Knowledge is Power:

apital enhanced by Labour-Balance of rights and duties-Relation of deman

ys, instead of giving "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether;" and even now, when these interests in many respects are still imperfectly understood, they occasionally quarrel about the conditions upon which they will continue to travel in company. In the very outset of the journey, Labour, doubtless, took the lead. In the dim morning of society Labour was up and stirring before Capital was awake. Labour did not then ride; he travelled slowly on foot through very dirty ways. Capital, at length, as slowly followed after, through the same mire, but at an humble distance from his parent. But when Capital grew into strength, he saw that

rate around him, because he was in a civilized country. Had he been thrown upon a desert land without food and shelter, his labour must have been instantly and directly applied to procuring food and shelter. He was equally without food and shelter in a civilized country. But the system of exchanges being in action, he did not apply his labour directly to the production of food and lodging for himself. He added by his labour a new value to a heap of coals; he enabled another man more readily to acquire the means of warmth; and by this service, which he exchanged for "a few pence" and "a small gratuity of meat and drink," he indirectly obtained food and lodging. He conferred an additional value upon a heap of coals; and that additional value was represented by the "few pence" and "a small gratuity of meat and drink." Had the system of exchange been less advanced, that is, had society been less civilized, he would probably have exchanged his labour for some object of utility, by another and a ruder mode. He would have received a portion of the coals as the price of the labour by which he gave an additional value to the whole heap. But mark the inconvenience of such a mode of exchange. His first want was food; his next, shelter: had he earned the coals, he must have carried them about till he had found some other person ready to exchange food and lodging for coals. Such an occurrence might have happened, but it would have been a lucky accident. He could find all persons ready to exchange food and clothes for money-because money was ready again to exchange for other articles of utility which they might require, and which they would more readily obtain by the money than by the food and clothes which our labourer had received for them. During the course of the unprofitable labour of waiting till he had found an exchanger who wanted coals, he might have perished. What then gave him the means of profitable labour, and furnished him with an article which every one was ready to receive in exchange for articles of immediate necessity? Capital in two forms. The heap of coals was capital. The coals represented a very great

o shovel in the coals-or, that the capitalist should have been compelled to employ the labourer to shovel them in. Had the lot of the unfortunate prodigal been cast in such a state of society as would have allowed this violation of the natural rights of the labourer and the capitalist, he would have found little accumulation to give a profitable direction to his labour. He would have found production suspended, or languishing. There would probably have been no heap of coals wanting his labour to give them the last value;-for the engines would have been idle that raised them from the pit, and the men would have been idle that directed the engines. The circulating capital that found wages for the men, and fuel for the engines, would have been idle, because it could not have worked with security. Accumulation, therefore, would have been suspended;-and all profitable labour would, in consequence, have been suspended. It was the unquestionable right of the labourer that his labou

emand and supply exercise a joint influence and control, each with regard to the other. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, relates that in the year 454 of the building of Rome (300 years before Christ) a number of barbers came over from Sicily to shave the Romans, who till that time had worn long beards. But the barbers came in consequence of being sent for by a man in authority. The demand here distinctly went before the supply; but the supply, doubtless, acted greatly upon the demand. During a time of wild financial speculation in Paris, created by what is called the Mississippi bubble, a hump-backed man went daily into the street where the stock-jobbers were accustomed to assemble, and earned money by allowing them to sign their contr

erable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily, but cautiously, turned his first gains into second advantages; retained, without a sin

ition to the "meat and drink." The capitalist held that the labour performed had conferred a value upon his property, which would be fairly exchanged for the pence in addition to the food, and he gave, therefore, in exchange, that portion of his capital which was represented by the money and by the food. This blending of one sort of consumable commodity, and of the money which represented any other consumable commodity which the money could be exchanged with, was an accident arising out of the peculiar circumstances in which the prodigal happened to be placed. In ordinary cases he would have received the money alone,-that is, he would have received a larger sum of money to enable him to exchange for meat and drink, instead of receiving them

much lodging as he required for an equivalent portion of his money. If he kept his money, it would not injure by keeping as the food would. He might carry it from place to place more easily than he could carry the food. He would have a commodity to exchange, whose value could not be made matter of dispute, as the value of meat and drink would unquestionably have been. This commodity would represent the same value, with little variation, whether he kept it a day, or a week, or a month, or a year; and therefore would be the only commodity whose retention would advance his design of accumulating capital with certainty and steadiness. It is evident that a commodity possessing all these advantages must have some intrinsic qualities which all exchangers would recognise-that it must be a standard of value-at once a commodity possessing real value, and a measure of all other values. This commodity exists in all commercial or exchanging nations in the shape of coined metal. The metal itself possesses a real value, which represents the labour employed in producing it; and, in the shape of coin, represents also a measure of other value, because the value of the coin has been determined by the sanction of some authority which all admit. That authority is most conveniently expressed by a Government, as the representative of the aggregate power of society. The metal itself, unless in the shape of coined money, would not represent a definite value; because the metal might be depreciated in value by the admixture of baser or inferior metals, unless it bore the impress of authority to determine its value. The exchangers of the metal for other articles of utility could not, without great loss of

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