222 



most precious of all kinds of wealth tlie necessaries 

 of life has none. 



Thus if two pieces of land, one suitable for grow- 

 ing opium, and the other capable only of producing 

 rice : or two mines, one a gold and the other a copper 

 mine, were situated in the same locality, and at a 

 considerable distance from a market, it is quite 

 intelligible that, the expenditure of capital and labor 

 required to produce the opium and the rice, and to 

 work the gold and the copper mine being, respectively, 

 precisely the same, the opium land and the diamond 

 mine should have a high exchange value, while the 

 rice laud and the copper mine would be unsaleable. 

 Yet need not the rice land and the copper mine be 

 valueless. As the electric fluid in the Leyden Jar is 

 imprisoned till approached by the conductor, so 

 would be the natural properties of the rice land and 

 the copper in the mine, until advancing civiliza- 

 tion, improved communication, or other circum- 

 stances, set them free. In an old country, therefore, 

 the object, of a wise man with valuable property 

 in land, or wealth in mines, should not be to give 

 them away, or to sell them, at a nominal value, 

 to the first person who would undertake to cultivate 

 the one or to work the other, but rather to endea- 

 vour, if within his power, to bring them within 

 those influences which would give them a value in 

 exchange, in proportion to their natural value, and 

 then, and unless to do this was nearly impossible or 



