that such a road is the shortest road to York. But do we want to go to York? and is the shortest road the safest, the easiest, the most picturesque? and if not, is it worth while to sacrifice these advantages to brevity? On these points the sign-post is silent.

Of course when we are convinced that an increase of wealth or a certain new distribution of it ought to be accomplished, then the propositions of political economy which tell us how this can be done may safely be expressed as rules. When we have made up our minds that we must get to York, and that there is no reason against taking the shortest road, we may fairly say that the sign-post 'bids' us take this particular road; and such, and such only, is the bidding' of political economy. Cases in

which the solution of the economic element in the problem is substantially the solution of the whole, are sufficiently frequent to account for the very common mistake of supposing that political economy is essentially prescriptive -that what its exponents constantly profess is to inform men how they ought to act. But, however natural such a mistake, and indeed however true such an opinion, regarding a great deal that is to be found in books of political economy, it is evident that to regard all the laws of political economy as precepts cannot fail to make the science a preacher of unrighteousness. To take the results which follow on the play of (for the most part) self-interested motives, and convert them into rules of conduct-what can this be but to inculcate selfishness ? Under certain circumstances, the owner of a crop may and, therefore, if governed only by greed, he will-realise increased gains by burning a part of it. It may be proper enough for the economist to explain the causes

which will lead to this result-to show under what conditions selfinterest may lead a man to destroy his own property; but the person whose conduct is so explained must not be allowed to distort the explanation into a justification, and to plead in his defence that the is acting in accordance with the principles of political economy.' As well might the poisoner plead that he is acting in accordance with the principles of pharmaceutical science. - which he undoubtedly is, if, wishing to destroy life, he administers a drug which is warranted to kill.

The rich employer, therefore, whose wealth is wrung from the toil of half-starved and overtasked work-people, or even who, short of this, uniformly underpays his employés whenever he finds it in his power (for starvation wages are but the extreme form of an injustice which may exist in many degrees), needs to show, before he can justify his harshness by the authority of political economy, much more than the mere fact that economists recognise' the possibility and the approximate certainty that many men will act as he. He is nearer the mark if he tells us that according to political economy the liberality of employers cannot raise the average rate of wages. This is a question of economic fact, not of moral conduct, and consequently it is one on which the economists ought to give us a complete and correct answer. The answer of Mr. Mill we have seen-that liberality on the part of the employer cannot raise the average wages of labour beyond the ratio of population to capital,' but merely, by giving more to each person employed, limits the power of giving employment to numbers.' This doctrine, unless so explained away as to be nothing more than the most trifling truism, I conceive to be wholly false, and

inconsistent with a true appreciation of the fundamental laws of wages.

All who are in the least degree familiar with the recent literature of political economy will remember how Mr. Thornton several years ago acquired a sudden access of fame from Mr. Mill's acknowledgment that the criticisms of the former had detected a weakness in Mr. Mill's exposition of the laws of wages, and by correcting that exposition had rendered it necessary to adopt a new attitude towards trade-unions. Mr. Mill had enunciated the theory that there was a certain amount of national wealth devoted to the payment of wages, and that no pressure from without could increase that amount. Mr. Thornton convinced him that there was no fixed quantum of wealth predetermined to the payment of wages, and that the total amount paid away in wages-the wages fund, as it is called-might therefore be whatever the trade-unions could squeeze out of the employers. And many who remember the submission of Mr. Mill to this criticism will remember also how Mr. Cairnes stood firm to the position which his teacher Mr. Mill had abandoned, and practically told the world that Mr. Mill had receded from his original doctrine because he had never rightly understood it. And such, no doubt, was the case. To understand in what sense and by what means the rate of wages is 'determined,' it is necessary to resort to Mr. Cairnes rather than to Mr. Mill. The average rate of wages, all agree, is dependent on the number of the labouring population and the amount of capital; but how is the latter determined? Mr. Cairnes' reply is: Given the total wealth of the country, the proportion of it applied to reproduction, and not spent for immediate enjoyment, is determined partly by the amount of profit

which can be obtained on capital so employed, and partly by the disposition of wealthy persons, and the degree in which they can be attracted to save by a given rate of profit. Capital, in short, is determined by the prospect of profit and the character of capitalists; and Mr. Cairnes showed with much force, in relation to trade-unions, that the employer's own wish to make the utmost advantage from a profitable time would lead him on such an occasion to enlarge his undertaking and to bring as much capital as possible into his business, all of which would necessarily increase the demand for labour, and either give work to the unemployed or raise the wages of those already at work. As trade-union pressure could not, in most cases, increase either the prospect of profit or the willingness of employers to accept small profits without decreasing their investment of capital, it therefore could not be relied on to raise wages higher than the natural competition of employers anxious to hire workmen would itself raise them.

