Lord LAUDERDALE defines RICHES to be:

"Every thing necessary, useful, or agreeable to man."

M. SAY defines them to be:

"Every thing that can procure whatever is necessary, useful, or agreeable to man.'

Mr. MALTHUS defines them to be:

"Such material objects as are necessary, useful, or agreeable to man."

All these definitions are mainly defective.

Lord LAUDERDALE omits both the materiality, and the power of procuring.

M. SAY omits the materiality.

Mr. MALTHUS omits the power of procuring.

Supply these defects, and the definition may be made perfect,

thus:

"RICHES are such material objects as have the power of procuring whatever is necessary, useful, or agreeable to man."

The indefinite latitude of Lord LAUDERDALE's (miscalled) definition is apparent to all.

The latitude of M. SAY's definition is sufficient to destroy all the distinctions on which depends a clear knowledge of the causes of the increase or decrease of RICHES. It involves a series of confusions, which meet us at every step; and rests its support on innumerable subtleties, of which I can scarcely name another example.

Mr. MALTHUS's defectiveness is confined to his definition. His whole doctrine entirely agrees with the corrected definition which I have supplied. It is singular, that he should have fallen into an omissiveness similar to that which he has blamed in Adam Smith. Smith's doctrine was right: but he omitted the word material in his definition. So Malthus has omitted to name the ingredient of procurability, or exchangeable value.

SAY's error is not a mere defect in wording his definition. It pervades all his theory, and is its corner-stone. It lets in what he calls Immaterial RICHES; and on this he prides himself.

It is not my present purpose to pursue this, which I contend to be a most important error, into all its consequences. It may be at this moment sufficient to say only enough to show its nature. In assuming whatever will procure RICHES, to be RICHES: 1. There is a confusion between the means and the end. 2. A confusion between the posse and the esse.

3. A confusion between exchangeability and identity of kind. One might have expected, that the words Immaterial Riches would have struck every one as a contradiction in terms,

VOL. XX.

Pam.

NO. XL.

RICHES

2 H

in the universal opinion, as testified by the word synonymously applied to them, mean something of substance.

If they have no substance, how can they be appropriated? how can they circulate? how can they be transferred from one to another? how can they accumulate? how can they be detached from the person of the originator?

Yet surely that which is deficient in any one of these qualities, cannot be RICHES.

Those things, which M. Say calls Immaterial Riches, are deficient in them all.

Immaterial things may procure RICHES, and RICHES may procure immaterial things; but they are not therefore the same.

Nor is even every material thing which is necessary, useful, or agreeable, RICHES; because it must also have a value in exchange; and it cannot have a value in exchange unless it be an object in which a property can be had for no one will give any thing in exchange for that which he can have for nothing; as (speaking generally) he may have water, and some other productions of Nature.-(It is to this point that the defect in the wording of Mr. Malthus's definition refers.)

RICHES then are such material objects whether of Nature only, or improved by human' labor, as have a value in exchange, compounded of their necessity, usefulness, or amusement to man; and of the right of property in them.

If this definition be just, we come at once to the test of the soundness and accuracy of Adam Smith's grand distinction of productive and unproductive labor, (with reference to RICHES).

No labor can be productive, except of things which come within this definition.

But no one can deny, that there is an incalculable quantity of human labor, bodily and intellectual, which neither produces, nor can produce, such things. This last then is unproductive labor: domestic servants, soldiers, sailors, all the liberal professions, are occupied in unproductive labor.

When we understand precisely what this unproductive labor is, we can judge with much greater facility and certainty, in what cases and to what extent it is desirable, and in what cases and to what extent it is not.

For let it be recollected, that RICHES are not always best expended in procuring RICHES: they may sometimes be expended in procuring what is far more useful or desirable. For as other

things, which are the means of RICHES, must not be confound

'It may be doubted if any thing can be comprehended in this which does not require the addition of some human labor. The very act of making the right of property available involves human labor.

ed with Riches themselves; so RICHES themselves are but the means of something higher, of which happiness is the end.

Nothing can be more important than this distinction. Without it, it is impossible to comprehend the nature and causes of the distress under which Great Britain has long been suffering, and still suffers. With it, we may have a clear conception of the disease; and if we will, may apply a remedy.

When M. Say asserts that products can only be bought by products, he means products in his own sense, including what he calls immaterial RICHES :—and when he asserts that there exists abundance of products, and therefore that means of purchase cannot be wanting, and that such want cannot be the cause of the present stagnation, he means products in the sense of Malthus; viz. material commodities.

But employed labor, as far as regards what Smith, Malthus, &c. call unproductive labor, is wanting: therefore the means of purchasing the goods, which overload the warehouses, are wanting. And this again throws productive labor out of employ, because there is no demand for it.

Here then is a point, at which productive and unproductive labor become disproportionate to each other in the market. And here it becomes evident how necessary they both are in their due proportions; and how incalculably important it is, therefore, to distinguish them precisely from each other.

