The Rights of Industry is a little work which, at

all times, must have been valuable for the soundness of its principles, and the clear and lucid method in which they are explained to the compre- hension of any ordinarily intelligent member of the working-class. At the present moment, it has the additional value of being pecu- liarly seasonable—when ignorant but self-sufficient men have taken advantage of the agitation of the times, to cultivate the most absurd doctrines respecting property and capital. Such persons have unluckily a clear field for their machinations: periodicals cannot reach the poor, for the stamp operates as a prohibition ; and the proselytes of the anti-social doctrines stand little chance of meeting with men sufficiently enlightened to con- fute their errors by argument and illustration. The common farmer is perhaps more ignorant than the frequenter of the village alehouse of all the fundamental questions of civilization. The master-workman, when he knows better, which is not often the case, is too far removed from his men to perform the ditty of in, structor, more especially as the source might be suspected. The clergyman, generally still less qualified, is impatient and dogma- tic ; he avails himself of the invisible world to hector over this ; and even where he is benevolent, well-disposed, and unconnected with the irritating subject of tithes, his education has led him to subjects far different from the complicated interests of a highly- civilized state. If the Working Man's Companion can be exten- sively introduced into the cottage and the Union-parlour, and at the artisan's fireside, we shall not despair of seeing a great change wrought upon the mind of the labouring classes. Much gratitude is owing to the Society that has taken the pains and applied the knowledge and skill necessary for the production of such a work. We should he glad to see their efforts seconded by the formation of ambulatory libraries—the circulation of cheap periodicals of a sound description—and, if possible, the establishment of missions of instruction. The elements exist among the various Unions of the Operatives : there are ingenious men among them who would only require a few months' correction and instruction, to be formed into admirable domestic missionaries. If we are not mistaken, in various parts of the country there are working men connected with the different Unions, who are celebrated in their neighbourhoods for their information on subjects in ge- neral, and who are, on occasion of any convivial or other meeting, sent for from a distance, on the understanding that the company pays their expenses. In most towns of the kingdom, there are public-houses, the landlords of which retain readers in their pay, who sit in the place of common resort, and read all the most interesting parts of the newspaper aloud,—not unfrequently illustrating the subject with geographical and other notes, or by going back and referring to previous Circumstances, of which the conclusion only happens to be detailed in the paper of the day. Such are the men who might be made available itz directing and acceleriiting the progress of intelligence. It is a mistake to sup- pose that "a little knowledge," however little it may be, is dan- gerous. There is nothing to be feared but error. The path of the man who knows a little, and really knows it, is safe though it may be short: it is only the man of false and erroneous notions—a kind of active ignorance—who is wandering in a quagmire, mis- guiding others and being engulphed himself. The object of the treatise on " Capital and Labour" is, by tak- ing the simplest instances of savage and partly civilized life, to trace civilization from its beginning, through societies of the rudest kind, or those somewhat more advanced, to that in which we are at. present,—a social state of vast wealth, and of a great complica- tion of interests. Capital and Labour are shown to proceed hand in hand, the one dependent on the other ; and it is proved, that should at any time Labour turn upon Capital, with a view of en- riching itself with the spoils, it would simply be an exemplification of the fable of the boy who killed the hen that laid him golden eggs. The relations of the labourer and the capitalist are all admirably expounded ; and the history of accumulation in England is further illustrated and enforced by facts, which exhibit this country in the various conditions it has enjoyed, or rather suffered, from our ear- liest annals. There is likewise a sketch of the history of labour in England, with a great many other divisions of information, pleasantly and perspicuously laid down. The book is written avowedly for the instruction of the working classes • there is not, however, a class in the country among whom it might not he cir- culated with striking advantage. We are sure that, after giving this little book an attentive perusal,five out of six persons through- out the whole country would look upon society with altogether new 'eyes. ' Though the price of this book is only a shilling (213 pages), we shall make extracts from it, partly because of their intrinsic value, and partlythat the attention of the world may be attracted to the book itself. • The first extract we shall quote is a rapid sketch of the accu- mulation of capital in a country, and of the consequences which would follow its destruction. It is the building up of the heap, and the kicking it down.

