nually going on, by which the values which we create will be destroyed, unless we watch over them with perpetual vigilance. Childish, imbecile carelessness is enough to render any man poor, without the aid of a single positive vice.

It seems to be a law of nature, that we cannot create one value without destroying another. He who chops down a tree and saws it into boards, destroys for ever the value of the tree as a tree. It can never more give shade to the traveller nor gratify the taste of the tourist. He who butchers an ox for beef destroys for ever the utility of the animal as a beast of draught. If we eat an apple, we annihilate for ever the quality in the apple of giving pleasure to any other being. And thus, in general, consumption is a sort of exchange, in which we surrender one value for the sake either of creating another value, or else for the sake of gratifying some desire, which we consider of more importance than the existence of the value which we annihilate.

1. Consumption is either of labour or of capital. If I purchase five dollars' worth of mahogany and pay a mechanic ten dollars for his labour in making it into a table, I have consumed five dollars' worth of capital and ten dollars' worth of labour. If I have made it myself, instead of employing another, I have consumed the same amount of value in my own labour. And, inasmuch as it costs just as much to support a human being whether he labour or whether he remain idle, the spending a day in idleness should always be considered as the consumption of a day's labour. In estimating the benefit of holidays, we should always remember that the time which they occupy is the consumption of so much labour. And the profitableness of the consumption is to be estimated by the benefit of the result which is attained.

2. Consumption is either partial or total. Sometimes, after one value has been consumed, another and an important value remains. A pair of India-rubber shoes may be worn out, and be useless as shoes, and yet they may be valuable for the manufacture of India-rubber cloth. A linen garment may be worn out, and its utility as a garment may have been annihilated, and yet it may possess an important value to the paper-maker. On the other hand, when we eat a piece of bread, as it has but one value, and that value is destroyed, the consumption is total. When we burn gunpowder in fireworks, and, commonly, when we use property to gratify our appetites, the case is the same. Hence we see the importance of consuming every value of every kind which a substance possesses; and also of consuming nothing for the purposes of gratification, unless for a reasonable and adequate cause.

4. Consumption is either rapid or gradual. The consumption of wood for fuel is rapid. The consumption of the axe with which we chop it, or of the fire-place in which we burn it, is gradual. But the one is going on as certainly as the other; and hence, in estimating his expenses, if a man wish to estimate them correctly, the one must be taken into the account as well as the other. If a man build a house and occupy it for ten years, the gradual consumption has materially diminished its value. If, now, at the close of this period, he estimate the value of the house at its original cost, he will greatly overrate his property. The same is true of furniture, and of every thing else which we use. It need scarcely be remarked, that the annual consumption of an individual is the total amount of values which he consumes, whether in his business or in his family. Unless his annual production be sufficient to replace the whole of his annual consumption, he will run in debt. By as much as his annual production exceeds his annual consumption, he will be growing richer. Hence, the object of every thrifty man is to render this excess as great as possible. II. Of the Design of Consumption.

The design of consumption is easily seen. Inasmuch as consumption is the destruction of some value, it is of the nature of an infelicity. We never therefore consume, but with the expectation of procuring some greater good than that which we annihilate. This good may be of two kinds. First, we consume one value for the sake of procuring another and better value; or, secondly, we consume a value for the sake of gratifying some appetite or desire, that is, for the sake of increasing our own personal happiness.

1. Consumption for the sake of the increase of value. In this manner the farmer consumes seed, manures, labour, and tools, that he may thus be enabled to produce a harvest. The manufacturer consumes raw cotton, labour, machinery, &c., in order to produce cloth. The mantua-maker consumes calico, thread, needles, and labour, in order to produce a new dress. And thus, in all the various occupations of men, materials of every kind, and labour, are consumed for the sake of creating some article of use, or convenience, or luxury.

Besides, however, the consumption by accident, a continual consumption is going on by the ordinary agents of nature. If a pile of wood is suffered to remain for a long time exposed to the changes of the weather, it will be rendered utterly worthless. Its value is thus as entirely destroyed as it would have been by fire. If

by intellectual pleasures, and others by the pleasure of doing good. It is not necessary that I should enumerate all the various modes of expenditure. In general they consume the value which they appropriate, and all that remains is the gratification which they produce.

OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CONSUMPTION.

Consumption is of two kinds, individual and national. Individual consumption is of two kinds, first, for the sake of reproduction, and secondly, for gratification.

Of Individual Consumption for the sake of Reproduction. The design of the consumer in this case is the repro. duction of capital, in some form different from that

in which the capital is consumed. He would gladly produce without consumption, were it possible. But to do so is contrary to the law of his being. Consumption is necessary; but if a man be wise, he will consume as little as possible. Production is his remuneration, and if he be wise, he will render this as great as possible. His whole gain is the amount by which his production exceeds his consumption. The greater this excess, the greater will be his profit. The rule by which he should therefore be governed, is to create as large a product as possible, by the consumption of as small a value as possible.

The consumption of a producer is of two kinds of capital and of labour.

Of Consumption of Capital.-The principles which should govern us here, are, I suppose, the following:1. The consumption of capital should be as small in amount as is consistent with the creation of the desired product. A shoemaker, who habitually cuts up a side of leather so carelessly that leather sufficient for one pair of shoes is wasted, will never grow rich. The farmer who sows two bushels of seed when one would have answered as well, loses the half of his seed. In China, sowing is always done by drilling instead of broadcast. It has been computed that, by this method, as much grain is saved as would feed the whole population of Great Britain. The useless expenditure of fuel in Britain is enormous. It is supposed, and with good reason, that not more than one-tenth of the heat of the fuel employed is rendered available in a common fire-place.

2. Capital of no greater value than is necessary should be employed to create the desired product. Thus, it is for the interest of every producer to ascertain in what manner he may be able to accomplish his purpose, by the consumption of the least valuable materials. The merchant inquires before he imports a product from a foreign country, with what export he can procure it at the cheapest rate. So the manufacturer, if he be wise, will keep himself informed of the progress of science and of the arts, that he may learn in what manner a cheaper article may be substituted for a dearer in the creation of his product. A fortune has frequently been realised by the discovery of a cheaper dye-stuff, or the substitution of a single cheaper material in the place of that ordinarily in use.

3. Every utility possessed by the material consumed should be rendered in the best manner available. Thus in an oil-mill the flax-seed from which linseed oil has been expressed is a valuable food for cattle. After the brewer has extracted the saccharine matter from barley, the grains, as they are called, are valuable for the same purpose. The tan bark, after the tanning matter has been extracted, is valuable for fuel. This economy of materials is very well illustrated in the manufacture of combs. In a well-conducted establishment of this kind, every part of the horn, the core, the body, the tip, the shavings, the fat, and the mucilage, are all turned to some available purpose.

Nor is this all. The values which are consumed should be consumed to the very last. Thus, in the working of a steam-engine it is necessary to evolve a great amount of caloric, and this is the most expensive part of the process. Now, economy demands that this caloric should be produced at the least possible expense, and that having been produced it should be used for every purpose that it can be made to serve. But every one must have perceived, by the flame which escapes from the chimney of a furnace, that a very large portion of the caloric evolved is absolutely wasted. A very great economical improvement has of late been made in some of the iron-works in Great Britain. This caloric, which was formerly wasted, is used to heat the air which is blown into the furnace. By this expedient a very great saving of fuel is accomplished.

Consumption of Labour.—As labour is expensive in the same manner as capital, economy teaches us to consume precisely as much of it as is necessary to accomplish our purpose in the best possible manner.

1. We should employ no more labour than is necessary. Too many labourers will always encourage each other in idleness. When there is one man at leisure to tell stories, the time of several others must be consumed in listening to them.

2. We should employ no less labour than is necessary. When, from want of a sufficient number of labourers, one labourer is obliged to perform several kinds of work, we lose the advantage of division of labour, and also expose ourselves to all the inconveniences of confusion and disorder.

