Paris, Rome, or London-thus quickening the circulation in the city in which he resides, and thereby economising human force, which, of itself, is capital. By withdrawing the cattle from Ireland, he, in a corresponding degree, renders the Irish circulation more sluggish- thereby producing a waste of capital. Why, however, does absenteeism stand so conspicuous among the grievances of Ireland? Because political centralization has transferred to London the demand for mental force. Because trading centralization has transferred the demand for mental and physical force, to Lancashire and Yorkshire. Because the two have combined for the annihilation of that demand for the potential energies of man, without which, his faculties must remain undeveloped. Because they have combined, too, to augment the wasting tax of transportation-producing a necessity for exhausting the powers of the soil, and thus diminishing the produce, while lessening the price to be realised for the things produced. The more perfect the diversification of employments, the greater is the tendency towards augmentation in the proportion of fixed capital towards competition for the purchase of physical and mental services-and towards strength in the people and the State. The less that diversification, the greater is the tendency towards augmentation in the proportion of movable capitalthe greater is the competition for the sale of human powers — and the greater is the weakness of both State and people. Concentration being attractive, brings with it combination, prompt demand for human powers, and rapidly augmenting force. Centralization, being repulsive, is found in company with consolidation of the land, dispersion of the people, sluggish demand for services, and declining force. Localization of the capitalist, and growing competition for the purchase of the laborer's services, attend the one; while consolidation of the land, absenteeism, and increasing competition for the sale of human service, attend the other.*

* Absenteeism was universal throughout France, except as regarded those provinces in which the people had retained the right to tax themselves. One of them, as the reader has seen, was Languedoc-that one in which the energies of the people were most directed towards relieving the farmer from the tax of transportation, and in which, consequently, fixed property had the largest value. How great was the strength thence resulting, may be inferred from the fact, that "the central government often applied to it for endorsements, and borrowed in the name of the province at lower rates than would have been charged to the crown."-DE TOCQUEVILLE, L'Ancien Régime, chap. xii.

CHAPTER XLV.

OF COMPETITION.

§ 1. FINDING no competitor for the purchase of his services, Friday was glad to sell himself for food and clothing - becoming Crusoe's slave. Had the island contained half-a-dozen Crusoes, their competition would have enabled him to make his election among them all-exercising, thus, that power of self-government by which the freeman is distinguished from the slave.

Will you buy? Will you sell? The man who has a commoty, and must sell, is forced to ask the first of these questionsobtaining, for that reason, ten, twenty, or thirty per cent. less than might otherwise be regarded as the fair market price. His neighbor, who buys, and is not forced to sell, waits for the second of them - thereby obtaining more, perhaps, than the ordinary price. Such being the case with commodities and things that admit of being held on hand, waiting for a purchaser, how much more must it be so, in reference to that potential energy resulting from the consumption of food, which cannot be preserved, for even a single instant, after its production? The trader takes the market price for his perishable oranges, however great may be his loss-knowing that it will become greater with every day's delay. He stores his ironwaiting for a better market. The farmer sells his peaches on the instant, low in price as they may be; but he carries wheat and potatoes to his barn hoping for better prices. The faborer's commodity being yet more perishable than either the oranges or the peaches, the necessity for its instant sale is still more urgent.

The merchant, having stored his sugar, and the farmer, having housed his wheat, can obtain advances, to be returned when their commodities shall be sold. The laborer can obtain no advance upon his present hour-his commodity perishing at the instaut of production.

Further, the merchant may continue to eat, drink, and wear clothing his stock, meanwhile, perishing on his hands. The farmer may eat his potatoes, after failing to sell his peaches. The laborer must sell his potential energies, be they what they may, or perish for want of food. In regard to no commodity, therefore, is the effect resulting from the presence or absence of competition so great, as in relation to human force. Two men competing for its purchase, its owner becomes a freeman. The two, competing for its sale, become enslaved. The whole question of freedom or slavery for man is, therefore, embraced in that of competition.

§ 2. The man who finds a purchaser for his own labor, competes for the purchase of that of others. The more instant the demand for his services, the greater is his power of purchase, and the more instant become his demands for other services-the more rapid is the circulation. the larger the production and the greater the tendency towards accumulation. Each and every man who has physical or mental effort to sell, is, therefore, interested in promoting increase in the rapidity of the societary circulation-it being in that direction he is to look for such competition for the purchase of his own services, as will enable him to obtain, in exchange therefor, the largest quantity of the necessaries, conveniences, comforts, and luxuries, of life.

