engagements. One of the latest, if not the very last, of these services, was performed in this chapel,-some of us remember with what interest to us and with what painfulness to himself; and especially how a tender pathos unusual to him, entered into his last appeal to the young men who heard him. He brings volume after volume forth from the press. He maintains an unabated interest in old friends and lavishes a youthful freshness of affection upon those newly acquired. But it is all the while apparent that he does not struggle against death because he is afraid of death; but rather that he has conquered death, because the life he is now living he lives by faith in the Son of God. He becomes more genial in his ways, more kindly in his judgments, more sweet in his affections, more overflowing in his humor, more demonstrative in his tenderness. He is contented to live. He is not afraid to die. God is with him by day and by night. Christ has become more and more completely the indweller within his soul, and more and more the inspirer of his wonder and joy.

In one of the last days of the last year, I spent two or three hours with him in what I believed would be a farewell visit, as it was. He was cheerful in spirits and even buoyant with humor. He talked of the present and the past with more than his usual spirit and freedom, but with an indescribable simplicity and loveliness. At parting he asked me to come again for another three hours as pleasant as these we had spent together. I bade him good-by, never to meet with him again in what we call the present life. I know not how or where we may meet again, nor with what surroundings: whether in scenes to which earth's scenery has no analogies, or in some place like that in which his boyhood was spent-"a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills." But of this I am certain, that wherever and whatever that land may be, "the glory of God will lighten it and the Lamb will be the light thereof;" and of this also, that the man whose character is formed most completely by faith in the love of God in this life will be transformed into a manhood which shall be proportionately glorious in the life which is to be.

ARTICLE IX.-THE NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH.

PRACTICAL wisdom was never more in demand than at present. Questions concerning currency, free-trade, taxation, etc., are demanding and receiving the attention of Political Economists, and it is in this part of their science that the attractive fields lie both for the writer and the reader. The period of radical and irreconcilable diversity in the fundamental principles of the science seems to be past; the so-called "Mercantile Theory" exists no longer among scientists; the school of the "Physiocrats" has passed away, and a period of relative unanimity, in thought if not in language, appears to have arrived. If it be true, however, that this unanimity is, at best, only relative, and that even a small amount of obscurity and inconsistency hangs over those fundamental conceptions the clear apprehension of which is essential to all reasoning on the subject, then the removal of never so small a proportion of that obscurity may shed more light on practical questions than a large amount of discussion of specific applications. In the present state of the public mind financial heresies receive a ready circulation, and, if these false doctrines connect themselves, in any way, with fundamental errors of Political Economy, it is time that those errors were exposed and their teachers discredited. Those practical questions on the solution of which the prosperity of the nation so largely depends cannot be satisfactorily solved without the clear apprehension of correct principles.

Nothing can be more fundamental, in the science of Political Economy, than the conception of Wealth. John Stuart Mill, the legitimate successor of Adam Smith, has given the whole weight of his wide-reaching authority to some of the most mischievous errors of his great predecessor. While his definition of wealth presents nothing peculiar, his application of the definition is positively erroneous and inconsistent with the logical consequences of the definition itself. He has classed as wealth

some things which do not possess the very attribute of "exchangeable value" which he states as essential, and he has

excluded from the classification things which do not possess this and other essential attributes, as he states or implies them. His conception of wealth has obliged him to revive the pernicious classification of labor, as productive and unproductive, and expressly to exclude from the list of productive laborers such persons as "the actor, the musical performer, the public declaimer or reciter, and the showman;" also "the army and navy, the legislator, the judge, and the officer of justice." On the other hand, a school of writers under the leadership of M. Bastiat, while recognizing the evil resulting from Mr. Mill's classification, have found no other remedy for the evil than that of abandoning the conception "wealth" as the subject of the science and substituting the plausible but ambiguous and delusive conception "services." Few recent writers have steered clear of both these errors; a majority bear the marks either of Scylla or of Charybdis, and an open and obvious channel between them would be a boon to all who traverse these regions. It is not promised for this essay that it will furnish such a channel, or that it will remove for its readers all obscurities and the difficulties that hang about the conception wealth, though it has measurably accomplished this for its author. It is offered as furnishing a conception of wealth which renders the classification of all labor as productive, both possible and obvious, and, if it prove to be correct, it renders it easy to place every variety of laborer in exactly that class of wealth-producers where, from the nature of his function, he belongs.

