Mr. Ricardo seems to have been led to his cons clusions by observing that the wages of servants, sailors, and soldiers are principally paid in kindthose of artisans in money. He correctly states, that if a man with 10,000 a year spends his income in the purchase of commodities for his own use, he retains, after having made those purchases, no further fund for the maintenance of labour; but that if he spends it in the purchase of commodities to be employed in maintaining menial servants, he has, in those purchased commodities, a new fund with which he can maintain a certain number of menial servants. It appeared to him, therefore, that the landlord would, in the latter case, be able to spend his income twice Ttudi over; to subsist twice as many persons as before. It did not occur to him that the landlord, by purchasing himself the subsistence of his servants, merely does for them what they would be able to do better for themselves; that, instead of spending his own income twice over, he merely takes on himself the business of spending theirs for them*;

*He did not perceive that all that the landlord spends in purchasing the subsistence and clothing of his servants is so so much deducted from what he would otherwise have to pay them in money.

and

that if he were to give to his servants: the value of their whole subsistence in money, the

whole body of labourers would be just as welk maintained as in the supposed case of his pur chasing their subsistence, and then giving it to: them in exchange for their services. No one would maintain that if it were the practice in this country, as it is in India, to give to servants board wages, the demand for labour would be! essened; or that if it were the practice, as it is in semi-barbarous countries, to maintain servants to produce within their masters' walls the commodities which we are accustomed to purchase from shops, the demand for labour would be increased. Still less could it be maintained, that if those servants, instead of producing commodities, were employed in following their master's person, or mounting guard before his door, such a change would create an additional demand for men, and be favourable to an increase of ormen, population.

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So far am I from concurring in Mr. Ricardo's opinion, that it is the interest of the labourers that revenue should be spent rather on services than on commodities, that I believe their interest

to be precisely opposite. In the first place, thei labourer can generally manage better his own income than it can be managed for him by his master. If a domestic servant could earn as wages the whole sum which he costs his master, even if he were to spend it as he received it, he would probably spend it with more enjoyment. Secondly, the income spent on services is spent in the purchase of what perishes at the instant of its creation; that spent on commodities often: leaves results which, when their first purchaser has done with them, are serviceable to others. In this country the poor are, to a great extent, clothed with garments originally provided for their superiors. In all the better class of cottages may be found articles of furniture which never could have been made for their present possessors. A large portion of the commodities which now contribute to the comfort of the labouring classes would never have existed, if it had been the fashion in this country, during the last fifty years, to prefer retinue and attendance to durable commodities. And, thirdly, the income employed on commodi! ties is favourable to the creation of both material and immaterial capital; that employed on services

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is not. The duties of a servant are so easily learned, that he can scarcely be termed a skilled labourer; his accumulations are small in amount, and seldom turned to much advantage. The artisan learns a trade, in which every year adds to his skill, and is taught mechanical and chemical processes, often susceptible of indefinite improvement, and in which a single invention may raise the author to wealth, and diffuse prosperity over a whole district, or even a whole nation. An industrious artisan can often save a large portion of his income, and invest it with great and immediate profit. He purchases with his savings a small stock of tools and materials, and by the vigilance and activity which can be applied only to a small capital, renders every portion of it efficient. The ancestors, and not the remote ancestors, of some of our richest and our proudest families, the authors of some of our most valuable discoveries, were common mechanics. What menial servant has in this country, and in modern times, been a public benefactor, or even raised himself to affluence? Both history and observation show that those countries in which expenditure is chiefly employed in the purchase of services are poor, and those in which it is employed on commodities are rich.

Mr. Ricardo's theory as to the effects of war is still more strikingly erroneous. It is, in the first place, open to all the objections which I have already opposed to his views respecting menial servants. The revenue which is employed in maintaining soldiers and sailors would, even if unproductively consumed, maintain at least an equal number of servants and artisans; and that portion of it which would have been employed in the maintenance of artisans would (as we have seen) have been far more beneficially employed. The demand for soldiers and sailors is not, as he terms it, an additional, it is merely a substituted demand. But a great part of that revenue would have been productively consumed. Instead of employing some labourers in converting suburbs into fortifications, and forests into navies, to perish by dry rot in harbour, or by exposure at sea, and others in walking the deck and parading on the rampart, it would have employed them in adding more and more every year to the fund from which their subsistence is derived. War is mischievous to every class in the community; but to none is it such a curse as to the labourers.

THE END.