productive. It is not allowed to monopolize all the gain resulting from its superior efficiency, though it obtains the larger share. Part is retained by the capital, through the increased aid of which it was enabled to effect enlarged and improved results; part goes to the consumer by the fall of price. It would seem not hard to determine which is most consonant with reason and facts; nor would it seem presumptuous to say, that the British theory is crammed with absurdities. It may be objected to the argument founded upon the diminished proportion which the declared or real value of exports from Great Britain bears to their official value or quantity, that it is limited to manufactured commodities, and that the advance in real wages resulting from the diminution in their cost may be counteracted by the rise in the price of agricultural products. The statistics which we cited in the November number of this Magazine from the Annuaire de L'Economie Politique, of the agricultural production of France for a period of one hundred and fifty years, and of its distribution, showing as they do a vast increase both in the nominal or money wages, the real wages, or the absolute quantity of grain they would command, and the proportion which they bore to the entire crop, might suffice for an answer. If a further one were required for the purpose of showing that the experience of England agreed with that of France, it might be found in the statement of Mr. Malthus before referred to. It was, that "the average proportion which rent bears to the value of the produce seems not to exceed one-fifth, whereas formerly when there was less capital employed and less value produced, the proportion amounted to one-fourth, one-third, or even two-fifths." In the same paragraph he says that "though the landlord has a less share of the whole duce, yet this less share, from the very great increase of the produce, yields a larger quantity." Of course the whole produce in the period to which he refers, must have more than doubled, in order that one-fifth now, should be greater than two-fifths formerly. If its amount at the earlier period be represented by 100, two-fifths of which, or 40, was retained for rent, it left 60 to be divided between wages and profits. It has now become 200 plus an indefinite quantity, which we may represent by x one-fifth, or 40+ goes to rent, and the remainder160+x, is left for wages and profits-that is to say, two and two-thirds times as much as before, besides the indefinite addition x.

pro

Thus much for the degree in which the agricultural laborers shared in the produce of their own toil. But what we want to learn is, the cost of that produce to others. If the increased quantity has been raised by the same or a less amount of labor, then it is obvious that its real cost has decreased. Upon this point there is no room for doubt. The number of agricultural laborers in Great Britain has been constantly decreasing in the proportion which it bore to the whole population and to the crop. Thus Mr. Porter informs us-(Progress of the Nation, vol. 1, page 148)-that "the total number of families in Great Britain has increased, between 1811 and 1831, from 2,544,215 to 3,414,175, or at the rate of thirty-four per cent; the number of families employed in agriculture has increased only from 896,998 to 961,134, or at the rate of 74 per cent." It was shown by the census of 1841 that the number of persons employed in agricultural labor was less absolutely and of course still less proportionally, than in 1831. We are not yet furnished with the information upon this point obtained by the census of 1851, but there can be no doubt that the same decrease in the proportion of agricultural laborers has continued down to the present period. This fact is

conclusive as to the diminution of the labor cost of agricultural products. I further testimony is wanted, it is furnished in that unexceptionable freetrade authority, the Edinburgh Review, for July,

"During the ten years of the present century, between 1811 and 1820, the wheat grown on our own soil sufficed for feeding 13,035,039 persons, allowing the yearly consumption of each to be eight bushels. The average price of wheat during those ten years was 88s. 8d. per quarter, and the mean number of the population of Great Britain was 13,494,317. During the next space of ten years the mean number of mouths having increased to 15,465,474 we fed from our own soil 1,894,843 more than in the previous ten years. Yet what had been the average price for the whole period? It had fallen to 588. 5d., or to 21s. 7d. per quarter below that at which it had, in 1815, been declared possible to keep our land in cultivation and which it was sought to maintain as a minimum by excluding all foreign imports, when the price should fall below 80s. per quarter. In the following decennium, with prices still further depressed to the average of 56s. 9d., our farmers provided wheat for 1,697,706 of the mouths which in the same period had been added to our numbers, or, for 16,628,188 of the 17,535,826 souls then inhabiting Great Britain."

Mr. Porter, after giving the imports of wheat for a long series of years, to show "in how small a degree this country has hitherto been dependent upon foreigners in ordinary seasons for a due supply of our staple article of food," and how exceedingly great the increase of agricultural production must have been to have thus effectively kept in a state of independence a population which has advanced with so great a degree of rapidity," says, "the one article of wheat has been selected because it is that which is most generally consumed in England; but the position advanced would be found to hold good were we to go through the whole list of the consumable products of

the earth."

It would be easy to bring any quantity of testimony upon the point under consideration, for the free-traders of England are laboriously engaged in proving that the farmers of the kingdom can produce food at much lower prices than any named in our quotations, (for we have stopped short of the epoch of the repeal of the corn laws,) and yet maintain a fair rate of profit.

