the cost; but man, by restrictive laws, customs, duties, &c., increases the cost of supply to two fifths, or a half, or a whole, or perhaps double, the cost price of the articles.*

We are fully aware that, to many, this mode of viewing restrictive laws will appear, at all events, irrelevant; at the same time, there can be little doubt that, so long as restrictive laws of this character are allowed to exist, man must suffer. We do not say that the persons who make the laws will suffer, that they will be poorer, or that they will reap the inconvenience of the arrangements. Their pecuniary interests are often diametrically opposed to the welfare of the great body of the population. But so long as any legislators whatever are allowed to originate restrictions, and thereby vastly to increase the cost of those natural productions which the population requires, the great body of the inhabitants of a country must be in a

*The mode in which the taxation of articles of consumption operates, is thus set forth by the Liverpool Financial Reform Association:

Those who are interested in the facts of politics (and who is not?) will find the best account of the present political condition of Britain in Wade's "Unreformed Abuses in Church and State." London: E. Wilson. Price 2s. 6d. This is, perhaps, the best exposition of the fruits of aristocratic government that has issued from the press.

worse condition than Providence intended, in a worse condition than they would have been had there been no such laws, and in a worse condition than they would have been had the arrangements of nature been left to themselves, and not interfered with by the enactments of the legislators.

There is the greatest possible difference between taking advantage of the laws of nature, and originating laws. It is not man's office to originate laws. God has made the laws, and given man an intellect to discover and apply them. As well may man make laws in the physical sciences, or in theology, as in political economy. It is true he may make laws and enforce them; but what he never can do is, to make the operation of those laws beneficial to the world. This is beyond his power; and, though the laws may be for the pecuniary advantage of the privileged classes of a country, they are necessarily followed by a concomitant series of evils, which bear on the masses of the population.

The great truth which political economy will ultimately teach is this: "That God has constituted nature aright; that it is man's interest to take advantage of the arrangements of nature according to the laws which God has established in the world; that all human laws originating in man are prejudicial arrangements, which interfere with the course of nature; that all such laws ought universally to be abolished, so that man may have free scope to extract the maximum of benefit from the earth." Social arrangements for the benefit of all are not laws they are adaptations of the laws of nature. These are requisite for society;

and to these arrangements, legislation, in its economical aspect, ought to be exclusively confined. When men persecute each other on account of their religious tenets, (either by positive infliction or by exclusion from civil rights,) they make laws-they originate laws; when they make it a crime to kill a wild animal, they originate laws; when they tax the population for the support of a national creed and national ceremonial, they originate laws; when they allow the king to grant fifty or a hundred thousand acres of the nation's land to an individual, they originate laws. There are no such laws as these in nature; no such laws in reason; no such laws in Scripture. They are mere human inventions, having no truth to rest upon; they are the productions of man during the era of superstition.

But, on the contrary, when men make light-houses for the protection of maritime commerce public harbors for the safety of ships, seamen, and cargoes when they make a police to watch-when they pave, light, and clean towns-when they make roads and arrangements for communication- when they support such national defences as are judged requisite at any given time when they support judges and other officers to administer the laws of justice-when they do these, and many other similar acts, at the common expense, and enforce the payment, they do not make laws. They make only such arrangements, based on the laws of nature or equity, as are deemed fitting at a given period; they take advantage of the world, such as they find it, and endeavor to evolve from it a greater amount of good than they could do individu

ally, were there no such social arrangements. Men may make laws, if they will; but what they cannot do is, to make good to follow them.

§ III. The Province and Position of Politics Proper. From political economy we turn to politics. Here we approach the argument that a millennium, or reign of justice on the earth, is a natural event; that it belongs to the course of human evolution; that it is computable on the very same principles that men employ to compute other events; that it may be inferred from the past history of human progression, which gives us the actual line of progress, and from the logical ordination of the sciences, which gives us the abstract line of progress.

First, then, we have to determine the position of politics in the scheme of classification. Before doing so, however, we must remark that no science of politics, whatever be its form, or whatever be its matter, can hope to meet with impartial investigation. Whatever may be the real system of truth, (and a truth there must be somewhere,) that system cannot fail to controvert the opinions of multitudes, and to be favorable or unfavorable to the pecuniary interests of multitudes. A few there may be who are able to look calmly; but the minds of the vast majority are occupied by habitual prepossessions, which, in spite of every effort of the will, prevent the intellect from shaking off its fetters. What they have been accustomed to, or one short step beyond what they have been accustomed to, is the extent of their intellectual horizon. All beyond is a fabulous region of mysterious portent

an Ultima Thule, whose thick waters are unnavigablea land of darkness, which perhaps some of our far-off descendants may possibly visit, but which we can never hope to explore..

Admit the fact of human progression, however, (nor can it reasonably be denied,*) and all the objections, and all the difficulties connected with the habitual credence of a present generation, vanish into air. Let political truth be what it may, it cannot receive general adoption at any period. It must grow; it must be suggested, misunderstood, denied, discussed, adopted in part, rejected in part, re-discussed, further adopted, and so on. Were any generation of men (constituted as men now are, and manifesting similar tendencies to what may every where be observed) to continue to live on instead of being replaced by successive generations, it appears highly probable that the progression of man would be for the most part arrested, or, at all events, it would be much less rapid than at present. In general, men form their opinions young, and adhere to them for the remainder of their lives. New intellect must be brought forward, with its elasticity, its inquisitive scepticism, and its ardent desire to form a system

* It may be necessary distinctly to reiterate, that by human progression we do not mean the progression of man's nature, but the progression of man's knowledge, and the progression of his systematic arrangements. We are well aware that there is a doctrine which teaches the progressive improvement of human nature. And even this latter doctrine appears to be so far correct, that the higher sentiments of human nature come more and more into general action the more men depart from barbarism. But that any amount of natural improvement will make man other than a fallen creature, is out of the question.