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The two preceding letters would do credit to any pen as specimens of natural and unaffected epistolary correspondence; while the sentiments they contain and the spirit which they breathe, would not be unworthy of the most mature christian. The fears respecting the future, which he so beautifully expresses, were never realized. His tender bark was indeed ill fitted to encounter the storms and perils of this world; and therefore Infinite Goodness brought it speedily to "the land of glory and repose." His amiable and long-afflicted correspondent still remains behind. Not a few, dear to the writer of these memoirs, beside John Urquhart, has she seen safely sheltered before herself, whose departed spirits will welcome hers into "the everlasting habitations" when the period of her release shall come. May the God whom she has long served, and who has sustained her "in deaths oft," be with her to the end of her journey! And, as she has been "a succourer of many, and of myself also," may her reward at last be exceeding great!

Dr. Chalmers's class seems to have occupied the principal share in his attention during this winter; and in moral philosophy and political economy he appears to have made great proficiency. Besides his notes of the professor's lectures, and the papers which he wrote on the various subjects which were assigned or voluntarily undertaken, he composed a synopsis or analysis of Smith's Wealth of Nations, the favourite class book of

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Dr. Chalmers; and which has contributed more to produce correct views of society and of the science which is now so popular, than any production of the age. My young friend read this work evidently with great care; and though he must have generally admired it, and have agreed in its statements and reasonings, he did not blindly adopt them. The following paper will evince that he could think for himself and discover even in the able work of that most profound thinker, positions that are not altogether tenable.

ESSAY

On the Distinction between Productive and
Unproductive Labour.

That there is some distinction between what Dr. Smith calls productive and what he terms unproductive labour, we think every one must allow and that it consists in this, that the former produces something which the latter does not produce, must, we think, be as readily admitted. The question comes to be, What is the something? If all that Dr. Smith means by this distinction be, that the one produces something which is tangible, while the produce of the other is something too ethereal and too evanescent to be laid hold of, we perfectly agree with him. We think his distinction a very just, but at the same

a very useless one; and in our opinion he might as well have amused us by a farther subdivision of labour, according as its produce was hard or soft, liquid or solid. But this is not Dr. Smith's meaning; and on appealing to his definition, we find that he founds this distinction on the supposition, that "the one sort of labour adds to the value of the object on which it is bestowed; and that the other has no such effect; that the one produces a value, the other does not." The distinction seems now to turn on the meaning of the word value; and on referring to a former definition to explain the present one, we do not find much light thrown on the subject. We are merely told of a value in use, and a value in exchange. If we take the latter of these, and apply it to the subject under consideration, we shall find that the one kind of labour produces a value just as much as the other: for the musician receives his subsistence in return for his labour in playing tunes, just as much as the tailor does in return for his labour in making clothes. But it may be said that Dr. Smith terms a certain kind of labour unproductive because it produces no value in use. But this cannot have been the cause of the distinction; for while on the one hand this objection does not apply to all the kinds of labour which he has termed unproductive, it on the other hand does apply to some of those which he has denominated productive. The terms wealth and value seem to us to be very indefinite, and to depend very much on the circumstances and the taste of the individual

in reference to whom they are mentioned. The clothing which is so valuable to the inhabitant of Europe would add nothing to the comfort of the naked inhabitant of New Zealand, and would consequently be of little value to him. And the antique vase which would be so highly valued by the curious antiquarian, may be thoughtlessly destroyed by the less refined peasant who digs it up.

Thirty or forty years ago a stock of shoe

buckles would have been an addition to the real wealth of this country; at present they would be valuable only for the material which composes them; and those who should now be employed in working them up, instead of adding, would, in fact, detract from the value of the subject on which their labour was bestowed. We have therefore the definition of value or wealth confined between two limits, and we shall come to a sufficiently correct if not a sufficiently comprehensive notion of what that is which constitutes wealth or value, if we can but discover what that is which existed in these shoe-buckles thirty or forty years ago, and which does not exist at present. They are as substantially material now as they were before. Were they manufactured there would be as much labour 'wrought up in them as ever, and the only change that we know of, that has taken place with regard to them is, that they were in fashion then, and they are so no longer; they cannot now minister to the enjoyment of the community. So that we must conclude that these commodities, or any other commodities whatever, which are the pro

duce of labour, form a part of the wealth of a country, just because they minister in some way or other, to the convenience or enjoyment of its inhabitants; and because, since they are the produce of the labour of man, they must have an exchangeable value, if there be any demand for them.

Now it seems to us remarkably unfair, that of two men whose labour has precisely the same effects on the wealth of society; the one should be denominated a productive and the other an unproductive labourer, merely because the labour of the former is realized in some material commodity, while that of the latter is not: that of two men, for example, the object of both of whom it is to minister to the enjoyment of society, by furnishing them with music, he who makes a musical instrument should be called a productive labourer, while he who performs upon that instrument and but for whom it could have no value whatever, is stigmatized with the epithet of unproductive.

By Dr. Smith it is asserted that the former of these individuals produces a value, while the other does not. Now if in this respect there be any difference at all between them it seems to us to be, that the one needs materials to work upon, while the other does not; that the one merely adds to the value of what was valuable before, while the other creates a value altogther; that the maker of the instrument merely increases by his labour the value of brass and wood and other exchangeable commodities, while the performer on

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