Political Economy has for it subject the nature and the laws of wealth. Whether avowed or not, this is the real subject of every treatise on this science, and its recognition and exact definition are essential to clearness and accuracy in the detailed discussion. The distinctive attributes of wealth are indicated. by the derivation and historical use of the term. The Saxon "weal" indicated a condition of relative well-being, the state of having one's wants relatively well supplied. No possession common to all men can constitute this relative well-being; the things which produce this condition are necessarily possessed by some but not by others. The free enjoyment of air and sunlight constitutes absolute but not relative well-being, and

only that which, besides satisfying wants, is capable of appropriation can produce this relative condition. The term wealth, as now scientifically used, indicates those things the possession of which constitutes the state of relative well-being, and its distinctive attributes are want-satisfying capacity, or utility, and appropriability.

These distinctive attributes of wealth have long been recognized as such, but the logical consequences of this definition. have not, it is believed, been fully realized. Mr. Mill and his school, as has been said, excluded from their classification things which possess these attributes and include some which do not. They recognize as wealth only those things which are sufficiently substantial and durable to constitute a more or less permanent possession, things which would appear on the inventory if society were suddenly to cease producing and consuming and devote itself, for, say a month or two, to taking an account of stock. It will be maintained in this essay that durability is not an essential attribute of wealth. Durability is a factor of value and determines, in so far, the measure of wealth in any particular product. But products are of all degrees of durability and there is no ground for excluding any product from the conception of wealth on the ground of this simple difference of degree. Even the school of writers referred to would not hesitate to class the ices of the confectioner in the same category with the stone wall of the mason, though they are at opposite extremes in the scale of durability. They would, however, exclude music from the conception, on the ground of its immediate perishability and its apparently insubstantial character. It is maintained in this discussion that, in that which constitutes wealth, there is no difference other than one of degree between music and a stone-wall; that both possess the essential attributes of wealth, want-satisfying capacity and appropriability, and that the difference in their durability is only a factor of their relative value. On the other hand, this school class the acquired abilities of the laborer as wealth though they differ from it in kind and do not possess its essential attributes. They are not a possession; that implies externality to the possessor. They are what he is, not what he has. Popular thought and speech broadly distinguish the able man

from the wealthy man. A man has a potential fortune, not an actual one, in his abilities. The term itself indicates a state of being able and implies a possibility, not an attained result. Labor creates wealth, and acquired abilities are potential labor. They are to be regarded as the potentiality of the human factor of production, and it introduces an element of confusion into the science to class them with the completed product. Appropriability, in the broad sense in which the term is used in our definition, implies that a thing should be free to be owned by any one of various individuals under the necessary conditions. The term implies that one man may become the owner of something previously without ownership or in the ownership of another, and it incidentally involves transferability. Nothing can be regarded as possessing this essential attribute which is an inseparable part of one man's being. This error is widespread and appears in the works of some of Mr. Mill's opponents. As acute a writer as J. B. Say* characterizes acquired talents as "a species of wealth, notwithstanding its immateriality, so little imaginary that, in the shape of professional services it is daily exchanged for gold and silver." The illustration is its own best answer. Talents are not exchanged and cannot be so, and they lack the attribute of "exchangeable value," which Mr. Mill himself states as essential. Their product only is transferable and that alone is a commodity. It will hereafter be shown that the human effort which creates a product calls into exercise activities physical, mental, and moral. If the talents which create wealth are to be confounded with the wealth which they create, every talent and activity acquired by effort, involving, in practice, the whole man, will have to be classed as a commodity. The error is confusing and disastrous in its practical effects. Man produces wealth and consumes it; but man himself is always distinct from it.

The condition of appropriation is a relation between commodities on the one hand and persons on the other, and implies, therefore, that both the commodity itself and the society where it exists should possess the attributes which render the relation of ownership possible. The commodity must not only exist in

* Say's “Treatise on Political Economy." Introduction, page XLII.