great branches of prosperity, for centuries to come. It is well for the moral good of a harmonious and happy understanding between all the orders of British society, that Free Trade has now become the legalized policy of our land. But we predict, with all confidence, the mortifying disappointment of all the extravagant economic notions which have been constructed thereupon; and that, if lured from the path of sober calculation, by the brilliant perspective of a now unfettered commerce with all the countries in the world, our capitalists will soon-very soon— come into collision with this barrier, which, though not absolutely fixed, recedes so slowly, that many-very many-are the adventurers who will speedily overtake and be dashed upon it, to the shipwreck of their now splendid anticipations. It was the delusion of Canning, when he opened South America to our trade, that he had created a new world for the unlimited absorption of the products of the old, with profitable returns on the back of them; and the consequence was a headlong impulse to speculation, and a reflux of wide-spread bankruptcy. The products might be indefinitely multiplied and absorbed; but the second term of the sequence, the profitable returns, there lies the failure.

Mr. Stirling could not have written the following paragraphs, without the whole truth of this argument being on his mindan argument so recently put forth, and as yet so partially and imperfectly apprehended.

"Were the quantity of all commodities increased simultaneously, and in just proportion, their relative values, each to each, might be maintained. But labour and the products of agriculture cannot be increased in the same ratio or with the same facility as the products of manufacturing industry. Hence, as regards the latter products, the tendency of the market is always to become overstocked. Merchants and dealers in every department struggle to keep the market-price on a par with the natural price; and while they continue to do so, their sales are necessarily limited. Manufacturers for a while continue their usual rate of production. Sales get heavy, and commodities continue to accumulate, till the growing symptoms of a glut or stagnation of trade begin to appear. The usual expedients of "half time," and a reduction of wages, are now tried by the manufacturers, but without producing any sensible effect upon prices, for generally, under such circumstances, years would be required to clear the market of the existing stock through the natural vent; that is, by sales at the natural or remunerating' price. Those who have been trading on borrowed capital, whether merchants or manufacturers, are in the meantime called upon to fulfil their engagements, and there is a growing necessity for available funds to meet the demands of creditors, who become every day more urgent. Under this pressure prices give way; those who stand out for the natural price can effect no sales-trade almost stands still, and the ominous mutterings of a commercial storm begin

to be heard-failures become rife, house after house is struck down, and at length there is a general crash-bankrupt stocks' are sold off at half price,' or at any price, without reference either to cost or profits, and this scene of ruin continues till the mercantile hurricane has fairly cleared the market of the mass of accumulated commodities. Mills, ships, workshops, forges, now get slowly into operation again— demand returns, natural prices are restored-and trade, once more revived, goes on briskly and healthily as before.

"The reverse of all this takes place when the market is understocked; trade goes on with energy-demand becomes more intensemanufacturers have orders for more work than they can overtake within the time allowed them—their machinery is in motion night and day-producers and dealers now raise their prices somewhat above the natural price-for so brisk is the demand that the vent for their commodities will bear contraction-and this cheering work goes on till individuals, tempted by the higher profits, transfer additional capital to those thriving employments, and bring the market price again to a par with the natural price.”—Pp. 55-58.

The second sentence of this extract-"But labour, and the products of agriculture, cannot be increased in the ratio, or with the same facility as the products of manufacturing industry”— it is this which explains the true reason of that natural limit, which stands but a little way behind all the artificial barriers that legislation has raised in the way of an extending commerce. According to the view of many speculators, we have but to manufacture an additional product of shoes, however well the market be provided with this article already, to call forth an additional product of something else, say of stockings, which two products might meet in the market, and there be exchanged as the equivalents of each other. But ere such a transaction can take effect, there must be a sufficient number both of legs and feet in the world to wear these articles of clothing, and belonging to men, too, who can give a return for their value. But there is a limit to the food, and so a limit to the population of the world; and, as surely as either, a limit to its capital: because of a failure at length in the power of making those returns by which capital is either sustained or extended. We have often thought that if an economist would but take up his position on the last cultivated land, he would find it the position of greatest command over the whole territory of his science; and that from the instruction to be gathered thence, he could both explain the most perplexing of its phenomena, and learn what the right solution is for the most difficult of its problems. But how could Mr. Stirling, after writing so intelligently and well as in the above extract, how could he quote with approbation the following sentences from Mr. Say?

"It is worth while to remark, that a product is no sooner created,

than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. When the producer has put the finishing hand to his product, he is most anxious to sell it immediately, lest its value should vanish in his hands. Nor is he less anxious to dispose of the money he may get for it; for the value of money is also perishable. But the only way of getting rid of money is in the purchase of some product or other. Thus, the mere circumstance of the creation of one product immediately opens a vent for other products."-Footnote, p. 36. These italics are not ours, but taken from the work before us. Is it of this last averment of Mr. Say, that Mr. Stirling speaks as having at first something of the air of a paradox? Is it not rather in its reality and substance a most egregious fallacy?

The work advances in interest as it proceeds. The next book, with its ten chapters or propositions, treats of labour; and the reader will, from the mere announcement of the first of these, at once perceive the value and importance of the whole preceding argument. The proposition is, "that the value of labour is governed by the same laws which regulate the value of other subjects of exchange." Labour is viewed as in itself a commodity; and, like all others, as dependent for its value on the relative quantity between it and the other commodities which are brought to the market for sale. This simple and right view of the matter enables him at once to cut short a number of unprofitable speculations and errors, wherewith the elementary questions of political economy have been bound up, and to dismiss them from the science. We are particularly pleased with the short work which it enables him to make of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour; nor have we anywhere seen this factitious distinction so satisfactorily disposed of in such few sentences.