3. We should employ labour of no higher price than is necessary.

In any extensive operation it will be seen upon reflection that some parts of the process require more skill and attention than others. Some will require labour worth five or ten shillings a-day, and others labour worth not more than eightpence or one shilling a-day. It is of great importance in any large establishment so to arrange the labourers that no workman shall be employed at a higher price than the labour which he performs is actually worth. It is, however, to be remarked, that an error may exist of the opposite kind. It is as bad economy to employ too cheap as too dear labour. In the one case, we lose by paying too high a price for labour, in the other, by that destruetion of materials, which always results from the want of skill in a labourer.

4. The labour which we have paid for should all be performed. Time is money, to him at least who pays money for it. If it be wasted, his money is thrown away; and by throwing away money no one ever became rich.

In order to secure this result, several things must, however, be attended to. The most important of these is, that he who employs labourers should in person superintend his own affairs. No one will take as much interest in our own concerns as ourselves. When this cannot be done, the establishment should be so arranged as to ensure full and vigilant superintendence over every part, and under such responsibilities as will bring a knowledge of any delinquency to the notice of the competent authority.

Besides this, much time is saved by system and regularity. When one is obliged to wait for another, much labour is of necessity wasted. Tools should always be in the best possible condition. This saves time, and takes away one of the most common excuses for negligence.

Consumption for Gratification.

Consumption may be conducted upon economical principles, or the reverse. It is clearly the interest of every individual that he should not consume his capital by expenditure upon objects which are to yield him no pleasure or profit of any kind; that every thing he purchases should be consumed as thoroughly as possible, and not in any respect wasted. In this way no labour is lost. It is the same with national consumption or expenditure. When the public money is spent upon war, upon idle functionaries or sinecurists, or upon any kind of public work which is not to be either directly or indirectly useful, the labour which produced that money is lost, or has gone in vain. It is nothing in such cases to say that money has been circulated, that employment has been given, and so forth. Men do not absolutely need to be kept working in any particular way, and every idle consumer of others' goods than his own is a source of loss to the community. The labour could have been applied otherwise, and to a useful instead of a useless end.*

sketch of the science of Political Economy to an American writer, It is abridged, with a few slight alterations, from a small work

*We have to acknowledge ourselves indebted for the above

entitled "The Elements of Political Economy, by Francis Wayland, D.D., President of Brown University." Boston, U. S. 187.

Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh. Sold also by W. S. ORR & Co., London.

the long list of errors from passion, may not be added the still longer list of errors from ignorance; and, in general, to discourage indolence, improvidence, and a blind indulgence of appetite without regard to consequences; and to encourage industry, prudence, and the subjection of the passions to the dictates of reason. The only change, if change it can be called, which the study of the laws of population can make in our duties, is, that it will lead us to apply, more steadily than we have hitherto done, the great rules of morality to the case of marriage, and the direction of our charity; but the rules themselves, and the foundations on which they rest, of course remain exactly where they were before." This must be considered as the mildest possible exposition of the application of Mr Malthus's doctrines: his theory almost necessarily led to some other practical inferences, of a kind to which it is not so easy for a humane mind to assent. It came to be held, for instance, that, where the preventive check had not operated, it was quite legitimate to allow the positive to come into operation. A human being, who had come into existence undemanded by the state of the funds for subsistence, was to be told that the places at Nature's table were all occupied, and there was no cover for him. To the man who married when there was a redundancy of population," all parish assistance," said Mr Malthus, "should be most rigidly denied; and if the hand of private charity be stretched forth in his relief, the interests of humanity imperiously require that it should be administered very sparingly." These notions were adopted very generally by a class of political economists, and for twenty years they were in vogue in England, where the notorious abuses of the old poor-law had prepared the minds of many for taking extreme views with regard to public charity. But it was impossible for the great bulk of the community to give a cordial reception to doctrines so violently in opposition to the dictates of the natural feelings.

OBJECTIONS TO MR MALTHUS'S VIEWS.

A reaction at length took place against the Malthusian theory, and opposite views were presented by various writers, the most distinguished of whom was Mr M. T. Sadler, whose work, entitled The Law of Population, appeared in 1830.

By these writers it was represented, that, in America and the Australian colonies, there was an evident tendency in subsistence to increase in a more rapid ratio than population, insomuch that flocks and herds became a drug, and it was not uncommon in Brazil to use fat carcasses of mutton as fuel in lime-kilns. The only difficulty experienced in those regions was in obtaining a market for the vast amount of produce not needed by the native population. Here, it was said, is a clear case in disproof of the proposition that population always tends to increase more rapidly than food.

