eight months; yet there have been few failures and but little panic. It is not money, but capital, which is deficient ; the capitalists, deceived by two years of unusual prosperity, have undertaken enterprises which are beyond their strength.

But we have followed Mr. Mill far enough in these desultory remarks to show what is the general character of his speculations, and to bespeak for him the confidence of our readers. He is no wild theorist, but takes sober and comprehensive views, which he expounds with great moderation, clearness, and ability. We may follow him with more assurance, then, when he comes to treat of the great problem on which the future welfare, almost the existence, of his country depends, the situation of the laboring classes in Great Britain and Ireland. We have of late repeatedly considered this subject at some length in this journal, * but it is still fresh in interest and copious in instruction, some of the gravest questions respecting the tendencies of modern civilization, and the temporal welfare of the human family, being dependent for an answer on the results of the great experiment which is now going forward in England. We call it an experiment, because to the present condition of the English and Irish people no parallel can be found in any other country on the globe, nor in the former history of the same people down as far certainly as the middle of the last century. Nowhere else is all the soil, or the whole food-producing power of the country, monopolized by less than one three-hundredth part of the inhabitants, while full half of the population are dependent entirely on wages, which are already reduced so low that most of the common laborers with their families are literally on the brink of starvation. Nowhere but in England is vastly the larger portion of the real and personal property owned by less than two hundred thousand individuals, while eight millions of their countrymen. have no property whatever, and their labor, even when they have employment, which they cannot always obtain, produces hardly enough to support life on the poorest and scantiest fare. Three millions of these are in a pauperized condition, one half of this number claiming public charity every year. Enormous as these evils are, they are rapidly

*See North American Review, for October, 1847, p. 461, and for July, 1848, p. 119.

and steadily increasing; the wealth of the prosperous class increases even more swiftly than their numbers diminish, while the poor multiply at a frightful rate, and grow poorer every day. Nowhere else is it the avowed policy of the laws to foster this shocking inequality of wealth, the division of landed estates being opposed by legal obstacles which are practically insurmountable, and the aggregation of personal property being favored alike by the laws, the habits and desires of the owners, and by natural causes. The present state of the laboring population of England and Ireland is one of unequalled destitution and suffering, and while present tendencies continue to work without check, they have nothing to look forward to but an increase alike of their numbers and their misery.

Can this state of things continue a generation or two longer without producing a social convulsion as awful as any which is yet recorded in history? The British government, upheld by a great majority of the wealthy and educated classes, seem to think that it can; at any rate, they are still trying the experiment. But in Ireland the experiment has already failed; maddened by suffering, the wretched inhabitants have once already broken out into civil war, which has been crushed, indeed, by the gigantic military power of the government, though not without some sacrifice of life. Hopeless of success, not knowing what they are fighting for, the people are always ready to follow the impulse of a few miserable demagogues, and rush upon the bayonets and cannon which are pointed to receive them. They can but die, and what has there been in the condition of four millions of the Irish people for the last few years which could render life desirable? They know that they are miserable, they have a vague belief that their misery is the consequence of oppression and wrong, and they now seek only for vengeance. One political nostrum after another has been tried, in the hope of appeasing them, and has utterly failed. As if political measures alone Catholic emancipation, the extension of the franchise, the vote by ballot, or even the repeal of the Union could fill up the yawning gulph of Irish famine ! The people asked for bread, and the government and the demagogues alike have offered them a stone. If the six points of Chartism should be granted to them to-morrow, does any one believe that the social condition of the people

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would be in the slightest degree ameliorated? In ordinary years, Ireland produces vastly more food than is necessary for her own subsistence, the export of it being the chief branch of traffic that remains to this unhappy land. It is certain, therefore, that the only immediate cause of Irish misery is the enormous inequality in the distribution of wealth, whether this inequality be chiefly attributable to the people, the laws, or to former misgovernment and oppression. There can be no dispute, that the evil manifests itself through this inequality, and that no remedy for it can be effectual which does not tend very rapidly to a more even distribution of land and food, to say nothing of the other forms of property. Yet in Parliamentary debates on Irish affairs, this immediate cause of pauperism, famine, crime, turbulence, and rebellion is seldom, if ever, mentioned. Even the Irish members would be uneasy, if the rights and obligations of property came to be discussed; the institution is sacred, and its amendment is no more to be thought of than its abrogation.

