WEALTH NO MEASURE OF HAPPINESS.

53

tionate increase of the aggregate means of enjoyment-nay, that some kinds of wealth may be greatly augmented at a great sacrifice of human happiness is easily demonstrable. Suppose, for example, a race of absolute sovereigns to have a taste for jewels, and to employ several thousands of their subjects or slaves, generation after generation, in toiling to procure them: these treasures will be wealth of enormous value, but add barely anything to the aggregate means of enjoyment. Suppose another race of sovereigns to have employed equal numbers of workmen during the same time in making roads, canals, docks, and harbours throughout their dominions, and in erecting hospitals and public buildings for education or amusement: these acquisitions to the wealth of the country, having cost the same labour, may be of equal exchangeable value with the diamonds of the other sovereign; but are they to be reckoned only equally useful-equal accessions to the aggregate of human gratification? Suppose two tracts of ground of equal extent and fertility, one laid down as a deer-park for the sole pleasure of a wealthy individual, or sovereign, (as when the New Forest was emparked by Rufus,) the other divided into moderate-sized farms, each affording to the landlord a fair rent, to an honest farmer and a tribe of contented cottagers employment and maintenance, -to the community an enlarged supply of food. Such tracts may be equally valuable, if sold in the market, but are they equal in their influence on the sum of human enjoyment? Even Slavery itself may be in all probability, to a certain extent, a means of increasing the quantity of exchange

able wealth in the world; but will any one recommend it as a means of augmenting the mass of human happiness? No! wealth may be purchased at too high a price, if that price be the degradation and suffering of those who produce it. Wealth is only to be measured by its exchangeable value. In this sense increase of wealth assuredly is no true measure of the increase of enjoyment; and the science of wealth, if the attention be confined to the means of increasing its aggregate amount, may just as frequently lead to what will injure as to what will benefit the human race. If the greatest happiness of the community is the true and only end of all institutions, it follows that a government which should take political economy of this kind as a guide to its legislation, without continually correcting its conclusions by reference to the principles on which the happiness, not the wealth of man depends, must often sacrifice the real interests of the people it presides over for a glittering fiction.

It may be said that such inquiries would be difficult and complicated;-that it is impossible to mete out happiness, or establish a graduated scale by which to ascertain the utility of legislative measures towards this end. But the same argument might evidently be urged with equal force against all moral science. The happiness of society is the only end of every moral as of every economic precept. If it be, as we readily admit, impossible to ascertain to a fraction the precise extent in which any given measure is likely to affect the happiness of a community-still this can be no reason for adopting so obviously false a standard

TEST OF PUBLIC HAPPINESS.

55

as the increase of its aggregate wealth alone. There are other tests which there can be no good reason for neglecting;—there are, in the pursuit of economic as of moral policy, some broad landmarks to which it would be folly to shut our eyes-some palpable boundaries which it would be madness to cross-some clear general rules which point the direction of our path, and reduce the chances of error within very trifling limits, if we do not madly refuse to walk by their light.

One of these criteria, and by far the most important, is the proposition, which we do not hesitate to lay down as a fundamental truth,—that the amount of human enjoyment principally depends on the number of human beings enabled, without excessive toil, to obtain a comfortable subsistence, with satisfactory security for its continuance.

That the happiness of individuals does not necessarily increase with their wealth, is attested by the combined authority of all the philosophers and moralists of past ages. The most cursory observation of mankind proves that there is often as much enjoyment of life beneath a straw roof as a painted ceiling,-under a smock frock as a silken robe. Nay there are who very plausibly urge that

'Quei che felici son non han camicia.**

*Casti, La Camicia dell' Uomo Felice;-one of the few of his Novelle that can be read with a relish for the philosophy, undisturbed by disgust at the profligacy, of this clever satirist. A sick sovereign is recommended, as an infallible specific for his disorder, the application of the shirt of a happy man.' His emissaries in vain ransack all countries in search of such a being. At last they discover an individual who acknowledges himself to be happy, in the shape of a wild

the cares of life increase with the increase of property.

Without heaping together commonplaces on the subject, it will be disputed by few that, beyond a certain point, the amount of enjoyment shared by the different classes of society is pretty equal. Life,' says a shrewd writer, herself of the most elevated class, affords disagreeable things in plenty to the highest ranks, and comforts to the lowest; so that, on the whole, things are more equally divided among the sons of Adam than they are generally supposed to be.'* Whoever enjoys health,' says Jean Jacques, and is in no want of necessaries, is rich enough; 'tis the aurea mediocritas of Horace.'

This last passage states truly what that point is, at which an increase of wealth ceases to be a proportionate increase of enjoyment. Had Rousseau's language possessed the word, instead of necessaries, he probably would have said comforts.' Our own poet confines the real wants of man to

'Meat, fire, and clothes: what more? clothes, meat, and fire.' These, or in other words, the means of comfortable subsistence, compose the competence which admits of perhaps as keen and complete enjoyment of life as any fortune can bestow. That this comfortable subsistence is to be procured only by labour, so that it be voluntary, free in its direction, and not excessive, is, as I have attempted to show, mountain shepherd. But alas! he has no shirt! on which the tale ends with the above exclamation, Those only are happy who have no shirts to wear.' So D'Alembert used Qui est ce qui est heureux ? Quelque misérable!' *Letters of Lady M. W. Montague.

to say,

TEST OF NATIONAL HAPPINESS.

57

no detraction from the enjoyments it affords, but rather, if anything, an addition to them.

If, however, we come to the conclusion, that an individual who has within his easy reach the means of comfortable subsistence enjoys as fair a chance of happiness as those who occupy stations in the common opinion of the world more enviable, it is very clear that less than this will not afford the same chance. Though the enjoyments of wealth may be, on the whole, counterbalanced by the cares that accompany it, the evils of poverty are real and uncompensated. An individual who wants the means of subsistence,-nay, of comfortable subsistence, together with satisfactory security for its continuance, is in a state of suffering! Coarse diet may please the hungry appetite of the peasant as much, or more, than do costly viands the palate of the rich gourmand, and a frieze coat may be as pleasant wear as superfine, but scanty, unvaried, and ill-flavoured food, or deficient clothing and fuel, if it does not entirely prevent, must greatly detract from the enjoyment of life.

The conclusion then is, that every individual who has assured to him the means of comfortable subsistence without excessive toil, has a tolerably equal chance for happiness with those who possess a larger share of wealth; but that any falling off from this condition will proportionably lessen the individual chance of enjoyment. Consequently, the means of enjoyment possessed by any society must be judged of principally by the number of those who possess the means of comfortable subsistence on these terms, compared with that of those who