5. The third proposition is, that, with the increase of wealth and population, and the consequent necessity for re sorting to the poorer soils, the landlord's proportion tends to increase, rent rising as labor becomes less productive. If cultivation does really commence with the richer soils then is this proposition true, the necessary result of an increase in the numbers of mankind being that of more and more subjecting the many who labor to the will of the few who own the land. The ultimate slavery of man is thus the natural termination of the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine. If, however, the contrary be true, then must the landlord's proportion steadily diminish, leaving a larger proportion of an increased quantity for the laborer, whose ultimate lot is freedom.

Adam Smith tells his readers that the landlord's share in bis day was but a fourth or a fifth of the product; and Mr. Malthus acknowledges that it did not in his own time exceed a fifth. This, however, he considers as a proof of increasing difficulty in obtaining food, asserting that whereas in the fifteenth century a laborer could have 122 pints of wheat as a week's wages, in 1810 he could have but 80.

In 1389, a plough-driver had 7s. and a carter, 10s. a year, without clothing, and it is doubtful if, in addition, he had even his wretched food. On an average, those wages would not command more than eight bushels of wheat, yet are we now assured that a laborer could then earn three bushels per week. The average yield having been but about six bushels per acre, it follows that the annual wages of a single laborer required the whole product of 26 acres, and that at a period when, because of the imperfection of machinery, more than ten days labor were required for harvesting the wretched product of a single acre. Such are the extraordinary statements that are now put forth by writers who know that the land and its representative then took at least two-thirds of the whole product of land and labor.

In France, as has been already shown, the number of agricultural families nearly doubled in the period from 1700 to 1840, the average wages of agricultural labor having, in that same time, quadrupled. In the first period, the proportion allotted to the laborer was 35 per cent.; in the latter, it was 60 per cent. In the first, the land-owner retained 65 per cent., or almost twice as much as the laborer's share; whereas, in the latter, he retained but 40 per cent., or only twothirds as much. Nevertheless, so great had been the increase of product, that the smaller proportion of the latter period

gave to the capitalists 2,000,000,000 of francs, in place of 850,000,000 received in the earlier one.

Such is the course of things in every country in which wealth and population are permitted to increase and commerce is allowed to extend itself, all existing commodities then necessarily declining in their value as compared with labor, and labor rising as compared with them, because of constant diminution in the cost of reproduction. In Prussia, forty years since, a third of the product was regarded as the share to which the tenant might equitably be entitled. Since then-labor having become greatly more productive—the laborer's proportion has rapidly increased.

Wealth should grow more rapidly than population, and every increase in the ratio of the former to the latter is attended with an augmentation of the power of the laborer, as compared with that of landed or other capital. We all see, that when ships are more numerous than cargoes, freights are low; and, vice versa, that when cargoes are more abundant than ships, freights are high. When ploughs and horses more abound than ploughmen, the latter fix the wages; but when ploughmen are more abundant than ploughs, the owners of the latter determine the distribution of the product. Wealth increasing rapidly, new soils are brought into cultivation and more ploughmen are required. The demand for ploughs producing a demand for more men to mine the coal and smelt the ore, the iron-master becomes a competitor for the laborer, who obtains a larger proportion of the constantlyincreasing return to labor. He, in turn, becoming a better purchaser of cloth, the manufacturer becomes a competitor with the iron-master and the farmer for his services. proportion being again increased he now requires sugar, and tea, and coffee; and next, the ship-master competes with the manufacturer, the iron-master, and the farmer. With the growth of wealth and population, there is thus a constant increase in the demand for mental and physical effort the increased productiveness of which, and the consequently-increased facility of accumulating wealth, are followed necessarily, and certainly, by an increase of the laborer's proportion. His wages rising, the proportion of the capitalist falls; yet now the latter accumulates fortune more rapidly than ever, his and the laborer's interests being in perfect harmony with each other. The highest evidence of increasing wealth is to be found in the reduction of that proportion; and yet, the cardinal principle of the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine is

His

found in the assertion, that with the growth of wealth and population it must increase.

The following table of the results of the two systems may be compared by the reader with what passes before his eyes:

§ 6. The next proposition is, that wealth tends to counteract those laws, preventing the necessity for resorting to less productive soils, by producing improvements in cultivation.

This proposition was interpolated into the system because of the absolute necessity for leaving a place of escape for some of the thousand exceptions to its laws, and its presence is a direct admission of the unsoundness of the doctrine. Admitting its validity, wealth should grow most abundantly when and where land is most abundant. So far the reverse, however, has it been, that wealth has grown most slowly in those countries in which rich and unoccupied soils have most abounded; because there, men being few and scattered, the power of association has least existed.

