stock of beavers, foxes, and martens. It would be easier, doubtless, to raise the food for themselves, and ultimately to exchange corn for clothing, instead of furs for clothing. When this happens-and it will happen sooner or later, unless the remnant of the hunting Indians are extirpated by their poverty, which proceeds from their imperfect production-Europe must go without the brilliant variety of skins which are procured at the cost of so much labor, accompanied with so much wretchedness, because the labor is so unproductive to the laborers. When the ladies of Europe and the United States are compelled to wear capes of rabbits' fur instead of sables, and when the hair of the beaver ceases to be employed in the manufacture of our hats, the wooded regions of Hudson's Bay will have been cleared the fur-bearing animals will have perished-corn will be growing in the forest and the marsh-the inhabitants will be building houses instead of trapping foxes;there will be appropriation and capital, profitable labor and comfort. Three hundred thousand mink and marten-skins will no longer be sent from those shores to England in one year; but England may send to those shores woven cottons and worsteds, pottery and tools, in exchange for products whose cultivation will have exterminated the minks and martens.

CHAPTER V.

THE PRODIGAL.-ADVANTAGES OF THE POOREST MAN IN CIVILIZED LIFE OVER THE RICHEST SAVAGE. SAVINGS-BANKS, DEPOSITS, AND INTEREST.-PROGRESS OF ACCUMULATION.--INSECURITY OF CAPITAL, ITS CAUSES AND RESULTS.-CONDITION OF TURKEY.—EXPULSION OF THE MOORS AND JEWS FROM SPAIN.-REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.-PROPERTY, ITS CONSTITUENTS.-ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL.

THERE is an account in Foster's Essays of a man who, having by a short career of boundless extravagance dissipated every shilling of a large estate which he inherited from his fathers, obtained possession again of the whole property by a course which the writer well describes as a singular illustration of decision of character. The unfortunate prodigal, driven forth from the home of his early years by his own imprudence, and reduced to absolute want, wandered about for some time in a state of almost unconscious despair, meditating self-destruction, till he at last sat down upon a hill which overlooked the fertile fields that he once called his own. "He remained," says the narrative, "fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute." We shall show, by and by, how this plan worked in detail; it will be sufficient, just now, to examine the principles upon which it was founded. He looked to no freak of fortune to throw into his lap by chance what he had cast from him by

willfulness. He neither trusted to inherit those lands from their present possessor by his favor, nor to wring them from him by a course of law. He was not rash and foolish enough to dream of obtaining again by force those possessions which he had exchanged for vain superfluities. But he resolved to become once more their master by the operation of the only principle which could give them to him in a civilized society. He resolved to obtain them again by the same agency through which he had lost them-by exchange. But what had he to exchange? His capital was gone, even to the uttermost farthing; he must labor to obtain new capital. With a courage worthy of imitation he resolved to accept the very first work that should be offered to him, and, however low the wages of that work, to spend only a part of those wages, leaving something for a store. The day that he made this resolution he carried it into execution. He found some service to be performed-irksome, doubtless, and in many eyes degrading. But he had a purpose which made every occupation appear honorable, as every occupation truly is that is productive of utility. Incessant labor and scrupulous parsimony soon accumulated for him a capital; and the store, gathered together with such energy, was a rapidly increasing one. In no very great number of years the once destitute laborer was again a rich proprietor. He had earned again all that he had lost. The lands of his fathers were again his. He had accomplished his plan.

A man so circumstanced-one who possesses no capital, and is only master of his own natural powers-if suddenly thrown down from a condition of ease, must look upon the world, at the first view, with a deep apprehension. He sees every thing around him appropriated. He is in the very opposite condition of Alexander Selkirk, when he is made to exclaim "I am monarch of all I survey." Instead of

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feeling that his "right there is none to dispute," he knows that every blade of corn that covers the fields, every animal that grazes in the pastures, is equally numbered as the property of some individual owner, and can only pass into his possession by exchange. In the towns it is the same as in the country. The dealer in bread and in clothes-the victualer from whom he would ask a cup of beer and a night's lodging-will give him nothing, although they will exchange every thing. He can not exist, except as a beggar, unless he puts himself in the condition to become an exchanger.

But still, with all these apparent difficulties, his prospects of subsisting, and of subsisting comfortably, are far greater than in any other situation in which he must labor to live. As we have already seen, the condition of by far the greater number of the millions that constitute the exchangers of civilized society is greatly superior to that of the few thousands who exist upon the precarious supplies of the unappropriated productions of nature in the savage life. Although an exchange must always be made-although in very few cases "the fowl and the brute" offer themselves to the wayfaring man for his daily food-although no herbs worth the gathering can be found for the support of life in the few uncultivated parts of a highly cultivated countrythe aggregate riches are so abundant, and the facilities which exist for exchanging capital for labor are therefore so manifold, that the poorest man in a state of civilization has a much greater certainty of supplying all his wants, and of supplying them with considerably more ease, than the richest man in a state of uncivilization. The principle upon which he has to rely is, that in a highly civilized country there is large production. There is large production because there is profitable labor; there is profitable labor because there is large accumulation; there is large accumu

lation because there is unlimited exchange; there is unlimited exchange because there is universal appropriation. John Tanner was accounted a rich man by the Indiansdoubtless because he was more industrious than the greater number of them; but we have seen what privations he often suffered. He suffered privations because there was no capital, no accumulation of the products of labor in the country in which he lived. Where such a store exists, the poorest man has a tolerable certainty that he may obtain his share of it as an exchanger; and the greater the store the greater the certainty that his labor, or the power of adding to the store, will obtain a full proportion of what previous labor has gathered together.

In 1856,* the amount of money vested to the account of depositors in seventy-three of the savings-banks of Massachusetts, was $27,296,216-paying an annual interest of more than a million of dollars. The statistics of Great Britain inform us, that since the establishment of these institutions in that kingdom down to the year 1853, the gross amount of interest paid to depositors was upward of one hundred and fourteen millions of dollars. The capital which has so fructified as to produce one hundred and fourteen millions as interest, was the result of the small accumulations, penny by penny, shilling by shilling, and dollar by

* The Annual Reports of the Savings-banks of Massachusetts for 1856, show the wonderful growth of these institutions since 1834, a period of 21 years:

In 1884 the total number of depositors was..
Amount deposited......

In 1855, total number of depositors..

Amount deposited....

.24,256 .$8,407,778 90 .148,268 .$27,296,216 75

The increase of deposits since 1845 has been about $17,500,000, and the increase of depositors about 100,000. About one eighth the popula tion of Massachusetts are depositors in these banks. If the entire sum was divided among all the depositors, it would give each $180.