18 Transactions,— Miscellaneous. 
capital could not increase.” The community as a whole does, however, 
practically consume all that it produces. If population is stationary, 
nothing more is required to increase the average wealth than to replace all 
worn-out implements with new ones of a more scientific kind. If population 
is increasing, the number of implements must be increased as well as their 
quality improved, in order that the larger population may labour more 
advantageously than the smaller had done. This would not in the ordinary 
meaning of the word be called saving; if the community increases, it is 
part of its current expenditure to provide the new members with facilities 
of producing wealth for their own support. 
-~ The meaning of “capital” in this case appears to be the wealth which 
the capitalists give to the labouring classes in exchange for their labour; 
and the theorem is little more than an identical proposition. 
The third theorem is, that ‘‘ Capital, although saved and the result of 
saving, is nevertheless consumed.’’ This follows from what has been 
already said; everything which is saved by the capitalist is consumed by 
the labourers, except new implements, the production of which may be 
called saving by the whole community, as it implies a sacrifice of present 
for future advantage. All that Mill deduces from it does not, however, 
follow. He says: “ Saving, in short, enriches, and spending impoverishes, 
the community along with the individual; which is but saying, in other 
words, that society at large is richer by what it expends in maintain- 
ing and aiding productive labour, but poorer by what it expends on its 
enjoyments.” Saving by the capitalist, as has been so often said above, 
enriches the workman, but saving by the community would enrich no one. 
The object of labour is the bettering the conditions of life, and the com- 
munity, therefore, is the richer by what it expends on its enjoyments, and 
not the poorer ; it is the richer by what the capitalist saves, simply because 
this kind of saving is only another name for more equal distribution. 
The community does not require to save; it requires only that its labour 
shall be wisely directed, so that the produce shall give the greatest possible 
comfort and enjoyment. If the necessaries of life are not produced in 
sufficient quantity it will suffer privation, although every man had been 
engaged in what is generally called productive labour; no amount of cloth 
or iron would make good the want of food. The necessaries having been 
first provided for, the common labour should be devoted to producing those 
luxuries which all can share. This is the “productive labour" which it 
is the interest of society to “maintain and aid." An actor or publie 
Singer may more properly be called a productive labourer than a velvet- 
maker or diamond-digger, because the enjoyment which his labour pro- 
Li 