" The first operation in a newly-settled country is what is termed to clear it. Look at a civilized country, such as England. It is cleared. The

encumbering woods are cut down, the unhealthy marshes are drained. The noxious animals which were once the principal inhabitants of the land are exterminated ; and their place is supplied with useful creatures, bred, nourished, and domesticated by human art, and multiplied to an extent exactly proportioned to the wants of the population. Forests re- main for the produce of timber, but they are confined within the limits of their utility ;—mountains ' where the nibbling flocks do stray,' have ceased to be barriers between nations and districts. Every vegetable that the diligence of man has been able to transplant from the most distant regions is raised for food. The fields are producing a provision for the coming year ; while the stock for immediate consumption is ample, and the laws of demand and supply are so perfectly in action, that scarcity seldom occurs and famine never. Rivers have been narrowed to bounds which limit their inundations, and they have been made navigable wher- ever their navigation could be profitable. The country is covered with

roads and with canals, which render distant. provinces as near to each

other for commercial purposes as neighbouring villages in less advanced countries. Houses, all possessing some comforts which were unknown even to the rich a few centuries ago, cover the land, in scattered farm- houses and mansions, in villages, in towns, in cities, in capitals. These houses are filled with an almost inconceivable number of conveniences and luxuries—furniture, glass, porcelain, plate, linen, clothes, books, pic- tures. In the stores of the merchants and traders, the resources of human ingenuity are displayed in every variety of substances and forms that can exhibit the multitude of civilized wants ; and in the manufactories are seen the wonderful adaptations of science for satisfying those wants at the cheapest cost. The people who inhabit such a civilized land have not only the readiest communication with each other by the means of roads and canals, but can trade by the agency of ships with all parts of the world. To carry on their intercourse amongst themselves, they speak one common language, reduced to certain rules, and not broken into an em- barrassing variety of unintelligible dialects. Their written communica- tions are conveyed to the remotest corners of their own country, and even to other kingdoms, with the most unfailing regularity. Whatever is transacted in such a populous hive, the knowledge of which can afford profit or amusement to the community, is recorded with a rapidity which is not more astonishing than the general accuracy of the record. What is more important, the discoveries of science, the elegancies of literature, and all that can advance the general intelligence, are preserved and dif- fused with the utmost ease, expedition, and security, so that the public stock of knowledge is constantly increasing. Lastly, the general well- being of all is sustained by laws,—sometimes indeed imperfectly devised and expensively administered, but on the whole of infinite value to every member of the community : and the property of all is defended from ex- ternal invasion and from internal anarchy by the power of government, which will be respected only in proportion as it advances the general good of the humblest of its subjects, by securing their capital from plunder and defending their industry from oppression. " This capital is ready to be won by the power of the working man. But he must exercise this power in complete subjection to the natural laws by which every exchange of society is regulated. These laws some- times prevent labour being instantly exchanged with capital, for an ex- change necessarily requires a balance to be preserved between what one man has to supply, and what another man has to require; but in their general effect they secure to labour the certainty that there shall be abun- dance of capital to exchange with ; and that if prudence and diligence go together, the labourer may himself become a capitalist, and even pass out of the condition of a labourer into that of a proprietor, or one who lives upon accumulated produce. The experience of every day shows this process going forward—not in a solitary instance, as in that of the ruined and restored man whose tale we have just told, but in the case of thriving tradesmen all around us, who were once workmen. But if the labourer or the great body of labourers were to imagine tint they could obtain such a proportion of the capital of a civilized country except as ex- changers, the store would instantly vanish. They might perhaps divide by force the crops in the barns end the clothes in the warehouses—but there would be no more crops or clothes. The principle upon which all accumulation depends, that of security of property, being destroyed, the accumulation would be destroyed. If the labourers, also, were to ima- gine that they could use the capital without paying for its use, as they have been taught by some to think, the same effects would be the inevita- ble result.