It is clear, that in proportion to the excess of produce above its cost, will be the means of accumulation; and in proportion to the means of accumulation, a nation has the means of augmenting its RICHES in proportion to the same excess of produce above cost, it has also the means of consumption. To decide soundly between the one and the other, as circumstances vary, is the great trial of wisdom in Political Economy.

What is the advantage of accumulation, but a greater future good at the expense of a minor present sacrifice? What is the advantage of RICHES, but to spend them at the moment when they can be spent with the greatest benefit? Do we not therefore mistake the means, or the supposed means, for the end, when we economise at unseasonable times ?

There appear to be at least three cases, in which there is a great limit to the wisdom of accumulation, or saving.

The first is, where a nation is arrived at such a degree of RICHES, and such a facility of increasing them, that a diminution of expenditure for the purposes of economy, or even a refusal of a proportionate increase of such expenditure, would be a vain and idle forbearance.

The second is, where great and necessary wars render a stop to

accumulation, or to the same degree of accumulation, or even a sacrifice of part of the existing capital, indispensable.

The third is, where the whole labor, the whole machinery, and the whole products, having been swelled out in proportion to this increased expenditure, no future good to be derived from accumulation can equal the frightful distresses arising from a great and violent curtailment of the same cost and consumption; and where, as an additional objection, even if the pecuniary gain were worth the price, a pecuniary loss, instead of gain, would ensue. We all know, that in private affairs, a cessation of expense is very often falseeconomy. Where buildings have been erected; where lands have been highly cultivated; where capital has been hazarded, and must be lost, unless it is nurtured to the time of its fructification, there it is a false economy to withhold the continuance of the cost which is necessary to carry them forward.

Nothing can be more demonstrative, than that the expenses of the late wars re-created themselves. The evil was, not in the destruction of capital; but in this incident to public loans, that one set of people, (the already rich,) pay a large portion of the interest of that, of which another set receive the benefit; by which means the property of a country too violently changes hands.

A continuation of loans therefore would be a good, were it not for this counterbalancing incident. But though loans are so far mainly objectionable, yet it may be confidently asserted, that there are numerous diminutions of expense by saving, which are false economy. They are the aggravation of the very life of the

disease.

Now let us consider how Great Britain has been lately circumstanced. A war of unexampled expenditure created an unexampled demand both for productive and unproductive labor. The increased produce arising from capital, machinery, industry, and extended commerce, kept pace with the augmentation of consumption caused by the unprecedented increase of unproductive laborers. All the additional apparatus therefore, and all the additional population equal to the new demand, had been completely developed in three and twenty years.

Whether this was a good, or an evil; whether less production, less population, and less Riches, would have been a better thing; and whether (good or bad) it could no longer have been avoided, was now no longer the question: the machinery, the vested capital, the produce, the population, existed. The question was, how to enable them to go on, with the least balance of evil.

To me it is one of those questions which leaves not the smallest particle of doubt in the mind. I should say; "Go on with a liberal expenditure. The population thus excited into being, thus

grown into their several habits and qualifications by the public demand, must be supported. Do not throw those, who have hitherto lived upon the capital of the public purse, a burden upon the income of individuals, by throwing them on the Poor-rates. Do not think, that by putting lands out of cultivation, by rendering machinery useless, by sinking irredeemably capital, which has been generously ventured, by plunging into bankruptcy and despondence men of skill and enterprise, who have deserved well of the public; do not think, that when you are making a population discontented and desperate, you are saving money by diminishing your expenditure; or that if you could save it, it would be any otherwise than miserably saved.

"Reduce gradually and cautiously; employ part of your disbanded army and navy in public works; in roads and canals:not in labor immediately productive; for that is the disease; but in labor which may facilitate future production; a mode of expenditure which will have the good effects of saving without its evils."

I should have said: "The present is a moment doubly unpropitious to a great and sudden decrease of expenditure, because the power of expenditure has been already greatly decreased in a rich and powerful class, by accidental circumstances, either of seasons, or mismanagement. The agriculturists, whose expenditure supported so many laborers, and took off so much manufactured produce, are already, by the fall of corn in 1814 and 1815, shorn, perhaps, of one half of their incomes. Do not aggravate distresses already frightful.”

I should have said: "Listen not to the clamors of those, whose business it is to find fault. You will not even avoid their censures by yielding to their objections. They will reproach you either way! But how much more, when misfortune attends your measures, even though they should be those of their own suggestion. If success cannot soothe them, will failure satisfy them with you?"

I hear the answer to this: "The ministers of a mixed government, like that of Great Britain, cannot act independent of popular prejudices and popular clamor. The good of public saving is inseparable from popular opinion, especially when it keeps off taxes, and this ideal good is more than doubled by the supposition that it diminishes the power of Government."

This is true but much might yet be done to enlighten the pub

:

Nothing can be more absurd, than the argument, that the expenses of cultivation decreased proportionably. One consideration alone (out of many) puts an end to this argument. A great part of Agriculture and Trade is carried on with borrowed capital. Fall of prices did not reduce interest of

money.