CannuTHERS.—On some of the Terms used in Political Economy. 25 
nor more likely than others to take a wide view of their own interests. 
They do not try to get more profit out of their steam-engines by stinting 
the supply of coal, or out of their horses or cattle by stinting their food, 
but they will, if they can, reduce wages to a point at which the labourer ean 
barely live and work. They forget that a real and active desire that wealth 
shall be produced is one of the requisites of production, and that this 
cannot be entertained by a spiritless, hopeless drudge, who by hard and 
continuous labour can scarcely live better than the paupers in the work- 
house, into whose ranks he must fallas soon as, broken down with rheu- 
matism and other ailings brought on by insufficient food and shelter, the 
few best years of his wretched youth are passed. 
The total wages fund does not depend on the supply of labour, but on 
the competition between capitalists, and will be the same whether wages 
are high or low. The rate of wages depends on the numbers of the work- 
men who share the wages fund. Where the community is divided into 
capitalists and labourers, the latter have scarcely any inducement to keep 
down their numbers, or rather, it is not so apparent as in the case of the 
capitalists, and they are not fitted by education or habits of thought to 
exercise self-restraint when the reward is distant and not very obvious. 
They, therefore, tend to multiply until the wages fund is not more than 
sufficient to give them the bare necessaries of life. If the capitalists avail 
themselves of the competition of the labourers against one another, they 
may pay their workmen no more than is just sufficient to keep body and 
soul together. It is not their real interest to do so; by doubling wages 
they would induce the men to work so much better, that the produce would 
be increased in a still higher ratio. They should, even in their own interest, 
refuse to pay less than a certain liberal rate; the wages fund would then 
maintain only a comparatively small number of labourers, and an efficient 
check would be at once placed on undue increase of population. 
We have a right to expect more from capitalists in return for the 
immense privileges we grant them, than a simple acquiescence in the course 
which events are taking. If they cannot prevent a country from falling 
into the state into which Ireland fell, or even into that in which the south- 
west of England now is, they are of no use, and the sooner they are 
abolished the better. 
No other servants of the State, which capitalists simply are, would be 
tolerated who were so highly paid, and who performed their work so badly. 
We leave in their hands the absolute disposal of the labour of the com- 
munity, and the distribution of the wealth produced by that labour; we 