The laws of nature are simple and universally true. That of Mr. Ricardo is complex and universally false. Had it been otherwise, there would have been no necessity for thus providing escape-valves for troublesome facts.

7. The last proposition is, that every such improvement tends to retard the increase of rent, every obstacle to improvement tending, on the contrary, to accelerate it. The interests of the landlord and the laborer are thus always in opposition to each other.

Were it so that men did really commence on the most fertile soils, such must inevitably be the case. The landlord would take a constantly-increasing proportion, the laborer becoming his slave, thankful to be allowed to live and work, though fed on acorn-bread. The doctrine being here carried

out to its legitimate result, if correct, that point must certainly, at some future day, be reached. It signifies nothing. to say that the downward progress may be arrested. "How slow soever the increase of population," says one of the most eminent of the teachers of the Ricardo-Malthusian school, "if that of capital be still slower," as must certainly be the case if men do really commence on the richest soils, "wages will be reduced so low, that a portion of the population will regularly die from the consequences of want." The experience of Europe for thousands of years, and that of America for several centuries, leads us to opposite conclusions; yet are we constantly assured that such is the law. If so, when is it to become effective? We know of no other of nature's laws hung up, in terrorem, over man; none, the action of which is thus suspended, to fall, at some future period, with a force immeasurably increased. Population increases daily, and yet is man permitted to go on increasing his species in blissful ignorance of the great fact, that his descendants have been foredoomed to suffer all the pangs of hunger while landowners are to revel in abundance, the one class becoming masters, the other becoming with each succeeding century more thoroughly enslaved.

§ 8. The harmony of all the permanent interests of man being perfect, it would seem to be required only that men should be persuaded of its existence, to appreciate fully the advantages of co-operation over antagonism, and to induce all honest and enlightened men to unite in an effort for enabling their fellow-men, everywhere, to indulge their natural desire for association and combination, the husbandman and the artisan taking their places by each other's side. The necessity for this, and the advantages to be derived from it by all-whether Gaul or Briton, Turk or Christian-being more fully understood, peace and commerce would take the place of trading jealousy and universal discord. The harmony of classes thus begetting a harmony of nations, the love of peace would diffuse itself throughout the earth. All would then become satisfied that in the laws which govern the relations of man with his fellow-man, there reign the same beautiful simplicity and harmony everywhere else so aburdantly evident; all, by degrees, would learn that their own. interests would be best promoted by respecting, in others, those rights of person and property they desired to have respected in themselves; and all become at length convinced

that the whole of social science is embraced in the brief words of the great founder of Christianity: "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you."

Mr. Ricardo's system is one of discords, and tends to the production of war among both classes and nations. Professing an admiration for freedom of commerce, he teaches that a monopoly of the land is in accordance with a great law of nature. Believing in freedom of action, he teaches that if men and women will unite in marriage-thus doing that which stimulates to exertion, and tends most to improve both head and heart-starvation is their probable reward. Thoroughly approving sound morality he enforces the advantages of celibacy, thus affording countenance to the many restrictions by which marriage is prevented and profligacy promoted. Professing a desire for free-trade in corn, he teaches the landlord that his interests will be injuriously affected by it.

Anxious to improve the condition of the people, he assures the land-owner that improvement in the modes of cultivation must diminish rent. Desiring that the rights of property may be respected, he instructs the laborer that the interests of the land-owner are to be promoted by every measure tending to produce a scarcity of food, rent being paid because of the monopoly, by a few, of that which a beneficent Deity had intended for the good of all. His book is the true manual of the demagogue, seeking power by means of agrarianism, war, and plunder. Its lessons being inconsistent with those afforded by the study of all well-observed facts, and inconsistent even with themselves, the sooner they shall be discarded the better for the interests of landlord and tenant, manufacturer and mechanic, and mankind at large.

§ 9. All the facts thus laid before the reader, in relation to wages, profits, and rents, and those presented by the history of the world, now range themselves under the following propositions:

That, in the early periods of society, population being small and scattered, the possession of a small amount of capital gives to its owner a great amount of power, enabling him to hold the laborer dependent on his will, as serf or slave :

That, with the growth of wealth and numbers, the power of combination increases, with great increase in the productiveness of labor, and in the power of accumulation, every step in that direction being attended by decline in the power of the already-existing capital to command the services of