Those who at the present day maintain that agriculture should be protected, or, expressing the proposition in other terms, say that native industry ought to be pro tected, assume that a Government ought to regulate the manner in which a nation shall acquire its revenue. To be con sistent they should go further : a Govern ment should regulate the mode in which the revenue shall be distributed, accumu lated, and used. In fact Governments by their acts, and mainly by the weight and kind of their imposts, do this in some degree, though their object may not be to do this. But to protect native industry is to regulate purposely and designedly part of the process by which a nation produces the sum total of that revenue of which all persons, landowners, capitalists and la bourers, get some portion. This protec tion consists in excluding many articles of foreign produce, or laying heavy cus toms' duties on them, in order that those who produce such articles at home may get a better price for them. Thus he who has to buy the articles must give snore for them than he would if there were no protection ; and precisely to the amount of this higher price are his means directly diminished for buying anything else that he wants for productive use or simple enjoyment. The indirect conse quences of such Government regulations also diminish his own productive powers.
The French Economistes, as they are termed, of whom Quesnay was the head, considered agriculture as the only source of wealth, and had other opinions about agriculture as distinguished from manu factures, which are not well founded ; but they did not for that reason maintain that agriculture should have any exclu sive protection : on the contrary, they maintained that all taxes should fall on laud, and that trade in corn should be freed from the restrictions to which it was then subjected between one province and another in France.
It is not easy to make an exact classi fication of the subjects which writers on Political Economy discuss. The matters which they do discuss may be generally 'numerated as follows :—The production of wealth and the notion of wealth, which comprehend the subjects of Accumu lation, Capital, Demand and Supply, Di vision of Labour, Machinery, and the like. But all the matter of Political Economy is so connected, that every great division which we may make suggests other di visions. The Profits of Capital and the Wages of Labour, the Rent of Land, and the nature of the Currency, are all in volved in the notions of Accumulation, Capital, and so forth. No treatise has perhaps yet appeared which has exhibited the subject of Political Economy in the best form of which it is susceptible.
The way in which " the Revenue of the great body of the people" is distributed, is an inquiry only next in importance to the mode in which it is produced ; and the mode and proportions in which it is dis tributed re-act upon future production. He who receives anything out of the "Re venue" is, by the supposition, a person who: has contributed to it, either as a land owner, a capitalist or a labourer. If he is neither a landowner, a capitalist nor a la bourer, he is supported out of the public revenue either by alms, or by pensions, or by the bounty of parents or friends. Omit ting these cases, a man's title to a part of " the Revenue of the great body of the people," if it is an honest title, is either the title which he has to the produce of land or capital, of which a portion has been appropriated to him in conformity to the rules which establish ownership, or it is the title of one who labours for hire and re ceives his pay pursuant to the terms of the contract. The owner of land and capital, if he does not employ it himself, lets cthers have the use of it in consideration of in terest or rent or some fixed payment.
The use which a people shall make of their revenue is the last great division of the subject The analogy here be tween Economy in its proper sense and the Economy of a People is pretty close. Judicious Economy is the making the best use of one's income ; and the best use is to spend it on things of necessity first, on things which gratify the taste and the understanding next, but to put by something as a reserve against con tingencies, and as a means of adding still further to our enjoyments. The savings of individuals constitute the savings of the Nation : there is no saving by the Nation as a Nation ; the national accu mulation is the sum total of individual accumulations. The savings are made nearly altogether without concert or co operation. Division of labour and com bination of labour, which are in reality the same thing when properly understood, effect saving in production, and conse quently they effect saving in consumption so far as they make anything cheaper; but this is not individual saving; it is an addition to the public wealth, by which addition all individuals, or some indivi duals, get more for their money than they otherwise would, or get the same thing cheaper than they otherwise would. The
general revenue is always created by co operation, in which each man receives his due portion. The use or consumption of any man's portion of "the revenue of the great body of the people " and the degree in which each man co-operates towards producing this revenue, are unconnected. Each man consumes, in the true and literal sense of consumption, by himself and for himself—he produces together with others and for others as well as for himself. It is true that he who consumes merely for con sumption's sake does indirectly affect pro duction ; and this is the kind of consump tion which is handled least completely by political economists, though it is in fact the chief element in the whole science. Malthus, in his ' Principles of Political Economy,' has hinted at this : " Adam Smith has stated that capitals are in creased by parsimony, that every frugal man is a public benefactor (' Wealth of Nations,' b. ii. ch. 3), and that the in crease of wealth depends upon the balance of produce above consumption (b. iv. ch. 3). That these propositions are true to a great extent is perfectly unquestion able. No considerable and continued in crease of wealth could possibly take place without that degree of frugality which occasions annually the conversion of some revenue into capital, and creates a balance of produce above consumption ; but it is quite obvious that they are not true to an indefinite extent, and that the principle of saving, pushed to excess, would destroy the motive to production. If every per son was satisfied with the simplest food, the poorest clothing, and the meanest houses, it is certain that no other sort of food, clothing, and lodging would be in existence ; and as there would be no ade quate motive to the proprietors of land to cultivate well, not only the wealth derived from conveniences and luxuries would be quite at an end, but, if the same division of land continued, the pro duction of food would be prematurely checked, and population would come to a stand long before the soil had been well cultivated. If consumption exceed pro duction, the capital of the country must be diminished, and its wealth must be gradually destroyed, from its want of power to produce ; if production be in a great excess above consumption, the mo tive to accumulate and produce must cease from a want of will to consume. The two extremes are obvious ; and it follows that there must be some interme diate point, though the resources of po litical economy may not be able to ascer tain it, whereby, taking into consideration both the power to produce and the will to consume, the encouragement to the in crease of wealth is the greatest. The division of landed property presents an other obvious instance of the same kind. No person has ever for a moment doubted that the division of such immense tracts of land as were formerly in possession of the great feudal proprietors must be fa vourable to industry and production. It is equally difficult to doubt that a divi sion of landed property may be carried to such an extent as to destroy all the benefits to be derived from the accumu lation of capital and the division of la bour, and to occasion the most extended poverty. There is here then a point, as well as in the other instance, though we may not know how to place it, where the division of property is best suited to the actual circumstances of the society, and calculated to give the best stimulus to production and to the increase of wealth and population." (Malthus, Introduc tion.) It is only by a close analysis of the matter which all economical writers agree in considering as belonging to Political Economy, that we arrive at the more exact notion of the objects and limits of the science, or at such objects and limits as may be comprehended within a science. The head which is the last in the list, Consumption, may be either Consumption for the purpose of further production, or Consumption for the sole purpose of enjoyment. This Con sumption for the purpose of enjoyment is a kind of consumption which some econo mical writers have scarcely thought of, though all the rest of the world are thinking of it and labouring for it. This Consumption for enjoyment may to some extent and in some cases coincide with or contribute to furtherproduction ; but as such, as Consumption for enjoyment's pur pose, it must not be confounded with any other kind of consumption. The true basis of all those investigations which are included under the name of Political Eco nomy is this : That man desires to enjoy, and that he will labour in order to enjoy. The nature of his enjoyments will vary with the various states of society in which he lives, with his moral, social, and intel• lectual character. As he labours in order to enjoy, and as one man gives his labour in exchange for another man's labour, it follows that the exchargeable value of every man's labour will ultimately depend on the opinion of him who wishes to have the fruits of such labour.