104 TRUE OFFICES OF MONEY. comes from California the poorer we shall become under a system that drains it from the country, that closes the mills and furnaces of the nation, that destroys the power of association—and that causes a demand for exportation of all the gold we receive; for with every step in this direction we are increasing the power of other nations to produce cheaply both iron and cloth, while diminishing our own. "It is by means of association and combination of effort that man advances in civilization. Association brings into activity all the various powers, mental and physical, of the beings of which society is composed, and thus it is seen that individuality grows every where with the growth of combination. Association enables the many who are weak and poor, to triumph over the few that are rich and strong, and thus it is that we see man becoming more free with every advance in wealth and population. To enable man. to associate, there is required an instrument, by the help of which the process of composition, decomposition, and recomposition of the various forces may readily be effected, so that while all unite to produce the effect desired, each may have his share of the benefits thence resulting. That instrument was furnished in those metals which stand almost alone in the fact that, as Minerva sprang fully armed from the head of Jove; they, whenever found, come forth ready, requiring no elaboration, no alteration to fit them. for the great work for which they were intended, that of enabling men to combine their efforts for attaining the highest degree of civilization and progress. Of all the instruments at the command of men, there are none that tend in so large a degree to promote individuality on the one hand and association on the other, as do gold and silver— properly therefore denominated, the precious metals."* *Henry C. Carey. CHAPTER VIII. IMPORTANCE OF CAPITAL TO THE PROFITABLE EMPLOYMENT OF LABOR.-CONTRAST BETWEEN THE PRODIGAL AND THE PRUDENT MAN: THE DUKES OF BUCKINGHAM AND BRIDGEWATER.-MAKING GOOD FOR TRADE.-UNPROFITABLE CONSUMPTION. -WAR AGAINST CAPITAL IN THE MIDDLE AGES.-EVILS OF CORPORATE PRIVILEGES. -CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE UNDER HENRY VIII. BUT whatever difference of opinion may be entertained in respect to the relation which money sustains to the various productive forces of every civilized society, we think our readers will willingly yield their assent to the conclusion which we have endeavored to illustrate, namely, that accumulation, or capital, is absolutely essential to the profitable employment of labor; 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 stages 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 governments 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 sav age 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 appropriation, is one of extreme wretch 106 THE PRODIGAL AND THE PRUDENT MAN. edness, we may safely leave such opinions to work their own cure. For it is not likely that any individual, however disposed to think that accumulation is an evil, would desire, by destroying accumulation, to pass into the condition described by John Tanner, of a 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 production, and equally destroys his share in the productive power of capital and labor 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 consumption 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, and 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 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 DUKES OF BUCKINGHAM AND BRIDGEWATER. 107 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. Let us offer two historical examples of these two opposite modes of making good for trade, and circulating money. The English Duke of Buckingham, having been possessed of an income of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars 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 exhausted all his princely resources, he was left at the last hour, under circumstances which are well described in the following lines by Pope: "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, No wit to flatter, left of all his store, * No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, 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 expenditure to two thousand dollars a-year, and devoted all the remaining portion of his revenues to the construction of a magnificent work of the highest public utility. The 108 66 MAKING GOOD FOR TRADE.” one supported a train of cooks and valets and horse-jockeys; the other called into action the labor of thousands, and employed in the direction of that labor the skill of Brindley, one of the greatest engineers 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 descendants, and opened a channel for industry which afforded, and still affords, employment to thousands. When a mob amused themselves by breaking windows, as was once a common recreation in England on an illumination night, by way of showing the amount of popular intelligence, some were apt to say they have "made good for trade." Is it not evident that the capital which was represented by the unbroken windows was really so much destroyed of the national riches when the windows were 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 destruction of windows, there must have been a necessary retrenchment in some other outlay that would have afforded benefit to the consumer. Doubtless, when the glazier is called 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 also 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 labor by an unnecessary destruction of what former labor has produced, trade |