12 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
should in his youth accumulate capital, that is, a right to wealth which he 
himself has not produced, so that in his old age he may live in comfort 
without working; this is not, however, accumulating wealth, but only pro- 
viding that the distribution of future wealth shall be made in a particular 
manner. The community never grows old; and it would be unreasonable, 
even if it were possible, that one generation should scrimp and spare so 
that the next should live without labour. Each generation provides for the 
future by rearing children. It does not lay aside wealth for future use, but 
stores it, by using it to feed the young, who in their turn support their 
fathers when no longer able to work. Unhappily, the machinery by which 
this is effected is very faulty, and age and want too often go together ; 
but it is still true that all who are too old or too young to work are 
supported by those in the prime of life. 
Direct wealth is never saved, but is consumed as fast as it is made, or 
is stored up so far only as may be necessary to make the stock in hand ` 
last until more can be produced. This can not be called saving at 
all; it is no more than the exercise of sound judgment in the rate of 
consumption. There is no sacrifice involved, but the reverse. 
Saving on the part of the whole community can only be made by making 
implements ; there is in this case a clear sacrifice, for the labour which is de- 
voted to the work might have been employed in producing direct wealth, which 
would at once have been useful, while the implement only makes it possible 
that a larger stock of wealth shallin future be produced with the same labour. 
The number of implements which can be judiciously made is, of course, 
limited by the number of men who are at hand to use them; it is also 
limited by the advantages which would be gained by having them; if a 
large expenditure would be incurred in making a new machine, and only a 
small increase obtained in the production of future wealth, the community 
would be richer by not making it at all. In a community where education 
and knowledge of the laws of nature are stationary this latter limit is soon 
reached, and no further increase of wealth is then possible. 
There would have been for instance no use, just before the invention of 
railways, in making more macadamized roads in England, as those already 
made were sufficient, and any increase in their number, however large, 
would have been followed by only a small increase of utility. Increased 
knowledge of the laws of nature, by suggesting that invention, opened out 
a new way of employing labour in making new implements which would 
repay their eost. The result was a large increase of the wealth of the 
world, measured, not by the cost of the railways, but by their efficiency“as 
compared with the roads they superseded. 