Here, as everywhere else, Mr. Cairnes holds firmly to the fundamental principle that the distribution of wealth among different classes of workers depends not more upon the constitution of the physical world than upon the characters of men. The rate of wages is determined, not, as Mr. Buckle asserted, in spite of the habits of all concerned, but by means of them. A change in the workmen's habits on the point of marriage would affect one element of the problem, population. A change in the habits of the masters on the point of their readiness to invest for a small rate of profit would affect the other element, capital. In a civilised country a much larger proportion of the total wealth is employed as capital than in an uncivilised, and why? Because (among other rea

sons) the uncivilised man needs a very strong attraction to induce him to spare his wealth from his immediate consumption and employ it for a return at some future day. As he advances in culture, and the importance of the future as compared with the present gains more hold upon his mind, a saving which would once have required the attraction of a profit of 100 per cent., he will readily undertake in view of a profit of 20 per cent. Now, what civilisation and prudence do up to a certain point, a liberal feeling on the part of employers will do in the same direction and beyond that point. The action of a liberal spirit will be no more a contravention of the laws of political economy than civilisation is. One employer requires a profit of 20 per cent. as a condition of investing the capital from which a hundred labourers derive a scanty living indeed, but still a living. His neighboar, of greater humanity, will invest his capital equally on the attraction of 15 per cent., letting the difference go in the supply of a little more comfort to those whose labour is the necessary condition of his wealth. His liberality will operate to increase capital just as a greater regard for the future in comparison with the present would increase it-i.e. less prospect of profit will be sufficient to attract him to save. He will not, says Mr. Mill, by his liberality raise wages beyond the figure determined by population and capital. Certainly not, but he will increase the capital, and not merely the capital as a whole, but the particular portion of capital with which we are especially concerned -the wages fund. The quotient will be what the divisor and the dividend determine-granted, but liberality on his part will add to the dividend.

a

In other words, there is nothing in political economy to contradict the very common-sense position

that it is perfectly possible for employers generally to raise the rate of wages, if they are willing, as the means to that end, to accept of lower profits for themselves.

If they pay higher wages, they diminish, says Mr. Mill, their power of giving employment to numbers. Doubtless, if the whole of their wealth beyond what is necessary for their own support were already employed in the maintenance of labour, the question would indeed lie between paying larger wages to a few while many were left unemployed, and employing the whole on lower terms. But this is not the case in view, nor is it one in which liberality would have very much room to operate. Liberality means, not that A should pay good wages to B at the expense of C, but that he should pay good wages to B at the expense of himself; and the actual case too often occurring is one of large personal consumption-of money saved by cutting down salaries and wages, to lavish on personal enjoyments. These enjoyments, it is true, will in some cases consist largely of services, and it may be pleaded that if the employer gave better wages to those in his business, he would have to dismiss some of his household staff. Peter, however, ought not to be robbed to pay Paul, especially if Peter is a millhand or agricultural labourer, and Paul is a powderheaded footman spending half his time in looking out of the hall window. What is to be desired is not merely that a certain amount of wages shall be distributed among a certain number of people, but that it shall be distributed in some proportion to the labour performed by them. So if the wealth saved by underpayment of employés is utilised by investment as capital through any of the numerous channels in which private savings are collected and made available for the support of indus

trial operations, a like objection arises that even granting that there is no diminution in the total amount paid away as wages, there is, or for anything the employer knows there well may be, a diversion of wages from a poorly paid to a much better paid class. And as to the popular objection that if the employer pays more wages, he will have less to spend on himself, and that what he spends does just as much good to trade, and through the traders to the producers, as what he pays, it is not necessary in reply to resort to the full-length refutation of this opinion in the pages of Mr. Mill and other economists, but it is sufficient to say that the payment of higher wages will not cause a farthing less to be spent or a farthing's less encouragement given to trade than if the employer screwed down wages to their lowest point; the workers who receive the wages will be just as ready to spend them as the employer, and though a different class of goods will become in demand, the total demand will be the same as before.

