return to labor, and the greater the rent. The more factories, the less is the labor required for obtaining clothing, the greater is the proportion that may be given to improving the land by making drains, roads, bridges, and school-houses, the larger is the return to labor, and the greater the rent. The interests of the landlord would seem, therefore, to be directly promoted by every measure tending to augment the wealth of the community, and to aid in the improvement of cultivation.

How stands it with the laborer? Seeing that, with every increase in the number and quality of spades and ploughs, engines and roads, mills and factories, his labor becomes more productive that, with every increase in the ratio which spades. and ploughs, engines and mills, bear to the men by whom they are to be employed, he is enabled to retain an increased proportion of the larger product- and that, whereas, when the land in cultivation yielded a net product of only six bushels to the acre, the owner took two-thirds, leaving him but two, now, when it yields forty bushels, he takes but a fifth, leaving him thirty-two

he feels that his interests are, like those of the rent receiver, directly advanced by every measure tending to the augmentation of wealth, and to the promotion of improvement in the modes of cultivation.

§ 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-appreciating fully the advantages of co-operation over antagonism, and seeing that, like mercy

"It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath "-

blessing both "him that gives, and him that takes," to induce all honest and enlightened men to an effort for enabling their fellowmen, 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-Gaul and Briton— Russian and American - Turk and 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

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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 abundantly 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. Its parts not agreeing with each other, its whole tends to the promotion 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 most stimulates to exertion, and most tends to improve both heart and mind-starvation is to be their probable reward. Thoroughly admiring 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 all wealth appropriated to improvement in the modes of cultivation, must diminish the progress of 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 an exercise of power on the part of the few, who have appropriated to themselves, that which a beneficent Deity intended for the common 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 come to be discarded the better will it be, for the interests of landlord and tenant, manufacturer and mechanic, and mankind at large.

§ 9. That, for centuries past, the progress of affairs in England, France, and other countries, has been in the direction we have indicated, cannot admit the slightest doubt the proportion of the land-owner and other capitalists having constantly diminished, while that of the laborer has steadily advanced, and the former having become enriched, as the latter has become free. Looking to other portions of the world, however, we see a different state of things-the proportion of the land-owner having increased in Ireland, India, and other countries, while that of the laborer has decreased. It is needed, therefore, that we now inquire into the disturbing causes producing such effects thereby ascertaining how far they tend to the establishment, or disproof, of the proposition, that the tendency to a decline in the proportion of the capitalist, and to an increase in that of the laborer, is in the direct ratio of the circulation of labor and its products.

Attica, in the peaceful days which followed the legislation of Solon, exhibits to us a people among whom the capitalist's proportion was steadily declining - the people becoming, therefore, more free from year to year. Later, war and trade having become the sole pursuits, the mode of distribution changes, and man becomes re-enslaved. When next we see the seat of this once-powerful republic, we find in it a Roman province the free citizens of earlier days having been wholly replaced by slaves, dependent on the will of men like Herodes Atticus, for the determination of the question, as to what is to be the distribution of the proceeds of land and labor. The circulation of the social body having gradually ceased, political and moral death had followed, as its necessary consequence.

Turning to Italy, we meet a repetition of what has been seen in Greece the circulation gradually ceasing, as land becomes monopolised, and individual men acquiring power to direct the distribution of the produce of hosts of slaves. Centralization and slavery inducing always the abandonment of the richest soils, the later days of the empire exhibit the fertile Campagna as having reverted to a state of nature, while Rome itself had become the property of a few great families, recipients of enormous incomes, but wholly incapable of self-defence. *

*The great families of Rome, in the days of Alaric, were 1760 in number -many of them having annual incomes exceeding $500,000. Of the Campagna, half a million of acres had been then abandoned.

Spain expelled her most industrious people—thus producing stoppage of the circulation, and abandonment of her richest soils. Land becoming consolidated, the effects are seen in the gradual growth of power among the few, attended by corresponding weakness in the people and the State.

