the actual pin-maker, or which of the farm-fervants produces the crop. All the branches of ufeful industry work together to the common end, as all the parts of each branch cooperate to its particular object. If you fay that the farmer feeds the community, and produces all the raw materials which the other claffes work upon; we anfwer, that unless thofe other claffes worked upon the raw materials, and fupplied the farmer's necef fities, he would be forced to allot part of his labour to this employment, whilft he forced others to affift in railing the rude produce. In fuch a complicated fyftem, it is clear that all labour has the fame effect, and equally incrcafes the whole mafs of wealth. Nor can any attempt be more vain than their's who, would define the particular parts of the machine that produce the motion, which is neceffarily the refult of the whole powers combined, and depends on each one of the mutually connected members. Yet fo wedded have thofe theorits been to the notion, that certain neceffary kinds of employment are abfolutely unproductive, that a writer of no lefs name than Dr Smith has not fcrupled to rank the capital funk in the public debt, or spent in warfare, in the fame clafs with the property confumed by fire and the labour destroyed by peftilence. He ought furely to have reflected, that the debts of a country are always contracted, and its wars entered into, for fome purpofe either of fecurity or aggrandizement; and that ftock thus employed must have produced an equivalent, which cannot be afferted of property or population abfolutely destroyed. This equivalent may have been greater or lefs; that is, the money fpent for ufeful purposes may have been applied with more or lefs prudence and frugality. Thofe purposes, too, may have been more or lefs ufeful; and a certain degree of waste and extravagance always attends the operations of funding and of war. But this mult only be looked upon as an addition to the neceffary price at which the benefits in view must be bought. The food of a country, in like manner, may be ufed with different degrees of economy; and the neceffity of eating may be supplied at more or less coft. So long as the love of war is a neceffary evil in human nature, it is abfurd to denominate the expences unproductive that are incurred by defending a country, or, which is the fame thing, preventing an invafion, by a judicious attack of an enemy, or, which is alfo the fame thing, avoiding the neceffity of war by a prudent fyftem of foreign policy. And he who holds the labour of foldiers and failors and diplomatic agents to be unproductive, commits precifely the fame error as he who should maintain the labour of the hedger unproductive, because he only protects, and does not rear the crop. All thofe kinds of labour and employments of

Stock

ftock, are parts of the system, and all are equally productive of wealth*.

The fpeculations in which we have been indulging, appear, in fome points, to have partially received Lord Lauderdale's affent. His work contains a statement of feveral of the propofitions which we have ventured to maintain; and, in particular, he argues against the doctrines maintained by the author of the Wealth of Nations, on grounds fimilar to thofe which we have detailed. But although feveral of his pofitions are enforced with confiderable ingenuity and acutenefs, and though, generally fpeaking, we have to acknowledge a great degree of liberality in his economical tenets; yet his deductions appeared to us fo deficient in connexion, and in many points fo narrow, and fo little calculated to exhibit the fubject with the full effect of which it is capable, that we have thought ourselves juftified in fubmitting to our readers the foregoing analyfis of our opinions upon this important field of inquiry, trufting that fuch a view of theories, never before fairly canvaffed, may prove not unacceptable to the ftudent of political economy. We fhall now, with greater brevity, run over a few of the topics connected with this branch of the fubject, in which the noble author appears to have committed fome fundamental errors, from his rafh method of inquiring, and his unphilofophical ardour for novelty and paradox. Lord Lauderdale maintains, and we really think with more

parade

The

See Book II. chap. III. Wealth of Nations, (Vol. II. p. 25. 8vo edition.) The terms productive and unproductive are, in the argu ment of fome of the Economifts, and in parts of Dr Smith's reasonings, fo qualified, as to render the queftion a difpute about words, or at moft about arrangement. But this is not the cafe in many branches of both thofe theories, and especially in the pofition examined in the text. author actually remarks how much richer England would now be, had the not waged fuch and fuch wars. So might we eftimate how many more coats we should have, had we always gone naked. The remarks here ftated, may with equal justice be applied to a circumftance in the Theory of the Balance of Trade. In flating the proportion of exports to imports, it has juftly been obferved, that no notice can ever be taken, in Custom-houfe accounts, of money remitted for fubfidies, or for the payment of our troops and fleets abroad. But it has very inaccu rately been added, that thefe fums are fo much actually fent out of the country without an equivalent. In fact, the equivalent is great and obvious, although of a nature which cannot be stated in figures among imports. The equivalent is all the fuccefs gained by our foreign war fare and foreign policy-the aggrandizement and fecurity of the ftate, and the power of carrying on that commerce, without - which there would be neither exports nor imports to calculate and compare,

the

parade than is warranted by any novelty the propofition can be thought to poffefs, that the fources of wealth are threefoldland, labour, and capital. He accufes all preceding writers of inconfiftency and confufion in afcertaining those fources, and is peculiarly fevere upon Dr Smith, whofe doctrines are fo lamentably incongruous, that, it feems, no opinion has any where been maintained on this fubject, which does not appear to have been adopted in different parts of the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations.' (p. 116.) A little farther attention to the inefti mable work of that profound and deliberate reafoner, and a more careful examination of that very vague and arbitrary polition, by which, as by an infallible teft, he prefumes to try the very father of this fcience, would probably have taught the Earl of Lauderdale to doubt whether the inconfiftency lay in the fub. ftance or in the language only of Dr Smith's ftatements, and whether the mistake was to be charged upon the doctrines of that illuftrious author, or upon the standard which has now been invented for their admeasurement.

