INSTITUTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.

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exclusive self-gratification. No picture can be more pleasing than that of men dwelling together in unbroken harmony and untiring union. No assertion can be more plausible than that were all the efforts of the industrious combined in one common direction, and all the rubs and jostling, and cross purposes, and mutual interference prevented, which now check and retard the progress of each, the general advance would be greatly accelerated. But-is it possible to realise this beatific vision? There is not the slightest ground for supposing so. Its designers forget that the industry, of which in the present advanced state of society they witness the fruits, has been brought into being, and has hitherto grown and thriven, only under the shelter of the institution of private property and the stimulus of competition; and that neither history nor observation warrants, in the least degree, the assumption, that industry could exist at all except on these conditions. The establishment of a community of property would most probably, by damping industry and discouraging production, shortly leave no property whatever to divide. The desire of individual acquisition has hitherto been the main motive to every exertion. Take it away, by sharing the results of a man's labours equally, or in certain proportions, fixed by others, among his neighbours-so that he himself shall not be benefited, except in an infinitesimal degree, by its increase, and who will guarantee the continuance of his exertions with the same vigour and energy which he now evinces, if he even continue them at all, when sure of a maintenance, at all events, from

the labours of others? Experience has proved the constitution of the human mind to be such, that freedom in the direction of labour, and security for the personal enjoyment or disposal of its products, are the conditions on which alone industry. will be effectually put forth, and production advanced. That the opposite conditions will admit of the same results is not merely not in accordance with, but directly opposed to the analogy of our experience. The proposal of a community of goods as a remedy for their present unequal distribution is like an attempt to cure a horse of stumbling by cutting off his legs. We are not surprised that the same philosophers generally advo cate a community of wives and children, with a view, it must be supposed, to the increase of the conjugal and parental affections.

That the products of industry are, at present, too unequally and therefore unfairly distributed, is most true; but surely means may be devised for remedying this, short of the complete annihilation of the principle itself of production-individual acquisition. That such means are attainable indeed, and this by the simplest exertion of fore-thought and pre-arrangement, I trust to be able shortly to

show.

Enough has been said here, perhaps, to prove that since the main object of all regulations respecting wealth is to obtain the greatest possible amount of production consistently with a sufficient remuneration to the producers, the principle of a community of property must be rejected as unfriendly to the voluntary increase of production; and the natural right of every individual both to

LABOUR CREATES NOTHING.

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choose the direction, and dispose of the produce of his labour, (under reservations to which I shall hereafter advert,) admitted as the only true foundation of economical polity. We proceed to consider the other essential conditions of production.

All wealth is the product of labour; but not of labour alone. Labour can create nothing. All that it does, is to alter the disposition of things already existing in what is usually called a state of nature. To produce anything, the labourer must operate upon some natural substance, and call in the ever-active powers of nature to his aid. The agriculturist, for example, does not create corn; he only applies the seed after a certain method which his knowledge, obtained through experience or precept, teaches him to be best adapted for causing the growth of the greatest quantity of corn; and the powers of the soil and the atmosphere, the moisture of the heavens, and the genial warmth of the sun bring about the production of his crop. These powers, therefore, of earth, air, water, and fire, (which the ancients in their ignorance of chemistry considered, and in their equally ignorant, though pardonable gratitude, worshipped as primary elements,) or to speak more correctly, the natural affinities of the material substances occurring on the surface of the earth must co-operate with the labourer, or his toil is utterly unproductive.

Nor is this generally enough. There are few things which an individual, though availing himself of all the powers of nature within his reach, can produce by himself, or by a single effort of labour.

F

He must call in the aid of others; and he must, likewise, exert himself at repeated intervals;-he must avail himself of the results of his previous labour, or that of others-generally of both. Take the simplest case-the labour by which a man may sometimes satisfy his hunger by gather ing berries from a bush. Even here nature must have first produced and ripened the fruit to his hand. Wild fruits, however, are but scantily supplied by nature. If then, to supply his wants, a man desire animal food, he must provide himself with some product of previous labour (his own, or of others), a club, a bow, a trap, or a gun; and he must acquire, moreover, by previous labour, both of mind and body, a knowledge of the haunts and habits of the animals he wishes to take, or he has but a small chance of breaking his fast upon them. If wild fruits and animals

become equally scarce, and he is led by Necessity, the fertile mother of Invention, to sow or plant the herbs and trees which produce the former, and to domesticate the latter for the supply of his wants-still more observation, forethought, contrivance, and preparation are necessary on his part. He must acquire a knowledge of the habits and characters of the useful plants-of the best methods of cultivating and storing them; he must provide the proper seeds and plants-tools with which to dig up the soil, clean it, and gather his crops,-fences to keep off wild animals, and confine his tame ones, with a store of fodder for their sustenance. All these preparations are the. result of previous labour, accumulated for the purpose of aiding him in the production of food.

LABOUR LAND-CAPITAL.

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Similar provisions will be required to supply him with clothing, shelter, and other desirable objects.

The results of labour so accumulated, or provided beforehand for productive purposes, are called by the general term capital.

It is thus made clear that labour can produce nothing, or scarce anything, without the aid both of capital and the useful qualities of those natural substances which are scattered over the surface of the earth. These, then, are the primary and essential elements of human production ;-Labour, Capital, and the natural products of the earth's surface, which, so long as they are affixed to that surface, and not severed from it by industry, are all classed in the language of political economists, (following in this the language of the law of property) under the somewhat vague title of Land*. And if, as would seem proper, we comprehend under the term labour all the ability, or productive capacity of man, natural or acquired -under that of capital all the substantial results of labour, stored up and employed in furthering production and under that of land, all the natural qualities of those substances met with on the face of the earth, which can be appropriated and rendered available for productive purposes, we shall embrace under these several heads every

"The word land' includes not only the face of the earth, but everything under it, or over it. Therefore, if a man grants all his lands, he grants thereby all his mines of metal and other fossils, his woods, his waters, and his houses, as well as his fields and meadows."-Blackstone's Commentaries, II. c. ii. p. 18.