"This view of the subject, too, happily puts an end to the controversy about productive and unproductive labour,-a dispute rather about words than things. To make a musical instrument is productive, to play upon it, unproductive labour. The man who builds a church is a productive, the clergyman who uses that church for the celebration of divine service, an unproductive labourer. The physician who heals labours unproductively: the butcher who kills labours productively. These are specimens. Now all such unmeaning distinctions are swept away, and this unprofitable controversy settled at once, by regarding labour simply as a thing which is bought, sold, and exchanged;—a thing which has value, whether brought to market per se, or realized and worked up in another commodity."-Footnote, pp. 68, 69.

How is it after this, that Mr. Stirling could quote without correction the following passage from Mr. Say, who obviously regards material products as the all in all of political economy:

"Should a producer imagine that many other classes, yielding no

material products, are his customers and consumers equally with the classes that raised themselves a product of their own; as, for example, public functionaries, physicians, lawyers, churchmen, &c.; and thence infer that there is a class of demand other than that of the actual producers, he would but expose the shallowness and superficiality of his ideas. A priest goes to a shop to buy a gown or a surplice; he takes the value that is to make the purchase in the form of money. Whence had he that money? From some tax-gatherer, who has taken it from a tax-payer. But whence did this latter derive it? From the value he has himself produced. This value first produced by the tax-payer, and afterwards turned into money, and given to the priest for his salary, has enabled him to make the purchase. The priest stands in the place of the producer, who might himself have laid out the value of his product on his own account in the purchase, perhaps, not of a gown or surplice, but of some other more serviceable product. The consumption of the particular product, the gown or surplice, has but supplanted that of some other product. It is quite impossible that the purchase of one product can be effected otherwise than by the value of another.'" Footnote, pp. 36, 37.

But the greatest service effected by the better and juster view of labour is, that "it upsets the theory upon which the whole system of Ricardo's Political Economy is founded." We for one confess ourselves to be heartily glad of such an achievement, for, in truth, the speculations of this writer have long been felt by us as an incubus on the science of political economy, and all the more formidable from the weight of his authority and name. Mr. Stirling has devoted a separate article of the Appendix to the consideration of his fundamental principle, that "the value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production." This principle is met in the article now referred to by six distinct arguments, all of which, save the fifth, (which, we think, might be redargued and got the better of by the disciples of this school,) abundantly warrant the spirited conclusion of our author, who, after quoting Mr. Ricardo's own words on the difference between the natural and market price of commodities, sums up his own counter-declaration in these telling sentences:

"Here Mr. Ricardo fully admits that all deviations from the natural price are corrected by the agency of supply and demand, by a transference of capital and a consequent increase or diminution of quantity. But the principle which corrects such deviations, which raises, depresses, and ADJUSTS prices to a certain standard, does in reality fix and regulate these prices. Why, then, beat about for another principle less plain, less intelligible, and which involves contradictions? Why go in search of a new rule, guarded by exceptions and modifications of exceptions, alike destructive of the rule itself, when we have already

got all that we want, a plain well-known principle, according perfectly with facts which come under our daily observation, requiring neither modification nor exception, and accounting satisfactorily and intelligibly for all the phenomena which the science is called upon to explain."-Pp. 332, 333.

By understanding value then, as our author does, to be a relative and not an absolute term, and that the value of a commodity, or of labour viewed as a commodity, depends on its relative quantity either to money or to other commodities in the market, we have done enough both for the establishment of a right nomenclature, and of a sound and sufficient principle to guide our reasonings on either of these two subjects, into whatever part of the science of political economy they may be found to enter, or whatever question of political economy they might help to resolve.

Mr. Ricardo has taken up the position which we have just ventured to recommend, as the one of greatest command over the whole field of political economy-that is, he looks to the land which has been last taken into cultivation, and which yields no rent. He says, and says truly, that the produce of that land is an aggregate made up of profit and wages alone. But he inverts altogether the order of cause and effect, when he ascribes to this produce, or this return from the poorest of our cultivated soils, a controlling power over either of these two elements. It is not the productiveness of the land last entered on which determines the rate either of the wages or profit. Both are determined on separate principles of their own, and it is the sum of them taken together which determines what the quality of the soil is, at which the further progress of agriculture is for the time arrested. But we shall not write anew on a subject that underwent from ourselves an ample discussion many years back; and we shall, therefore, satisfy ourselves with a brief extract from the representation there given of our views:

"Yet this phenomenon (the descent of the plough to a poorer territory than before), but the subordinate result of a law having a distinct principle of its own, has itself been magnified into the principle; and a controlling force has been ascribed to that which is only the determinate consequence of a prior force, determining the rate of profit. The effect has been mistaken for the efficient. The produce of the land that is said to yield no rent, is conceived of as representing the aggregate of wages and profit. At most it is but the measure, and not the determinator of the sum of these two. The wages of labour are not low, nor is profit either, because land of an extremely poor quality has been taken into cultivation; but this land has been taken into cultivation, because wages and profit are low. If wages be low, it is because labour, or the number of labourers, is in excess.