◆1 Many kinds of wealth that are considered typical would become almost valueless if divided: for instance, a great house and its contents.
◆¹ Let us take, for instance, some palatial house in London, which catches the public gaze as a monument of wealth and splendour; and we will suppose that a mob of five hundred people are incited to plunder it by a leader who informs them that its contents are worth two hundred thousand pounds. Assuming that estimate to be correct, would it mean that of these five hundred people each would get a portion to him worth four hundred pounds? Let us see what would really happen. They would find enough wine, perhaps, to keep them all drunk for a week; enough food to feed thirty of them for a day; and sheets and blankets for possibly thirty beds. But this would not account for many thousands out of the two hundred thousand pounds. The bulk of that sum would be made up—how? A hundred thousand pounds would be probably represented by some hundred and fifty pictures, and the rest by rare furniture, china, and works of art. Now all these things to the pillagers would be absolutely devoid of value; for if such pillage were general there would be nobody left to buy them; and they would in themselves give the pillagers no pleasure. One can imagine the feelings of a man who, expecting four hundred pounds, found himself presented with an unsaleable Sèvres broth-basin, or a picture of a Dutch burgomaster; or of five such men if for their share they were given a buhl cabinet between them. We may be quite certain that the broth-basin would be at once broken in anger; the cabinet would be tossed up for, and probably used as a rabbit-hutch; and the men as a body would endeavour to make up for their disappointment by ducking or lynching the leader who had managed to make such fools of them.
◆1 Wealth, as a whole, even less susceptible of division.
◆¹ And now let us consider the wealth of the kingdom as a whole. Much as the bulk of it differs from the contents of a house of this kind, it would, if seized on in any forcible way, prove even more disappointing and elusive.
◆1 Wealth, as a whole, has two aspects: that of capital, and that of income.
◆2 We will first consider the national capital.
◆¹ We may consider it under two aspects. We may consider it as so much annual income, or else as so much capital. In the last chapter we were considering it as so much income, and presently we shall be doing so again. But as capital may possibly strike the imagination of many as something more tangible and easily seized, and likely to yield, if redistributed, more satisfactory results, ◆² we will see first of what items the estimated capital of this country is composed. To do so will not only be instructive: it will also be curious and amusing.
◆1 This capital consists not of money;
◆¹ As I said just now, its value, expressed in money, is according to the latest authorities about ten thousand million pounds.[14] As actual money, however, forms so minute a portion of this,—the reader will see that it is hardly more than one-fortieth,—we may, for our present purpose, pass it entirely over; and our concern will be solely with the things for which our millions are a mere expression.
◆1 But of three classes of things: the two first comprising things not susceptible of division;