I have spoken of the circumstances determining the general rate of wages. The excessively low wages of which I speak are, however, most commonly met with among persons who are debarred by special facts from much range of choice in their occupations, and are, in fact, shut up to almost one means, or at least to a very narrow circle of means, of gaining their bread. However high wages may be in other occupations, this fact can afford no relief to those who are unable to compete with any outside their own limited sphere. Wages in such cases are dependent mainly on three factors, the number of persons so situated, the demand for the produce of their labour, and the dispositions of employers. The demand of the rest of society for the produce of their labour determines how much there is to be distributed

among those concerned in the production, and the distribution of this between employers and employed depends on the same considerations as those which I have already spoken of. Any attempt to raise wages by raising the price of the product is met by the difficulty that this involves a diminution of the demand; and although a smaller sale at a higher price does not necessarily mean a lessened total return, yet there is of course a point where it does mean this, and when once that point is reached, then-unless what the workers need is rather shortened hours of labour than higher wages-it is not in the interest of the producers collectively that the price should be further raised. But at this point, and when the total price which can be obtained for the produce of the labour of this special class of workers is thus at its maximum, there still remains as before the question of the division of this price between the capitalists and the workers, or, in its more practical form, the question what wages the employer who receives the total sale-price will pay to the work-people. It is needless, of course, to recapitulate what I have just said: it is sufficient to repeat the conclusion that in the view of political economy as of common-sense, there is nothing to prevent the employer, if he chooses, from paying higher wages and contenting himself with lower profits, and that the spirit of liberality-in some cases it may be questioned whether we ought not rather to say the spirit of simple justice-which may prevent a capitalist from taking the maximum advantage of the power placed in his hands by the necessities of the workers is no transgression' of the laws of political economy. The science, in teaching that under given circumstances a very low rate of wages is naturally to be expected from the operation of unlimited self-interest,

certainly does not thereby justify that rate. It is an odd idea that if you have traced your pedigree up to Selfishness, you have satisfactorily established the honour of your family.

I do not wish to be understood as speaking of competition generally as an evil. I agree with Mr. Mill that it is decidedly the reverse. It has unquestionably a natural tendency, where it exists in perfect freedom without intentional or accidental checks, to proportion the reward of industry to the toil. Of two classes of workmen competent for the same kinds of work, if the one class receives much inferior payment to the other, the natural effect of competition is a desertion of the ill-paid for the well-paid employment until the diminished numbers engaged in the one and the increased numbers in the other establish the wages of the two employments either at the same level or at such an inequality as may be necessary to compensate for the superior difficulty or disagreeableness of one kind of work. The evil that too often exists is a want of the power of competition with outsiders. Agricultural labourers may compete with agricultural labourers, or matchmakers with matchmakers, but to desert their own ill-paid occupation for a better, to compete with the more prosperous industries outside their own, they are often unable. They suffer at once from competition among themselves and from inability to compete with others. And can it, with the least degree of justice, be said that 'to be protected from competition-protected, that is, by the liberality of employers from feeling the full evil of competition inter se―is, in such a case, to be *protected in idleness, in moral dull. ness, to be saved the necessity of being as active and intelligent as other people'? Surely the employer who pays better wages than the 'struggle for existence among

the workers compels him to pay, has ample security for being to the full as well served as other people. Protection from competition by legal privilege which no misconduct or idleness can forfeit is indeed not unlikely to be protection in idleness; but from condemning such protection to condemning benevolent customs or benevolent action of individuals which shield the industrious poor from the full furnace heat of competition, there is a long step.

Again I have heard it said, in defence of those who insist to the utmost on their pound of flesh as secured by the market price of labour, that to pay better wages would be no real kindness to the poor, as it would merely stimulate an increase of population that would soon swallow up all the temporary advantage. There are many to whom the doctrines of Malthusianism appear to operate as a salve for the conscience against the duty of lending a hand in any way to the improvement of the labourer's position. They forget the pithy sentence in which Dr. Johnson summed up the arguments for marriage on the part of the very poor. 'I can't be worse off, so I'll e'en take Peggy.' The greatest depth of poverty, beneath which no lower deep, still threatening to devour them, opens wide,' is of all conditions the least favourable to fostering in the working classes that matrimonial prudence which Malthus and his disciples so strongly inculcate. It is not those that have nothing to lose whom we must expect to rise above recklessness in regard to one of the gravest of duties and one of the most powerful of instincts. And it is not therefore by keeping down wages to the lowest possible level that we shall most certainly guard against the danger of over-population. Moreover, in this keen dread of overpopulation, it seems almost to be