Wellington Philosophical Society. 597 
TRACT. 
Mr. Mill defines wealth to be “all useful and agreeable things which possess 
exchangeable value," and capital to be “a stock previously accumulated of the products 
of former labour." Mr. Carruthers proposes “ to define wealth to be ‘everything in the 
world which is useful or agreeable to man,’ and capital the ‘ownership of that wealth." 
The author sees no reason to depart from Mr, Mill’s definitions, and does not think Mr. 
Carruthers’ definition of capital any improvement upon that of Mr. Mill. There is 
a sense in which nature’s bounties may be converted into capital. By nature’s bounties, 
he means the rays of the sun, air, and water, and such-like things; for example, the 
owner of a piece of land by a running stream can at any time command a higher price 
for his land than the owner of another piece, equally good in all other respects, which is 
at a distance from water. Again, if the stream is of sufficient volume, especially if the 
fall be considerable, the fortunate owner becomes possessed of an inexhaustible fund of 
potential energy, which he may turn in various ways to his own use and benefit, and 
thereby convert it into capital. He can apply the energy of the stream to drive machinery, 
and by that means save the expense of a steam-engine and the fuel necessary to drive it. 
He can, if need be, irrigate his lands and increase the prodnoe of his fields. Every 
farmer knows the value of a situation on the sunny side of a . e farmer thus 
situated is able to avail himself of the earliest rays of the sun, and of the concentration 
of those rays at a later period of the day to promote vegetation. He in fact converts the 
potential energy of the sun’s heat into a means of growing crops, and thereby increasing 
his income. He will be able to produce crops earlier than, and superior in quality 
to his neighbour whose land lies on the other side of the mountain range, and "who 
receives the sun’s rays later in the day and at a more acute angle. 
The author then gives his reasons for disagreeing from Mr. Carruthers on two 
or three points of importance. It is not a difficult matter to detect the fallacy that 
by creating a paper currency we should be giving that which costs almost nothing for 
the product of labour. This would be doing violence to a fundamental law. It is, in 
fact, saying that we can give a penny for that which costs a pound. The error lies in 
supposing that any power or authority, however great, can create a fictitious or artificial 
ue, This is sufficiently disproved by the fact that, wherever the experiment has been 
tried, it has resulted in signal failure. The scheme of John Law, in France, in the 
reign of Louis XV., is a case in point. But Law’s scheme had one redeeming feature 
as compared with the theory of Mr. Carruthers, inasmuch as his paper currency was 
supposed to represent the possessions of the great landed proprietors. 
The author gives other instances of attempts to set up a paper currency, notably the 
case of the United States. 
No legal enactment can override an universal law. The idea of a paper standard of 
currency is not a new one, as will be seen by what has been already advanced. There 
been visionaries without number who have talked the wildest nonsense on this 
subject. Yet all enlightened nations have found it necessary to adopt metallic standards. 
And these metals are adopted simply because they are scarce and costly. They represent 
work and labour done, and they are a convenient medium of exchange because they are 
scarce, and require the expenditure of energy to the value that they represent to obtain 
them. Tens of thousands of men, with various mechanical appliances, are employed in 
obtaining the precious metals, and others are employed, skilled artizans, with costly 
machinery, to refine them and coin them into money. If one buys an article for a pound, 
R2 
" 
