I believe it to be true that I cannot by means of money raise the condition of a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before without proportionately depressing others in the same class. . . . If I only give him money, supposing the produce of the country to remain the same, I give him a title to a larger share of that produce than formerly, which shows that he cannot receive without diminishing the share of others.

Ricardo lived in the same economic age as Malthus. He was an eye-witness of the same intense and prevalent distress, and it is not surprising as a consequence that his attitude of mind was, if anything, even more pessimistic than that of Malthus. In the chapter on wages in his "Principles" he assumes without any further circumlocution that the natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race without either increase or diminution. Nay, even more than this,

In the natural advance of society the wages of labour will have a tendency to fall as far as they are regulated by supply and demand; for the supply of labourers will continue to increase at the same rate,

whilst the demand for them will increase at a slower rate.

...

When by the encouragement which high wages give to the increase of population the number of labourers is increased, wages again fall to their natural price, and indeed, from a reaction sometimes fall below it. When the market price of labour is below its natural price the condition of labourers is most wretched; then poverty deprives them of these comforts which custom renders absolute necessaries. It is only after their privations have reduced their number, or the demand for labour has increased, that the market price of labour will rise to its natural price. . . .

Although in new settlements, under the most favourable circumstances, the power of production is still greater than that of population, it will not long continue so; for the land being limited in quantity and differing in quality, with every increased portion of capital employed on it there will be a decreased rate of production, whilst the power of population continues always the same. . . . In long settled countries from the diminishing rate of supply of raw produce all the evils of a crowded population are experienced. . . . In this case the population increases faster than the funds required for its support. Every exertion of

industry, unless accompanied by a diminished rate of increase in the population, will add to the evil, for production cannot keep pace with it. With a population pressing against the means of subsistence, the only remedies are either a reduction of people or a more rapid accumulation of capital.

As has been the case with almost every other distinctive theory of the so-called classical political economy, that which Ricardo enunciated was formulated and crystallised into hidebound theory by his successors. Ricardo published his "Principles of Political Economy" in 1817. The first edition of James Mill's Elements appeared only four years later, in 1821. In this work we meet with the most naked and hateful exposition of the so-called law of wages. The connection of thought between the two writers will be instantly detected.

Universally, then, we may affirm, other things remaining the same, that if the ratio which capital and population bear to one another remains the same, wages will remain the same: if the ratio which capital bears to population increases, wages will rise; if the ratio which population bears to capital increases, wages will fall. . . .

If it were the natural tendency of capital to

increase faster than population, there would be no difficulty in preserving a prosperous condition of the people. If, on the other hand, it were the natural tendency of population to increase faster than capital, the difficulty would be very great. There would be a perpetual tendency in wages to fall. . .

That population has a tendency to increase faster than in most places capital has actually increased, is proved incontestably by the condition of the population in almost all parts of the globe.

Following this exposition, Mill devotes three long paragraphs to prove that population tends to increase rapidly, that capital has a less tendency than population to increase rapidly, and that the employment of forcible means to make capital increase faster than its natural tendency would not produce desirable effects.

It will be seen at a glance from this short account that by the time the theory had left the hands of James Mill, and reached the hands of his son, John Stuart Mill, it was already substantially formulated and defined. All that the younger Mill did was to invest the theory with that garb of high-sounding but empty philosophic generalisation which he contrived to throw around the whole subject of Political Economy. He had, too, all the less excuse for thus servilely

following his father and Ricardo, in that his lot had fallen on better days than theirs. But John Stuart Mill had not a spark of originality in his

nature.

Over his celebrated exposition of the wagefund theory we need not delay. It is practically summed up in the opening lines of this chapter.

Now what has been the reception accorded by the working-classes of England to this wage-fund theory which had been thus formulated for them by the classical Political Economists? A very curious reception indeed. At first they howled in exasperation at it, spurned it, execrated it. It was the iron law, most cold and fiendish of all the cold and fiendish laws which a cynical, heartless, and inhuman Political Economy had ever enunciated. Then the period of abuse and reviling passed away, and the working-classes-swallowed the theory at a single gulp. Without a thought of the consequences, they assumed to themselves the malignant heritage of the classical economists, and ever since they have sunk deeper and deeper in the mire of delusion. It is true that certain parts of the theory they have never to this day digested. Quite rightly they do not and will not believe that wages are bound down to the minimum of mere necessaries of life by any iron law, and that it is impossible to raise wages. Quite rightly it has been the consistent purpose of their unions to raise wages. But the general