The case of England is not quite so bad, though few who have read the evidence adduced in our former articles will deny that the same causes are working there towards the same inevitable result, and "little more than one generation," to adopt Mr. Thornton's language, "might suffice to convert England into an Ireland of human misery and degradation." The situation of the third kingdom is well described by Mr. Laing, who says, after a full investigation of the evidence, that "Scotch destitution has gone a step beyond English, and arrived, like that of Ireland, at a point at which all other evils are swallowed up in the urgent and ever-present danger of literal death by starvation." If our readers will now remember that England is much the wealthiest country in the world, that full half of the population of the three kingdoms have no share whatever in this wealth, but subsist entirely on wages, the average of which is only enough to support life in such a manner as we have just described, that the whole population increases at the rate of sixteen per cent. in ten years, and that at least three fourths of this increase is of the laboring class who have no property, they will have before them the chief elements of what is called the Condition-of-England question. Of all themes for the consideration of the economist, the legislator, and the philanthropist, we know of none that equals this in interest and importance.

We looked, then, with much curiosity for the opinions of a bold and original thinker, like Mr. Mill, on this great subject. The defects and evils in the present constitution of society, the modes of supplying or remedying them, and the probable results of leaving them as they are, or of applying only insufficient means of prevention or cure, are topics upon which he has speculated widely in former publications, and always with great sagacity, comprehensiveness, and good sense. In his present work, while going over the whole ground of political economy, he could not fail to consider, in all its relations and tendencies, the actual state of the laboring classes of Great Britain; especially as his plan included the application of the principles of economical science to social philosophy. By this enlargement of the range of his inquiries, he has virtually admitted the justice of M. Sismondi's complaint, that the English economists hitherto have studied only chrematistics, or the art of money-making, while the science of political economy includes, as its name imports, not only the production of wealth, but the political regulation of society, as if it were a household, that is, its government and direction with a view to the general well-being, the equal distribution of the means of happiness among all its classes and members. Are not some measures which tend to increase the wealth, and, perhaps, even the political power and importance of a nation, destructive in a greater or less "degree of some of its higher interests, and especially of the individual happiness of its people? Those who contend that such a conflict of aims is impossible must maintain that riches are every thing, the sum of all good, or else that the pursuit of them, under all circumstances, and to the utmost extent, is perfectly consistent with every other enterprise in which an intellectual and moral being can be engaged. The wealth of a nation consists of the aggregate wealth of all its members, and it may be advantageous for the power and political importance of a state that this wealth should all be owned by a very few persons, since it will thus be more accessible when the government needs to expend it for the national defence, and it is only when accumulated in large masses that capital produces its grandest and most striking results. It is by this aggregation of wealth in the hands of a few, that England has become the most opulent and powerful nation on the face of the earth; at what cost she has

risen to this proud eminence, let the present terrible condition of her laboring classes throughout the three kingdoms answer. And yet her political economists and statesmen, her great landlords, wealthy manufacturers, and merchant princes, continue to defend and support the system of legislation which produces these shocking results.

Mr. Mill does not acknowledge either the justice or the expediency of favoring the concentration of riches, and leaving the bulk of the community destitute or dependent. He recognizes the great truth, that "property is only a means to an end, not itself the end"; and consequently, even if capital when in large masses should be a more effective agent of production than when distributed more evenly, the legislature ought not to favor its aggregation, if it should appear that this enlarged production was not a sure means of promoting the general welfare and the highest interests of the community. Here is the vice of that narrow definition of political economy to which we have alluded, that, by restricting the inquiry to the means of increasing wealth, writers upon this science have been led to advocate measures which tend to diminish the sum of human happiness, and which are repelled alike by the sense of justice and the feelings of common humanity. We yield our hearty assent to the doctrines expressed in the following passage, which is entitled to more weight in the estimation of the judicious, because it immediately succeeds, in Mr. Mill's work, that decisive refutation of the theories of the Communists and the Saint-Simonians upon which we have already remarked.

"There has never been imagined any mode of distributing the produce of industry, so well adapted to the requirements of human nature on the whole, as that of letting the share of each individual (not in a state of bodily or mental incapacity) depend in the main on that individual's own energies and exertions, and on such furtherance as may be obtained from the voluntary good offices of others. It is not the subversion of the system of individual property that should be aimed at ; but the improvement of it, and the participation of every member of the community in its benefits. The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property, which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of con