are mixed up with all political institutions. From the foundation of the monarchy to the present period, these causes have operated both on the people and the government, and introduced numerous alterations in the law and the constitution. What suited the Norman and Plantagenet era, was unfitted for the age of the Tudors: the policy of the Tudors was not adapted to the time of the Stuarts: and the Hanoverian dynasty was in its turn compelled to vary from the system adopted in preceding reigns. All these changes have had their effect on the sources of national wealth, both in its production and distribution; and, in reference to finance, we are now living in a new world, every link in the chain being so delicate and fragile, as to threaten to snap asunder on the slightest pressure.

Property is usually comprehended under two leading divisions, immoveable and moveable, the former including land and the structures raised upon it, the latter embracing all manufactured articles and raw materials. But there is another species of property, not commonly noticed by writers on law, government, or political economy, though it is in fact the most important of all; and this we deem to be industry and intellect. Without them, the land would have remained a desert wilderness, and man have continued to be an untutored savage. They are the parents of all wealth and the pioneers of civilization. Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, are but the effects, of which industry and intellect are the efficient

causes.

We are told by the political economists, that the strength of a country consists in the numbers of its population, and its command over the precious metals. If the foreign exchanges are in our favour, we are to make ourselves easy, and rejoice in obtaining the gold and silver of our neighbours. When the funds are steadily rising, we are ordered to exult at the firm credit of the nation. Now, all these things may exist, and really do exist at this time in England, yet trade yields barely any profit, land with the greatest difficulty sustains rent, and industry looks in vain for remunerating employment. When corn is so cheap as not to repay the cost of production, it is declared that the harvests are too abundant, the seasons too favourable, and the land too scientifically cultivated. Notwithstanding this censure of the bounties of Providence and the skilful labour of man, the poor still find that bread is beyond their reach, and we behold, coexistent at the same time, the fact of glutted granaries and a starving population. The manufacturers have been assailed in their turn by similar animadversions. They have been accused of overtrading, and giving too great an encouragement to industry. But in the midst of this redundant supply, thousands and tens of thousands were deficient both in clothing and furniture. It is clear, then, that the theory of the political economist is refuted by the practical results, and therefore we are warranted in denying that population and a command over the precious metals constitute national wealth. We hold this doctrine to be partial, narrow, and false,

and productive of the most mischievous consequences. The nerves and sinews of a country are not physical, but intellectual. A people, without education, are but a cluster of bulrushes, which every puff of wind may lay prostrate in the dust. A people, without morals, are alternately the tools or the slaves of despotism. A people, without religion, are but a rope of sand.

We have already stated, that when a nation has attained to the point of civilization, the inhabitants are divided into the three sections of landlords, capitalists, and operatives. When land has been long appropriated to the uses of exclusive ownership, and stock has been largely accumulated, these three classes exhibit a very marked numerical disproportion among each other, and the difference is the more striking, where the law of primogeniture is recognized. The landed proprietors are but a fraction, in point of numbers, compared with the whole population: the capitalists, including all who live on the profits of stock, are greatly more numerous than they are while the operatives, comprehending all who subsist on the wages of labour, vastly outnumber the other two classes combined.

It is in the nature of things, that this numerical disproportion should always exist. Land is limited in extent and in fertility, for if the whole earth were cultivated as a garden, a supposition more hypothetical than probable, its productiveness would still be confined within limited boundaries. It being impossible to increase the surface of the soil, every acre appropriated to exclusive ownership leaves a diminished quantity for future distribution, till at last the whole becomes allotted, and an insurmountable barrier is raised against further occupancy. The landed proprietors thus become limited in numbers, precisely because the land itself, which constitutes their property, is limited in extent. The law of primogeniture, by disinheriting all the children of a family except the eldest son, perpetuates this system from generation to generation, and the manifest tendency of this process of concentration is to create a monopoly of the soil in few hands.

But this character of fixedness and limitation does not apply to stock, which forms the property of the capitalists, as the inventive faculties of man and the productive powers of machinery appear to be inexhaustible. The raw material, furnished by the earth, may be worked up into countless varieties of manufactured articles, and, by the aid of chemistry, air, fire, and water, become auxiliaries in the production of wealth. Land may be accurately measured, and thus its limits may be ascertained, but there is no assignable term to the products of industry and science created out of a combination of the elements of nature. It is on this account that the second section of society, those who live on the profits of stock, will always be more numerous than the landed proprietors, because there is always a wider field and more ample scope for the operations of the capitalists. Every generation witnesses some new invention, and some

novel application of machinery, each of which raises up a fresh class of traders, whose numbers are thus constantly progressing.

But it is not sufficient that there should be heads to contrive; there must also be hands to execute, and between them a mutual dependence must always exist. Science itself would be mere barren speculation, unless labour realized what science had planned, and labour would lack employment, if science did not distribute the materials on which labour could be exercised. Capital, or accumulated stock, is the fund of wages, and as it is increased or diminished, the power of employing labour is increased or diminished. Every augmentation, therefore, of the class of capitalists enlarges the number of the operative population. As each manufacturer requires the services of many workmen, any numerical increase of the former must be attended with a vast numerical increase of the latter, so that the numbers of those who are maintained by the wages of labour will always vastly exceed the combined numbers of those who subsist on the rent of land and the profits of stock.