It may be noticed that Mr. Malthus, in the quotation we have given, does not state the dates within which the proportion of rent to the whole produce has thus decreased, while its absolute amount has augmented. Mr. Porter, however, informs us that "the revenue drawn in the form of rent from the ownership of the soil has been at least doubled in every part of England since 1790, and it is more than probable that it has advanced 150 per cent throughout the kingdom."

R. S. states that"in 1830 and 1831 it was proved before a committee of the House of Lords, that rents had risen in England four hundred per cent within the period of half a century." Whatever the advance of rents be taken to be within this period, it has been shown, by the testimony of the most distinguished followers of Ricardo, that the production of food advanced yet more rapidly. Between 1804, the earliest period, we have any very reliable statistics on the subject, and 1841, the population of the United Kingdom advanced from 15,441,000 to 26,831,105, or 58 per cent. If we suppose the same rate of progress to have existed in the ten years preceding 1801 as since, the increase of the population between 1790 and 1841 will amount

to 73 per cent. The rent has advanced, according to Porter, 150 per cent, or twice as fast, and inasmuch as the produce has augmented, according to Malthus, twice as much as the rent, it has increased four times as rapidly as the consumers.

I have the means at hand, in the statistics of McQueen and others, of showing the facts I desire to establish, in a much more lucid, accurate and convincing form; but I prefer to restrict myself to the testimony of men in high standing in the school of Ricardo and Malthus, and who cannot be impeached for the slightest leaning towards the protective system. Relying solely upon such hostile evidence, I think it has been made apparent that capital in land follows the same laws as that in moveable property, and that with its growth and progress, the gross return, to the activity of labor and capital in combination, is so greatly increased as―

1st. To give a larger proportionate share, and of course a greater absolute amount to the laborer.

2d. To give a greater absolute amount, though a less proportionate share, to the capitalist.

3d. To leave a surplus of advantage which accrues to the benefit of the entire body of consumers in the diminished cost of products.

The course of this world is so ordered that no man can monopolize the benefits of the enhanced efficiency of his capital or his labor, but is obliged to share them with all his brethren. It is so, because capital of all kinds increases faster than population-the mass of things to be sold, faster than the purchasers-the sum total of food, materials and tools, faster than the laborers who are to use them.

Few have reflected how very trifling an annual increase of capital is requisite to keep it in advance of population. An advance each year upon the last, of 2.81 per cent will double population in twenty-five years, and this is a rate so rapid as to have been taken by Malthus as the limit of physical capacity. Capital increasing in the same way, at three per cent, or less than one-fifth of one per cent more than population, will double in 22.916 years; and in twenty-five years will amount to 9.48 per cent more than double the original amount. If at the expiration of this period the increase were to be divided, there would be sufficient to give to each of the original members of society, or his representative, 4.73 per cent in addition to his original stock, and to provide each of the new members, equal in number, with the same amount of property, as the old ones would possess in their improved condition. If capital increased at the annual rate of five per cent, it would amount in twenty-five years to 3.38 times its original sum-and upon a new division would give to each member of the doubled society $169 in value in place of the $100 which the original half of their number had at the commencement. If the process continues a second period of twenty-five years, population will have quadrupled, and the original $100 of capital will have swelled to $1,146 74, giving to each person, on a new division, $28 68. If the people of Great Britain and Ireland increased only 73 per cent between 1790 and 1840, an increase of their capital, each year upon the preceding of but 21 per cent, would be sufficient to give to each person in 1840 twice as much as was possessed by the individual in 1790. An increase at the rate of three per cent would give to each one an average of $253 40, where each of his predecessors had but $100-and at the rate of four per cent, would give $410 70.

We think it sufficiently appears from the facts, that capital in the shape

of food and raw material follows the same laws in its distribution as that of other descriptions; and this is conclusive as to the law of its production, or rather growth. For wealth of every kind is distributed not through the process of division, and the assignment and location of parts in different quarters and to different claimants by an independent agent or exterior force, but it distributes itself under the action of its internal law of growth, as the trunk of a tree throws out its branches, and these again twigs and buds and leaves. The difficulty with the Ricardo and Malthus school of economists is, that instead of observing the facts and endeavoring to deduce a theory from them, they have invented an hypothesis to which they are determined that facts shall be made to conform. It is the old error of the middle age scholastics from which it has been supposed that Bacon had redeemed the human intellect. Its followers are so given over to a strong delusion, that they answer the characteristic description of Shakspeare, of which, we have during the past year had so many brilliant examples

"And, like a scurvy politician, seem to see

The thing which is not."

