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CarrutHERs.—On Mill's Fourth Fundamental Theorem respecting Capital. 25 
Health, strength, education, mechanical skill, and all other useful 
personal gifts and acquirements are wealth, and every free man is a capi- 
talist to the extent of owning his own personal powers of body and mind. 
The health, strength, skill and intelligence of a slave are, however, as far as 
they are transferable, part of his master’s capital. 
The sun’s warmth and light, air, rain, land, and all other useful natural 
agents are wealth. Where they cannot be appropriated by any individual, 
‘the ownership is common to all, and all are capitalists ; where they have 
been appropriated, as in the case of land, the owner becomes the sole 
capitalist as regards them. 
The wealth of the world consists of natural agents which we receive 
unconditionally ; of our personal mental and bodily acquirements ; and of 
wealth which has been produced by the labour of man to eke out the supply 
that nature has unconditionally given, and which is not sufficient for our 
subsistence. This last we may call ** commodities.” 
The stock of commodities in the world is perpetually being consumed 
and replaced by others produced by the unceasing labour of man. It is 
like the sea, from which the sun is perpetually taking away, but to which 
all that is taken away is returned by the rivers after it has passed over 
and fertilised the land. But for this circle of evaporation and rainfall, 
the earth would be a sterile waste; but for the circle of consumption 
and production, man would be reduced to a state no better than that of 
the brutes. 
Our stock of commodities would not keep us alive more than two or 
three years at the furthest, and if labour ceased, that short time would see 
the almost total extinction of civilised man. ** The accumulated wealth of 
centuries" is a thing of imagination. All the commodities in the world, 
which were not produced by the present generation, would not, even if 
converted by miracle into bread, at their exchange value as compared with 
that of bread, give us a single good meal. Accumulated capital there may 
be; that is, some families may increase, in every generation, their owner- 
ship of the wealth produced by others, but this can only be done to a small 
extent; the capital of all the banks in England represents but a very 
small part of the wealth which the labour of Englishmen produces every 
year. 
It is not important to any individual in what form his capital may be. 
He may hold cash, or land, or he may have a stock of commodities in his 
store which would be of no use to himself, if he could not exchange them ; 
but, by the help of trade, his capital will give him whatever form of 
exchangeable wealth he may wish. Practically, he is not the owner of any 
particular commodity but of a share, proportioned to his capital, of all the 
commodities of the world, 9. 
