laborer each pay a heavy poll tax, and are in every respect on an equality in the manufacture of an article; that the labor is the same and the profit the same. Now let us suppose the poll tax taken off the French laborer, and that this tax is so large as for half of it to pay the carriage of any certain article from France to England. I ask any person of common sense whether the Frenchman could not undersell the Englishman in the English market, by the amount of the other half of the poll tax; and whether it would not enable him to undersell the Englishman in the French market by the amount of the whole poll tax, and the expence of the carriage of the Englishman's goods to France. Arguments, about the tendency of rates of profit to fall to a general level, are all nonsense, till the countries are placed on a footing of perfect equality in soil, climate, security of property, and taxation.

But on the latter, in Prin. Polit. Econ. p. 386. Mr. McCulloch says, "It has, therefore, been most justly and truly observed by Dr. Smith, that a heavy taxation has exactly the same effects as an increased barrenness of the soil, and an increased inclemency of the heavens."

18. Now let us suppose England and France to be in every respect relating to political economy on the same footing, and only divided by an imaginary boundary. Under these circumstances, the

rates of profit will be the same in the two countries. Mr.M Culloch maintains that cultivating lands of worse quality than those already in cultivation will reduce the rates of profit. Now if I reduce the quality of all the lands in England,-increase the barrenness of the soil, leaving those of France untouched, I shall reduce the rate of profit in England: but if I lay a heavier taxation on England than on France, I shall do the same as increase the barrenness of the soil, and thus reduce the rate of profit, and banish capital to France. Hence it is very evident that as long as our taxation greatly exceeds that of France, we never can compete with her, all other things being equal.

Thus, as it is evident that we cannot compete with France if our taxes are greatly disproportionate to hers, so, in the same manner, we cannot compete with her if her soil or her climate be greatly superior, unless we have some other very great preponderating advantage as a counterpoise. To talk of what is REALLY A FREE TRADE, with a great disproportion of taxation, is absurd, and must be instantly ruinous to the high-taxed country, if adopted by it. But if a nation possess any great preponderating advantage over its neighbor-such as great superiority of climate, or soil, or government, or national habit of industry,- this will act, as far as it goes,' as the exemption from taxation named above, and give it always an advantage in the race of prosperity with the less favored country; which the latter can only balance by acquiring some countervailing. advantage, or by restrictions.

19. Mr. McCulloch has published a treatise on the rate of wages, which he has printed in a cheap form for dispersion amongst the laboring classes. I shall endeavor to show that his reasoning

is erroneous.

He begins his essay with a definition of what he calls capital. Of the word capital he says, "The capital of a country consists of all that portion of the produce of industry existing in it, which can be made directly available either to the support of human existence, or to the facilitating of production." He then adds, " But the portion of capital to which it is now necessary to advert, consists of the food, cloths, and other articles required for the use and consumption of the laborers. This portion forms the fund out of which their wages must be wholly paid."

20. Now I apprehend that here are two clear and distinct propositions, essentially different from one another. On the second of: these it is that all his superstructure ought to be built; and it is by confounding them together, and by sometimes reasoning from one of them, sometimes from the other, that he has been induced. to draw conclusions perfectly untrue and erroneous.

In the heading of his first section he states, "Rate of wages in any given country at any particular period, dependent on the mag

nitude of the fund or capital appropriated to the payment of wages, compared to the number of laborers."

Now this is perfectly true; but when stripped of its formal and technical language, to what does it amount? simply to this; that if a larger sum of money be divided as wages amongst a given number of persons, they will have a larger sum each than if a smaller sum be divided amongst them; that if two pounds be divided amongst four men, they will have each a larger sum than if only one pound be so divided; that is, the rate of wages would be higher if two pounds be divided, than if only one were so divided. This is all true; but what then? What consequence can be deduced from this self-evident proposition? I think I have fairly stated Mr. McCulloch's meaning-I shall be very sorry if I have made any error.

He has fallen into a mistake by confounding capital appropriated to the payment of wages, as stated in the heading of his first section, with national capital, as stated in several places afterward, and particularly in the fifth distich of the first section, as follows: "Whatever, therefore, may be the state of money wages in a country-whether they are one shilling or five shillings a day-it is still certain, that if the amount of the national capital and the population continue the same, or increase or diminish in the same proportion,-no variation will take place in the rate of wages."

Nothing can be more untrue, as a general proposition, than this. He then goes on to draw the conclusion, that "wages never really rise, except when the proportion of capital to population is enlarged; and they never really fall, except when that proportion is diminished."

21. This is a most marvellous non sequitur. He has confused himself by losing sight of the limitation in his first proposition, in which, in fact, lies all its truth: it is true with the limitation; it is untrue without it. He ought always to have qualified the expression capital, or national capital, with the words appropriated. to the payment of wages. This omission is of no trifling importance, because it is by the omission of this qualification that he is enabled to deduce consequences destructive to the very existence of society in this country,-destructive actually to the food of many millions of people.

His conclusion ought to have stood as follows:-"Wages never really rise, except when the proportion which capital appropriated. to the payment of wages bears to the laboring population, is enlarged; and they never really fall, except when that proportion is diminished." If capital be increased, unless it be appropriated to the payment of wages, it can have no effect on the rate of wages. Again, the rate of wages will not be affected by the population