" A writer who has delivered lectures on Political Economy complains, in those lectures, that the labourer is not allowed to work, unless, in addition to replacing whatever he uses or consumes, and comfortably subsisting himself, his labour also gives a profit to the capitalist on all the capital which he uses or consumes while engaged in producing ;' and this principle the same writer calls a principle of slavery. The mis- chievous ignorance of such doctrines may be very easily shown. If some capitalists did not receive a profit upon the employment of the capital, it would remain unemployed—it would be useless. Capital, the accumu- lation of former labour, according to this doctrine, ought to be the pro- perty of the present labourers ; for it is evident that if it is not allowed to yield a profit to the capitalist, he may as well give up the trouble of taking care of it. The labourers of 1831, we say then, according to this notion, divide the capital, and work more advantageously to themselves with the profits of the capital thus appropriated ; for there must be ap- propriation after all. But new labourers will rise up—the labourers of 1832, or of 1842, who have had no share in the spoil. They, of course, according to the doctrine thus laid down at the Mechanics' Institute, have a better title than the labourers of 1831, who have become capitalists ; because, not being capitalists, they contribute more labour to procure some of the capital by exchange. They,therefore, dispossess the labourers of 1831; and these, again, having become non-capitalists, have a new title to the capital, and dispossess the labourers of 1832. Their title would be exactly similar to that of the priest described by Strabo, the ancient geographer, whose right to the priesthood was acquired by having mur- dered his predecessor; and consequently the business of the priest in possession was not to discharge the duties of the priesthood, but to watch sword in band, to defend himself against the new claimant to the office. The doctrine which we have exhibited is, that the accumulation of former labour belongs to the present labourers ; and that the best title to the ac- cumulation is to have added nothing towards it, but only to be willing to add. " It is necessary to establish this point of the security of property, as one of the rights, and we may add as the greatest right, of industry ; and therefore, at the risk of being thought tedious, we further call your attention to the general state of the argument in reply to those who wish to render property insecure.

" The value of an article produced, is the labour required for its pro duction.

" Capital, the accumulation of past labour, represents the entire amount of that labour which is not consumed ;—it is the oldlabour stored up for exchange with new labour.

"Those who attach an exclusive value to new labour as distinguished from old labour, or labour as distinguished from capital. say that the new production shall be stimulated by the old production, without allow- ing the old production to be exchanged against the new ; that is, that the old production shall be an instrument for the reward of new labour, but not a profitable one to its possessor. "The doctrine therefore amounts to this—that labour shall be ex- changed with labour,—but not with the produce of labour,—or that there shall be no exchange whatever ; for if the present labourers are to have the sole benefit of the capital, the principle of exchange, in which both exchangers benefit, is destroyed. There must be an end of all ex- changes when the things to be exchanged are not equally desired by both parties. If the capitalist is to lend or give the capital to the labourer without a profit, or without a perfect freedom which would entitle him to withhold it if no profit could be obtained, the balance is destroyed be- tween capital and labour. Accumulation is then at an end, because the security of the thine° accumulated to the accumulator is at an end. The security is at an end, because, if the new labour is to have the advantage of the old labour without compensation or exchange, the new labour must take the old labour by force or fraud ; for the new cannotproceed with- out the old; —labour cannot stir without capital. Accumulation, there- fore, being at an end, labour for an object beyond the wants of an hour is at an end. Society resolves itself into its first elements. We return to the powerless condition, first of the North American Indians ; and thence, having overturned the security of property which they respect, we go backward to the state of man in the lowest depth of brute degrade tion, such as scarcely exists amongst the rudest tribes."—P. 53-60.

The next extract is historical, and shows us some of the fright ful tricks played by ignorance in the government of nations.

