1831 .] 
and of Periodical Increase. 
75 
that the real agent, in effecting what follows, is the life, or what I may term indif- 
ferently, the vital or procreative, the reproductive, and incremental principle, in- 
herent in the products themselves which have been reserved with this particular ob- 
ject in view. 
The vital principle inherent in the reserved stock of organic germs, and not the 
passive soil, is, therefore, to be treated as the source of future wealth, and of perio- 
dical increase ; and we must in vain seek elsewhere for a competent cause for such 
phenomena, as are continually exhibited in the reproduction and increase of wealth. 
Let other active principles be substituted for this power, although we may perceive 
amongst them sufficient causes for modification and change, yet we cannot, in the 
whole range of nature, find the means of obtaining one set of products from the 
destruction or modification of similar products : far less can we perceive competent 
causes, not only for a reproduction of qualities similar to those destroyed, but for a 
reproduction and increase also of the products in which these qualities inhere. 
The labour of man, when alone applied to existing products, can effect nothing 
but the destruction of existing properties, followed, it is true, by the acquisition of 
new, (for destruction of the component matter itself is beyond human power ;) the 
last result differing, of necessity, however, in many of its essential qualities, from 
the subject on which industry' was first exerted ; and labour even, when guiding in 
some destined channel the physical forces of nature, as it may be said to do, when 
employing the stupendous machinery of the present day, can effect nothing but a 
change. To this I beg the most particular attention ; for to labour alone is repro- 
duction now attributed. 
Let well directed industry, however, co-operate with the vital principle inherent 
in the reserved stock of seed, and we witness, as the result, a periodical reproduc- 
tion, and a progressive increase, brought within the reach of man, of those things 
of which he originally feels most intensely the want. We witness, on the one hand, 
as the effects of industry, a destruction of existing properties ; a smooth soil made 
rough with the plough, or the spade ; or a dry spot made wet. We see a modifica- 
tion effected in the soil, and its former products ; and an alteration in the relations 
of the soil and its former products ; also, a change brought about in the relations of 
the soil, and the seed which man desires to plant : but we perceive, on the other 
hand, as the results of the living principle, the destruction of existing properties • 
their gradual re-formation ; and the creation, not of one, but of hundreds of pro’- 
ducts, similar to the one originally destroyed ; each capable, in its turn, of running 
the same career, provided the circumstances under which it is placed correspond 
m some particulars, with those of its parent germ. 
These considerations are important; as I conceive, that to the want of attention 
to t te difference between the effects of the vital energy in the organic products of 
nature, and the other active principles in nature, and between these, and the effects 
f la jour, may be traced many of the errors of political economists. 
i ly system of wealth, therefore, commences with the adoption of the principle 
' St0ry ’, by the testimony of all voyagers who have visited nations 
n their infancy ; and still more forcibly, by the denouncement in holy writ, that a 
1 c ony existed originally of that description of produce which forms human 
nutriment, as well as the means of its subsequent increase : and it proceeds with 
this other equally well established principle; that man's numbers, and subsistence, 
a rs imi e in amount, must subsequently increase together in mutual and 
constant dependence one upon the other. 
But whether the former principle have, in all cases, been found in actual opera- 
tion, is, however, a matter of little consequence to the doctrines I wish to elucidate ; 
