been carried to an extent unknown in any other country-giving to the bodies thus created, a flexibility and variety wholly unknown, says Chancellor Kent, to the Roman or English law.*

Charters creating corporations, having for their object the promotion of industry and commerce, may be regarded as Enabling Acts, conferring upon individuals the powers and privileges required for the advancement of the general welfare. Securing the parties concerned against unlimited risks, they facilitate the combination of labor and capital thereby promoting industrial enterprises in a manner, and to an extent, that could in no other way be effected. The principle upon which they are based is a plain and simple one, that of the unity and identity of social interest; or, in other words, the brotherhood of man translated into the partnership of business. It is the same as that which lies at the foundation of all associations for peaceful purposes, whether as nations, states, communities, towns, or banks-the object sought being organization, incorporation, unity, harmony, and co-operation. The interdependencies, as well as the natural sympathies of men, tend to draw them together the first and greatest need of man being that of association with his fellow-men. That they may associate, and thus be enabled to combine their efforts, there must be organization, giving, as its result, not only an aggregation but a multiplication of forces - human force increasing geometrically, as the habit and the power of association increase arithmetically. The more perfect that power, the more rapid becomes the societary movement, and the greater the tendency towards increase in the value of man and land.

With every stage of progress in that direction, the necessity for the services of the trader and transporter tends to decline — the various functions of societary life tending more to take the forms of partnership, joint investment, participation in loss and profit, and common interest in the increased productiveness of labor, and in the general well-being of each and every member of the community. With each, the proportion of the laborer tends to riselabor itself, however, still remaining divorced from, and antago

*Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 280.

The admirable effects of combination are well exhibited in the recent reports of the Superintendents of the Newsboys' Lodging-Houses-showing, as they do, at how small a cost the condition of large numbers of persons may be much improved.

nistic to, the capital of which it is itself the sole creator. At one moment, the laborer must sell, if he would not perish for want of food. At another, the capitalist must buy, if he would not have his machines thrown idle upon his hands. Competition is here a war between hostile forces, and so must it continue to be, as long as wages shall continue to be the reward of the laborer, and profits those of the capitalist. So, too, is it with rent and interest. the risks and responsibilities being thrown upon the renter and the borrower, while the money-lender and the landlord stand guaranteed against loss, so long as the former shall continue able to fulfil their contracts. † There is here no equitable mutuality in the spirit of the contract- no acknowledgment of an identity of interests no true harmony among the contracting parties. Co-operation tends to produce such unity-all concerned being then alike interested in so directing the affairs of the association as to diminish friction, and increase production.‡

It is certainly true, that that general prosperity which in every country results from diversification in the demand for human powers, tends of itself to cause increase in the laborer's proportion of the product- thus placing him in a more independent position as regards his employer. § It is, nevertheless, quite

*How slight is the tendency towards harmony, and how small is the prospect of its arrival, under a system which treats man as a mere instrument to be used by trade, will be seen on a perusal of the following passage from one of the most distinguished advocates of the free trade system:

"Humanity, indeed, would rejoice to see them [the laborers] and their families dressed in clothing suitable to the climate and season; having homes in roomy, warm, airy, and healthy habitations, and fed with wholesome and plentiful diet, with perhaps occasional delicacy and variety; but there are very few countries where wants, apparently so moderate, are not considered far beyond the limits of strict necessity, and therefore not to be gratified by the customary wages of the mere laboring class.”—J. B. SAY: Political Economy, Philad. edit., p. 336.

For the effect of money rents in England, see ante, vol. ii., p. 79, vol. iii.,

p. 284.

See ante, vol. ii., p. 432, for the ownership of New England banks, and for the amount of loans. As a rule, there is there scarcely any friction between the lender and the borrower the one receiving as dividend, almost exactly the same rate that is paid by the other as interest.—Such, too, was the tendency of that New England joint-stock manufacturing system, which now is tending so rapidly to disappear. No more striking evidence of the injurious effects of the present free trade policy could be produced, than that which is now exhibited, throughout New England, in reference to the substitution of great individual capitalists for associations of small proprietors.

"It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labor [combination of action], which

apparent, that as yet we know not how to divide the results of any business enterprise between the capital, skill, and toil, that have been required—each and all having been equally essential to the production of its results. A bank can divide its profits, to the smallest fraction, among its stockholders, but it must purchase the talent, skill, and service of its agents, at such prices as they will command in the general market. Buying and selling are an array of hostile interests—excluding wholly the idea of harmony, sympathy, neutrality, partnership, or even equity of distribution. Not in any manner involving the idea of co-operation or organization, reference to the mutual life and health of the parties finds no place among its instincts.* Hence it is, that harmony in all

occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of, beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society."-SMITH: Wealth of Nations.

The most remarkable case of co-operation on record is that of the Equitable Pioneers' Society, of Rochdale, England, commenced fourteen years since, by some thirty or forty poor and humble workingmen, with less than $10 in the treasury, and an income of two pence a week from each stockholder its object being that of making arrangements "for the pecuniary benefit and improvement of the social and domestic condition of its members." From this small beginning it has grown to have seven distinct departments, and the capital is now $75,000, held in $5 shares, of which over $18,000 is invested in the mill, in which they are the owners. The Pioneers have incurred no debts, and made no losses; and, though their aggregate dealings have amounted to $1,500,000, they have never had a lawsuit. Nearly a hundred persons are directly and constantly employed by the Society, a dozen or more of them being in the store alone. Over the grocery is a news-room, where the members are reading every evening, and a circulating library of 2,200 choice volumes, from which they and their children are taking out books. Toad Lane is crowded each evening by cheerful co-operators, and as much as $2000 has been taken by the store in a single day. "It is not," however, says the author of the interesting little volume," the brilliancy of commercial activity in which either writer or reader will take the deepest interest; it is in the new and improved spirit animating this intercourse of trade. Buyer and seller meet as friends; there is no over-reaching on one side, and no suspicion on the other; and Toad Lane, on Saturday night, while as gay as the Lowther Arcade in London, is ten times more moral. These crowds of humble workingmen, who never knew before when they put good food in their mouths, whose every dinner was adulterated, whose shoes let in the water a month too soon, whose waistcoats shone with devil's dust, and whose wives wore calico that would not wash, now buy in the markets like millionaires, and, so far as pureness of food goes, live like lords. They are weaving their own stuffs, making their own shoes, sewing their own garments, and