" England, as we have said, once groaned under the evils of positiv slavery. The Anglo-Saxons had what they called live money,' such as sheep and slaves. To this cause may be doubtless attributed the easy conquest of the country by the Norman invaders, and the oppression that succeeded that conquest. If the people had been free, no king could have swept away the entire population of a hundred thousand souls that dwelt in the country between the Humber and the Tees, and converted, a district of sixty miles in length into a dreary desert, which remained for years without houses and without inhabitants. This the Conqueror did. In the reign of Henry the Second, the slaves of England were imported in large numbers to Ireland. These slaves, or villeins, as is the case in Rus- sia and Poland at the present day, differed in the degree of the oppression which was exercised towards them. Some, called villeins in gross,' were at the absolute disposal of the lord—transferable from one 'saner to another, like a horse or a cow. Others, called villeins regardant,' were annexed to particular estates, and were called upon to perform whatever agricultural offices the lord should demand from them, not havine'' the power of acquiring any property, their only privilege being that they were irremoveable except with their own consent. These distinctions are not of much consequence, for, by a happy combination of circum- stances, the bondmen of every kind, in the course of a century or two after the Conquest, were rapidly passing into the condition of free labourers. But still, capital was accumulated so slowly, and labour was so unproductive, that the land did not produce the tenth part of a modern crop ; and the country was constantly exposed to the severest inflictions of famine, whenever a worse than usual harvest occurred. " In the reign of Edward the Third, the woollen manufacture was in- troduced into England. It was at first carried on exclusively by foreigners; but as the trade extended, new hands were wanting, and the bondmen of the villages began to run away from their masters, and take refuge in the towns. If the slaVe could conceal himself successfully from the pursuit of his lord for a year and a day, he was held free for ever. The constant attraction of the bondmen to the towns, where they could work for hire, gradually emboldened those who remained as cultivators to assert their own natural rights. The nobility complained that the villeins re- fused to perform their accustomed services, and that corn remained uncut upon the ground. At length, in 1351, the twenty-fifth year of Ed- ward the Third, the class of free labourers was first recognized by the legislature ; and a statute was passed, oppressive indeed, and impolitic, but distinctly acknowledging the right of the labourer to assume the cha- racter of a free exchanger. Slavery, in England, was not wholly abolished by statute till the time of Charles the Second: it was attempted in vain to he abolished in 1526. As late as the year 1775, the colliers.of Scotland were accounted ascripti gleke—that is, as belonging to the estate or colliery where they were born and continued to work. It is not neces- sary for us further to notice the existence of villeinage or slavery in these kingdoms. Our business is with the slow progress of the establishment of the rights of free labourers—and this principally to show that, during the long period when a contest was going forward between the capitalists and the labourers, industry was comparatively unproductive. It was not so unproductive, indeed, as during the period of absolute slavery; but as long as any man was compelled to work, or to continue at work, or to receive a fixed price, or to remain in one place, or to follow one employ- ment, labour could not be held to be free—property could not be held to be secure—capital and labour could not have cordially united for production—accumulation could not have been certain and rapid. " In the year 1349, there was a dreadful pestilence in England, which swept off large numbers of the people. Those of the labourers that re- mained, following the natural course of the great principle of demand and supply, refused to serve, unless they were paid double the wages which they had received five years before. Then came the' Statute of Labourers,' of 1351, to regulate wages; and this statute enacted what

should be paid to haymakers, and reapers, and threshers ; to carpenters, and masons, and tilers, and plasterers. No person was to quit his own village, if he could get work at these wages ; and labourers aad artificers flying from one district to another, in consequence of these regulations, were to be imprisoned. " Good laws, it has been said, execute themselves. When legislators make bad laws, there requires a constant increase of vigilance and seve-

rity, and constant attempts at reconciling impossibilities, to allow such laws to work at all. In 1360, the Statute of Labourers was confirmed with new penalties, such as burning in the forehead with the letter F those workmen who left their usual abodes. Having controlled the wages of in

dustry, the next step was for these blind lawgivers to determine how the workmen•should spend their scanty pittance; and accordingly, in 1363, a statute was passed to compel workmen and all persons not worth forty shillings, to wear the coarsest cloth called russet, and to be served once a day with meat, or fish, and the offal of other victuals. We were not without imitations of such absurdities in other nations. An ordinance of the King of France, in 1461, determined that good and fat meat should be sold to the rich, while the your should be allowed only to buy the lean And stinking.

" While the wages of labour were fixed by statute, the price of wheat was constantly undergoing the most extraordinary fluctuations, ranging from 2s. a quarter, to I/. is. 8d. It was perfectly impossible that any pro- fitable industry could go forward in the face of such unjust and ridiculous laws. In 1376, the Commons complained that masters were'obli2ed to give their servants higher wages to prevent their running away ; and that the country was covered with stafstrihers and sturdy rogues who robbed in every direction. The villages were deserted by the labourers resorting to the towns, where commerce knew how to evade the destroying regula- tions of the statutes ; and to prevent the total decay of agriculture, labourers were not allowed to move from place to place without letters patent : any labourer, not producing such a letter, was to be imprisoned and put in the stocks. If a lad had been brought up to the plough till he was twelve years of age, he was compelled to continue in husbandry all his life ; and in 1406 it was enacted that all children of parents not pos sessed of land should be brought up in the occupation of their parents. While the Legislature, however, was passing these abominable laws, it was most effectually preparing the means for their extermination. Children were allowed to be sent to school in any part of the kingdom. When the light of education dawned upon the people, they could not long remain in the darkness visible' that succeeded the night of slavery.

