Before proceeding to give an account of this performance, we will more particularly show what was, at the date of its publication, the condition of the science it was designed to illustrate. Mr. Malthus had taught that population tended to increase faster than food, and that so irresistible was this tendency, that all human efforts to restrain the number of men within the limits of subsistence were vain. It was a great "law of nature," and it was of little consequence, therefore, how fast food might be increased, since the only effect must be to stimulate population, which, in the end, was sure to outrun the means of living. The impression which this work produced has been briefly noticed in what we have written in connection with Mr. Alexander H. Everett's reply to it, printed in London and Boston in 1822. The doctrine was a convenient one, for it relieved the directors of affairs from the charge of causing, or suffering, the poverty and wretchedness by which they were surrounded.
Soon after this, Mr. Ricardo attempted to explain by what means the supply of food was limited. He taught that men always commenced the work of cultivation on the most fertile soils, capable of yielding, say, one hundred quarters for a given quantity of labor; but that as population increased, it became necessary to resort to poorer soils, yielding but ninety quarters, and that then the owner of the first could command as rent ten quarters. With a further increase, lands of a third quality, yielding but eighty quarters, were brought into use, and then the first and second would command as rent the whole difference, say, twenty quarters for the first, and ten quarters for the second. The payment of rent is thus regarded, in this school, as an evidence of constantly diminishing reward of labor, resulting from the increase of population in consequence of which it is necessary to extend the area of cultivation. With each step of its progress, the owner of the land takes a larger proportion of this constantly decreasing product, leaving a smaller one to be divided among those who apply either labor or capital to cultivation, thus producing a constant increase in the inequality of human condition. The interests of the landlord are in this manner shown to be for ever opposed to those of all the other portions of society. Rent is supposed to be paid because land has been occupied in virtue of an exercise of power and not because the owners have done any thing to entitle them to it. Here we see the germ of that discord which everywhere in Europe exists between the payers and receivers of rent. The annual fund from which savings can be made is held to be continually diminishing, the poor becoming poorer as the rich grow richer. The tendency to increase is more powerful in population than in capital, and the natural result must be that "wages will be reduced so low that a portion of the population will regularly die of want."[25]
The effect of the promulgation of these principles, upon the science of which they were asserted to be the basis, was curious. It was clear that increase of population led to famine. It was equally clear that increase of wealth tended to the extension of cultivation over inferior soils, with constantly decreasing returns to labor. Nevertheless, the political economist was everywhere surrounded by facts showing that the condition of man improved as numbers increased, and as cultivation was extended. With lessened rewards of toil there should be deterioration of moral condition, and abridged facilities for intellectual cultivation, but it was incontestable that men were more moral and better instructed than in any previous centuries. The increasing disproportion between the share of the landlord and that of the laborer was calculated to increase the inequality of condition, and yet it was not to be doubted that the two were nearer together than they were in the days of Elizabeth or of Henry VIII. The fact and the theory were always at variance with each other, and hence resulted a determination to limit the science to the consideration of wealth alone, excluding all reference to social condition. Mr. McCulloch therefore defined Political Economy as the Science of Values, and Archbishop Whately desired to change the name to Catallactics, or the Science of Exchanges. The whole duty of the teacher of this new science was held to be that of explaining how wealth might be increased, allowing "neither sympathy with indigence, nor disgust at profusion nor at avarice; neither reverence for existing institutions, nor detestation of existing abuses; neither love of popularity, nor of paradox, nor of system, to deter him from stating what he believed to be the facts, or from drawing from those facts what appeared to him to be the legitimate conclusions."[26]
Such was the Political Economy then, and such is that which is now, taught in the schools of England. The consequences are seen in the manner in which the poor people of every part of the United Kingdom are being expelled from the little holdings to which they have been reduced by a system of unbounded public expenditure, and the contemptuous tone in which the common people are spoken of in all their journals. Charity is denounced as tending to promote the growth of population. Marriage among the poor is regarded as a crime, and farmers are regarded as participant in crime for giving employment to men with families in preference to single men. But the system itself was an enormous wrong against nature. Mr. Carey entered the lists against it, with the earnestness and confidence inspired by a conviction that he contended for humanity.
