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they will command a price, are they to be held as consti- 
tuting wealth. 
Air and water are indispensable for living beings, but they 
are not wealth, unless, from some cause, a price can be had 
for their possession. 
None of the rich gifts of nature can be held as forming 
any portion of men’s wealth until they have been appro- 
priated to some special uses, and thus made to command a 
price for their transference from one party to another. 
Rich lands and minerals, useful animals and vegetables, 
whilst in their wild or natural state are not wealth, and 
become such only by appropriation and culture, whereby 
they will command prices for transfer. 
These last-named things form a great portion of the 
wealth of all civilised nations, but solely so from their 
appropriation and culture. The aggregate of things 
possessed by individuals constitute the entire wealth of a 
nation — for wealth implies ownership and the possession of 
material things. 
Whilst it is proper enough to call men wealthy who have 
large incomes from the public funds, from shares in compa- 
nies, from interest on loans, and other investments — yet, in 
strictness, instead of their possessing great wealth, it is only 
that of the power to draw wealth from its sources and have 
it transferred to them. To have a clear conception of the 
nature of wealth we must distinguish the difference between 
the power to obtain wealth from others and the actual 
possession of it by some person or party. 
We have a large number of persons belonging to the 
upper or wealthy classes having incomes from ten to twenty 
thousand pounds a year, a goodly lot with one thousand 
pounds per week, and some six or eight whose incomes 
reach the enormous amount of one thousand pounds per 
day ! — yet these vast sums afford no evidence as to the 
amount of the nation’s wealth beyond the fact that a few 