R. S. asks, "If food tends to increase more rapidly than population, how is it that capital has accumulated unequally in the hands of a few, and that number rapidly decreasing in all countries?" We have shown by unimpeachable authorities of this very sect, that the number is not decreasing, but increasing, even in countries that have been under the sway of a system of policy based upon this very idea, recognizing such progressive inequality as the inevitable law of humanity, and admirably calculated to maintain and aggravate it "adapted," as the London Times said, on the 24th of September last" to the supposition of a vast difference of classes-a lower class, redundant, necessitous, ignorant and manageable; an upper class, wealthy, exclusive, united and powerful; and a middle class, struggling to emerge from the lower and attach itself to the upper." "If food tends to increase more rapidly than population," asks R. S., "what gives capital a continually increasing power over the wages of labor?" It has been shown that labor is more and more emancipating itself with the progress of population and capital. The questions both concede that if the assumed facts for which they require an explanation, do not exist, then food does tend to increase more rapidly than its consumers.

The contrary hypothesis, as we have seen, rests upon the notion of "the inevitable necessity under which we are placed, of "resorting to poorer soils to obtain raw produce as society advances." It certainly was a plausible figment of the imagination, that men in the first instance appropriate the most fertile soils, and only take the inferior grades into cultivation as they are driven to it by necessity; for forty years the assertion that they did so, stood uncontradicted. Mr. Carey, in the Past, Present and Future, was the first to question it. He established historically that men in every nation with the progress of whose settlement we are acquainted, had planted themselves on the poorest soils, the hill-tops and uplands, at the sources of the streams, and had proceeded downwards, as their numbers grew, and they acquired capital in food, materials and tools, and increasing power of combination to the cultivation of the bottom lands, which yield the largest return to labor. His historical sketch of the progress of cultivation in various countries is so interesting and instructive, that I should be very glad, did my limits allow, to make copious extracts. Those, however, who desire to investigate the subject, ought to possess and study the book. My object is confined to

showing that it is well deserving of study, and that there are no antecedent improbabilities of the truth of Mr. Carey's discovery, to justify any inquirer in declining the investigation. R. S. has himself conceded enough not only to negative such an improbability, but to force us to anticipate precisely what Mr. Carey has proved. The following passage from his article in the June number of this Magazine, is remarkable in several aspects.

"Mr. Carey says, 'In the infancy of civilization man is poor, and works with poor machinery, and must take high and poor soils requiring little clearing and no drainage, and it is only as population and wealth increase that the richer soils are brought into cultivation.'

"In this proposition of Mr. Carey's there is a clear admission of the principle contended for, that mankind will at all times cultivate the most available soils, those that will produce the largest returns for the labor and capital ready at the time to be invested. It is not until labor is changed by competition, and the profits of capital reduced by the increasing price of food, that society can be forced into the expenses of clearing and draining, which in some instances costs more than the land was originally worth."

Now this is such support as Malthus and Ricardo, if they were alive, would emphatically decline. They assert broadly that the best soils are first appropriated, and base their entire doctrine of rent, with all its startling consequences, upon "the inevitable necessity of resorting to poorer soils as society advances; "the constantly increasing fertility of the soil," which Mr. McCulloch assures us, is the cause of the increasing price of food and of increasing wages. The concession that men will at all times cultivate the most available soils, and that it is not until a late period that they can be forced into the expenses of clearing and draining, completely oversets the theory. It is manifestly the soils which require clearing, because they bear heavy trees, that will bear the heaviest crops, and it is the light and sandy soils through which the water will sink, or the rocky hillsides from which it runs off, that require no draining.

In the long settled countries of Europe it is not so strange that the fact should have escaped remark, but in our country, where the process of settlement is going on every day under our eyes, it is easy to make the necessary observations. The contrast between our country roads, nearly every one of which seems to have been laid out with the design to go over the top of every hill lying near their course, and our railroads and canals, which necessarily pursue the levels and the valleys of the streams, indicate the course of cultivation in the elder states with great precision, and in a striking way. We first go where the houses of the original settlers were located. Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, in her recently published "Travels in the United States," notes the fact that our railroads are lined with forests. "Railroads in the United States," she says, are not like railroads in other countries, for they fly plunging through the deep umbrageous recesses of these vastly, widely spreading woods." If I mistake not, Lyell, the geologist, makes the same statement, and it is a familar remark, that we see the least cultivated portions of the country on a railroad jaunt.

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R. S. has not deemed it worth while to read Carey's works. They have attracted the attention and high commendation of the most distinguished economists in Europe, and have been made the subject of extended review and discussion in several languages. They have been made text-books in foreign universities. Within a few weeks Sciologa, the most eminent Italian Economist, in a new edition of his own Lectures, has put them in the list of