Louis X. proclaims the abolition of slavery-every man in France being, thenceforth, to be reputed free.* All his measures, and those of his successors, however, tending towards a total suspension of the circulation, their effect is seen in a steady consolidation of the soil in the hands of the nobles and the Church the people perishing like flies in the autumn, while their masters wasted their substance on wars abroad, and palaces at home. †

The British policy having for its fundamental idea, the centralization of manufactures at home, and the stoppage of the circulation abroad, it is in the countries most subject to it, we should find the proportion of the landlord largest-the quantity least - and the power of the laborer over the product of his efforts, at the minimum point. That all these conditions have been complied with, is shown in the facts, that, while the Irish laborer has paid at the rate of five, six, and eight pounds per acre, the land-owners have been so completely ruined, as to have produced a necessity for the revolutionary measure of creating a special court, charged with dispossessing the rent receivers. Turning to the West Indies, we find the land-owner taking so large a proportion of the proceeds of labor, and leaving to the laborer so small an one, as to have caused the entire annihilation of nearly twothirds of all the people who had been imported-thus producing a necessity for a constant importation of laborers, to be, in their turn, annihilated. Large as was the proportion of the land

* Proclaiming freedom for all, Louis invited the serfs of the crown domains to purchase their liberty. That they refused to do: whereupon he ordered his officers to take their property, and compel them to become free men. Greedy of revenue, he imposed a tax of two deniers per franc, on every contract of purchase and sale made by the Italians then the chief manufacturers for Europe. The Jews having been expelled by previous sovereigns, he invited their return — guaranteeing them full power to pursue their debtors, on condition of giving him two-thirds of all that might be recovered.

† See ante, vol. ii. p. 59, for the condition of the subjects of Louis XIV., the founder of Marly and Versailles.

See ante, vol. i. p. 297.

lords, they yet were ruined, their quantity having been but small. Looking, next, to India, we find a government claiming, as annual rent, an amount equal to a fourth of the whole value of the land, yet obtaining an amount not exceeding seventy cents per head -thus furnishing proof conclusive of the application to that great country, of the law in virtue of which, the quantity of rent diminishes, as its proportion increases.* So, too, is it in Turkey and Portugal, the societary circulation there decreasing, with constant diminution in the power of production-requiring the payment, by the occupant of land, of a constantly increasing proportion of its products to be applied in payment of rent and taxes. These, combined, absorb so large a share, that the farm-laborer is unable to command the commonest necessaries of life.

A century since, it was complained, in France, that rent and taxes absorbed eleven-twelfths of the produce— leaving but a single twelfth for the man who tilled the land. Still less than that, is now the proportion of the English farmlaborer--it being, as we see, somewhat doubtful if he receives, for his share, even a twentieth of the product of his labor. His condition is, therefore, lower than that of persons of a corresponding condition of life, in almost any community claiming a place among the civilized nations of the world.t

"The revenue of this country was derived from taxes, and was distinct from the income of the proprietors of the country. But the revenue of India was made up of both; for our Government had, by fraud and usurpation, occupied the position of landlords and proprietors. as well as governors, in India; and the wretched twenty or twenty-one millions that we annually wrung from a starving people, were made up partly of rent that we received from the land, which never exceeded thirteen millions, and partly from the taxes. It would be impossible to add anything to the amount of our present revenue, which was partly raised by a land-tax amounting to sixty per cent., calculated, not according to the value of the land, but according to the probable value of the crop; and partly by other taxes imposed on articles of all descriptions, from those of luxury and vice down to the most indispensable necessaries of life. And yet, this small revenue was raised from a territory as large as Europe, infinitely more fertile, better peopled, more completely in the hands of the Government, blessed with three or four harvests in a year, and abounding in every production that could be named among the products of the tropics."-Speech of Mr. Anstey in the British House of Commons.

"If we have enormous wealth, we ought to remember that we havo enormous pauperism also; if we have middle classes richer and more intelligent than those of any other country in the world, we have poor classes, forming the majority of the people of this country, more ignorant, more pauperised, and more morally degraded, than the poorer classes of most of the countries of Western Europe."-KAY: Social Condition of the people of England and of Europe, vol. i. p. 6.