" When the industry of the country was nearly annihilated by the laws regulating wages, it was found out that something like a balance should be preserved between wages and prices ; and the magistrates were therefore empowered twice a year to make proclamation, according to the price of provisions, how much every workman should receive. The sys- tem, however, would not work well. In 1496, a new statute of wages was passed, the preamble of which recited that the former statutes had not been executed, because the remedy by the said statutes is not very per- fect.' Then came a new remedy : that is, a new scale of wages for all trades ; regulations for the hours of work and of rest ; and penalties to prevent labour being transported from one district to another, As a ne- cessary consequence of a fixed scale for wages, came another fixed scale for regulating the prices of provisions; till at last, in the reign of Henry VIII., lawgivers began to open their eyes to the folly of their proceedings, and the preamble of a statute says that dearth, scarcitie, good cheape, and plentie of cheese, butter, capons, hens, chickens, and other victuals necessary for man's sustenance, happeneth, riseth, and chanceth, of so many and divers occasions, that it is very hard and difficile to put any certain prices to any such things' Yet they went on with new scales, in spite of the hardness of the task; till at last some of the worst of these absurd laws were swept from the statute-book. The justices, whose principal occupation was to balance the scale of wages and labour, com- plained incessantly of the difficulty of the attempt; and the statute of the 5th Elizabeth acknowledged that these old laws' could not be carried into executian without the great grief and burden of the poor labourer and hired man.' Still new laws were enacted to prevent the freedom of in- dustry working out plenty for capitalists as well as labourers; and at length, in 1601, a general assessment was directed for the support of the impotent poor, and for setting the unemployed poor to work. The capi- talists at length paid a grievous penalty for their two centuries of oppres- sion ; and had to maintain a host of paupers, that had gradually filled the land during these unnatural contests. It would be perhaps incorrect to say, that these contests alone produced the paupers that required this le- gislative protection in the reign of Elizabeth ; but certainly the number of those paupers would have been far less, if the laws of industry had taken their healthy and natural course,—if capital and labour had gon e hand in hand to produce abundance for all, and fairly to distribute that abundance in the form of profits and wages, justly balanced by the steady operation of demand and supply in a free and extensive market. "The whole of these absurd and iniquitous laws, which had succeeded the more wicked laws of absolute slavery, proceeded from a struggle on the part of the capitalists in land against the growing power and energy

of free labour. If the capitalists had rightly understood their interests, they would have seen that the increased production of a thriving and happy peasantry would have amply compensated them for all the increase of wages to which they were compelled to submit; and that at every step - by which the condition of their labourers was improved, their own con- dition was also improved. If, then, capital had worked naturally and honestly for the encouragement of labour, there would have been no lack of labourers ; and it would not have been necessary to pass laws to com- pel artificers, under the penalty of the stocks, to assist in getting in the harvest (5 Eliz.) If the labourers in agriculture had been adequately paid, they would not have fled to the towns; and if they had not been liable to cruel punishments for the exercise of this their natural right, the -country would not have been covered with valiant rogues and sturdy beggars.' "—P.91-99.

We shall make one more extract, and take it from Chlpter VI. —which might be called "making good fur trade," and which in a small compass relieves us of a few vulgar errors.

" If we have succeeded in making our meaning clear, by stating a gene- ral truth, not in an abstract form, but as brought out by various in- stances of the modes in which it is exhibited, we shall have led your minds to the conclusion that accumulation, or capital, is absolutely es- sential to the profitable employment of labour ; and that the greater the accumulation, the greater the extent of that profitable employment. This truth, however, has been denied altogether by some speculative writers ; and, what is more important, has been practically denied by the conduct of nations and individuals in the earlier state of society,—and is still denied by existing prejudices, derived from the current maxims of former days of ignorance and half-knowledge. With the speculative writers we have little to do. When Rousseau, for instance, advises go- vernments not to secure property to its possessors, but to deprive them of all means of accumulating, it is sufficient to know that the same writer advocated the savage state, in which there should be no property, in preference to the social, which is founded on appropriation. Knowing this, and being convinced that the savage state, even with imperfect ap- propriation, is one of extreme wretchedness, we may safely leave such opinions to work their own cure. For it is not likely that any indivi- . dual, however disposed to think that accumulation is an evil, would de- sire, by destroying accumulation, to pass into the condition, described by John Tanner, of &constant encounter with hunger in its most terrific forms: and seeing therefore the fallacy of such an opinion, he will also

see that if he partially destroys accumulation, he equally impedes pro- duction, and equally destroys his share in the productive power of capital and labour working together for a common good in the social state.