As for the geometric ratio of the human increase, by which so great an alarm had been excited, what was it, after all, but a different form of the obvious truth, that the more people there were, there would be the more parents, and consequently the more children? Suppose ten families, existing in 1800, having become twenty in 1825, it might certainly be expected that the addition between the last date and 1850 would be other twenty, not ten merely, seeing that the start was not from ten, as it had been before, but from twenty. Such is but an unavoidable consequence of population swelling by multiplication and not by addition. But if the human family follows this ratio of increase, so do all the orders of organic beings, animal and vegetable; sheep, oxen, and hogs, increase at the geometric ratio as well as mankind, and what is more, they begin to multiply at a much earlier period of life. Poultry, for instance, could probably multiply themselves a million of times, before a couple of the human race could do so once. The vegetable food of man is capable of a still more rapid increase. Wheat generally returns from ten to twenty fold in one year. The produce of a single acre of this grain, increased year after year in the ordinary

way, would require only fourteen years to reach an amount which would occupy the whole cultivable surface of the globe. And as it is with wheat, so is it with most of the other plants on which we depend for food, either for ourselves or for the animals which become food to us. So that, instead of there being any such disagreement between the natural possibilities of increase in human beings and subsistence, as Mr Malthus insisted on, there would appear to be a discrepancy in exactly the contrary way; that is to say, subsistence appears to be capable of a much more rapid increase than human beings.

But the Malthusians object-when the best soils are all under cultivation, it is necessary to resort to the inferior. These require more labour and afford less return. There is therefore a decreasing fertility in the country, while its population is always increasing. To this it is replied by the opposite party, that, while worse and worse soils are in the course of being resorted to, better and better modes of culture are coming into operation, so as to make, perhaps, a third-rate soil capable of producing as much, by a certain amount of labour, as a second-rate soil was a few years before, and so on with the other qualities, each being raised a degree in the scale by every fresh effort of human ingenuity. In point of fact, the best British soils do now bear four times the quantity of grain which they did a few centuries ago, and millions of acres then deemed unfit for tillage now produce as much by the same degree of labour as the best soils did at that time. Perhaps the answer is less satisfactory on this point than on any of the rest.

The Malthusians, however, were said by their opponents to derive the strength of their case from limiting their views to a certain region. Their propositions, it was admitted, might be true with regard to a population shut up in a certain small space, without any connexion with what was beyond. But such a popu lation never existed, and therefore the apprehended evils never could take place. From the earliest notices we have of the human family, it appears to have been their custom to spread abroad over the soil, when they found that food could be more easily obtained at a distance from the natal spot than at the natal spot itself. The original command given to man, to increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth, is only in accordance with what has always appeared as a tendency of the race. It is probable that, at the present time, not above one-hundredth part of the earth's surface is cultivated, and not one-hundredth part of that cultivated in a scientific or advantageous manner; while, from what has taken place, we may reasonably calculate upon the productiveness of the best cultivated parts being yet greatly increased. With such an almost indefinite field still before us, it seems absurd to be under any anxiety as to the supposed tendency of the human family to a too rapid increase. The superabundance of one district has only to go to some yet unpeopled spot, or to exert ingenuity and industry to raise more food from that which they do occupy, in order to maintain themselves in comfort. There is another means whereby it may chance that a superabundant population can support itself in the native locality, though the productiveness of that locality falls short of the demand for food. If it possess advantages for manufactures, it can exert its industry in that way, and exchange the products for food raised in other countries, where subsistence exceeds population, and advantages for manufactures do not exist.

The opponents of Mr Malthus combated his notion of checks on moral and religious grounds; and here, certainly, the natural feelings of mankind greatly favoured their views. It was held as an impeachment of that system of wisdom and benevolence seen throughout all nature, that one of the most powerful tendencies of human beings should be supposed to require being put under an absolute arrestment, upon the penalty of its otherwise leading to misery in the individual and embarrassment in the community. It was held that the preventive