It is obvious to remark, that no eminent degree of praife is due to a division which, for the fake of extreme accuracy, constitutes 'capital' a branch or a fource of wealth, as feparate from land, without giving any definition of what the term capital means. By capital, when ufed generally, we understand the whole of the material world which man can appropriate, as well as thofe talents, natural or acquired, which are the fprings of his exertions. In this fenfe of the word, it fignifies all property material and mental, or every thing valuable to man. Among other things, it clearly comprehends land. But fometimes we fpeak of capital, in oppofition to land; and, in this cafe, it comprehends every thing valuable, except the ground; for it certainly includes all the parts and productions of the foil which are fevered from it. In this fenfe, the division nearly resembles the legal distribution of property into real and perfonal. Both thefe definitions of capital are ufed repeatedly, and with equal frequency, by every writer on political economy. A metaphyfical difcuffion of the fubject might, without much impropriety, have contained fome inquiry into the relative propriety of thofe arrangements; and we think a very little attention might have fhewn that the leaft correct, is that which is adopted by our author.

If capital is contradiftinguifhed from land, the feparation is made by a moft indefinite and obfcure boundary. Canals, roads, and bridges, are as much a part of capital, as any portable machines, fashioned out of the produce or parts of the foil. The fame may be faid of fences, drains, footways, and in general of all the oftenfible monuments of labour in an improved farm. But is not the foil itfelf, alfo, referable to the very fame clafs,

after

after it has been worked up with manure and compofts, fo as to be highly fertilized? Is not the whole furface of an improved farm, therefore, to be confidered as capital, rather than as land? And when a perfon buys a hundred acres of improved land, how can he fay what part of the price is paid for land, and what part for capital? We fpeak indeed of capital vefted in land, and use the phrafe, until we actually think there is fuch a thing as adding the capital to land; whereas, the whole meaning of the expreffion is, that capital of one kind or other is given in exchange for land, or that our property has become land, instead of fome other valuable commodity-or, according to what has just now been defined, that one kind of capital has been exchanged for another. If it is faid, that capital is that in which labour has been fixed and realized, either by accumulation or by change of form; then, it is very obvious, that land, in the moft extenfive fenfe of the word, muft become capital in order to be ufeful; and that many things, ufually reckoned capital, as the wild produce which is raised by nature without human affiftance, belongs to the clafs of land, and not to that of ftock. But a difference is eftablished by fome, efpecially by Dr Smith, between capital and the other parts of ftock; capital being, according to them, that part which brings in a revenue. This idea clearly appears, by the whole of the illuftrations given of it, to have arifen from the fundamental error of confidering nothing as productive, which does not yield a tangible return, and of confounding ufe with exchange. For, may not a man live upon his ftock, that is, enjoy his capital, without either diminifhing or exchanging any part of it? In what does the value, and the real nature of ftock referved for immediate confumption, differ from flock that yields what Dr Smith calls a revenue or profit? Merely in this-that the former is wanted and ufed itfelf by the owner; the latter is not wanted by him, and therefore is exchanged for fomething which he does want. There is furely no other meaning in the idea of profit or revenue, but this and as the profit of that part of stock which is exchanged, and which the adherents of this opinion denominate capital, confifts merely in the ufe of thofe things obtained in return-fo, the profit of the other part of stock, the portion referved for confumption, is the ufe to which it is immediately fubfervient. According to Dr Smith, there is fome difference between revenue and enjoyment; and that part of a man's property yields him no profit, which is moft ufeful and neceffary to him, by which he can fupport and enjoy life without the neceffity of any operation of barter.

But in no particular is the confufion of our ideas on these subjects

jects more remarkable, than in our mode of conceiving the fubferviency of different objects to the production of wealth. Lord Lauderdale feems to think that he has fettled this point with unprecedented accuracy, by ftating, with great prolixity and repetition, that land, labour and capital, are the three fources of wealth; and yet through his whole Inquiry he has never taken the trouble to draw a line between the various meanings in which he is obliged to ufe the term fource; for he is perpetually confounding the fountain with the ftream-the origin with the produce the caufe of wealth with the wealth itfelf. It is obvious that land is a component part of wealth, as well as a means of producing it. The ufe of a lawn, or ftation for building, is as much the enjoyment of land itself in the fhape of wealth, as the ufe of its produce for food or clothing is the enjoyment of wealth derived from land.

To call capital a fource of wealth, is ftill more inaccurate. Capital is nothing but accumulated stock; and all the parts of ftock are much more frequently to be confidered as wealthfomething from which enjoyment is immediately derived, than the mere inftruments by which wealth or enjoyment may be procured. To clafs the fruits of the earth with the land itfelf

the fifh with the water-and the confumeable produce with the thing which produces it, is evidently no very fignal proof of accuracy in an author who has taken fo much pains to inftruct the world in the true nature of value, and the difference between wealth and riches.'

Labour, on the other hand, is fo far different in the mode of its fubferviency to our enjoyments, that it can in no way be ranked in the fame clafs, either with capital or with land. Labour is applicable to both land and capital. It is the means of rendering them useful, or of increafing their utility. It is truly the origin and fource of wealth; but is, in no fenfe of the word, wealth itfelf-unlefs, indeed, we conceive the pleasure of fome kinds of exertion to be a ufe of labour analogous to the enjoyment of riches. Nothing, then, can be lefs clofe and confiderate than the manner in which Lord Lauderdale fettles the queftion relative to the origin and nature of wealth. The fubject, indeed, does not admit of any fuch formal diftinction. Wealth may be faid to be every thing from which man immediately derives the fupply of his wants and defires. Its component parts are as various as thofe wants and defires, though it is, no doubt, fufceptible of various general divifions, liable to no juft exceptions in point of accuracy. Thus, it may be ranged in the two claffes of matter and mind, or property and talents; and property may be divided into animate and inanimate, or the lifelefs and the living