" But, without going the length of wishing to destroy capital, there are many who think that accumulation is a positive evil, and that con- sumption is a positive benefit ; and, therefore, that economy is an evil, and waste a benefit. The course of a prodigal man is by many still viewed with considerable admiration. He sits up all night in frantic riot —he consumes whatever can stimulate his satiated appetite—he is waited upon by a crowd of unproductive and equally riotous retainers—he breaks and destroys every thing around him with an unsparing hand—he rides his horses to death in the most extravagant attempts to wrestle with time and space ; and when he has spent all his substance in these excesses, an dies an outcast and a beggar, he is said to have been a hearty fellow, and to have made good for trade' When, on the contrary, a man of fortune economizes his revenue—lives like a virtuous and reasonable being, whose first duty is the cultivation of his understanding—eats and drinks with a regard to his health—keeps no more retainers than are sufficient for his proper comfort and decency—breaks and destroys nothing—has respect to the inferior animals, as well from motives of prudence as of mercy— and dies without a mortgage on his lands ; he is said to have been a stingy fellow, who did not know how to circulate his money.' To circulate money,' to make good for trade,' in the once common.meaning of the terms, is for one to consume unprofitably what, if economized, would have stimulated production in a way that would have enabled hundreds, instead of one, to consume profitably. We will give you two historical examples of these two opposite modes of making good for trade and cir- culating money. The Dukeof Buckingham, ',having been possessed of about 50,0001. a year, died in 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the utmost misery' After a life of the most wanton riot, which ex- hausted all his princely resources, he was left at the last hour, under cir- cumstances which are well described in the following lines by Pope : " In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red; zG,TorelavtitVtioliBieartstelire, sleft of all h*is store,

No *

No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'

"Contrast the course of this unhappy man, with that of the Duke of Bridgewater, who devoted his property to really making good for trade,' by constructing the great canals which connect Manchester with the coal countries, and with Liverpool. The Duke of Buckingham lived in a round of sensual folly : the Duke of Bridgewater limited his personal expendi- ture to 4001. a year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility. The one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockies : the other called into action the labour of thousands, and employed in the di- rection of that labour the skill of Brindley, the greatest engineer that any country has produced. The one died without a penny, loaded with debt, leaving no trace behind him but the ruin which his waste had produced : the other bequeathed almost the largest property in Europe to his de- scendants, and opened a channel for industry which afforded, and still affords employment to thousands. " When you hear of a mob breaking windows on an illumination night, you are to apt to say they have made good for trade.' Is it not evi- dent that the capital which was represented by the unbroken windows is really so much destroyed of the national riches, when the windows are broken ?—for if the windows had remained unbroken, the capital would

have remained to stimulate the production of some new object of utility. The glaziers, indeed, replaced the windows ; but there having been a de- struction of the windows, there must have been a necessary retrench- ment in some other outlay, that would have afforded benefit to the con- sumer. Doubtless, when the.glazier is balled into activity by a mob breaking windows, some other trade suffers ; for the man who has to pay for the broken windows must retrench somewhere, and if he has less to lay out, some other person has less to lay out. The glass-maker, probably, makes more glass at the moment ; but he does so to exchange with the capital that would otherwise have gone to the maker of clothes or of furniture : and there being an absolute destruction of the funds for the maintenance of labour, by an unnecessary destruction of what former labour has produced, trade generally is injured to the extent of the de- struction. Some of you say that a fire makes good for trade. The only difference of evil between the fire which destroys a house, and the mob which breaks the windows, is, that the fire absorbs capital for the main- tenance of trade, or labour, in the proportion of a hundred to one, when compared with the mob. Some of you say that war makes good for trade. The only difference of pecuniary evil (the moral evils admit of no com- parison) between the fire and the war is, that the war absorbs capital for the maintenance of trade or labour in the proportion of a million to a hundred when compared with the fire. If the incessant energy of produc- tion were constantly repressed by mobs, and fires, and wars, the end would be that consumption would altogether exceed production ; and that then the producers and the consumers would both be starved into wiser courses, and perceive that nothing makes good for trade but profit- able industry and judicious expenditure. Prodigality devotes itself too much to the satisfaction of present wants ; avarice postpones too much the present wants to the possible wants of the future. Real economy is the happy measure between the two extremes ; and that only 'makes good for trade,' because, while it carries on a steady demand for industry, it accumulates a portion of the production of a country to stimulate new production. Tnatjudicious expenditure consists in 10 The sense to value riches, with the art T' enjoy them.' " The present little volume forms only the first part of the Rights of Industry; the second will be published early in the year 1832. We should like to see it taught as extensively as the Catechism.