It is in this state that England now finds herself placed. She has attained, in the sense of political economy, the point of civilization. The inhabitants are divided into the three classes above enumerated, and their numerical relations are disposed in the order stated. The land is cultivated on the most scientific system: her manufactures exceed those of all other nations; her mechanics are the most skilful, the most enlightened, and the most industrious in the world. The country is studded over with vast cities; the harbours are crowded with vessels; the warehouses are stocked with goods; the roads are thronged with public and private conveyances. An external appearance of wealth and comfort strikes the eye of a casual passenger, from the Land's End to the northern extremities of Scotland. But, alas! all is deceitful and a vain shadow. All the three sections of society murmur at their condition. The landed proprietor complains that rents are so depreciated in value, and so uncertain in their reception, that he must retreat to the continent for economy. The capitalist declares that the profits of trade barely return the common interest of money, and prepares to retire from business. The operative deplores the reduction of wages, which barely provide the common necessaries of life. Are these the legitimate results of civilization ? If they are, then barbarism is enviable. Or, can this universal scene of discontent be ascribed to bad government and defective political institutions? If so, then some remedy may be found for the evil. In order to discover the truth, we must not confine ourself to the surface, but penetrate sufficiently deep to arrive at the pure ore of financial knowledge. We must trace back the effects which we witness, to their remote causes, if we desire to ascertain the true character of the political disease which now gnaws the vitals of the country. Away with opiates and soporifics; let us, with a bold hand, apply the caustic and the knife to arrest the progress of this destroying gangrene.

After William the Norman had effected the conquest of England, he rewarded his companions in arms with donations of land, and it is recorded in doomsday book that the whole country was parcelled out among six hundred and five proprietors. These favoured individuals were the original landlords, the sole receivers of what we call rent. At that time agriculture was the only source of wealth, so that the rest of the population were left wholly without property. From this source, remote though it be, the oligarchical structure of modern society is derived, the perpetuating principle being the law of primogeniture.

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This original distribution of the Conqueror was scarcely established, before it felt the influence of competition. The king endeavoured to weaken the temporal barons by forfeiture of their estates: the barons plundered each other on every favourable opportunity, without the slightest regard to justice while the clergy attacked them both, by spiritual menaces and spiritual finesse. The crusades, however, gave the first severe blow to the ancient institutions of landed property, and threw the balance of wealth in favour of the church. Large estates were voluntarily bestowed on the clergy, to pray for the safety of the adventurers in Palestine. Many knights, to gratify their pride or display their zeal, borrowed sums of money from the church to equip their followers, pledging their lands for the repayment of the advance. Vast numbers perished in the Holy Land, and the clergy took possession of their property, either to realize their securities, or under the pretext of praying their souls out of purgatory.

The continental wars in which the kings of England were engaged, as dukes of Normandy, impoverished the crown, and impaired the resources of the barons, while the civil wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster nearly reduced the whole kingdom to beggary and famine. The barons, however, had succeeded in passing a law, called the Statute de Donis, or the Statute of Westminster the Second, which preserved their estates from forfeiture, and thus immense power was still retained in the hands of the territorial aristocracy in addition to which protecting statute, the law of primogeniture prevented the severance of estates.

From the conquest to the accession of the Tudors, the social history of England presents one continued scene of aggressive competition between the monarch, the barons, and the clergy, each striving to gain excessive wealth by impoverishing their rivals. The only point in which they agreed was in coercing the people, and retaining them in bondage, for the real object of each was to appropriate to their own peculiar order the largest possible amount of the products of industry. In the course of these disorders, the working classes, slowly but gradually, emerged from obscurity. They raised themselves into sufficient importance to acquire a slight share of political power, and the foundations of the House of Commons were laid in the issuing of writs summoning the poorer barons

and capital burgesses to the common council of the nation. This concession, however, was not made from any honest motive or any worthy principle of government, but solely for the purpose of obtaining money from the trading classes through their deputies, such money being not only an accommodation to the king, but also a relief to the barons, who must otherwise have supplied his necessities out of their own pockets. Avarice, not justice; cupidity, not patriotism, were the true parents of the House of Commons,-a fact not to be overlooked in estimating the boasted virtues of our ancestors.

If the crusades enriched the clergy at the expense of the temporal barons, the reformation was attended with results directly the reverse. The church was despoiled of her possessions, and the plunder bestowed on the minions of the king. Abbies and priories were confiscated, and the majority of our modern peers and wealthy commoners, who hold extensive landed estates, may trace their acquisition to the unbridled lust of an adulterer and murderer. Had these revenues been appropriated to the purposes of national education, the standard of morals would have been much higher in England than it actually is.

The aristocratic revolution of 1688, so preposterously lauded as a triumph of public liberty, further encreased the wealth of the territorial aristocracy, by conferring immense tracts of land in Ireland on the English nobility, which their descendants hold to this day. It is to secure the payment of Irish rents, that the labour of English mechanics is taxed for the support of the numerous army quartered in the sister kingdom, which, owing to this most iniquitous distribution of property, remains without education, morals, or humanity, and altogether unregulated by the rational principles of action.

This rapid glance at past times will convey some general idea of the rise and progress of that section of the community called "The Landlords." Their preponderating influence was first acquired by the usurpation of the Conqueror, and the immense grants of territory he bestowed on his chief officers. They were next indebted to Henry the Eighth for seizing on lands belonging to the church, and which were largely devoted to charitable uses. The last obligation they owe to the Prince of Orange, who despoiled his father-in-law of the crown, and rewarded his accomplices by stripping the natives of Ireland of their estates. What was acquired by these successive acts of open plunder has been kept together by the law of primogeniture, so that this territorial wealth is the joint product of direct robbery on the public at large, and disinheritance of every child in a family except the elder son. Such is a rough outline of the financial history of lords and squires.

The rise and progress of the second section of society, which includes the capitalists, has depended on so many circumstances that an exact enumeration of all, if even possible, would occupy an entire volume. It