This Political Economy à rebours—this Political Economy read backwards—is the staple of many of our journals, and the life of legislative assemblies. It has misled the candid and philanthropic Sismondi, and we find it very logically set forth in the work of M. de Saint-Chamans.
“There are two kinds of national wealth,” he tells us. “If we have regard only to useful products with reference to their quantity, their abundance, we have to do with a species of wealth which procures enjoyments to society, and which I shall denominate the Wealth of enjoyment.
“If we regard products with reference to their exchangeable Value, or simply with reference to their value, we have to do with [p185] a species of Wealth which procures values to society, and which I call the Wealth of value.
“It is this last species of Wealth which forms the special subject of Political Economy, and it is with it, above all, that governments have to do.”
This being so, how are Economists and Statesmen to proceed? The first are to point out the means of increasing this species of riches, this wealth of value; the second to set about adopting these means.
But this kind of wealth bears proportion to efforts, and efforts bear proportion to obstacles. Political Economy, then, is to teach, and Government to contrive, how to multiply obstacles. M. de Saint-Chamans does not flinch in the least from this consequence.
Does exchange facilitate our acquiring more of the wealth of enjoyment with less of the wealth of value? We must, then, counteract this tendency of exchange.[39]
Is there any portion of gratuitous Utility which we can replace by onerous Utility; for example, by prohibiting the use of a tool or a machine? We must not fail to do so; for it is very evident, he says, that if machinery augments the wealth of enjoyment, it diminishes the wealth of value. “Let us bless the obstacles which the dearness and scarcity of fuel in this country has opposed to the multiplication of steam-engines.”[40]
Has nature favoured us in any particular respect? It is our misfortune; for, by that means, we are deprived of the opportunity of exerting ourselves. “I avow that I could desire to see manufactured by manual labour, forced exertion, and the sweat of the brow, things that are now produced without trouble and spontaneously.”[41]
What a misfortune, then, is it for us that we are not obliged to manufacture the water which we drink! It would have been a fine opportunity of producing the wealth of value. Happily we take our revenge upon wine. “Discover the secret of drawing wine from springs in the earth as abundantly as you draw water, and you will soon see that this fine order of things will ruin a fourth part of France.”[42]