AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 171 



carefully providing against small ones. The importance of 

 this principle is thus illustrated by M. Say, a political 

 economist : 



&quot; * Being in the country, I had an example of one of 

 those small losses which a family is exposed to through 

 negligence. From the want of a latch of small value, the 

 wicket of a barn yard, looking to the field, was left open. 

 Every one who went through, drew the door to; but having 

 no means to fasten it, it re-opened. One day a fine pig got 

 out, and ran into the woods, and immediately all the world 

 was after it. The gardener, the cook, dairy-maid, all ran 

 to recover the swine. The gardener got sight of him first, 

 and jumped over a ditch to stop him, he sprained his ankle, 

 and was confined a fortnight to the house. The cook, on 

 her return, found all the linen she had left to dry by the 

 fire, burned ; and the dairy-maid, having ran off before she 

 tied the cows, one of them broke the leg of a colt in the 

 stable. The gardener s lost time was worth twenty crowns, 

 valuing his pains at nothing. The linen burned and the 

 colt spoiled were worth as much more. Here is a loss of 

 forty crowns, and much pain and trouble, vexation and in 

 convenience, for the want of a latch, which would have 

 cost three pence ; and the loss, through careless neglect, 

 falls on a family little able to support it. 



&quot; Proceeding now to inquire how to labor with profit, 

 we remark first, that capital is a general term for the ac 

 cumulated stock of former labor. Its father is labor, and 

 its mother economy. Ties of consanguinity, however, it 

 was long ago discovered, are no preventive against unseemly 

 contention. It is an old proverb, * When two men ride on 

 one horse, one must ride behind, but it is not always easy 

 to decide the question of precedence between them. In 

 primitive and unsettled states of society, labor is more 

 powerful than capital. In pruning the luxuriance of na- 



