CHAPTER I. Of Labour. MAN is the only animal, whom nature has doomed to depend on his own labour for subsistence, comfort, and happiness. He comes into the world naked, hungry, and defenceless; unprotected from the inclemency of the elements, unprovided with food, raiment, and shelter. With sensibilities superior, and wants more numerous than any other animal, he is made to rely on his own resources of genius, skill, ingenuity, and foresight, for all those possessions which gratify his appetites, minister to his pleasure, and stimulate to his improve ment. Compelled by a law of his nature to produce, and to acquire, in order to prolong his existence, it is selfevident, that all which he produces, or acquires, must be his own for man must have existed anterior to society, and even society terminates in the happiness of the individuals who compose it. This axiom is universally recognised and adopted in all the laws which violate its spirit, by substituting chance, force, or fraud, for labour. The first effort of man is to procure food, the second, clothing, the third, habitation. These constitute the FIRST elements of wealth, and are produced by industry and toil. Beyond these, imagination riots in fictitious wants, and intellect, soaring to sublime heights, creates a new world, the offspring of its own power. These constitute the SECONDARY elements of wealth, and are classed as LUXURY, SCIENCE, LITERATURE, and the FINE ARTS. The very first stage, in the first elements of wealth, is one of inequality. One man is stronger than another, one is more industrious, another more expert, skillful, and ingenious; and according to this diversity of powers, would be the unequal possession of wealth in all. But no man in the order of nature, could become the master of wealth, without industry, labour and skill. That no man might be idle, nature furnished him with an impulse, which when he is indolent, inflicts the sting of pain-and when he is employed, rewards him with a sensation of pleasure. It was an impulse necessary to his preservation, and without which, his nature could never attain to a high degree of perfection. The very efforts of industry would soon produce inequality of possessions. Some would become comparatively rich-others comparatively poor, according to the diversity of their physical and intellectual powers; but this inequality would never attain to a pitch to inflict misery, or to produce extortion. It would be a wholesome allotment on a scale of harmonious dependence, favorable to the competence and happiness of all. The difference between the powers of man, is not so great, as to produce a vast disparity in their productions and acquisitions, without the intervention of some agent of a character extraneous to industry and skill; as chance, fraud, force, law, or some custom arising from a combination among the strong, in violation of the rights of the weak; or among one ascendant interest, seeking the destruction of all others: as stock attempting to crush industry, or capital and monopoly to rule as the arbiters of wealth. Notwithstanding, therefore, the scepticism of David Hume, in whom, however, there is some inconsistency,* and his school of philosophers, there does exist. one instinctive sentiment of property, and that is labour-this being the root, or original instinct, from which flow all other ideas and principles, connected with CONTRACT, INHERITANCE, POSSESSION, prescripTION, &c. The authority of kings, and senates, of laws, and usages-the decisions of judges, and all the forms of refined civil society, although they may sometimes, or even generally, violate this original instinct, yet they never can altogether disregard its decrees, or erase it from the statute book of nature. The great test of this first principle, is found in this invariable and eternal fact, that without labour, there can be no property; maugre the manner in which we nominally come to its acquisition. If an ancestor bequeaths me a thousand acres, unless labour converts them to a useful purpose, they are without value: if I fell the timber, labour is the agent: if I till the ground, and produce grain, labour is still the active principle of wealth. I may sell them to another, but still the same process * Hume often refined his arguments into contradiction--and even here he is an authority in favour of labour. He says, "Every thing in the world is purchased by labour; and our passions are the only causes of labour. When a nation abounds in manufactures and me chanic arts, the proprietors of land, as well as the farmers, study agriculture, as a science, and redouble their industry and attention." Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in a full possession of all the necessaries, and many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich, than it adds to that of the poor. It also augments the power of the state." Vol. 1. pp. 280-2. H is in constant operation in some form, and whatever I receive in payment, or howsoever I may invest the proceeds, it will avail nothing without labour, which is the living spring that supplies all the channels of wealth, trade, manufactures, agriculture, and com merce. Natural agents are but the basis of human industry. Water courses, and water power, its decomposition by fire into steam-the peculiar combination of heat and moisture-the current of a stream, fertilizing a tract of country, and various other forms of matter produced by natural agents, would be of little, or no utility to man, without labour. Animal, vegetable, mineral, and other riches of nature, all require the labour of man to apply them to useful purposes. But these primitive sources of wealth, are so extensively known, and so obviously implied in all disquisitions upon political economy, that a more elaborate notice of them may be dispensed with. I doubt the utility of an extensive dissertation upon the chemical combinations and mysteries, that bestow the powers of fecundity, and clothe the earth in the bounties and the beauties of her fruits, and her flowers-her mineral riches, and her vegetable stores. Political economy to be useful, must soar above primitive principles, to their more remote relations-it must not be confined to an essay on acorns, or a dissertation upon the chemical elements that conspire to the production of a cabbage, a cucumber, or Indian corn. In no climate, however, that I know of, would natural agents, unassisted by the labour of man, furnish him with food, raiment, habitation, and defence: but to attain to civilization and science, wealth, literature, and refinement, would be utterly impossible by them alone. They form the basis, but must not be considered as a con . stituent of wealth. Wealth is exclusively the work of man, (of the man who labours;) without his labour, the fruits of nature would rot, and prove as transitory, as the seasons that produced them. Natural agents, left to themselves, might sustain human life for the time, but never could produce wealth. On man it has devolved, to nurse, husband, cherish, and operate upon the agents and productions of nature; and his reason and industry are only equalled by the creative powers of God. The labour of man is the efficient cause of all the value of natural agents and productions, considered in relation to wealth. The prevalent opinion, that gold and silver constitute wealth, and which must be classed among the vulgar errors of the age, will be shocked to learn that they are nothing but the symbols of riches: and in respect to labour, have the same basis as the other metals, upon which it operates. These two metals are the only species which serve the double purpose of currency, and manufacture. Their intrinsic superiority over the other metals, gives them a greater value-as they are more rare, and their properties finer; but still they are no more a constituent of wealth, than iron, brass, copper, or lead. But adopted as a measure, or guage of industry, they are more useful, because more rare; more fine, and less liable to destruction, and decomposition; as well as held in universal esteem for their beauty and utility. As far, however, as they constitute the wealth of the community, they are indebted for their value, like every thing else, to labour. A bar of silver, or a lump of gold, is a mere raw material; and although it is of more worth than an equal quantity of iron, that does not alter its character; for lead is of more worth than iron; yet this inequality of value, does not affect their |