them from property in the soil, and even from the secure cultivation of the small farms to which they were driven for subsistence. In France, Germany, and Belgium, landed property is a national institution, and a national benefit, and the nation is for it; in Ireland it has been, both in origin and in effect, a hostile institution, and the nation is against it. Yet the very causes which have produced this unnatural situation have concealed themselves in the violence of their own effects; and the system of tenure has appeared the only great evil, because it has been almost the only career open to the nation; proprietorship having been altogether denied to it. The system of property, an oligarchic and feudal system of property, is the radical evil, of which the system of tenure is only a single branch. The great aim of Parliament ought to be to diffuse property in land widely throughout the nation; treating all immediate cost incurred for that end in compensating existing proprietors as incurred, not only for the improvement of Ireland, but also for the security of the Empire. The provisions of the Irish Land Bill now before Parliament need much amendment for the protection of tenants. But the success of any law of tenure, however well framed in itself, will mainly depend on the number of proprietors the conditions of purchase and reforms in the law of property shall call into being.

85

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND EMIGRATION.*

THANKS to four or five great writers in a century, a few statesmen, and the particular interests and accidents which led to a comparatively early adoption of free trade, England is looked up to on the Continent as par excellence the country of political economy. In few other countries nevertheless is this branch of political philosophy less carefully or commonly studied, however commonly its terms are in use; and it becomes daily more evident that the air ought to be cleared of clouds of confusion enveloping those very terms. For instead of facilitating thought, as the terms of a science should do, they have come to supersede it; they are taken to settle several problems about which economic inquiry is almost in its infancy; and, what is yet more misleading, they have caused different and even opposite things to be confounded under one name-as has been the case not only with several economic terms commonly made use of in discussing emigration, but with emigration itself.

In no other branch of philosophy indeed, unless metaphysics itself, does the ancient mist of realism continue so to 'darken counsel by words without knowledge.' A resemblance has been seen by a philosopher in a number of different things viewed in one particular light, and a common name has been given to them with reference only to that point of resemblance; often indeed the general term introduced in this way was not originally meant to denote a complete induction, but simply to put a conspicuous part for the whole, leaving something to human intelligence; presently, however, the entire class comes to assume a perfect identity in the minds of some of the philosopher's most intelligent followers. In like manner, a phrase used at first to signify merely a tendency of things under particular conditions comes to stand for a universal law or principle of nature, and a generalisation, which originally threw a new light upon phenomena, finally involves them in almost impenetrable obscurity. Emigration, for example, though really a name for several different kinds of emigration, and, in particular, for two opposite kinds on which we shall have particularly to dwell, has been spoken of as a thing, the beneficial effects of which, in every case, have an à priori certainty that leaves no room for discussion. It is all supply and demand, one person will tell you; labour, whether it be English labour or Irish labour, is a commodity which finds its way to the best market. Another, arriving by a somewhat less mechanical process at the same positive conclusion, tells you that it must be beneficial, since it takes place through the operation of the private interest of all the parties concerned the term 'private interest,' it will be observed, being in all such reasoning confounded

with another deceitful abstraction, 'the desire of wealth. A third argues that it must of necessity raise the rate of wages, by distributing the 'aggregate wages fund' among a smaller number of labourers.

That the rate of wages is not determined by any single law or set of conditions, we hope to demonstrate in a subsequent article.* At present it is enough to remark, in the first place, that there are no funds necessarily destined to employment as wages; and coincidently with a vast emigration there may be, as its very result or as the result of a common cause, a substitution of pasture for tillage, and a withdrawal of capital from farming, with a diminished demand for labour in consequence. Moreover, the aggregate amount of the funds expendible as wages does not, given the number of labourers, determine the rate of wages at all. If a single employer, or a few who could combine, had the entire amount, all the labour in the country which could not emigrate might be hired for its bare subsistence, whatever the rate in the power of the employer to give. Again, if the whole amount were, as it really is, very unequally shared among employers, the price of labour might be immeasurably lower than if it were equally shared; just as at an auction, the prices paid for things will probably be immensely higher if the purchasers have equal means, than if most of the money is in the hands of a few. If two bidders, for example, have each 50l., one of them may have to spend his whole fifty to get half what he wants; but if one of them has but 5l. and the other has 95l., the latter may get all he wants for 51. 5s.

There may be a convenience in having a collective term for all the sources of wages, all the funds, whether capital, income, or the revenue of the State, expendible upon labour; but the misfortune is that the collective term employed for this purpose has created an imaginary collective fund destined to the payment of labour; and the payment is inferred to be higher or lower in proportion to the number of labourers. In like manner the phrase 'private interest,' though really a collective term for a number of individual interests, by no means all for the public interest, has assumed, in the minds of a number of economists, the form of a single beneficent principle, animating and regulating the whole economic world. The desire for wealth,' in the same way (which is by no means, as already observed, the same thing with private interest, for wealth is not the predominant interest of the most powerful classes*),

*

'There is a firm oasis in the desert upon which we may safely rest, and that is afforded us by the principles of political economy. I entertain a prejudice adopted by Adam Smith, that a man is at liberty to do what he likes with his own, and that, having land, it is not unreasonable that he should be free to let his land to a person upon the terms upon which they shall mutually agree. That I believe to be good political economy.' [Speech of Mr. Lowe in the House of Commons, March 14.] Now what has Adam Smith really said? It seldom happens that a great proprietor is a great improver. But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages demonstrates that the work done by slaves is in the end the dearest of any.' 'The pride of man,' nevertheless, he continues, 'makes him love to domineer. Wherever the law allows it therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen.'- Wealth of Nations, book 3, chap. ii. And in the only sentence in which Adam Smith speaks of allowing the landlord to pursue his own interest in his