His book commences with a single elementary proposition, that man desires to maintain and improve his condition, whether physical, moral, intellectual, or political: and the object of it is to show, that the theories of Mr. Malthus and Mr. Ricardo are in direct opposition to the universal fact, and therefore cannot be regarded as natural laws. On the contrary, he shows that food has always grown faster than population, and that the power to obtain subsistence has always increased most rapidly in those countries, and at those times, in which population has most rapidly increased, and in which cultivation has most rapidly extended over those soils denominated by Mr. Ricardo inferior. The error of all these writers is shown to be in taking quantities instead of proportions, and it is the law of proportions that constitutes the novel feature of this work. Ricardo and Malthus assert that land, labor, and capital are the agents of production, and are subject to different laws, all tending to produce contrariety of interests, and that the reason why such is the case is that land owes its value—or power to command rent for its use—to monopoly, while capital is the accumulated product of labor. Mr. Carey, on the contrary, shows, by a vast variety of facts, that land owes its value to labor alone, and that its selling price is invariably less than would purchase the quantity of labor required to induce its present condition were it restored to a state of nature. It is, therefore, like steam-engines, mills, or ships, to be considered as capital, the interest upon which is called rent, and it is subject to the same laws as capital in any other form. With the growth of wealth and population, the landlord is shown to be receiving a constantly decreasing proportion of the product of labor applied to cultivation, but a constantly increasing quantity, because of the rapid increase in the amount of the return as cultivation is improved and extended.[27] So it is with the capitalist. The rate of interest falls as cultivation is improved, and capital is accumulated with greater facility, and the capitalist receives a smaller proportion; but the quantity of commodities obtainable in return for the use of a given amount of capital increases, and with every change in that direction there is shown to be an increasing tendency to equality and to improvement of condition, physical, moral, intellectual, and political.
According to the system of Mr. Ricardo, the interests of the land owner and laborer, the capitalist and the employer of capital, are always opposed to each other. Mr. Carey, on the contrary, proves, and we think most conclusively, that "the interests of the capitalist and of the employer of capital are thus in perfect harmony with each other, as each derives advantage from every measure that tends to facilitate the growth of capital, and to render labor productive; while every measure that tends to produce the opposite effect is injurious to both."[28]
The entire novelty of these views rendered it necessary that they should be supported by a great body of facts, and Mr. Carey therefore furnished an examination of the causes which have in various countries, particularly India, France, Great Britain, and the United States, retarded the growth of wealth—demonstrating that they were to be found in the great public expenditure for the support of fleets and armies, and the prosecution of wars, the natural results of a state of things in which the few govern the many, taxing them at their will; and that the remedy was to be found in that improvement of political condition which should enable men to govern and to tax themselves, doing which they would be disposed to remain at peace.
That man may be enabled to improve his physical condition, combination of effort is shown to be necessary, and that tends to increase with the increase in the density of population. Therewith comes increased security of person and property, and increased respect for the rights of others, tending to promote the further increase of wealth, and to enable men to devote more time to the cultivation of mind. Improved mental condition enables men to apply their labors more productively, and thus obtain better subsistence from a diminished surface, facilitates combination of action, and increases the growth of wealth. With its growth the proportion of the laborer increases, and that of the landlord or other capitalist decreases, and the power of the former to govern himself, and to tax himself, grows steadily with the growth of wealth and population; and thus we have physical, moral, intellectual and political improvement, each aiding, and aided by, the other.
It will be seen from this brief summary that the field occupied is a most extensive one, more so than that of any similar work that has been written. The views are presented with great distinctness and force, and illustrated throughout by numerous facts drawn not only from the four countries principally referred to, but from Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, &c. It is one of the chief distinguishing merits of the work, that each part of it, while complete in itself, has that relation to the other which belongs to the divisions of a whole, in which all things are so interblended and harmonious as to produce a cumulative and finally perfect effect; while in the various systems presented to us by Europe, every part is in conflict with every other.
In denying Mr. Ricardo's theory of the occupation of the earth, Mr. Carey did not undertake to present any by himself, but this he has done in his more recent performance, The Past, the Present and the Future, published in Philadelphia in 1848. In this original and masterly composition, he has shown that the law is in direct opposition to the principle announced by Mr. Ricardo, and since adopted in the English school, and to some extent in France and in this country. In the infancy of civilization, man is poor and works with poor machinery, and must take the high and poor soils requiring little clearing and no drainage; and it is only as population and wealth increase, that the richer soils are brought into cultivation. The consequence is, that in obedience to a great law of nature, food tends to increase more rapidly than population, and it is only by that combination of effort which results from increasing density of population that the richer soils can be brought into activity. The truth of this is shown by a careful and particular account of the settlement of this country, followed by a rapid sketch of the occupation of Mexico, the West Indies, South America, Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, India, and the Islands of the Pacific, illustrating and confirming the position that the poor lands at the heads of streams, or the small and rocky islands, are first chosen for cultivation, while the lower and richer soils are left unimproved for want of the means which come with growing wealth and population. Mr. Ricardo's theory is then examined in all its parts, and shown to be entirely opposed to the whole mass of facts presented in a rapid review of the course of events in the different portions of the world, while the exceptions made by him for the purpose of providing for the infinite number that could not be brought under his general law, are shown to be themselves the law; and that such is the case is now admitted by some of the most eminent economists of Europe.