the relations of society grows so rapidly in all those countries in which the producer and consumer take their places by each other's side-approximating the prices of rude products and finished commodities, and thereby diminishing the space allotted to the trader. Hence, too, the growing discord in those, in which the proportions of the trader tend to augment, with corresponding tendency towards reduction in those of both consumers and producers competition for the purchase of labor growing in the one, while competition for its sale grows steadily in the other.†

grinding their own corn. They buy the purest sugar, and the best tea, and grind their own coffee. They slaughter their own cattle, and the finest beasts of the land waddle down the streets of Rochdale, for the consumption of flannel-weavers and cobblers. When did competition give poor men these advantages? And will any man say that the moral character of these people is not improved under these influences? The teetotalers of Rochdale acknowledge that the store has made more sober men since it commenced, than all their efforts have been able to make in the same time. Husbands who never knew what it was to be out of debt, and poor wives who, during forty years, never had sixpence unmortgaged in their pockets, now possess little stores of money sufficient to build them cottages, and go every week into their own market with money jingling in their pockets; and in that market there is no distrust, and no deception; there is no adulteration, and no second price. The whole atmosphere is honest. Those who serve, neither hurry, finesse, nor flatter. They have no interest in chicanery. They have but one duty to perform that of giving fair measure, full weight, and a pure article. In other parts of the town, where competition is the principle of trade, all the preaching in Rochdale cannot produce moral effects like these." -Self-Help by the People. History of Co-operation in Rochdale. By G. J. HOLYOAKE.

"When small farmers have any hold on the land, as in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, and France, they combine to raise funds for any project that promises to be generally beneficial. In this way, channels many miles in length are made for irrigation or drainage; and a dozen owners of three or four cows, or occupiers of as many acres, combine to make cheeses as large and fine as any that Cheshire can produce; and even to establish a beet-root manufacture, the most extensive and scientific of all modern agricultural operations. Mutual co-operation thus places within the reach of small farmers almost every advantage possessed by their wealthy rivals."THORNTON, On Over-population, p. 331.

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+ Competition, according to M. Bastiat, is "democratic in its essence"being "the most progressive, the most equalizing, and the most communistic, of all the provisions to which Providence has confided the direction of human progress."-Harmonies Economiques, p. 407. Elsewhere, he tells his readers, that he has not failed to see, and will not deny, the extent of evil that competition has inflicted upon mankind."—Ibid, p. 458. The contradiction here existing, results from his having failed to remark, that competition is of two kinds the one being for the sale of labor and its products, and the other for its purchase. Whatever tends to increase the first, tends towards slaveryincrease in the other, on the contrary, tending towards freedom. The more distant the producer from the consumer, the more do buying and selling tend to become the business of all mankind, with constant increase of discord The nearer they are to each other, the less is there of purchase and sale, and

§ 4. Among the men who have, at any time, been placed in charge of the helm of State, Colbert stands pre-eminent for his full appreciation of the fact, that the headship of a nation brought with it a necessity for the performance of great and important duties each and all of them, however, looking to the removal of the obstacles to association and combination. Every stage of progress in that direction, as he clearly saw, tended towards developing the individual faculties of his countrymen, and towards fitting them for more extended intercourse with distant people.* Differing widely from modern teachers, he regarded wealth only as a means - the end being found in the elevation of the people subject to his control, and the gradual substitution of the real MAN for the mere human animal bequeathed to him by his predecessors. That he erred occasionally in regard to the measures required for enabling him to attain the desired end, as when he prohibited the export of artisans and corn, is not extraordinary seeing how little progress has been made, in the two centuries which have since elapsed, .towards harmony among the teachers of social science, whether as regards the facts themselves, or the deductions they may be held to warrant.‡

the greater is the tendency towards that co-operation among all the members of society, by means of which all, great and small, become participators in both the losses and the profits.

The spirit of Colbert's system, as regarded external commerce, is thus briefly given by himself, in one of his Reports to the King: "Reduction of export duties upon all domestic products; diminution of import duties on raw materials; exclusion of foreign manufactures, by means of increase of duties."

† See ante, vol. i., p. 307, for the principles by which his colonial policy was governed. In one of his letters to the Intendant of Tours, he says to him: "In all your visits, study the condition of the peasantry-seeing how they are dressed-how their houses are furnished-whether or not they are more merry at festivals and marriages than they had used to be-and finally, if their condition is improved. These four points," he continues, "embrace all the information we need for proving the establishment of a better state of things than that which existed during the war, and in the early years which followed the return of peace."-Quoted by M. CLEMENT: Histoire du Système Protecteur, p. 32.

In the work above referred to, M. Clément says, that "countries in which provisions are cheap and abundant," have, in the manufacturing contest for the markets of the world, "a marked advantage over those in which the cost of living is great." It may indeed, as he thinks, be regarded as an established principle, that "the less the people are required to expend for food, the lower will be the cost of production." Directly the reverse of this, however, is the fact the cost of conversion being least in those countries in which food is highest, and greatest in those in which food is cheapest.