What is true of the individual man, is equally so in regard to communities composed of millions of men -the nation whose members find instant demand for all their powers of body and of mind, being thereby enabled to have much to offer in exchange for the labor of others, and to consume much of what is produced by those others. Each and every community is, therefore, directly interested in promoting the rapidity of circulation in each and every other-it being in that direction they are to look for increase of competition for the purchase of the commodities they have to sell. The harmony of international interests is, therefore, perfect-all the laws of nature tending towards the establishment of freedom and peace throughout the world.

Such being the case, it follows, necessarily, that a course of proceeding in any one community, tending to lessen, anywhere,

the power of production, is an offence against mankind at large, and should be so regarded.

§ 3. The greater the competition for the purchase of labor, the more perfect is the power of the laborer to select for himself the pursuit in which his powers shall be employed, and the person with whom, or for whom, he will work-and to exercise control over the distribution of the things produced. Competition for the purchase of labor leads, therefore, towards wealth, freedom, and civilization.

The greater the competition for the sale of labor, the less is the power of the laborer to determine how, for whom, or on what terms, he will work. Competition for the sale of labor leads, therefore, towards poverty, slavery, and barbarism.

The planter of Alabama, or of Texas, of Cuba or Brazil, tolerates no competition for the purchase of the labor of the persons who till the land upon which he has placed himself. Requiring each and all of them to bring to him, alone, the products of their toil, he makes the division in the manner that best may suit himself. The consequences of this are seen in the fact, that he and they have little to sell, and can, therefore, purchase little of the products of others- the destruction of competition for the purchase of labor at home, being thus attended by diminution in the competition for its purchase abroad. Slavery in any one community of the world, tends, therefore, towards the production of slavery in all.

The trader, in like manner, tolerates no competition, when he can, by any means, prevent it. The history of the world is a record of contrivances for the maintenance of monopolies — beginning with the secret expeditions of the Phoenicians, and closing, for the present, with the annihilation of the cotton. manufacture of India, and the extension, over the whole of that vast country, of patent laws, in virtue of which machinery cannot be improved without the consent of people who are many thousands of miles distant. It is, too, a record of wars for the same purpose the Carthaginians having been as fully determined to prevent, at any cost, competition for the purchase of the potential energies of Central Africa, as were the Venetians and Genoese, for those of Eastern and Western Europe - the

Paper.

Rocky Mountains.

Slavery.

Dutch, for those of the Asiatic islands.

or the people of England, for those of Jamaica, or of the occupants of the lands on Hudson's Bay.*

Turning now, once more, to the diagram representing the gradual changes of society, here once more given

Rags....

Land valueless.

LAND.

Land high in value.

we find, on the left, no competition for the purchase of laborthe trader being there sole master, and sole director of the division between himself and the men who do his work.t Further, we find an almost total absence of circulation- & most trivial amount of production - and an entire inability to

"It would be easy to fill a goodly volume with interesting accounts of this sealed country, this region hidden from the knowledge and industry of mankind, during nearly two hundred years, in order that a body of private individuals might realise handsome profits. *** It is impossible to look without interest on a country containing three millions of square miles, abounding in mineral wealth, and capable of growing corn enough to feed the whole of Europe, yet whose sole destiny it is to furnish four shiploads of skins annually, of the value of five hundred thousand pounds." -Household Words, vol. viii. p. 453.

"Living in rude tents, subsisting on kammas, or preserved bulbs, pemmican, and dried fruits, they [the aborigines of the Hudson's Bay settlements] had little desire for civilised luxuries. Of athletic form, and taking abundant exercise, they enjoyed robust health, and the calling of the 'medicine-man' amongst them was entirely confined to the healing of wounds obtained in the chase or war. Their weapons for slaughtering the buffaloes or deer were bone-point arrows and spears, which latter were formidable instruments of destruction in their hands. These animals being found in great numbers, often in thousands at a time, it was seldom they ran short of a good store of dried pemmican for the long winter months.

"For upwards of a century, the fate of these once-happy races was hidden from Europe. All within that great beaver preserve' was a sealed book in this country. But, in the course of time, the truth oozed out slowly but sadly. Tales reached England of the extermination of entire tribes and races by starvation, intemperance, and disease introduced from Europe. Stories were listened to, but scarcely credited, of cannibalism from sheer starvation, of wholesale murders in the madness of intoxication, and it was said that, at the then rate of human destruction, the footprint of a native would not be seen on the wastes of the Indian territories by the end of the present century."-Ibid.